May 2023

Social media surfers may have already caught a glimpse of side-scroller Scarlet Deer Inn, which recently went viral over the weekend for its fully embroidered animations. Yep, embroidered as in using needles, thread, and fabric to stitch together every animation in real life, from the protagonist's big jump to a sheep’s wagging tail. This stitching is then scanned into the game by developers Attu Games, creating a uniquely beautiful platformer with a slightly physical touch.

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Sony has released the debut trailer for the Gran Turismo movie.

The video, below, gives us a good idea of what to expect from the film, which is directed by District 9's Neill Blomkamp and stars the sad cop from Stranger Things and the elf who notices they're taking the hobbits to Isengard in Lord of the Rings.

The Gran Turismo movie is about a Gran Turismo fan who enters a competition to become a professional racer. It's based on a true story about Jann Mardenborough, who did just that in real-life.

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Microsoft has announced the next wave of Game Pass games.

Out today is of course Arkane's vampire first-person shooter Redfall. Check out Donlan's impressions, a third of the way in. Redfall is out on Game Pass across Xbox Series X and S, PC and cloud.

Next, on 4th May, Game Pass gets Cococucumber's fairy tale adventure Ravenlok across console, PC and cloud.

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Have you ever wondered what Zelda's Adventure would be like on Game Boy? Well, wonder no more, as one intrepid fan has taken one of the series' least well-received games and turned it into something that actually looks pretty great.

Admittedly, Zelda's Adventure is not exactly canon in the series' timeline. Developed by Viridis Corporation, it was published by Philips Interactive Media for the CD-i back in 1996.

Despite featuring a playable Zelda (in Zelda's Adventure, it is Link who has been whisked away by Ganon), the game was pretty poorly received by, well, everyone. Everything from its graphics to its acting came under fire, and even some of the most die hard Zelda fans have generally avoided it.

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There's a moment in Varney Lake where you meet the vampire. It's early summer, 1954, and a few friends are working out what to do with the lazy days that stretch ahead. They come across a shack and wander in. And there they meet the vampire.

It's a fascinating moment, and one I shouldn't spoil. What I will say, though, is that I've played this moment again and again and I'm mesmerised by how it's handled. I'm mesmerised by all the surprising, delicate choices that have been made in the staging. The vampire is frightening, but the scene is not purely frightening. It's filled with fascination and care, by memories the characters have of the grown-ups in their lives and how they tend to react to things. And there's that brilliant juxtaposition, the dark of the shack, the bright summer sun outside. And this juxtaposition is heightened by the fact that this scene, this present, is also part of the past. It is lit by the bright, sometimes blinding sun of memory.

Varney Lake is the follow-up to Mothmen 1966, which means it is a Pixel Pulp made by an Argentinian micro-studio who love creepy things, cryptids, horror, and pulp as a sensibility, as a process for making art quickly as well as pulp as a genre or rogue's gallery of themes. Like Mothmen 1966 Varney Lake comes across as a haunted CGA game from the early 1990s PC gaming scene. It's a visual novel, with decisions that play out as you make choices through a text selection interface. The visuals are an absolute thing of glory: lurid, playful, sometimes sharply realistic, all delivered in just a handful of carefully selected and paired colours and filled with graphical noise, pixel cross-hatching, the mimeo-thick lines of cheap old Mad Magazine printing.

I’m not a prude about war games, but real war is so horrifying that I always need some abstraction to get into it. The outlandish outfit designs in Fire Emblem and the cat ears in Arknights create a bit of cognitive distance from the harsh realities of armed conflict I learned about in school, allowing me to embrace…

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Getting to play as Storm, Mistress of the Elements, is a highlight of any X-Men gaming experience, whether it be Konami’s classic arcade beat ‘em up, the beloved action-RPG X-Men: Legends, or as part of the Certified Gay Trio of Storm, Rogue, and Psylocke in Marvel vs. Capcom 2. As a lover of all the female X-Men, and…

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Citizen Sleeper was one of our favorite experiences of 2022, and as it approaches its first anniversary on May 5, the team behind it reveals it's begun work on its next project.

Gareth Damian Martin, the solo developer behind Jump Over the Age, is again joining forces with indie publisher Fellow Traveler, character artist Guillaume Singelin, and composer Amos Roddy on a new game. There’s no information about what this next title entails, but the team promises to reveal more in the “near future.” The coming days serve as a celebration for Citizen Sleeper, with the game receiving a 33 percent discount on PC and Switch starting May 4. 

Citizen Sleeper is a sci-fi choice-driven adventure where players guide a robot possessing a human consciousness through life on a space station, fighting for survival while also helping the lives of its inhabitants. In our review, we scored the game a 9 out of 10, with editor Wesley LeBlanc writing that "Its hopeful and inspiring message is backed by a branching, heartfelt narrative, and a great gameplay loop, making it tough to put down. Add in its enriching visual style and my favorite musical score of 2022 so far, and Citizen Sleeper is a game I'll be thinking about for years to come." Citizen Sleeper also earned a spot on our Top 10 Games of 2022. 

Citizen Sleeper is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC. 

The Super Mega Baseball franchise is gearing up for its fourth entry to step into the batter's box, and this time, it's bringing a large suite of upgrades and enhancements, likely thanks to its new publisher, EA Sports. Electronic Arts acquired developer Metalhead Studio a year after the launch of Super Mega Baseball 3, meaning that the developer had the benefit of creating this fourth entry with the added resources of its new parent company.

The result appears evident. For the first time in series history, more than 200 legends of the sport (including cover star David Ortiz) are included in the roster alongside the fan-favorite cast of players from the earlier games in the series. You can take the new roster and enjoy the various modes in a variety of ways, including a league of baseball legends with teams organized by era. You can also use the new Shuffle Draft feature that lets you draft a unique roster featuring real-life legends and Super Mega All-Stars.

And, of course, the standard Exhibition, Franchise, Pennant Race, Season, and Online Leagues are present in Super Mega Baseball 4. However, they include various new improvements, including cross-play on all platforms for Pennant Race and Online Leagues. The suite of modes also includes expanded player traits, a new team chemistry system, automatic walks, two-way players, expanded bullpens, customizable free-agent pools, and more. The audio and visual aspects also receive an upgrade, with new crowd sounds, voiceovers, sound effects, licensed and original music, better lighting, and new cameras.

Riot Forge and Double Stallion Games have revealed that Convergence: A League of Legends Story will be released this month. 

More specifically, the single-player 2D action platformer starring League champion Ekko will be released on May 23. The game will be available for purchase on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC via Steam, GOG, and the Epic Games Store. Alongside the release date, Riot Forge and Double Stallion also released a new story trailer setting up the stakes of Convergence's story. 

Check out the new Convergence: A League of Legends Story trailer for yourself below:

Square Enix updated the official site for Final Fantasy XVI to include the Eikons' art and details. They are under the Characters tab. It also added more information about the battle system under the Battle page, and you can also view all the new videos or pictures under the Movies & Images tab.

The Eikons do not have their own section on the Characters page. Instead, they are a tab that you can toggle through on their respective Dominant’s profile. Though it shows a picture of each of the Eikons as they appear in Final Fantasy XVI, it does not give much of a description on who they are. For example, Jill’s profile states that she is the Dominant of Shiva and you can pull up a picture of Shiva, but that’s it.

In previous Final Fantasy titles, Eikons and their equivalents are more plot devices and tools in battle than actual characters. This might explain why Square Enix did not provide them with much flavor text. For those who wish to see the full-body art of the Eikons, you can do so on the Movies & Images page. You will have to click on the plus sign in order to expand the page enough to see them.

Final Fantasy XVI is in development for the PS5 and it will come out on June 22, 2023. There will be a six-month exclusivity period.

HoYoVerse offers a promotion in Honkai: Star Rail with its always-available Stellar Warp gacha banner that involves letting players pick one free 5-star character. The catch is that only seven options are available after pulling 300 times. You can only pick from Bailu, Bronya, Clara, Gepard, Himeko, Welt, and Yanqing. All of them are allies who are available at all times, which means you might even have some of them. Now, in general any 5-star character could have potential. Especially if your team is lacking a person in a role like a debuffer or AOE damage dealer. However, a few of these possible allies are especially useful regardless of who you already own.

[caption id="attachment_961486" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Screenshot via Siliconera[/caption]

A new Mega Man pop up shop with merchandise will appear in Marui City Yokohama from May 13-22, 2023. Original goods from the Mega Man series will be available for sale. The lineup includes graphic T-shirts, parkas, canvas tote bags, pin badges, clear files, acrylic key holders, and other original goods using pixel art from the classic games and illustrations. The merchandise will be sold in limited quantities. Admission will be free. [Thanks, Game Watch!]

Some of the games included in the lineup of goods include Mega Man, Mega Man X, Mega Man Legends, Mega Man Battle Network, and Mega Man Star Force. As a special offer, purchases of 2,200 JPY (~$16 USD) or higher will included an original character panel, with five different panels available each featuring a different illustration.

You can take a better look at the original merchandise available at the new Mega Man Marui Pop Up Shop here:

[gallery columns="2" ids="961460,961459" link="file"]

In other Mega Man news, the mobile phone Medabot S will hold a new collaboration event with Mega Man Battle Network that adds Dark MegaMan.EXE.

It was a Wednesday in March, and the Dreamworks dream team of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen had flown into Seattle to join Bill Gates for a press conference. The four men, seated on tall Hollywood director’s chairs, were estimated to be worth a combined $11 billion - and that was in 1995 money.

Together, Dreamworks and Microsoft were going 50-50 on a new game studio, investing a total of $30 million. “I’m spoiled,” said Spielberg, as recorded by the LA Times. “I worked with the best studios and the best actors, and it would be silly to get into the interactive business without Microsoft. They’re the best company in the world. It does seem like a marriage that was destined to happen.” It was a marriage that would produce a famously strange child in Jurassic Park: Trespasser.

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The Kingston NV2 is a budget PCIe 4.0 drive, designed to be assembled from the cheapest available components to deliver a decent baseline of performance. That makes it often an aggressively priced SSD compared to others at similar speeds, and today Box are offering the 2TB model for just £77.50. That's the lowest price we've ever seen for a 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD and a deal worth writing up, IMO.

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AMD's Radeon RX 6800 graphics card is one of the firm's best mid-range to high-end options, with excellent 1080p and 1440p performance that saw it get a warm write-up here at RPS. Now, MSI's RX 6800 Gaming Z Trio is down to £480 at Ebuyer here in the UK, a good price for a GPU of this calibre - if not quite as good value as the new RTX 4070.

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Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s PC has had a particularly bumpy launch on PC with our hardware boss James concluding that “sluggishness and stuttering are problems on higher-end graphics cards, even before adding the strain of ray tracing effects.” EA have now released their first post-launch patch, aiming to fix a host of issues.

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Marvel's Midnight Suns may be a turn-based tactics game first and foremost, but it also has a substantial RPG element that drives both the story and the interpersonal dramas of its superhero teams between missions. When you and your squad head back to your Abbey HQ, there are side stories and quests to investigate around the Abbey grounds, items to find, and more. It's a sizable part of the game, but at one point it was even bigger, creative director Jake Solomon tells me at GDC.

"It's crazy, if you go online, you can see all the Midnight Suns cutscenes and they're three hours long. That's as long as a movie," he says. But during the last year of development Solomon reveals "we cut 30 conversations from the game, like 30 scenes. We cut a ton, because we realised this is just simply too much."

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There was a time years ago when I played a lot of fighting games. The sort of sessions where you'd get together with a bunch of friends, huddle around a screen and take turns passing around controllers in unofficial mini-tournaments. If you weren't up, you'd be heckling the current players or just chatting amongst yourselves. No-one was an expert, there were no arcade sticks in sight, and - in the interest of full transparency - there was a fair bit of button bashing going on. It was so much fun, but no-one playing was going to win any actual ranked battles any time soon.

So that brings me to a question: can a lapsed and fairly casual fighting game fan find things to enjoy with Street Fighter 6? Well, after recently spending a couple of hours with the game, my answer would probably be yes, yes you can.

Street Fighter 6 isn't shy about letting you know it's keen to welcome new players with open and cartoonishly muscled arms. Let's be honest, buying into a fighting game if they aren't already very much your thing is a hard sell, and Street Fighter in particular isn't the kind of game many people play casually - the franchise has been very much focused on its hardcore community for some time now. But it's clear from this latest upcoming offering that Capcom has realised that it can't depend on the same community of fans forever without reaching out to potential new players. Thus, a lot of Street Fighter 6's new features are made with those curious about fighting games but too intimidated to try in mind.

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Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers can now refer a friend to PC Game Pass, and gift them 14 days of free subscription time.

Invited friends must be new to Game Pass to redeem the trial, and you're limited to doing this with five people. Also, to be clear, this is just for the PC portion of Game Pass.

Still, two weeks' of free game time is nothing to be sniffed at, and this membership of course includes access to new first-party Xbox games - such as Redfall - and the included access to EA Play and Riot Games libraries.

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In Star Wars, death is just a detour. A minor inconvenience. If you are famous or well-liked, odds are you’ll be back, either through the magic of prequels or through just being straight-up brought back to life to get fans all excited. And this tradition continues in the recently released Star Wars Jedi: Survivor,…

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Though Respawn Entertainment’s gargantuan Metroidvania Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was only released a few days ago, on April 28, the $70 game is already $10 off. Amazon recently added a sneaky “apply $10 coupon” box you can click while purchasing physical copies for PS5 and Xbox Series X online.

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The entirety of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom recently leaked online over a week ahead of the game’s May 12 release date. Now some players are making their way through it and streaming their journey for all to see while hackers comb through the game’s files for more clues. As a result, we’ve already…

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This year’s Fortnite Star Wars crossover is officially here, just in time for May the 4th. Naturally, there’s some of the expected: New Star Wars-themed skins and special Quests. But the official update post lays out even more Force fun to be had from now until May 23.

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Developer Firaxis Games has revealed the release date for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of its 2022 strategy card game, Marvel's Midnight Suns, alongside news that the planned Switch version has now been canceled. 

Midnight Suns hit PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on December 2, 2022, with plans for the PS4, Xbox One, and Switch versions to launch at a later date. Today, Firaxis announced that the PS4 and Xbox One versions will launch next week on May 11, which is the same day the game's fourth and final DLC – Blood Storm, which introduces Storm as a playable hero – releases. 

As for why the Switch version has been canceled, Firaxis doesn't provide anything more than, "Note that a Nintendo Switch version of Marvel's Midnight Suns is no longer planned." This follows news from earlier this year that the game's director (and the director of Firaxis' modern XCOM games), Jake Solomon, is departing from the studio. 

PS4 and Xbox One players that purchase the Legendary Edition of Midnight Suns or the game's Season Pass will get the new Blood Storm DLC as well as all previously released DLC, which alongside Storm adds Deadpool, Morbius, and Venom to the game.

For more about the game, read Game Informer's Marvel's Midnight Suns review. 

Microsoft announced the first round of May 2023 Xbox Game Pass additions and departures, and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair is among them. This is the Anniversary Edition of the game. This means you can also hear voice lines and see additional art, in addition to playing through the adventure as usual. It will be gone on May 15, 2023. This means it appeared on the service for just over a year.

First, here are all the new games that will be a part of Xbox Game Pass in May 2023. Both Redfall and Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 are both day-one releases appearing on the subscription service at launch.

• May 2, 2023: Redfall (cloud, Xbox Series X, PC)
• May 4, 2023: Ravenlok (cloud, console, PC)
• May 8, 2023: Weird West: Definitive Edition (Xbox Series X)
• May 9, 2023: Shadowrun Trilogy (PC)
• May 11, 2023: Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 (cloud, console, PC)

Here are all of the Xbox Game Pass games leaving on May 15, 2023.

A trailer for the Gran Turismo movie appeared. In addition, Sony have published an interview with director Neill Blomkamp on the PlayStation Blog. It is expected to appear in theaters in August 2023.

The Gran Turismo movie is based on the real-life story of British racing driver Jann Mardenborough. It follows his career from playing Gran Turismo to becoming a driver for Nissan. It focuses heavily on the GT Academy competition, which Mardenborough won in 2011.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVPzGBvPrzw

The interview with Director Neill Blomkamp revealed further details about the film. He acknowledged that the movie is a departure from his previous projects such as District 9. Blomkamp also discussed his personal love of cars and how he had a lot of freedom to explore the Gran Turismo IP. He also offered insight into the visual choices he made for the movie to maintain the feel of the games.

The Gran Turismo film will star David Harbour (Stranger Things) and Orlando Bloom (The Lord of the Rings). Harbour plays a racing trainer, while Bloom plays a character based on Darren Cox, the Nissan UK executive who helped found the GT Academy competition. Mardenborough is played by Archie Madekwe. Hermen Hulst, head of Sony Worldwide Studios, and Kazunori Yamauchi, producer of the Gran Turismo games, act as executive producers.

Udon Entertainment announced its 2023 Street Fighter Swimsuit Special comic. Issue one is in the works. It will release in stores on July 19, 2023. However, Udon’s site notes some have a general July 2023 release window there. There are six cover variants, each with different price points. As usual, one is a blank cover. Meanwhile, the others include characters from the original game all the way up through new fighters from Street Fighter 6.

This year, Udon is selling two 2023 Street Fighter Swimsuit Special #1 exclusive cover options from its storefront. Both feature Kajin-man covers. One is a $20 Poison Bikini variant. The other is a $50 version with Roxy on the cover that is limited to 300 copies.

Here is the list of options available and their prices.

HoYoVerse shared a new Genshin Impact Baizhu gameplay trailer, with Yuri “Dainsleif” Lowenthal explaining how the character works. The doctor is essentially a Dendro healer who wields a catalyst. However, it also shows how the five-star’s attacks and other supportive abilities can assist us while he’s in the party.

The Genshin Impact Bailu gameplay trailer begins by explaining his Exploration Talent. When you gather some plants and items in the wild, your health will be restored due to Herbal Nourishment.

After that, it gets into his main kit. His Normal Attack deals Dendo damage, with the charged version going from single-target to AOE. It’s with his Elemental Skill Universal Diagnosis that the healing element comes in. If no hostile forces are around, it will heal. However if enemies are nearby, it will attack and heal. His Holistic Revivification Elemental Burst generates a Seamless Seal that also heals while active. He also has a Five Fortunes Forever passive that will either make him heal more if the active character’s health is below half or make him hit harder if they are closer to full health.

Here's the full Genshin Impact Baizhu gameplay trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av4gbEYYZmM&ab_channel=GenshinImpact
The last trailer mainly focused on highlighting Baizhu's personality.

Square Enix announced a new sales hallmark for the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster games that covers both its digital and physical copies. All six games have now sold over two million copies worldwide. This comes after the PS4 and Switch versions debut on April 19, 2023.

Square Enix didn’t tell us regular sales figures initially for the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster games. This is likely due to the fact that there was a staggered release for the titles when they appeared on PCs and mobile devices. The first one appeared in July 2021, for example, and Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster launched on February 23, 2022.

As for the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster physical copies, Square Enix didn't announce how many copies were produced total. It only sold physical copies through its official site outside Japan, and those sold out. It is still possible to import physical copies of them from Asia. For example, Play-Asia sells the Switch Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster version for $79.99. That includes English as a language option.

So far, I wouldn't say Redfall is a "mess". A mess, to me, implies an excess of things that become a horrible, overwhelming tangle. Having played the vampiric FPS for a clutch of hours now, I'd say it feels more like an "absence". Arkane's latest strikes me as an open world shooter with a few simple strands that never seem to go anywhere. Occasionally, there are flashes of a team that - as we all know - are capable of brilliance, but Redfall has me following a path of irritation, and feeling a slight sadness for what might've been.

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One of 2022’s bestest games, tabletop-ish RPG Citizen Sleeper is now being turned into an actual tabletop game called Cycles Of The Eye, designed by series’ creator Gareth Damian Martin and long-time TTRPG smith Alfred Valley. Indie book publisher Lost In Cult have launched their latest campaign to crowdfund Cycles Of The Eye, as well as their next art book focused on the game's dystopian cyberpunk world.

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Fall Guys is back with another season of stuff next Wednesday, 10th May, but there's a major new addition this time around in the form of the freshly unveiled build-it-yourself Creative mode, giving players the tools to construct and share their own levels.

Creative mode functions pretty much as you'd expect, offering what looks to be an intuitive, fully featured construction toolkit available directly in-game. Developer Mediatonic demoed the new mode in today's reveal livestream, explaining that, at launch, players can build Races levels using either Fall Guys' original or new digital themes - with additional themes, round types, obstacles, and music set to be added in future updates.

After budding stage makers have selected their round type and theme, Creative mode then whisks them into the new building view, where they can call up a list of placeable objects - all grouped by category - including obstacles, decorations, and more.

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Citizen Sleeper is being adapted into a tabletop RPG named Cycles of the Eye.

Like the video game, it's a solo game broken down into turns called cycles with your energy represented by dice. However, Cycles of the Eye is driven by a tarot deck of cards to represent challenges, resources, characters and more.

Citizen Sleeper was inspired by TTRPGs so this adaptation certainly makes sense.

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Square Enix has shown our first look at gameplay from Forspoken DLC - In Tanta We Trust.

Releasing on 26th May across PlayStation 5 and PC, it's a prequel to the main game as protagonist Frey is launched back in time.

While gameplay is more of the same, Frey will be joined on her adventure by Tanta Cinta lending her abilities during combat and exploration. Check out the trailer below.

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