March 2023

A fantasy otherworld is about to get a taste of modern automated commerce. Studio Slowcurve Co unveiled the official trailer for the anime adaptation of Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon. The series is an adaptation of the three-volume light novel series by author Hirukuma. The series will debut in July 2023.

The Reborn as a Vending Machine anime trailer reveals a man who dies in a vehicular accident. He collides with a vending machine that falls off the back of a truck, and careens off a cliff. He awakens in a medieval fantasy world, not as a child or superpowered version of himself, but as the vending machine he died alongside. Unlike a certain slime, he is unable to speak or move independently. He's helpless until he meets Lammis, an obscenely strong adventurer. Lammis and the people of the fantasy world benefit from the convenient cuisine produced by the mystical machine they've come to call "Boxxo" (or "Hakkon" in Japanese). Meanwhile, Boxxo gets to travel the new world strapped to Lammis' back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VZEVawzgik

Boxxo is played by Jun Fukuyama (Lelouch in Code Geass, Shi Huang Di in Fate/Grand Order), and Lammis is played by Kaede Hondo (Aoi in Digimon Survive, Ciel in Tsukihime Remake, Firis in Atelier Firis).

Slowcurve also unveiled the official key art for the series.

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A new trailer and character information came out on Twitter for Veronica before she appears in Fire Emblem: Engage as DLC. She is part of the Wave 3 add-ons, and she will debut as an Emblem alongside the Chrom and Robin duo on March 7, 2023. Veronica is a support-type Emblem who can improve a character’s damage potential.

Veronica’s Syncho Skill activates when a character is not at full health. It increases their attack by 30% based on how much health they have lost. Her Engage Weapon is the Hliðskjálf, which will prevent an enemy from counterattacking when you attack them. This makes her a useful Emblem on characters who are slow or have low defense. You can also use her Contract skill on an ally who has already moved that turn. They will be able attack again, but they cannot move.

The company’s motto, Credo In Lugos, means “I believe in games”, which Believer said shows its dedication to video game development as a lifelong passion and not just a business venture. It appears dedicated to bringing its new IP to life beyond games as well, however, as strategic partner Michael D. Eisner said Believer understands that “truly great content franchises are not built with a single media type.

“They need to resonate with their audience across games, film, television, collectibles, and real-world interactive experiences,” he said, adding that their vision will be “[brought] to life across every platform”.

Destiny 2’s Lightfall expansion how now been out for a whole week. It made a bad first impression, but the post-campaign has been much stronger. There’s plenty to appreciate in between the disappointing story and the overall mixed bag of new additions and confusing changes. Outside of the jovial surfer cyborg Nimbus,…

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I boot up Hogwarts Legacy and step away to refill my coffee cup. Thanks to the PS5’s quick resume mechanic, my character is staring at me from the start screen before I even get a chance to add oat milk to my brew. I gaze, absentmindedly, as the boar’s head mounted on the wall behind her snarls and startles her, as…

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The Last of Us show had a pretty gruesome episode this week. The Winter section has long been regarded as the original game’s darkest section, reckoning with its most villainous figures and horrifying realities of the post-apocalypse. Because of that, it’s perhaps merciful on the showrunner’s part that the show omits…

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Xbox shared the latest games to join its subscription service Game Pass in a blog announcement earlier today, and it’s looking pretty good. This early month update adds Guilty Gear Strive, plenty of Dead Space, and a few important updates to games you already have.

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It’s a nightmare scenario for Yu-Gi-Oh fans who have to look up cards with convoluted descriptions. Over the weekend, the administrators of Yugipedia—which, as its name implies, is a wiki on all things Yu-Gi-Oh—announced that they had accidentally deleted half of the wikia’s primary database. “Yugipedia has suffered a…

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The Nintendo GameCube was a weird little console, one that had all kinds of wacky add-ons and peripherals released for it over the years, from LAN adapters to Game Boy Links to bongo drums. One thing I never knew about until today, however, were the company’s plans for an official LCD screen.

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Following the success of 2018's The Messenger, developer Sabotage Studio decided to go all in on its dream project – a fully featured RPG inspired by Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, and more. We played the game's opening eight hours and spoke with the team's creative director, artists, and sound designer and composer (as well as Chrono Trigger composer, Yasunori Mitsuda who is contributing music to the game!) about bringing its fantasy world to life and living up to the quality of the games that inspired it.

We have two amazing covers for Sea of Stars from Sabotage Studio senior concept artist Bryce Kho. The standard cover (below) shows the Solstice Warriors, Valere and Zale, along with their friend Garl, moving through the Forbidden Cavern while carefully avoiding monsters. The artwork for our Gold cover shows the same team embroiled in combat with the Botanical Horror boss in the Haunted Mansion.

Lince Works, the studio behind the Aragami franchise, has announced that it will shut down next month. 

The Barcelona, Spain-based studio, which was founded in 2014, will end development on all of its projects as a result of closing its doors in April, as reported by Gematsu. The studio cites unfavorable "economic context" as the reason it's shutting down after nine years of development, primarily creating 2016's Aragami, its Nightfall DLC, and 2021's Aragami 2. 

Here's the studio's statement on its closing, in full: 

Developer The Outsiders has announced the first piece of premium DLC for its critically acclaimed rhythm-based shooter, Metal: Hellsinger. The game, which challenges you to blast the demons of Hell to the beat of an original soundtrack featuring some of the biggest names in metal, is adding two new original songs to the soundtrack through the first piece of downloadable content.

The DLC, Dream of the Beast, adds original songs from two singers who didn't appear on the main game's soundtrack. Cristina Scabbia from Lacuna Coil and Will Ramos from Lorna Shore join the cast of recognizable singers to contribute to the soundtrack. Dream of the Beast also adds The Red Right Hand, a new machine gun, and three new outfits, each of which provide unique gameplay modifiers.

These updates join the game as part of the Dream of the Beast DLC, but players who don't purchase the premium content also have something to be excited for. The same day the DLC arrives, players can expect a free title update for Metal Hellsinger. This free update adds a new song selection feature.

Reviewed on: PC, iOS
Platform: PC, iOS
Publisher: Pomelo Games
Developer: Pomelo Games
Release: September 17, 2019 (iOS), March 7, 2023 (PC)
Rating: 12+

Despite my love for large-scale simulation games like Cities: Skylines as an adult, I was not a SimCity player growing up. Instead, I was pulled in the direction of the more manageable SimTown. The zoomed-in town management, where you can micromanage every aspect of your citizens' lives without the massive scope of SimCity, always appealed to me more. Perhaps that's why Outlanders, a simplistic yet challenging settlement builder, has now sunk its hooks into me on two occasions across both of its platforms.

Niantic has an ambitious new augmented reality mobile project

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So... what happened to the Pufftons?

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Save on some of the best titles in the cyberpunk genre, courtesy of the folks at GOG until March 13

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Playing it on Nintendo Switch made me obsessed anew

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Riot Games announced last month that three League of Legends games would arrive this year, including The Mageseeker: A League of Legends story. Now, the company has announced that The Mageseeker will hit consoles and PC next month. 

More specifically, The Mageseeker will hit PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC on April 18. It will cost $29.99 on digital storefronts, and preorders include the Lost Silverwing in-game bonus. You can also purchase the Digital Deluxe Edition for $39.99, and it includes additional digital items like a Silverwing Supply Station Pack, Home Sweet Home cave decorations, exclusive spells, and Unchained skins. 

Check out the game in action in the new trailer below: 

“How do I tell the world Derek Yu is dead? And worse yet – it’s my fault?”

Ridiculous, maybe, but these paranoid questions run through my head as Yu climbs a mountain. No safety gear. No helmet. Just his own hands, sneakers, and determination. I have to follow soon after, and though I’m undoubtedly scared, in the moment, I’m much more afraid of killing the creator of Spelunky than my own mortality. Though you could argue, in this hyper-specific example, the game should’ve been a cautionary tale. In Spelunky, you do die a lot. Nevertheless, I don’t want to be responsible for the death of one of the game industry’s most beloved indie developers.

It’s late April, a hot mid-afternoon day in West Hills, Calif., a neighborhood about a 45-minute drive northwest of Los Angeles. It took about an hour to hike here: the Cave of Munits, which now looms roughly 25 feet above us, a giant fissure in the mountain we stand beneath. We knew we’d have to do some light climbing; the websites we’d read said as much. But now that I’m here, looking into the opening of Munits, I feel they sold it short. To my anxious mind, I’m about to climb El Capitan. It could be 25 feet or 3,000 feet, for all I know. Falling to your death feels the same no matter what altitude you slip from.

“Wow, this really is like some actual spelunking here,” Yu says, the words stressed and labored as he pulls his body weight up.

Earlier this year we highlighted a deal on the Corsair MP600 Pro LPX 2TB, which dropped to £200 - a fair price for one of the very fastest SSDs on the market. Now though, the same drive is down to £164, a scorching-hot deal for this level of flash-based firepower and one well worth bringing up again!

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March’s first batch of Game Pass additions included JRPGs and remixed versions of history, and the second group is adding… more JRPGs and remixed versions of history. We now know what’s coming to Game Pass through March 21st, and there are some big highlights like Ni No Kuni 2, Civilization 6, and Guilty Gear.

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The Light Brigade has no direct relation to the British light cavalry unit made famous in the poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (which, if you head over to the poem's Wikipedia page, you can hear Tennyson himself read out via a phonograph recording from 1890 – Cool Factz!) But there is one bit of connective tissue, namely that charging into the fray is generally a bad idea. In the case of the game, that's because The Light Brigade is VR roguelike, one that blends Souls-like dark fantasy with World War II-era weaponry, with you playing a spiritually immortal but physically fragile warrior responsible for saving the world.

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Happy birthday, anniversary, launchiversary, or whatever you want to call it to the Steam Deck. Valve’s handheld SteamOS games machine has successfully evaded hardware flop status, currently sitting fourth in Steam’s own top sellers list a full year after it began shipping. That’s well deserved, too: the Steam Deck was a fun little alternative way to play PC games when it released, and through a combination of added features, ongoing improvements to game compatibility, and simply a wider choice of great games, it’s a better device now than it’s ever been.

I was originally going to look back on the Steam Deck’s first 12 months with my eyes only, but what fun is a party of one? Thus I invited Valve designer Lawrence Yang and engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais for their takes on the Deck’s past, present, and future.

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JBL are well known for their speakers and other audio products, so it's not really a surprise that their Quantum series of gaming headsets tend to offer pretty excellent sound, with an apparent focus on immersion and simulated surround. What is a surprise is that the company's Quantum 600 wireless headset is down to $59.99 on Woot, a nice $90 reduction from its current Amazon price of $149.99.

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Piratical PvPvE adventure Sea Of Thieves is five years old this month and developer Rare are setting sail on a month-long celebration full of community weekends, a feature-length documentary, and a brand new swashbuckling season. Sea Of Thieves Season 9 starts on March 16th and it’s carrying a boatload of quality-of-life features, new cosmetics, and changes to world events.

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2020’s Mars Horizon was a space flight management game where you were in charge of constructing bases, building rockets, and leading missions into the black abyss. Nate (RPS in peace) liked it quite a bit for its “masterfully crafted strategic dilemmas,” despite his findom relationship with the game. Now Mars Horizon is getting an expanded sequel, taking us to the outer reaches of the Solar System. Mars Horizon 2: The Search For Life is releasing sometime in 2024 on PC.

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I'm the sort of person that likes the idea of a rural, low-tech lifestyle, where you have a lovely little wooden house and know all your neighbours, and all your food is locally sourced from the farm down the road - but I'm self-aware enough to know that I'd hate it in practice. In the case of new town builder Outlanders, I'd have to share a house with five other people, the farmer just died of old age, and my leader wanders around doing nothing while occasionally issuing edicts forcing me to have children. But at least there's a chance of pumpkin pie.

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Paradox pulled a nifty trick when they supplanted EA's urban city builder with their own, and they're now hoping to strike twice with Life By You, a competitor to The Sims, complete with all the top-down interior design and people management you’d expect. We only have a very brief glimpse at Life By You, but developer Paradox Tectonic and former Sims boss Rod Humble are holding an announcement event on March 20th - so, we’ll see more of the life sim later this month.

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Yesterday’s Paradox Announcement Show saw the reveal of some new games, including the turn-based strategy The Lamplighters League, and a sequel to their hit city builder Cities: Skylines 2. But, with a bucketload of ongoing games, Paradox weren’t content with the newbies, and announced a blast of DLC. Flagship historical grand strategies Crusader Kings 3 and Europa Universalis 4, as well as colony builder Surviving The Aftermath, are all getting expansions.

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A new Elden Ring mod morphs FromSoftware’s open world epic into a gory Pokémon battler, with infinite spirit summons you can pit against each other like you’re Ash Ketchum at the renaissance fair. You can download the “Elden Ring Spirit Battler” now on Nexus Mods, no strings attached. You only need to be enthusiastic…

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Remakes, adaptations, reimaginings, reboots, they’re all tricky business. And with a game as celebrated as Resident Evil 4 next up on the remake meat grinder of modern video games, you might be curious as to what’s gonna get left on the cutting room floor. Well, a recent interview with the game’s director reveals that…

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The latest episode of HBO’s The Last of Us is full of standout scenes. While episode 8, “When We Are In Need,” is full of tension, drama, and even a bit more action than the show typically gets into, the moment that has viewers in a chokehold right now is one of its quietest: when Pedro Pascal’s Joel calls Bella…

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If you thought the war between Ukraine and Russia couldn’t possibly get any worse, it just did. A group of Russian weebs cosplaying as a band of thieves from the popular shonen manga Hunter x Hunter have joined the fray.

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Cheaters suck. By exploiting vulnerabilities in any given game, either through datamined hacks or purchasable cheats, charlatans can ruin the fun for everyone involved. Sometimes these swindlers need to be publicly shamed to grasp the gravity of the ban hammer that’s fallen upon them, and that’s exactly what Escape…

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