When you’re not getting lost in Resident Evil 4 remake protagonist Leon’s dreamy abs, you might find yourself trapped in an uncomfortable reality filled with puzzles—some difficult, and some simply annoying. I don’t know why RE4’s imposing castle and outskirts are packed with elaborate, burdensome puzzle pieces when,…
Last time, you decided that time loops are better than resuming interrupted reloads. We thankfully won't need to re-run that result, but we cannot fully leave the past behind us. One eagle-eyed reader observed that time loops and staged reloads "aren't really comparable", and I cannot overstate my embarrassment at having made such an obvious mistake. My deepest apologies to everyone who has trusted me to conduct this research with great rigour. I must do better. So reader dearest, I now ask you to pick between two things we can all agree are two of a kind. What's better: dark darkness, or bioluminescence?
The results are in, as Square Enix shared the winners of the Final Fantasy XIV Furnishing Design Contest 2022 held from December 2022 to January 2023. However, because of the sheer number of entries, the number of winners went from the usual 100 to 153. As usual, some of these items may be implemented in-game in the future via patches.
This time the contest’s theme was to create furnishings you would like to have on your own FFXIV house. Additionally, the categories covered every kind of furnishing except housing exteriors (roofs, roof decorations, exterior walls). The winners can expect a “Great Paraserpent” umbrella accessory in-game throughout April 2023.
The designs covered many different types of furniture with a huge variety of styles, ranging from useful to funny. Here you can see some of the selected ones.
[gallery columns="4" ids="958437,958438,958439,958440,958441,958442,958443,958436" link="file"]
The full list of winning designs is available in the FFXIV's Lodestone contest post. Square Enix stated that the team may later implement any designs considered "excellent" into the game with a few adjustments. This has been done before with designs such as the wooden partition blocks, the paissa swing chair, and the fat cat chronometer from the 2019 contest.
If you have ever wished to viciously stab your classmate with your chin because they do not agree with your food choices, you’re in luck—Team Yokkyufuman has released Gakuen Handsome Fighters. It is available on both Steam and Booth for the Windows PC. If you purchase it on Steam before April 12, 2023, then you will get to buy it at a 20% discount. [Thanks, 4Gamer!]
Gakuen Handsome Fighters is a 2D action game that seems to draw inspiration from retro games such as Street Fighter II. It uses pixel art for its sprites, as well as for its cutscenes. The story centers on the boys trying to get back Shiga’s white cat after someone steals it away. You can choose to play as any of the bachelors, all with their own unique moves. Mitsurugi can kick a soccer ball at his enemies, which is a reference to how he’s supposed to be a star soccer player. Screenshots do not show if he has his signature weapon (his chin).
https://twitter.com/teamyokkyufuman/status/1643508323982135296
On Twitter, Team Yokkyufuman stated that it wants to release a smartphone version of the game as well. However, it has no idea how to make it. So it tells fans to not get their hopes up. For those who wish to use their phones to kick butts as some of Japanese media’s hottest men, you may need to wait for quite some time.
A few days after I made fun of the Super Mario Bros. bath bombs for resembling pee, a company reached out to ask if I’d like to review their line of SMB hot sauce. Before long, a set of truffle-flavored hot sauce bottles arrived at the Kotaku office. As a spice lover, this was either going to be the greatest…
When I was a kid at the peak of Harry Potter mania, I considered myself a Slytherin. As a child, I didn’t think much about the larger connotations of that. As an angsty emo kid, it felt like an extension of identifying as an edgy little shit when all my friends proudly proclaimed they were part of Gryffindor or…
One of my all-time favourite gaming laptops is £300 off at Ebuyer UK today. The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro offers sterling performance in a slim, stylish chassis, and now you can pick up a model with an 11th-gen Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, 512GB NVMe SSD and RTX 3060 graphics card for £899.98.
The Corsair MP600 Pro LPX is a great SSD that we've recommended before, on the back of its excellent performance - and often, great value too. Today it's cheaper than usual, with the 2TB drive dipping to £154.99 on Amazon UK - that's £45 below the £200 price point we wrote a deals post to commemorate back in January!
We've covered surprisingly cheap NVMe SSDs on this deals patch before, but today we've hit a new high - or new low, depending on how you look at it. Right now you can pick up an Integral 2TB SSD for just £94.99, down from a regular price of £124, and best of all it's a fast PCIe 4.0 SSD capable of 4850MB/s reads and 4400MB/s writes. Nice!
The latest issue of magazine Famitsu includes more details about the publication’s latest interview with the new Final Fantasy XI Producer Yoji Fujito. The new information revealed that there are no plans whatsoever to end service for the game in the near future, and that Fujito would like to see Final Fantasy XI to continue to exist in some form in the far future. He also briefly talked about planned new updates and the upcoming final battle in The Voracious Resurgence, the latest episodic story added to FFXI. [Thanks, ryokutya2089!]
Here is a direct quote from Yoji Fujito's interview with Famitsu:
“My personal goal is to keep FFXI in some form. I absolutely don't want FFXI to come to an end someday and leave nothing but memories. My ultimate ideal is to aim to maintain FFXI as a title, even if it is in the form of a different game.”
The creative also said that it would take a lot of effort to reach that goal, so they are focusing on properly preserving the data and information of the game.
Square Enix has confirmed that the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, which are essentially upgraded versions of Final Fantasy 1-6, will be released on Nintendo Switch and PS4 on April 19, 2023.
The Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters are currently available on PC and mobile, and soon a new audience will be able to experience much of the history of the Final Fantasy franchise in a new way.
If that wasn't exciting enough, these versions come with a new pixel font, which seems to address one of the biggest issues fans had with the games when they first were released - the questionable choice of font by Square Enix for these remasters that left many unhappy.
There will also be a new option to switch between the original and new background music whenever you so choose, and there are more options to adjust encounter rate, EXP, Gil, and ABP.
All six games will be available on April 19 at 8am PT/11am ET/4pm BST, and fans will be able to purchase them individually or as a complete package. On the eShop, the games range from $11.99-$17.99 per game, and all six can be purchased for $74.99.
For more, check out seven things you probably didn't know about Final Fantasy 1-3 and our hands-on preview of the future of the series in Final Fantasy 16.
Starbreeze CEO Tobias Sjögren has spoken on the possibility of a Payday TV series or movie, saying it would be a "perfect fit" as it would allow the team to explore the complex lives of the Payday clowns alongside delivering a ton of action.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.Biz, Tobias Sjögren discussed the inspirations behind Payday, how they've already collaborated with other movie franchises, and how fans have already become attached to certain characters through the games' stories and trailers.
"It's certainly inspired by movies like Heat, and we've done several movie IP collaborations, including John Wick, Scarface, Point Break, Reservoir Dogs," Sjögren says. "The reason why they have worked so well is Payday has an element of suspense when you are playing it. There are action moments, but these characters actually have a deeper storyline; they have a personality in the story of the game and through the other trailers were done, players have got to know these guys and people and identify with them in various ways."
However, there is still so much left to explore, explains Sjögren, as the games have only begun to scratch the surface of the full history of the characters. This is why he thinks TV would truly be the perfect place, as it allows for the necessary time to build out this world and those inside it.
Sea of Stars is an RPG unabashedly inspired by the 16-bit era of Japanese RPGs. Even just looking at screenshots of the game recalls the best of the era, and that’s not an accident. Developer Sabotage Studio’s CEO and Sea of Stars’ creative director, Thierry Boulanger, is a huge fan of the genre and has been building towards making a game like this since he started building the fantasy world Sea of Stars and The Messenger takes place in during Elementary school.
Dozens of classic RPGs inspired Sea of Stars’ development, including Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, but we asked Boulanger to pick the most significant ones in the video below.
When Square Enix’s range of Final Fantasy remasters for PC and mobile were first unveiled a couple of years back, fans were quick to notice something: not only had the game’s traditional pixel font been replaced, but they’d been replaced by new, tiny little letters that were an assault on the senses.
The wait is finally over: The Super Mario Bros. Movie is out. The journey here has been filled with some of the best side-splitting memes, ingenious ad campaigns, and revealing method acting from Illumination Entertainment’s star-studded Hollywood cast. However, the Super Mario Bros. movie brouhaha has been…
Bandai Namco is holding a short user survey about Tales of Symphonia Remastered. The company is accepting feedback from users from a variety of countries, and it is available in several different languages. The survey takes about five to ten minutes to fill. Additionally, the survey includes a specific section for those that played the Nintendo Switch version of the game.
The survey begins by asking the user which country are they from, if they have played the game, and on which platform. The survey continues by asking to name up to five of the user’s favorite and most disliked features in Tales of Symphonia Remastered. After that, it introduces several questions about game UI, presentation, voice acting, and difficulty, among others.
At around the 35% mark and for those that played the Nintendo Switch version of Tales of Symphonia Remastered, the survey includes an option to report any performance issues or bugs that users might have experienced with said version. While the issues with the Switch version of the game have not been fixed yet, Bandai Namco announced last February 2023 that a patch is on the way.
Square Enix not only announced the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster games Switch and PS4 release date, but also confirmed there will be new font and soundtrack options. The games will arrive on April 19, 2023. People can go into the options to choose which font they prefer. They can also swap between the original music or remastered songs.
Here's the official Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster release date announcement trailer, which includes a look at the new font option in action. The new footage appears during the first half of the video. Then, after the 55 second mark, it shows how you can choose between the original soundtrack or the remastered one while playing the game.
The Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series launches on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch at 8am PDT / 4pm BST on April 19th: https://t.co/uCTUAPYoRk
Will you be reliving these adventures, or experiencing them for the first time? pic.twitter.com/K5dWZUbWL9
— FINAL FANTASY (@FinalFantasy) April 5, 2023
We caught up with Chris Pratt, Charlie Day, and Seth Rogen to talk about The Super Mario Bros. Movie, how it feels to voice such iconic characters, and what their favorite Nintendo games are. If you enjoy this video interview, featured below, subscribe to Game Informer's YouTube channel for more!
If you're interested in reading our full Super Mario Bros. Movie review, click here.
Every year, the MTV Movie Awards roll around and nominate a bunch of films and TV shows in some normal categories (Best Movie, Best Performance) and some not normal categories (Best Villain, “Best Duo”). It’s not a huge deal, the show is little more than an excuse to sell some ads, but one of this year’s nominations…
Oh, hello there. I see you’ve got your phone out at the movie theater and you’re sitting in the credits for The Super Mario Bros. Movie. You’re probably here wondering if there are extra scenes worth sticking around for. Well, I’m here to answer that question and more, so let’s jump down the warp pipe and into the…
Minecraft Legends is an interesting prospect. Like Minecraft Dungeons, it takes the familiar iconography and building blocks of one of gaming's most familiar and beloved worlds, and employs everything in a new way. For Dungeons, this meant transforming the game into a hack-and-slash action RPG. For Legends, it means something the developer's calling "action strategy", but might otherwise be called real-time strategy.
Ian and I had a chance to play the game in London a few weeks ago, dropping into the start of the single-player campaign and then trying a 3vs3 multiplayer match. (The final game will support 4vs4 and 2vs2 as well, I gather.) With the game out on the 18th, it's not too long before you'll get to see all this yourself, but here, at least, are the very basics.
I was surprised by what a traditional RTS Legends actually feels like, albeit one that's been smartly stripped back for an audience that is coming to this genre perhaps for the first time. Story-wise, Piglins are invading the worlds of Minecraft, and these funny, grotty, ravenous little horrors might be my favourite element of the entire game, spreading a charmingly silly kind of anarchy wherever they go. As a hero character you can attack them with your sword as you move around the procedurally created maps on your horse, but since this is a strategy game, the real key to success comes from harvesting resources and then building stuff with it.
When I think of Minecraft, I think of creativity, peace, and adventure. Minecraft Legends' opening campaign scene made me feel as though my past accomplishments and care for the franchise were being rewarded by trusting me with a new and important challenge: save the Overworld from the greed of the piglins. Minecraft Legends is the fourth Minecraft spinoff game (Telltale's Minecraft: Story Mode and Mojang's Minecraft Earth and Minecraft Dungeons preceding it) and after getting an hour with its campaign and about an hour with its PvP multiplayer, it's already building to be my favorite of the bunch.
Minecraft Legends is an action-strategy game, which yes, is different from an RTS (real-time strategy), though only in a few critical ways. Instead of taking a top-down omnipotent view of the world below you, your character leads mobs into battle with a sword in hand. Dennis Ries, Executive Producer at Mojang, told me that one of the reasons Mojang didn't want to make a traditional RTS is because of the challenges they present when putting them on console. The action-strategy interpretation cuts out some of the impersonal aspects of real-time strategy and makes events and threats more focused.
The Final Fantasy pixel remasters series finally has a release date on Switch and PlayStation: 19th April.
The games were previously released individually on Steam and mobile (followed by a series collection), with Final Fantasy 6 arriving last February. The series was then announced for Switch and PlayStation in December, but without a firm release date.
This new release will bring more new features, most notably an additional font.
Crime Boss: Rockay City takes Payday’s potent formula and plops it in the middle of the decade that brought us bleached hair, dial-up internet, and the ’92-’93 Dallas Mavericks. Unfortunately, just like bleached hair, dial-up internet, and those 11-and-71 Dallas Mavericks, Crime Boss looks awful, is technically outclassed, and is full of embarrassing performances. Hard to outright hate thanks to the compelling, car crash quality of some of its cutscenes, it’s nonetheless impossible to recommend right now on account of regular bugs, repetitive missions, and bog-standard blasting that’s unmemorable at its best and exasperating at its worst.
At face value, Crime Boss looks like a hearty deal. There are three separate ways to play, including a dedicated single-player campaign and two co-op focused modes. On top of that, Bon Jovi’s second-best song about cowboys is on the soundtrack, and Michael Madsen is here as leading man Travis Baker – and in a dapper hat, no less. Madsen isn’t a prolific video game voice actor but he has demonstrated an ability to pick quality winners in the past – certainly with the likes of Telltale’s The Walking Dead, Dishonored, and a 2001 game you may have heard of from the makers of Christmas Lemmings called Grand Theft Auto III. Unfortunately, his winning streak is now broken.
Jack Joyce has run out of time, or steam, both work! Remedy’s time-bending Quantum Break - part superpowered shooter, part live-action TV show - has been delisted on Steam and The Microsoft Store. The game’s Steam page is still up, but it’s no longer available for purchase on PC or Xbox consoles. Publisher Microsoft had already confirmed the game would be “temporarily” removed from Game Pass (for console, it was never on the PC version) due to licensing issues, although there was no word on a removal from storefronts.
The world of hack-and-slashing Hammerwatch returns this summer with a sequel, developers Crackshell have announced. Just like the first game released ten years ago, Hammerwatch 2 is a top-down fantasy ARPG where you’ll be building your own hero, choosing between a series of classes, and battling hordes either alone or in a co-op group of four.
Megahouse has announced two new Yu-Gi-Oh figures for the Look Up line of figurines. Yami Yugi and Dark Magician Girl. Each figure will cost 4,620 JPY (roughly $35 USD). The expected release date for the figures is October 2023, and they are now available for pre-order from the Premium Bandai online store.
The name of this line of toys is Look Up, which is the pose these figures are displayed in. Yami Yugi and the Dark Magician Girl are sitting down and looking up, and their heads have a joint ball that allows for their heads to be adjusted to look in the desired direction.
You can take a better look at both Yami Yugi and Dark Magician Girl Yu-Gi-Oh figures in the gallery below.
[gallery columns="4" link="file" ids="958496,958495,958494,958493,958489,958492,958491,958490"]
In the anime adaptation of Yu-Gi-Oh, Yami Yugi or Dark Yugi is the form that Yugi Muto takes when the spirit of Pharaoh Atem possesses him during duels. Pharaoh Atem was sealed inside the Millennium Puzzle. Meanwhile, Dark Magician Girl is the female version of one of Yugi’s most iconic cards, the Dark Magician, and one of the most popular Yu-Gi-Oh cards having received several versions, like the Gagaga Girl.
Blumhouse Productions founder and CEO Peter Blum has revealed the release date for the Five Nights at Freddy's film adaptation.
The adaptation of the game was first announced in 2015, and has since faced several setbacks and delays. In October 2021, Blum revealed progress on the movie was being held back FNAF creator Scott Cawthorn, who reportedly refused multiple scripts.
Filmmaker Chris Columbus, whose directing credits include Home Alone and Mrs Doubtfire, had previously been on board as director, but his departure was from the project was also confirmed in 2021.
Sony has registered a patent which describes the possibility of including temperature-controlled haptic feedback in a PlayStation controller.
The feature, which could emulate the sense of either hot or cold to the user, is part of several discussed in a patent for a controller made - at least in part - of a more gel-like material than the current plastic.
Sony's describes an "elastically deformable material" which is able to better aid in haptic feedback, and which can detect when said "elastic member" is touched, pressed, twisted, pinched, squashed, rubbed, or even "in the action of bringing a hand close to the elastic member".
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Bop it! Twist it! Pull it! Not phrases you'd generally associate with Elden Ring, but that's changed thanks to streamer Swoop Douglas who completed the game with a Bop-It toy.
The streamer completed the All Bosses run at the end of March, sharing a clip on Twitter.
A Bop-It Extreme 2 was used, allowing for just five inputs, which certainly adds to the challenge beyond the unique device.
Road 96 was an ingenious game that could feel, at times, like a bit of a mess. Set in Petria, an Americana-tinged totalitarian state, it followed a range of teens who were making a break for the border and a better life. Even now, the thought of the whole thing dazzles me a little: one by one, you take these teens from deep inside the country as they make their hardscrabble way to potential freedom. Hitchhiking, hiding out in lorries, jammed in the back of a cop car, each attempt had a beginning and an end, and then you'd do it all over again with a new protagonist.
The hook - and it was a great hook - is that these separate attempts would overlap in terms of the personnel they involved. So you'd encounter the same truckers, cops, and bank robbers again and again at different points in their own stories. Over the course of the game a rich portrait emerged, even if, looking back, I'm not sure exactly what it was a portrait of. Petria itself? The human spirit? The lasting appeal of 90s road movies? Anyway, it was vivid and empathetic and ambitious and surprising, the perfect match for the game's sunburned, rough-textured art style.
Now here's Road 96: Mile 0. It's a prequel to the first game, and it feels, at times, like a bit of a mess. And actually, I think it is a mess - but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing. Why is it a mess, though? I wonder if it's the mileage. The same thrumming energy of Road 96 is here, but the endless scoring and underscoring of that journey to the border is missing. This is the moment before everyone started to flee, so the game's antic enthusiasm for strange encounters and oddball asides has to work within confines. It's a Catherine wheel stuck in starting position on a fence as it sparks and splutters. It's a cat trying to get itself out of a duvet.
Humble Bundle has announced which games are available to keep in its monthly Humble Choice subscription for April.
Each month, Humble Bundle selects PC games for its members to keep, in addition to access to the Humble Games Collection and Vault, and 20 percent off thousands of games in the Humble Store.
This month's Humble Choice includes Death Stranding: Director's Cut, Aliens: Fireteam Elite, Rollerdrome, Life Is Strange 2: Complete Season, The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante, Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp, Founders' Fortune, and Revita.
Blizzard has detailed when Diablo 4 owners will be able to get playing early - if they have either of the game's Digital Deluxe or Ultimate editions.
Diablo 4 officially launches on Tuesday 6th June, but those who pay more can get playing ahead of time - and now we know exactly how early.
Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra has confirmed the early access launch window for Deluxe and Ultimate pre-orders will begin at midnight in the UK on the 2nd June, which is 4pm Pacific on the 1st June in the US. That's across PC, PlayStation and Xbox.
It may have begun as an April Fool's Day joke, but The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog has already had 1m downloads.
The visual novel game was released for free on Steam on 1st April - a real game, not just a joke!
What's more, it's currently the 61st highest rated game on Steam of all time, according to Sonic social media manager Katie Chrzanowski.
Warner Bros. has announced a new release date for its long-awaited Minecraft movie: 4th April 2025.
That's more than a decade after we first heard word of the film, and six years on from Warner Bros' original plan of May 2019.
Details on what the film may look like or actually be about remain thin on the ground, save for the continued attachment of charismatic Game of Thrones and Aquaman star Jason Momoa in an undisclosed role. (He's Steve, surely?!)
EA has published the minimum and recommended PC specifications for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, which is set to release at the end of the month.
Expected performance for the setups hasn't been detailed, but you may want to start freeing up some space on your hard drive.
Here's what EA has said you'll need...
Right now, the best Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (or Breath of the Wild 2 as many of us called it for years) preorder deal is at ShopTo for £49.85. With this preorder, you'll get the game and the limited edition free Tears of the Kingdom poster as well. This is a £10 saving compared to the Amazon listing, and well worth considering if you don't have any leftover extra credit at Amazon, or you won't be trying for the Tears of the Kingdom Collector's Edition (that's out of stock right now as well).
Other deals to check out right now include the 3-months for 99p deal returning at Audible (usually £7.99/month). This is for new or returning subscribers, and is well worth getting if you love audiobooks. There's also the PlayStation Spring Sale, PSN Gift Card discounts, preorders for limited edition 4K Blu-rays, a superb deal on cans of Pepsi, and plenty more to consider as well. See all these deals and plenty more just below, and make sure you're following @IGNUKDeals on Twitter for more updates.
Megahouse announced the re-release of the Variable Action Heroes One Piece Monkey D. Luffy figure. The figure is articulated and it includes different parts that allow for customization of the pose and expression. Pre-orders for this One Piece figure open on April 6, 2023. The figure will cost 9,900 JPY (roughly $75 USD). The figure is scheduled to release sometime on September 2023. [Thanks, Hobby Watch!]
The figure depicts Monkey D. Luffy, the main character in the One Piece manga and anime series. It stands at 16.5 cm tall, or roughly 6.5 inches tall. The figure has full range of articulation. It includes a variety of parts, like different arms and heads with different facial expressions.
You can take a better look at the figure on the gallery below.
[gallery columns="5" ids="958474,958475,958476,958477,958478" link="file"]
This is the third time this particular figure of Luffy from One Piece has received a resale. The figure received two resales on June 2019 and 2020.
In other One Piece news, on February 2023 MegaHouse announced a different line of figures depicting child versions of beloved One Piece characters. This new line includes Luffy, as well as Zoro Roronoa.
Ask RPS returns today with a question that takes us right back to the beginning of how we all got here. Not in the scientific, evolutionary sense of all of human history, I should add, but rather how we, the RPS Treehouse, ended up writing about video games for a living.
The question comes courtesy of Bloodyhell, who asked: When did you know that you not only wanted to play games, but to write about what you played? And, does writing about games ever dampen your enthusiasm when you are dealing with deadlines and putting words on a page?
A sneaky double-part question, there, but both good questions nonetheless. So come and find out our collective origin stories, and whether any of us have cried tears of pain and regret over the years after turning our favourite hobby into an actual job.
There's always been something quite comforting about loading into a brand new Minecraft world. Dropping into that first forest, punching that first tree... It's a promise of all the myriad adventures to come. And despite some fundamental changes in genre and perspective, it's something that the team behind the upcoming Minecraft Legends has tried hard to preserve.
I recently was treated to the most in-depth look so far at Minecraft Legends, in an hour-long livestream which gave us all some much needed answers on what manner of beast Legends actually is. It's a curious blend of action adventure and RTS, one that shares Minecraft's focus on exploration, but guides the player down a stricter, simpler path of summoning friendly mobs and constructing defences to repel a Piglin invasion. This will likely be a solid introduction to the RTS genre for a lot of players, but I came away unsure about whether the game will have enough depth to keep its prospective playerbase's attention.