April 2023

Pretty weird. I woke up this morning, and everyone was gone. The office (by which I mean our Slack channel) was cold and empty, and a shining beacon of light rose from my monitor screen and proclaimed that I was now an honourary Alice. And as such, the heavy responsibility of compiling everyone's weekend gaming plans fell to me. To entertain myself (and force those who left me in charge to think twice), I'll be writing a series of unhinged 90s-style "where are they now?" epilogues in italics for each person who neglected to send me words of their own.

Read more

Capcom has issued a warning to Resident Evil 4 Remake players to "be aware of a rare but critical progress bug".

Whilst the problem will "only occur under very specific circumstances", the team said that it was working on a fix and apologised for any inconvenience.

The bug - which currently affects all platforms - prevents progress "when performing certain actions in a specific area".

Read more

Science fiction often isn't really about the future. It's a reflection of our present, how today's anxieties and issues might be represented tomorrow.

Citizen Sleeper is a game about an android in a space station, overthrowing a corrupt corporation, and finding a home. But it's also a game about identity, about capitalism, and about trans experience. And now, with the third and final arc of its DLC released today, it's a game that explores refugees too.

Indeed, solo developer Gareth Damian Martin told me "the game is intended to be about now, as opposed to about the future". That seems particularly pertinent when the game has been nominated for four BAFTAs, including British Game and Game for Impact. It's something the developer admitted to feeling uncomfortable about.

Read more

Ubisoft is gunning for The Division 2 players who are "circumventing game mechanics" to rack up "an excessive amount".

In a statement shared across the shooter's social media channels, the development team warned that it was "monitoring" the issue and players who "make use of these exploits" will receive a temporary ban, whilst repeat offenders will be banned permanently.

"We have seen players circumvent game mechanics and systems in order to gain an excessive amount of XP in a short amount of time," the team explained in the brief statement.

Read more

EGX Full-Ride Fund is offering bursaries to enable UK-based, low-income and marginalised game developers to attend EGX 2023.

The campaign - which has no official connection with EGX or its organisers and was set up by "working class lad and formerly low-income member of the games industry", Dan Ahern - hopes to "fully fund" five game developers to travel from anywhere in the UK to attend EGX, as well as cover accommodation and subsistence costs, too.

It has already exceeded its original £4900 target.

Read more

It’s almost poetic that, in a genre built on many people fighting to stay alive until just a few remain, so many battle royale games have launched, flopped, and died over the last few years. Not every new battle royale can find the same success as Warzone or PUBG. In fact, most will be lucky to survive at all. And…

Read more...

More Cardcaptor Sakura is going to be on the horizon, as the official Twitter account for the series announced an animated sequel to Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card. This news came out during Sakura Fes 2023. More information on the continuation of the show's story will appear in the future.

There is no new key visual for the upcoming show. Instead, there is art of Sakura and Kero from the 25th anniversary celebration. This is the same art that appeared when the 25th anniversary project was first revealed back in 2022. Cardcaptor Sakura first started airing in Japan in April 1998. The plot centers around Sakura Kinomoto, who accidentally sets loose all of the mysterious Clow cards, and thus must use her new powers as a Cardcaptor in order to seal them back again.

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card is the sequel to the original Cardcaptor Sakura. The manga began serialization in 2016 and Madhouse produced the anime in 2018. In Clear Card, the Sakura Cards (which are powered-up versions of Clow card with Sakura as their new master) turn blank. She has to go and capture new transparent cards—the eponymous Clear Cards—with the help of her boyfriend Syaoran and her old friends.

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card is available for streaming on Crunchyroll. The sequel is in development.

On April Fools’ Day 2023 in Japan, Hoshimachi Suisei “debuted” as Super Idol ☆ Comet Chan. Now, to carry on with the theme and occasion, the Hololive Productions Official Store now carries (real) Super Idol ☆ Comet Chan merchandise and (fake) Motoaki “Yagoo” Tanigo merchandise. (For reference, Yagoo is the CEO of Cover, the company that owns and runs Hololive and Holostars.)

With Yagoo, the “item” was a 1:1 life-size, scale figure. It would stand at 170cm tall (5 and a half feet) tall and cost $593,622. It would have allegedly come with extra parts for posing to hold other Hololive merchandise. There would have been a Polaroid-style bromide with Yagoo’s signature. It would “ship” on  August 5, 8500.
[gallery size="full" ids="958065,958066,958067" link="file"]

SNK made multiple KOF XV Season 2 DLC announcements as part of Evo Japan 2023, with Sylvie Paula Paula, Goenitz, and Najo release windows confirmed. They’ll be among the seven new characters joining the roster in 2023. While Sylvie Paula Paula and Najd are paid add-ons coming this summer, Goenitz will be free. Kim Kaphwan also got an April 4, 2023 release date as well.

First, here’s the updated KOF XV Season 2 DLC roadmap. It started with Shingo Yabuki, who debuted on January 17, 2023 alongside character rebalancing. Then, it shows Kim Kaphwan on April 4, 2023. SNK noted that Summer 2023 will mark the arrival of the free Cross Platform update and Goenitz DLC, as well as the paid Sylvie Paula Paula add-on. Najd will show up as paid DLC in Summer 2023 s well. Finally, two more characters will appear in Autumn and Winter 2023.

Love can exist in the oddest of places, as you’re sure to find out in the NieR Reincarnation dating sim. For April Fools’, Square Enix and Applibot have released an otome romance game titled Reincarnation!!: Welcome to Enemy Academy. It will link to the player’s NieR Reincarnation game, causing special quests featuring your love interests to appear.

The game will come out in 12024, and Square Enix will announce a more concrete release window closer to that year. There is also a short trailer for the game, showing off the different kinds of enemies that you can romance. They combine a lot of familiar tropes, such as the assertive teacher, friendly childhood friend, and quiet senior student.

If someone stuck on who to date, in the Reincarnation!!: Welcome to Enemy Academy, you can romance multiple people at once. Of course, you shouldn’t do that in the real world. But in this game, if you try to date multiple partners, you get to see them fight, thus unlocking new scenes.

You can watch the trailer for Reincarnation!!: Welcome to Enemy Academy here:

https://twitter.com/nier_rein/status/1641817642150526982

Insurgency: Sandstorm's final "major content update" of Year 2 is now available.

As part of its fourth-anniversary celebrations, Operation: Accolade celebrates "player-created content in a stunning new setting" as well as a new map – Last Light – new weapons MDR and SG 552, and new character cosmetics Scout and Rebel, all of which will be available for free.

There are also "premium DLC cosmetics" for those who have purchased a Year 2 Pass, Gold Edition, or separately as individual paid content. These include new skin packs and gear sets.

Read more

Naughty Dog has apologised to PC players for the "quality level" of The Last of Us Part 1 and assured fans that it working to address the "issues preventing some of you from experiencing the game".

The studio said that a hotfix designed to address the "jittering on mouse-controlled camera movement" was on the way on Tuesday, and a "larger patch with additional fixes" will drop later next week.

As Matt summarised for us recently, The Last of Us Part 1 finally launched for PC earlier this week after a 25-day delay designed to ensure it would debut "in the best shape possible". Despite that delay, PC purchasers on Steam quickly began reporting a host of technical issues - including inconsistent frame rates, regular crashes, stuttering, long load times, and poor optimisation - soon garnering the port a Mostly Negative rating on Valve's storefront.

Read more

A GoFundMe fundraiser launched to help Dark and Darker developer Ironmace raise funds to fight a copyright claim against publisher Nexon has been deleted.

The fundraiser - which hoped to secure half a million dollars to pay for legal costs and developer salaries whilst the dispute persisted - was only live for about an hour before it was taken down.

"Support the Ironmace team in light of the known ongoing legal circumstances," the fundraiser begins. "All donations will be used as supplementary funding towards the known legal circumstances and also provide continued salary towards the development team".

Read more

Fat and reliable Lechonk is Pokemon of the day at the Pokemon Center, as tons of new Lechonk merchandise becomes available in the store. Those who can drop by the Nintendo Store from March 31, 2023 to April 15, 2023 will also be eligible to get a code to use in Pokemon Scarlet or Violet. The code will give you a Flying-Tera Type Lechonk, and you will not need to purchase anything to get it.

The Lechonk merchandise includes clothing, playmats, and pins. You can also get a fat plush of Lechonk for $19.99. It is around seven inches in size.

Here are the prices for the other items:

As part of the various Hololive April Fools’ Day 2023 activities, there will be a “new” Holostars Tempus group. At 6pm PT/9pm ET on April 1, 2023, four Vtubers will debut. They will be Justa Worm, Morf LeRosh, CL0PB0T, and Gorira Manager. The new personalities vary from otherworldly creatures, like the robotic centaur CL0PB0T, to a worm like Justa Worm.

Justa Worm, Morf LeRosh, CL0PB0T, and Gorira Manager are the alter egos of Regis Altare, Noir Vesper, Magni Dezmond, and Axel Syrios. All four are already “in character” on their official Twitter accounts. The official art hasn’t been revealed yet. However, there is a teaser trailer that shows the silhouettes and offers a sense of scale for all four of the performers.

Something’s happening…!

📅April 1st, 6 PM PDT | 10 AM JST (+1 Day) pic.twitter.com/yDIXomqNjM

— hololive production (English) (@hololivepro_EN) April 1, 2023

For April Fools’ Day, Cygames welcomed all Skyfarers in Granblue Fantasy to the magical world of Sanrio. The “Sanrio Characters: Come on Over to Hello Land!” event in Granblue Fantasy will only be available until midnight at April 1, 2023. During this event, you can get Sanrio outfits for characters, as well as the playable “Cinnamoroll and Pompompurin” unit.

Cinnamoroll and Pompompurin are an SSR Wind character that you will get as soon as the event starts. They are a pure support character and cannot normal attack. However, there is a lower chance of enemies targeting them as well. They are also prominent characters in the event’s story. Aglovale is also a key character, showing up in the story with a Cinnamoroll headband.

During the event, you could use Otherworldly Cuteness to exchange for outfits. You could get comedic costumes of characters like Zeta, Vane, Yuni, and Diantha. SSR Fire Summon Sanrio Characters (featuring popular mascots like Hello Kitty, My Melody, and Kuromi) and SSR Dark Staff Dragon Bar V are also in the event shop.

Granblue Fantasy is readily available on mobile devices and Internet browsers. The Sanrio event in Granblue Fantasy will run until 23:59 of April 1, 2023.

The post Cinnamoroll, Pompompurin Star in Granblue Fantasy Sanrio Event appeared first on Siliconera.

Final Fantasy 14 producer and director, Naoki Yoshida, has outlined what's coming up in the RPG's next substantive update, Patch 6.4.

During the latest Letter from the Producer broadcast, Yoshida revealed that Patch 6.4 – otherwise known as The Dark Throne – will launch in "late May 2023", bringing the conclusion of the Pandæmonium raid series and the continuation of the main scenario questline, the Warrior of Light.

New dungeon The Aetherfont, The Voidcast Dais new trials, duty support system and ocean fishing updates, and new side story quests are on the way, too.

Read more

April Fool’s Day has finally come to add a little bit more chaos to the week, as jokes and lies fly around unrestricted. But we understand what April 1 is all about—a chance for developers to sneak in some humor in our favorite games. These April Fools’ jokes are getting a little more advanced and ambitious year by…

Read more...

For April Fools’ Day, HoYoVerse released images and shorts of Genshin Impact characters as cats. The cat forms of Diluc, Keqing, Shinobu, and Wanderer all have their own splash art, complete with quotes. Of course, since they’re cats, the only thing they can say is “Meow.”

Here are all four of the Genshin Impact characters as cats.
https://twitter.com/GenshinImpact/status/1642013926589071361

https://twitter.com/GenshinImpact/status/1642015181491298305

https://twitter.com/GenshinImpact/status/1642016440566833153

https://twitter.com/GenshinImpact/status/1642017699931865089

Each of the cats still retain key elements of their design. Keqing still has her hair accessory and she’s standing near a fried shrimp ball, which is her favorite food. Wanderer’s hat is impossible to mistake too. There are animated versions of the splash arts as well, with them appearing in Live 2D. You can view the April Fools' Day videos from the Genshin Impact YouTube channel or its TikTok account.

Bandai Namco will release a theatrical version of its Tales of Puppet series in 3238. The genre name for the movie is “A Story That Walks Alongside True Strength.” The full title of the film is Tales of Puppet - The Movie: I’ve Decided to Live With the Truth and My Memories. 

Now, this is not a true movie that is in development. This is an April Fools’ Day joke. Several Twitter users on Bandai Namco’s Tweet stated that they would actually love to see a movie version of the series. Others wonder if Bandai Namco plans on actually revealing a theatrical production of Tales of the Rays. As of the time of writing and with the closure of Tales of Asteria, Tales of the Rays is the only mobile game title in the Tales series that is still in service.

Tales of Puppet, which is available via the official Bandai Namco YouTube channel, is a net series that summarizes the mothership Tales titles in a puppet show format. Though the series proclaims that it takes about five minutes every episode to discuss the major plot points of each Tales game, none of them are actually within five minutes. The episode for Berseria is just over thirteen minutes long, for example.

Tales of Puppet is available on YouTube. The movie will come out in 3238.

It’s been almost 12 years since Diablo III released on PCs. That’s over a decade of demon slaying, gear farming, multiplayer fun, and cringy dialogue, and we’re finally less than three months away from the release of its successor, Diablo IV. For me, Diablo III committed the heinous crime of being addictively fun, and consequently took hundreds of hours of my life. After playing through the Diablo IV beta, it’s clear that I’m about to lose a ton more.

Diablo IV takes place thirty years after the events of Diablo III, where millions of people died thanks to the ongoing feud between the high heavens and the burning hells. That’s mostly all you need to know about Diablo’s story, which, while vast and full of lore, is also very silly and out there. In Diablo IV, Lilith is positioned as the main antagonist, while the player is an unnamed hero who has to put a stop to all the culty, demonic behavior. Lilith, who is known as the Queen of the Succubi, is the creator of Sanctuary, daughter of Mephisto, Lord of Hatred, and the sister of Lucion. There’s alot more to her lore that I won’t get into here, but suffice to say that she’s one of the best characters in the often goofy Diablo universe. It’s possible that the story in Diablo IV will be great, but it’s more likely that it’ll be superficial, silly, and entertaining, which is part of the allure of the series.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am honored to be your host. E3 2023 is officially cancelled! While the convention itself had seen better days, there's no doubt that the last handful of years of E3 prior to the pandemic created some of the best content the site had generated. I can confirm the staff had been planning to host an L.A.-based interview show in conjunction to E3, but we'll have to wait and see if some version of that is still going to happen.

The good news is that Giant Bomb is returning to the convention circuit sooner than that! Way sooner in fact. If you plan to be in San Diego from April 7-9, you will have the opportunity to watch Jan, Grubb, Dan, and Fandom personalities host in-person panels! In fact, the Giant Bomb-led panel will be a LIVE Voicemail Dump Truck. They're asking that all call-ins be gaming related, so, keep that in mind if you plan to call in.

Tam and Lucy were presenters for the video game BAFTAs! If you missed the stream, here's a link to the Twitch VOD. Plenty of fun moments have come from the event and it's worth checking when you have three hours to spare.

The end of support for Marvel's Avengers was announced in January, but wrapping up a live service game and doing it right is a gradual process. Yesterday saw the release of patch 2.8, its last content update, which made "nearly all" cosmetics free, converted in-game currency into resources, and handed out rewards as a thank you to players.

Read more

The Last Starship, the new game from the developers of Prison Architect, is currently in the earliest stages of early access. Its latest update is named "Alpha 2" to help make that clear. Released this past week, it expands the industrial and manufacturing aspects of the spacefleet simulator.

Read more

ARK 2 has been delayed until the end of 2024. The dinosaur survival sequel currently best known for having Vin Diesel in it, for some reason, was originally aiming for a 2023 release, but developers Studio Wildcard say they need more time.

To compensate, they're going to instead release Ark: Survival Ascended in August, a remaster of the original Ark: Survival Evolved that moves it over to Unreal Engine 5. That's the good news. The bad news is you can only buy it in a $50 bundle with the sequel (which won't be finished for at least a year), and that the original Survival Evolved servers will be switched off when Ascended launches.

Read more

Sonic The Hedgehog has been murdered - and not by negative reviews, for a change. Instead it's the precipitating event at the beginning of The Murder Of Sonic The Hedgehog, a short, free visual novel released by Sega for April Fool's Day.

Read more

It's strange to think that for a moment in 2022, the New York Times, one of the most prestigious and respected news brands on the planet, became a global media story itself - for buying a game. Wordle wasn't just any game though. Created by programmer Josh Wardle to amuse his partner, it was - and still is - a phenomenon; a deceptively simple word-spotting puzzle with an insanely compelling and sharable design. Launched in October 2021 it became a viral sensation, hitting two million players by December, and three million by the time the NYT purchased it at the end of January 2022.

Wordle now sits on the NYT's renowned online games portal among the paper's homegrown titles, including the thoughtful word search challenge, Spelling Bee, the dot-to-dot shape-maker, Vertex, and the ever compulsive Mini Crossword. The games were played almost four billion times in 2022, attracting over one million subscribers, and it's such an important part of the paper's remit, the service now has its own "Play" tab in the NYT News app.

Heading up Games for the paper is Jonathan Knight, a 25-year video game industry veteran who started out as a producer at Activision before moving to Electronic Arts, Warner Bros and Zynga. So what's the secret of the NYT's puzzling success, and what's it like running a game studio inside a digital news operation? We sat down with him in London to find out.

Read more

Final Fantasy 14's expansion, Stormblood, is currently free to download for a "limited time only".

From now until 8th May, Stormblood – the MMORPG's second big expansion following Heavensward – can be downloaded across all platforms for new and existing owners of Final Fantasy 14 Online Starter Edition.

"Continuing the critically acclaimed story from Heavensward, Stormblood takes players to new far away locales, introduces new playable jobs, continues the enthralling main scenario questline and more," teases Square Enix.

Read more

Sundays are for lying face-down on the sofa with a soothing 10-hour rainscape YouTube video playing in the background trying to recover from a packed games event in Boston. Hello! I am the second imposter covering for our dear Ed, who is currently away on holiday in Japan (and I’m definitely not jealous at all). Let’s get into some good words, shall we?

Wired’s Megan Farokhmanesh interviewed Richard Hofmeier, the developer of Cart Life - a sobering game about three street vendors trying to make ends meet. Hofmeier tells the story of his decision to remove the game from Steam ten years ago and his reasons for bringing it back.

His time away from game spaces made him appreciate the spectrum of expertise his colleagues had in things he’d never done. It was humbling. “So many people have talent and passion that gets entirely overlooked,” he says. He loved working in games, but back when he released Cart Life he feared a career in the field could get too insular. “The most interesting art, to me, comes from outsiders,” he says. “I was a little bit scared of becoming an insider myself.”

Read more

Sega celebrated April Fool's Day by teasing a new game called The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog. The twist? It's actually real.

Described as a "labour of love from the Sonic Social team", the point-and-click visual novel adventure is available now on Steam, featuring "fully hand-drawn landscapes and characters".

The Sonic Social team thanks "a host of amazingly talented people who are just as passionate about Sonic as we are".

Read more

Before I start talking about my time with The Last Worker, I feel I should preface this week's episode of Ian's VR Corner with a couple of points.

Firstly, the game's publisher Wired Productions should be absolutely praised for not only making The Last Worker available to play in both flat-screen and VR modes, but also its upcoming Lemmings-like puzzler Tin Hearts too. If this trend were to be continued by the majority of publishers and developers, the world of VR gaming would be a much busier and better place and the sooner other studios and software houses follow the example set by Wired the better.

Secondly, my impressions below, and in this week's VR Corner above, are only based on approx 2 hours of gameplay and I was feeling rather ill with what could possibly be Covid (although I'm still testing negative) at the time of recording. Perhaps that's why I didn't seem to enjoy The Last Worker as much as other reviewers did, I don't know, but it's certainly possible that the gameplay could markedly improve after this point.

Read more

Resident Evil 4 Remake voice actor, Lily Gao, has closed her Instagram account to comments after receiving thousands of messages from players criticising her performance as Ada Wong.

Gao – who had excitedly shared several posts talking about the role – has now deactivated replies and hidden all but one of her posts from public view after vitriolic so-called Resident Evil fans flooded her mentions.

"You ruined the remake," wrote one commenter. "I feel like I just wasted my money by buying the deluxe edition to get this VA to dub Ada." Wrote another: "Your voice acting was horrible in the RE4 Remake," added another. "It sounded super stiff and there was nothing seductive about it? It didn't fit at all omfg I hope they don't hire you as Ada's voice actor for another game."

Read more

Sports anime tend to have a very simple, but highly successful success formula that more or less guarantees you’ll enjoy it if that’s your cup of tea. I mean, a story about a group of people who learn to work together as teammates and eventually friends? Maybe they win a tournament or two along the way? It's fantastic to watch underdog teams get through challenges and rivals in order to bring home the victory. Sign me up! But Blue Lock looks that formula in the eye and spits on it. And in a way, it works.

Blue Lock is the show where all of the characters compete to be the very worst sports anime boy. The story centers on Yoichi Isagi, who is one of 300 strikers chosen for the Blue Lock program. The JFU devised the program to find and train new soccer players who will take Japan’s soccer to the next level. However, instead of teaching them how to be teammates and work together, the program actively pits the players against each other. This is because the show’s central philosophy is that the most egotistical plays are what’s ultimately the most important thing to break Japan out of its team-oriented funk. In a way, it’s the antithesis of what a sports anime is. What they want is the worst boy to ever exist in sports anime.

Premium Bandai announced a giant plush of the Pokemon Snorlax that also serves as a cushion. The cushion costs 72,000 JPY (roughly $542 USD). The giant Snorlax cushion comes with a Poke Flute. Unfortunately, playing the Poke Flute won’t make the Snorlax cushion come to life and wake up. It is planned to release in Japan in mid-July 2023. Pre-orders are now open from the Japanese Premium Bandai online store. [Thanks, Inside!]

The official name for this new Pokemon merchandise is “Definitely want to wake up - Snorlax cushion.” The Snorlax cushion is about 150 cm or 5 foot tall. You can take a better look at the Snorlax cushion that also serves as a giant plush, alongside the accompanying Poke Flute, in the gallery below.

[gallery columns="4" ids="957995,957996,957997,957998,957999,958000,958001" link="file"]

This new Snorlax cushion is inspired by the sleepy and immovable Snorlax from the original Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue games. The player had to obtain and play the Poke Flute, a key item and musical instrument that only Pokemon can hear. The item would allow for the Snorlax blocking the road to wake up and move, so the player could continue their adventure.

Incidentally, in 2016 Premium Bandai released a different giant Snorlax cushion/plush under the name of “I definitelly don’t want to wake up – Snorlax cushion.”

Hideo Kojima has partnered with a "luxury London designer" to create a unisex line of "Death Stranding-inspired" clothing.

The range includes tracksuits, shirts, a bucket hat, a bomber jacket, and silk tux jacket, too, with prices starting at £65 for the hat and creeping all the way up to £1050 for the silk jackets. The shirts are currently retailing for around £150, and the tracksuit jackets for £245.

There are also matching trousers, too, it seems, but they're currently unavailable from the store.

Read more

Physical editions of Sifu on Xbox One and Xbox Series X are out now in Europe, and will be coming later this month for our friends in North America.

To celebrate the launch of acclaimed martial arts adventure Sifu on Xbox and Steam after a year of PlayStation and Epic Games Store exclusivity, Xbox fans can also grab the Vengeance Edition, which includes the game on Xbox One/Xbox Series X, an "exclusive" SteelBook case, The Art of Sifu print artbook, a digital copy of the game's original score, and three lithographs.

"Players who already own the game on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch or PC won't be left out as the Redemption Set collector's box set is already available," the team reminds us. That includes an 8-inch/20cm figurine of the Student, a tenacity pendant, and a 160-page Behind the Art of Sifu developer's diary.

Read more