March 2023

***Last of Us Episode 8 Spoilers Below***

While HBO’s The Last of Us has been receiving almost unanimous praise from both critics and fans alike, there’s a subsection of the audience that is wondering why the adaptation seems to be lacking in violence, mostly when compared to the source material.

In a recent round table discussion following Episode 8, some of the cast and crew sat down to talk about this, as well as violence as a whole in the show. Writer and Creator Craig Mazin specifically addresses the differences between the violence in the games and show right from the jump, stating:

“When Niel (Druckman) and I were first talking about how to adapt it, we had a big discussion about violence.” he said. “When you’re playing a video game, the NPCs are a fun gameplay to puzzle; how do I get through them and around them, and violence is a part of the method of that.

Jon Bernthal is allegedly set to return to the world of the MCU, thanks to Daredevil: Born Again, as the actor has now been seemingly pegged to portray the Punisher once again.

The news of Bernthal’s return is not too surprising, given that there have been a plethora of rumors that both he and Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones will be in the Daredevil revival series at some point. It is definitely exciting though that fans’ dreams of one day seeing these Marvel Television show characters get to join the main MCU is coming true.

It is worth noting that this has not yet been officially confirmed by Marvel themselves, and these projects are constantly changing, so there is always a possibility that it will fall through. However, seeing as this is being covered by The Hollywood Reporter, it seems like fans can indeed expect Bernthal to appear.

To what extent The Punisher will be in Daredevil: Born Again remains to be seen, but seeing as there are set to be 18 episodes in the series, the writers need to find characters to fill that time, with Frank Castle being a perfect choice. Also, considering how this version of the character originated on the Daredevil show, which is currently streaming on Disney+, it makes perfect sense that Marvel would choose to reintroduce him on this show’s revival.

When the name Chucklefish comes up, most players probably immediately think of Starbound, Stardew Valley, or the upcoming Witchbrook. Others may think about Wargroove. Regardless of which game you envision first, it would be impossible to deny the influence that Chucklefish has had over the gaming community for a good few years now.

Their wholesome, pixel-perfect gameplay experiences are favorites for many kinds of players, whether or not they would usually pick up titles in such genres. Although Witchbrook has dominated fans’ minds for a while now as Chucklefish’s big upcoming title, the Stardew Valley publisher has come out and teased a new game’s arrival on March 7, 2023, called Saffron Isles.

Just like that, in a blink of an eye, the inaugural tournament of Valorant’s 2023 season is over, with 32 teams battling in São Paulo, Brazil for the trophy. After a month of grueling matches, EMEA powerhouse Fnatic has claimed the trophy, restoring the region to its glory, while granting EMEA an extra slot for Masters Japan.

As with most of the big Valorant tournaments, all eyes turn to the crowdfunding opportunities Riot Games presents the fan base. The LOCK//IN bundle served up quite a few stylish looks, and after the bundle sale ended, Riot revealed final sales have led to over $10 million going to the 32 teams that participated in LOCK//IN.

It’s been something of a guessing game since Epic Games announced that Chapter 4 Season 1 of Fortnite would be ending sooner than expected, but the official start of season two has now been revealed. Rather surprisingly, the new start date is actually the same as the original end date, March 10, 2023.

While fans don’t have that long to wait, Epic Games have been setting things up to build player hype as things head toward the end. On March 7, 2023, the warp gate on top of Warden’s Watch has finally gone off after players have been keeping an eye on it. Whatever happened to the gate entirely destroyed it and left a massive red rift in the sky that can be seen anywhere on the island.

Exactly one month after it announced its previous Xbox wireless controller variant, Microsoft is back with another, this one fully adorned in Xbox's "signature" green.

Officially, Microsoft is calling this latest controller release Velocity Green, which joins a line-up of other flat-colour variants including Pulse Red, Deep Pink, and Electric Volt.

Feature-wise, it's exactly as you'd expect from an Xbox controller, with textured grip for bumpers, triggers, and rear, along with a "hybrid" D-pad, Share button, and 3.5mm jack.

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Lince Works, the studio behind enjoyable stealth-action games Aragami and Aragami 2, has announced its imminent closure following what it calls a "particularly difficult" couple of years.

Lince Works was founded in 2014 and released its debut title, Aragami's first instalment, two years later. It proved successful enough that a sequel arrived in 2021, and the studio revealed it had started focusing on "brand-new adventures" in September last year.

Now, however, in a message shared on Twitter, Lince Works has announced it will "effectively stop the development of new projects indefinitely, starting this April."

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UPDATE 9/3/23: After our small teaser earlier in the week, we now have more information on Fortnite’s upcoming season.

Epic Games released a brand-new teaser for Chapter 4 Season 2 earlier today, showing off the game’s neon lit Tokyo-themed city. And, yes, those are grind rails you can see in the trailer.

These rails will be similar to the rail system seen in games like Sunset Overdrive, giving players speed boosts when grinding.

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For all of Lloyd's talk about overcoming barriers, Trails to Azure faced many before finally reaching the West. Nearly twelve years after its initial PSP release, Nihon Falcom's RPG arrives hot on the heels of Trails from Zero, with NIS America licensing a popular fan translation. It's a crucial release before the upcoming Trails into Reverie, which serves as a joint epilogue for both Crossbell and the Cold Steel arc. Azure's release was a long time coming, but it's a worthy follow-up that builds on Zero's strengths.

If you didn't beat Trails From Zero first, fix that immediately. Azure assumes your familiarity with what happened before - although jumping in without playing the Trails in the Sky trilogy will be fine, as much as diving into such a large series might seem daunting. Going through Sky first adds context to a few scenes, but a wide cast of returning characters fills any crucial blanks. I'd also recommend playing both on the same console; a cleared Zero save file is transferable into Azure and adds some appreciated bonuses. EXP levels carry over, fishing rank, and Detective Points are all accounted for, while certain scenes play out differently depending on prior choices. Don't expect any drastic changes like Mass Effect would offer, but it's a lovely touch that helps maintain your own continuity between both RPGs.

A bug in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is causing players to lose their save files, thanks to the latest patch.

It's unclear exactly what the cause is, but many fans on reddit (thanks Kotaku) are reporting the error after connecting to the Pokémon Go app or downloading the DLC.

The reddit thread is full of players losing hundreds of hours of gameplay and shiny Pokémon, some from merely purchasing the DLC.

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Good Smile Company announced its next toys will be a Nendoroid release of Bendy and the Ink Machine characters. Bendy and Ink Bendy unpainted prototypes appeared. There's no release window yet, and other details about the release are vague.

Here's a closer look at the Nendoroid prototypes of Bendy and the Ink Machine characters. Good Smile Company referred to this as a single Nendoroid. This could mean that one of the two figures is the actual figure with additional face plates and arm parts and the other is an "accessory" included with it.

We're excited to announce that a Nendoroid featuring Bendy and Ink Bendy from "Bendy and the Ink Machine" (@Bendy) is in the works! Here is a first look at the prototype! Stay tuned for more information coming soon!#BENDY #nendoroid #goodsmile pic.twitter.com/qs1lZIdaeX

— GoodSmile_US (@GoodSmile_US) March 7, 2023

This will be one of many pieces of Bendy and the Ink Machine merchandise, as things like toys and plush are already available.

From time to time, HoYoVerse will release Genshin Impact event videos on the official YouTube channel. This provides a means of commemorating them outside of the game proper. Now that the Windblume Festival is live in 3.5, there's a new one. People can now see the "The Mages' Tea Party" Genshin Impact story teaser, which is narrated by Klee's mother Alice. It introduces the Hexenzirkel, a group of notable intellectuals and mages in Teyvat.

This Genshin Impact video begins with Alice introducing the Hexenzirkel, a group of which she was a member. It also included Rhinedottir, a name those interested in Albedo will recognize, as well as Mona’s mentor Barbeloth. She noted they shared tea parties to exchange knowledge and socialize. However, we only hear characters’ voices. None of their faces are actually shown. This means the appearance of Klee’s mother still remains a mystery.

Here’s the full “The Mages’ Tea Party” Genshin Impact video, featuring the characters Alice, Rhinedottir, Barbeloth, Andersdotter, and I. Ivanovna N. While Alice is the most recognizable one, given we’ve heard Rachel Kimsey voice her in-game and for trailers before, the others are “new.” However, players familiar with Albedo’s and Mona’s backstories will catch Rhinedottir and Barbeloth’s parts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RigK4OwCCM8&ab_channel=GenshinImpact

Essential-level subscribers also get Code Vein

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Not many games have the staying power that Red Dead Redemption 2 does, where constant memes and mods surface almost weekly on the internet. The latest mod features an abnormally large Arthur Morgan and highlights how his large and in-charge form saves his life.

YouTuber Paradise385 put together a YouTube short, and in this alternate version of Red Dead Redemption 2, Arthur Morgan sees himself on trial at the hands of Dutch van der Linde, with his last words being a cry for food. Dutch issues the call to execute Arthur, but being large has its benefits, as his life is spared due to the rope not being strong enough to carry him.

What follows is a silly set of events as Arthur makes a mad dash to escape his fate. Hopping on a hot air balloon, he and his partner manage to get away until they crash land in the forest. The ending is a sad one; while nobody loses their life in the crash, one chocolate bar is sacrificed.

This is just the second entry in Paradise385’s series, with the last one detailing how the hefty protagonist ruins a bank robbery due to getting stuck. It’s the gift that keeps on giving, as Paradise’s channel is full of Red Dead mods, keeping the game alive and fans entertained with a wide variety of mods and memes.

Meanwhile Rian Johnson’s movies are apparently still alive

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Grand Theft Auto and Borderlands publisher Take-Two has confirmed reports of layoffs at the company, calling the job losses "necessary steps" as it seeks to "position the company for another extended period success."

Reports of layoffs at Take-Two first surfaced via Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who claimed the move would impact employees at Take-Two's Private Division - the publishing label behind the likes of OlliOlli World and Kerbal Space Program - and other unspecified parts of the company.

Take-Two acknowledged it had laid off staff - but did not confirm affected divisions or the number of employees impacted - in a statement provided to PC Gamer, saying it had made "targeted reductions in our US teams, primarily in corporate operations and label publishing" that would have an "minimal" impact on its US development studios.

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Good Smile Company started taking orders for an array of Chainsaw Man accessories, which includes jewelry inspired by Denji, Power, and Pochita and Power's horns. The jewelry consists of a necklace, rings, and earrings. As for the horns, they are a pair of hairclips that can be used for Chainsaw Man cosplay purposes. All of them will come to Japan in July 2023 and North America in September 2023.

With the earrings, people get to make it look like the Chainsaw Man mascot Pochita is dangling by a chain from their ear. One option is a clip-on, in case someone’s ears aren’t pierced. (The other is a standard earring.) In each case, the cuff goes at the top of your ear. It costs ¥2,750/$19.99. It is made of brass, not sterling silver.

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Yamaha Corporation released a new Po-uta voicebank for VOCALOID 6 in collaboration with EDM composer and producer Porter Robinson. This addition is based on Robinson's well-known high-pitched voice and includes 13 artist-approved vocal style presets. The name "Po-uta" is a play on words between Porter and the word "uta," which means song in Japanese. You can find this voicebank for $108 right now on the official site. However, in order to use it, it is necessary to have purchased the $225 VOCALOID 6 software beforehand.

As part of the release, Porter Robinson made a new demo song called "Humansongs." It is designed to show what this vocal bank is capable of doing. The song goes for a "robotic" style similar to the songs made famous by Vocaloid's own Hatsune Miku. Although, Robinson stated that the voice has options to sound more "human-like."
https://twitter.com/porterrobinson/status/1632927546806517760?s=20

Po-uta also supports multilingual functions, enabling it to work with Japanese, English, and Chinese. Additionally, it works with the Vocalo Changer function, enabling users to reproduce their own singing style using the voicebank.

When the latest FFXIV patch dropped, it added an Ear Wiggle emote, but it seems it doesn't include a special Viera animation. When someone earns and uses /earwiggle, it will temporarily make Loporrit ears appear on their avatar's head. It does the same for Viera, who already have rabbit ears, rather than make them use their hands to make their own ears wiggle as in the official 2023 New Year's art.

Here’s a video clip from Twitter user Runa, which shows a Viera using the new FFXIV Ear Wiggle emote.

THE EAR WIGGLE EMOTE ON VIERA IS CURSED pic.twitter.com/9NBEZj45IX

— runa @ 6.3 spoilers ⛅ (@ivalicea) March 7, 2023

The official TikTok account for the game also shared a video of characters from different races, like a Lalafell or Miqo'te, look when performing it.

Building things in Minecraft takes a long time. Even in the vastly quicker Creative mode, you're limited to constructing your grand designs block-by-block. That might change soon, if leaked footage which appears to show a Minecraft Bedrock edition world editor mode is legitimate.

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Extraction shooter Escape From Tarkov has been battling cheaters for years, with seemingly mixed results. Developers Battlestate Games are stepping up their efforts not only to ban cheaters but to show other players that "justice has been served", by releasing the usernames of thousands of players banned for allegedly cheating.

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The developers of breezy stealth 'em ups Aragami 1 and 2 are closing down. Lince Works announced the news earlier today, saying that they would "stop the development of new projects indefinitely, starting this April." Both games will remain available for sale and online co-op will still be accessible.

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Destiny 2’s newest expansion dropped its first major secret on Tuesday. Following the game’s weekly rest, players discovered clues in the European Dead Zone leading to a new exotic quest. I finished it earlier today, and can confirm it’s a certified banger.

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“Exclusionary Design”, also known as “Hostile Architecture”, are the names given to the relatively modern concept of “an urban-design strategy that uses elements of the built environment to purposefully guide or restrict behaviour”. Specifically, it targets the homeless and the young.

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Good news for all the potty-mouthed YouTubers out there. A new update introduced by the monetization policy team makes some important changes, letting you cuss more often in your uploads and still collect that ad-revenue bag.

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Everyone knows old Pokémon cards are incredibly hot right now, but nobody knows exactly what they’re worth to collectors. Exhibit A: Someone put a holographic Illustrator Pikachu in near-perfect condition up for auction on eBay with a starting bid of $480,000, and it went over like a lead balloon.

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So you love Grogu, aka Baby Yoda. We all do. And his television series, which is oddly named The Mandalorian, is now back for its third season. How exciting! And who knows, maybe you also like the bounty hunter action, western tropes, and maybe even the Mando himself. If any or all of that is true, then here are some …

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A month after Twitch streamer Brandon “Atrioc” Ewing accidentally revealed that he was watching sexually explicit deepfakes of his fellow streamers while on stream, Twitch has issued a lengthy statement regarding its stance on the controversy and what the company is calling “synthetic non-consensual exploitative…

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Cities: Skylines 2 was announced yesterday, with a CG trailer and scant details aside from it being in some way "revolutionary". If you hunger for something more concrete about how it might differ from its predecessor, as I do, then you might be interested in an apparently leaked list of achievements that contains details of disasters, weather, embiggened map sizes and more.

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Metal: Hellsinger - the gleefully boisterous rhythm shooter from developer The Outsiders - is getting its first paid DLC expansion, titled Dream of the Beast, on 29th March.

Dream of the Beast adds two new original songs to Metal: Hellsinger's stellar music line-up, alongside a new weapon and three new outfits (Angel Eyes, Morning Star, and Dark Devotee), each with their own unique gameplay modifiers.

On the song front, The Outsiders have signed up Lacuna Coil's Cristina Scabbia and Lorna Shore's Will Ramos to provide vocals for the new compositions which, as with Metal: Hellsinger's other tracks, have been written by Two Feathers.

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Shin Kamen Rider, the latest entry in the Kamen Rider franchise, is finished and ready to release. The announcement comes from the official Twitter account, which shared an image depicting the announcement of a first screening for March 7, 2023 in Japan. The image also confirmed the exact screen time for the movie, it being 2 hours, 1 minute, and 13 seconds long.

You can check out the announcement below.
https://twitter.com/Shin_KR/status/1632894723575934976

Shin Kamen Rider is the new movie in the massively popular Kamen Rider franchise. This new entry serves as a reboot of the original Kamen Rider TV show, and it was produced in order to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The original Kamen Rider TV show ran from 1971 to 1973.

Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno is the producer, director, and concept designer for Shin Kamen Rider. Aside from his work in creating Evangelion, Anno is known for being one of the leads behind the “Shin” trilogy of tokusatsu franchise reboots. Shin Godzilla, released in 2016 in Japan, is the first entry in the trilogy, and 2022’s Shin Ultraman is the second one.

Fans of dating simulators and Castlevania alike can now unite with the recent release of Romancelvania. This unique title has dropped and delivered a diverse cast of characters, an amusing premise, and fun gameplay. It revolves around a main character known as Drac whom players can choose to make either male or female. Gender and sexuality are unimportant in this sex-positive game, and humor takes the stage as each character delivers witty dialogue laced with jokes or innuendos. The familiar side-scrolling combat that players who have fought their way through older Castlevania titles will recognize, is there to keep you on your toes between your monster dates.

As a fun break from more serious gaming, Romancelvania draws on many features from different genres to create a dating simulator that players can jump into and come out of feeling as though they have not ever encountered another quite like it.

It’s been over a decade since the release of Mass Effect 3, and fans are still creating ways to fix up the experience to eliminate facets deemed annoying or not cool enough for what the series deserves. One of the focuses has always been on the Starchild/Catalyst character, which is often criticized for detracting from moments that could be better. A new mod has reworked the dream sequences to leave the character out entirely while generally improving them.

The mod in question is called Dreams Remade and was created by Nexus Mods user Pauju for the Mass Effect Legendary Edition. This mod serves to fundamentally change the dream sequences and make them more of a reflection of Shepard’s choices over the span of the trilogy. If the point of the game series is to craft your own experience, this mod is a much better way of getting to see the fruit of that labor.

The mod also diminishes the role of the Starchild in the dream sequences, not eliminating the character outright but certainly paring it down to a more acceptable amount. This way, the sequences are much more centered on the history of the character, which is a better culmination of what the game has always seemed to be getting at anyway.