May 2023

Shipment from Modern Warfare is one of Call of Duty's most famous maps. So famous, it actually got a revamp for the likes of Vanguard and Modern Warfare 2 (where it was set on a ship).

Its somewhat simple design, which sees a collection of vacant containers for players to shoot their way around, is a mainstay of the series. However, the original map nearly didn't make its way into Call of Duty at all. As hard as it is to imagine now, Shipment's inclusion in 2007's Modern Warfare was "truly an accident".

Speaking to Dexerto, Infinity Ward multiplayer design director Geoff Smith shared more backstory on Shipment's genesis.

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom lets you dress Link in a whole wardrobe of costumes and armour - but none so unsettling as his Link's Awakening outfit.

The blank, unblinking eyes, the polished sheen of his mask's surface - it all leads to Link looking like a serial killer. (And considering what some of you are doing to those poor Koroks, perhaps this isn't too far off.)

This is, of course, Link's design from the recent Nintendo Switch remake of classic Game Boy adventure The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. Except there, it was part of the game's cute toy diarama aesthetic. In Tears of the Kingdom, Link's longer body and glassy-eyed expression give off a very different vibe.

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Yet another Hololive VTuber has contracted COVID-19, as Cover reported that Sakura Miko will be on hiatus. After discussions with her doctor and manager, she decided to take a break for a week and see how she feels. If she feels better after seven days, then she will likely resume her normal streaming activities. Cover also apologized for the worry this news may cause.

Sakura Miko felt sick for a while now, according to Cover’s tweet in regards to the VTuber's hiatus. After she went to get a check-up, she found that she tested positive for COVID-19. On Sakura Miko’s personal Twitter account, she said that she went to the hospital because her throat has felt off for a long while. Though she does not have a fever, she has a sore throat and is coughing.

Many Hololive VTubers have ended their Golden Week vacation with a COVID-19 diagnosis. She is the fourth VTuber to go on a break for health reasons. Going off of the tweets, it seems like Sakura Miko has the lightest COVID-19 symptoms. Laplus Darkness, Murasaki Shion, and Minato Aqua are all also recovering, and all three of them have reported a fever as one of their symptoms.

Sakura Miko will take a week hiatus to recover from COVID-19. If she feels better at the end of it, she will resume her usual activities.

Ubisoft quietly stopped talking about NFTs a while ago, but the controversial idea is now back in the form of new licensed collectibles for Assassin’s Creed. Come along for the ride and we can suffer through this together.

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What can I say? I love games that have a bit of a sing-song. I've enjoyed the pop platforming of Sayonara Wild Hearts, the DIY DJ-ing in Fuser, the grungy game-meets-album Teenage Blob, and the recently released fist-pumping robot-thrashing Hi-Fi Rush just to name some from the top of my noggin'.

Music is a definitely big part of these games, but Stray Gods: A Roleplaying Musical has set itself on a different kind of musical path, in that it’s actually a musical. I'm talking like a full-on ballad-belter, curtain-caller, exit-stage-left-er musical. And get this: it’s also a modern retelling of the mythos behind the Greek Gods. It feels like my inner theatre kid has chugged ten Red Bulls and is waiting for her cue to burst out.

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Free-to-play battle royale Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt is ending development a year after launch, the team at Sharkmob have announced. That means the game won’t receive frequent updates in the future. Sharkmob points to their limited player base, which made sustainable development difficult for the battle royale, although servers will remain online indefinitely, as long as there’s an “active player base and community.”

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Blizzard has said it's feeling "really confident" Diablo 4 will enjoy a smooth launch following a series of server stress tests.

The developer held a "Server Slam" event over the weekend to test the upcoming action role-playing game's servers one final time ahead of launch in June. The event seemed to go smoothly, with most players reporting little to no queue time and, when in-game, improved performance compared to that seen in previous tests.

Speaking to Eurogamer in an interview in London today, Diablo 4 art director John Mueller and associate game director Joe Piepiora said Blizzard is feeling good about the launch because it had learned so much from the various tests.

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Saudi Arabia's controversial Public Investment Fund (PIF) has increased its stake in FIFA publisher EA.

According to Seeking Alpha (via Eurogamer's sister site GamesIndustry.biz), a new filing regarding the fund was published yesterday (15th May). This filing was for the three months that ended on 31st March, and reveals the PIF purchased more shares in EA during Q4 2022.

Prior to this quarter, the PIF held 16.01m shares in EA. It has since increased this stake by 55 percent, and now holds 24.81m shares as of the end of Q1 2023.

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Microsoft has detailed the latest batch of games headed to Xbox Game Pass for console and PC over the remainder of May, including EA's final ever FIFA title.

As previously announced, FIFA 23 joins Game Pass for consoles and PC today, from 6pm UK time. As an EA Play title, you'll need PC Game Pass and Ultimate for this one.

Later this week brings 2D side-scrolling RPG Eastern Exorcist and the console version of "Eastpunk" action-RPG Ghostlore, both on 18th May.

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Pokémon Go is finally giving players a Master Ball - the franchise's legendary item with a 100 percent guarantee of catching any Pokémon.

These coveted items are typically held by players of mainline Pokémon games for the rarest of creatures. In Pokémon Go, what you use your Master Ball on will be up to you.

Pokémon Go players will receive a Master Ball as part of this season's ongoing story quest, with its final part set to debut next week on 22nd May at 10am local time.

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The UK Competition and Markets Authority has defended its decision to block Microsoft's $68.7bn Activision Blizzard buyout, as part of a grilling by MPs today.

CMA bosses Marcus Bokkerink and Sarah Cardell faced repeated questions from the UK government's Business and Trade Committee this morning relating to the decision, just a day after the European Commission voted to approve the deal in the EU.

MPs asked the CMA to explain why it had reached a different decision on the deal to its European counterpart, and repeatedly questioned whether the CMA had considered the effects of blocking a deal like this on the UK's international reputation.

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Jing Yuan will join Honkai: Star Rail on May 17, 2023, but people can start collecting Ascension and Trace materials now. HoYoVerse shared details about the character and noted what people will need to collect. The item you’ll need the most of is the Immortal Scionette and its upgraded forms, as both his Ascensions and Traces require it. However, the developer didn’t note how many of each item people will need just yet.

First, here are the two “base” kinds of Ascension Materials for Jing Yuan and where you can find them in Honkai: Star Rail:

• Immortal Scionette: Assignments reward, Embers Exchange, Mara-Struck Soldiers drop, and Simulated Universe reward. The upgraded versions are the Immortal Aeroblossom and Immortal Lumintwig.
• Shape Shifter’s Lightning Staff: Shape of Doom Stagnant Shadow at Stargazer Navalia on The Xianzhou Luofu.

Next, these are the materials needed for Jing Yuan’s Traces in Honkai: Star Rail:

After teasing a new type of Poke Ball on May 15, 2023, Niantic announced the Master Ball will come to Pokemon GO. It won't be an item people can buy. Rather, the announcement noted the first one will be one people will need to earn. It will be a Special Research reward starting on May 22, 2023.

How to get a Master Ball in Pokemon GO

So far, Niantic only revealed one opportunity to get the can't miss Poke Ball in the game. It noted the Special Research: Let’s Go in Season 10: Rising Heroes will offer the first Pokemon GO Master Ball reward. Between May 22, 2023 and June 1, 2023, people will apparently be able to get it. Should this questline be completed, they’ll get a single Master Ball.

This means there will be five total types of Poke Balls in Pokemon GO. The Poke Ball, Great Ball, and Ultra Ball are all used for normal catching while exploring. The Beast Ball only is used if you take part in an Ultra Beast Raid. Finally, if you face a Team Rocket member or a normal Raid and get a catching opportunity at the end, then the Premier Ball will appear as the one you can use.

Pokemon GO is available on Android and Apple iOS devices. As a reminder, Niantic recently removed accessibility features by changing how Remote Raid Passes work.

Ahead of the debut of the Honkai: Star Rail Jing Yuan and Before the Dawn Light Cone Event Warp banners, HoYoVerse revealed the other characters and Light Cones that will be on them. If someone is going for the character banner, they’ll also see March 7th, Sushang, and Tingyun more often. If you pull for Jing Yuan’s Light Cone, three four-star ones will appear more often.

Diablo IV’s Server Slam weekend, which ran from May 12 through May 14, gave players one final chance to scour Hell for loot and kill Ashava the Pestilent before the action-RPG drops on June 6. This open beta came with a handful of changes, particularly some nerfs to the Necromancer that developer Blizzard eventually…

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I find minimaps to be incredibly distracting; they constantly pull my eyes off the world I’m navigating, leading me to stare at a little icon following a path instead of taking in the sights around me. Fortunately, many games let you shut them off. As was true with Breath of the Wild, open-world adventures like The…

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There’s currently an Electronic Arts publisher sale on Steam right now, and one deal in particular offers a great chance to catch up on some of the best role-playing games of the last 20 years. The BioWare mega collection includes every Dragon Age and Mass Effect game, and it’s only $20.

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom leaked over a week before launch and sent Nintendo into a frenzy, with the company firing off copyright takedowns to Discord, Twitch, Twitter, and more. Now the game is officially out, but some pirates are still illegally downloading the game, and Nintendo is watching.

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Link gets most of the Purah Pad’s fancy features before he descends onto Hyrule’s surface in Tears of the Kingdom’s intro. However, there are a few you have to go out of your way to find, and one of them is the camera function. This allows you to take photos of all your adventures through Hyrule, and it would be a…

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I've been meaning to write about Veiled Experts for over a month now, since playing it religiously during the Final Beta Test. I've been putting it off mostly because I've been busy, but also because I'm trying to find a way of saying "actually it's really good" without people laughing and throwing garbage at me. It's very hard to describe Veiled Experts to someone in a way that doesn't prompt an instant dismissal. That was my reaction too. I saw it on Twitch, my mind said "third person Counter-Strike", and sent an automatic signal down to my lips to proclaim the words: "sounds awful".

Thank goodness for boredom. Later that day I was at a loose end and saw that Veiled Experts was free, so I downloaded it and tried it out. And here we are, a month and a bit later. The game is about to release into Early Access, and I'm desperately trying to get everyone I know to play it with me, because it's bloody phenomenal.

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May marks the beginning of summer, the end of spring, and National Paper Airplane Day. Oh, and another fresh batch of Game Pass comings and goings. The rest of this month welcomes a few gems (Chicory: A Colorful Tale and FIFA), and bids farewell to others (Europa Universalis and FIFA).

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After playing a bunch of the demos at LudoNarraCon earlier this month, the best one I played, with zero hesitation, was Cryptmaster. Its smart text-based puzzle design fused with stylish dungeon crawling had me completely spellbound, to the point where it's now become one of my most anticipated indie games for 2024. It’s honestly unlike anything I’ve played.

Developed by Paul Hart and Lee Williams, Cryptmaster is a dark fantasy dungeon crawler where you need to type (or speak) commands to help get your undead amnesiac party members out of a strange underground kingdom. Your band of forgetful adventurers aren't completely at the mercy of the dungeon, as a devilish-looking necromancer is there to give a helping hand. An ominous figure who acts as both guide and a quest giver, the horned necromancer helps you navigate the strange rules of this underground world where words and letters are a resource for survival.

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After giving us a release window for horror collection Layers Of Fear, developers Bloober Team have now set a concrete date: June 15th, 2023. The game previously changed its name earlier in the year, dropping the pluralisation of Layers Of Fears. Presumably, it'll still explore more than one fear, though. You can see for yourself as the game released a new demo today, available on Steam until May 22nd.

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Final Fantasy XVI arrives exclusively on PlayStation 5 next month, but before that, it’s getting the Game Informer spotlight on our latest cover! We traveled to Japan and spoke with several of the leads within developer Creative Business Unit III of Square Enix to talk about combat, story, art, lore, and so much more, and we played hours of the game we can’t wait to tell you about. This cover story and our exclusive coverage going live on the site starting soon will bring you all the FFXVI information you need before finally jumping in to play it next month. 

Welcoming you into our deep dive into FFXVI’s world of Valisthea, its lore, its characters, and of course, its Eikons, is the beautiful art adorning this issue of Game Informer. Our standard cover showcases protagonist Clive Rosfield and the hellacious Ifrit Eikon, and on the back, Clive’s brother Joshua joins him with the fiery Phoenix Eikon. 

Sega is mulling an increase in prices for its forthcoming video games.

Sega boss Haruki Satomi and chief financial officer Koichi Fukazawa took part in a Q&A session following the company's financial results briefing in April. Here, the Sega execs were asked if there are plans to increase its unit sales prices.

In response, the Sega heads explained that while AAA games "have been sold at $59.99 for many years", over the last year more titles have been "sold at $69.99".

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Now that Sylvie Paula Paula is playable in The King of Fighters XV, SNK updated the official site to go over her KOF XV backstory and Bellamy "interview." The story revealed that she got interested in competing after running into Kukri, and Shermie helped her enter the tournament. Meanwhile, the interview went over her affection for other characters like Athena and Kula.

With the interview, it mainly went over her attire and different characters. As in the last game, she’s still connected to both Kukri and Mian. He’s even described as her rival in this installment. This backstory segment also noted her affection for Athena and Kula, as how she appreciates both’s appearance and attitude.

As for the reason why she joined, it started when she encountered Kukri in Paris after seeing Mian in China. She brought up how Otoma=Raga was mentioned, and he told her to keep out of it. She brought up the encounter and her displeasure at his reaction when spending time with Shermie. Shermie then offered Sylvie Paula Paula a KOF Special Invitation Letter so she’d have a chance to see for herself and encounter Kukri again.

Nintendo revealed details about the next Splatoon 3 season. The Sizzle Season will begin on June 1, 2023, following the end of the current Fresh Season. More content is coming to the game, including new music, new and returning stages, and a weapon referencing a classic Nintendo peripheral.

https://twitter.com/SplatoonNA/status/1658457873813217282

Two new stages were revealed. The first of these is Humpback Pump Track, a BMX-themed stage that first appeared in Splatoon 2. The second stage is a new one called Barnacle & Dime. From the footage shown by Nintendo, it appears to be inspired by the courtyard of a large mall. Salmon Run will also gain a new stage, which is Jammin’ Salmon Junction.

New weapons will be added to Splatoon 3 too. The Paintbrush is another brush weapon, and it is one that offers a wider spread than the Inkbrush or Octobrush. A new Blaster weapon, the S-BLAST ’92, is also coming. It’s based on the Super Scope, a light gun released for the SNES. This is similar to the N-ZAP weapons already in the game, which are based on the NES Zapper.

Another major addition for the Sizzle Season is Challenges. Nintendo’s trailer showed off some possible challenges, including Too Many Trizookas, Foggy Notion, and Extreme Jump Battle. It’s not clear how these challenges will be implemented into the game.

Capcom's continuing its Street Fighter 6 "How to Play" series of videos looking at characters, with Jamie being the latest "star." Each one of these clips shows what people should know about different fighters and tips for using them. They can also focus on specific helpful moves. His video begins by showing how someone can build momentum with certain attacks, then use opportunities to get a drink to increase his moveset.

Here's the video going over how to play as Jamie in Street Fighter 6.

Combining drunken boxing and breakdancing, Jamie specializes in close-range combat. By drinking a special herbal concoction he can enhance the abilities of his moves, and gain access to new ones. pic.twitter.com/rUQnPpVTVB

— Street Fighter (@StreetFighter) May 16, 2023

We already saw a Street Fighter 6 “How to Play” video starring Jamie’s rival Luke. It was the first in the series to appear. In case you missed it, it highlighted how he’s “well-rounded.”

Learn how to play Luke from Street Fighter 6!

Final Fantasy XI Producer and Director Yoji Fujito revealed the upcoming roadmap for the MMORPG. Fujito confirmed that new content will gradually wind down as part of a “more realistic” roadmap, but it will still provide "motivation" for players to play. The team will also continue to keep up maintenance on the game.

Fujito pointed to two current Final Fantasy XI events as a template for what players can expect. The 21st Vana’versary Celebration Campaign began on May 11, 2023. During it, various campaigns give out extra rewards than usual. It runs until May 31, 2023.

Simultaneously, the Return Home to Vana’diel Campaign began on May 12, 2023. Past players can rejoin the game free of charge, allowing players an easy way to catch up on content added in the past few years. It also enhances rewards for various campaigns. There will also be an Assist Channel to aid new and returning players. The campaign will run until May 22, 2023.

Fujito previously expressed a desire to keep Final Fantasy XI alive for as long as possible. In his announcement, he also said he was excited to see the game’s 22nd anniversary next year.

Kadokawa will re-release a scale figure of Saber Alter from Fate/stay Night Heaven’s Feel in a kimono. This figure is a recreation of an illustration that Takashi Takeuchi drew for Newtype magazine. Pre-orders are available via Good Smile Company until June 22, 2023. It costs 24,000 JPY and will come out in January 2024 in Japan. Meanwhile, those in North America can pay $171.99 and get her in Q1 2024.

The scale figure of Saber Alter (Kimono Version) stands at around 275 millimeters. This includes both her stand and her umbrella. The kimono is in Saber Alter’s usual dark purple and black color palette, but with red highlights underneath. Her umbrella also has red on the bottom, which serves to contrast with the kimono’s dark aesthetic.

Here are some more pictures of the Fate/stay Night Heaven’s Feel Saber Alter (Kimono Version) scale figure:

[gallery columns="5" ids="963528,963527,963526,963525,963524" link="file"]

Ubisoft is more committed than ever to Assassin’s Creed. After reporting a $500 million operating income loss for the last year, the French publisher announced it would increase the number of developers working on the hit historical fantasy franchise to almost 3,000. If you thought there were too many…

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On May 9, a Borderlands 3 player lit the popular subreddit r/Gaming ablaze. They posted a photo of an error message on their Xbox Series S, which indicated that the console had run out of video memory. Not long after, the post was inundated with tons of comments saying the same thing: This happens all the time when…

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