August 2023

The Tomb Raider will join the Modern Warfare Operator roster soon

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The chapter one boss fight is the game’s first big skill check

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Save up to 90% on eligible strategy titles through Sep. 4

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Sorkin originated the character in 1992’s Batman: The Animated Series

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gg Elon

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This 4K Blu-ray is one of 2023’s best discs

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Fionna and Cake and Archer and much more

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ABC: Always Be Cool.

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Decent discounts on Microsoft’s powerhouse

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Asking big questions of a team asking big questions

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A leaked press release says that the Lenovo Legion Go will cost $799/€799.

Per Windows Report, the handheld will be revealed on September 1 and will go on sale in October.

The competitor to Valve's Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally will run on Windows 11 and feature an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor.

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Two Motorsport Games staffers have won their lawsuits for unpaid wages.

As reported by Insider Gamer, one ruling awarded an employee $14,600 and the other developer won $10,000 from another case, according to a source.

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A Starfield leaker is facing multiple charges days after sharing the opening 45 minutes of the Sci-Fi RPG.

As reported by Kotaku, the Tennessee man allegedly stole 67 copies of the game, which he claims to have purchased legally.

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Imagendary Studios has "deeply restructured" with its future in significant question, according to a now-former employee posting on LinkedIn last week.

"This dream is done, Imagendary Studios has deeply restructured, and most of us were laid off," artist David Luong posted on LinkedIn. "I remained on as one of the last skeleton crew members to tidy some things up."

An inquiry to Imagendary parent company FunPlus was not returned as of the time of publication.

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Gamescom 2023 had 320,000 in-person visitors from over 100 countries last week, organizers announced.

By comparison, last year's attendance saw more than 265,000 people visiting the Germany-based event.

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The latest from Sabotage, the creators of 2018's The Messenger, is a fantastic throwback that takes lessons from the best 16-bit RPGs of the past while ignoring all the annoying elements that makes some of those games hard to go back to. You can absolutely dive in blind, but I highly recommend reading this update on the game's Kickstarter page. Titled Prologue - The Two Alchemists, it basically lays the groundwork for the universe Sea of Stars takes place in and establishes two important characters I was grateful to have known more about when I started the game.

Know The Prologue

To quickly summarize, Aephorul and Resh’an are alchemists who figured out the secret to immortal life, but it turns out being immortal is kind of terrible and the two came to this realization in opposing ways. Aephorul turned evil and gleefully spreads chaos across the world with monsters (known as Dwellers) and became known as The Fleshmancer. Resh’an embraced good and tries to make life better for the mortals by combating Aephorul's shenanigans. Resh’an primarily does this with the aid of Solstice Warriors (which is what you play as in Sea of Stars), which use the power of the sun and moon to fight Aephorul's Dwellers. Left unchecked the Dwellers will turn into World Eaters, which is a bad thing.

Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Arzest, Sonic Team
Release: October 17, 2023
Rating: Everyone

As part of our last issue's cover story, we provided exclusive insight into Sonic Superstars, the upcoming 2D platformer starring everyone's favorite blue hedgehog. We gave first hands-on impressions with several never-before-seen zones (read all about them here), but I recently got my hands on another all-new zone that I didn't see earlier this summer. Not only that, but I also experienced perhaps my biggest question mark to this point: cooperative play.

Sonic is - and has always been - about running really fast. Spin dashing down green hills. Speeding through loops and corkscrews. Grabbing rings with an iconic tinkle as you fly through the air.

Sonic Superstars has all that. But what happens if there's more than one player on the screen? Sega's latest 2D Sonic offering (with co-developer Arzest, who worked on Balan Wonderworld) features up to four player co-op as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy. At Gamescom I was able to test out both two-player and single-player.

As a multiplayer game, Sonic Superstars is fundamentally flawed.

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Vampires might be the themed threat for Diablo 4's second season, but it was arguably its own player base who drew first blood when season one started at the end of July. As you may have heard by now, Diablo's Season Of The Malignant didn't exactly go down all that well, with much of the hissing and fang-bearing directed toward its nerf-heavy balance patch that arrived a couple of days before the season started in earnest - a series of events that Blizzard's franchise general manager Rod Fergusson describes as "a perfect storm of a couple of situations" when I sit down to talk with him at Gamescom.

"Season one was exceptional, because we did something we'd never do again," says Fergusson. "As part of listening to players wanting to carry over their renown, we had to put the patch out a couple of days before the season. The intention is that a season and a patch would go [live] the same day, so at the time we make a balance change and you start a level one character, it feels differently to go through the progression with the new balance."

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What's the first derelict and/or abandoned (but is it really abandoned???) spaceship you ever visited in a videogame? I'm struggling to pin it down through the growing white noise of early middle age - as with much else in my life, everything blends into a gritty soup of Metroid and DOOM beyond the turn of the millennium - but I suspect it might have been a level from Rebellion's amazing 1999 Giger 'em up Aliens versus Predator, which I now recall only as screenfuls of fangs illuminated by Smartgun fire.

Does Sonic 2's Flying Fortress Zone count as abandoned, given that almost every NPC aboard is robotic? Blargh. I'm more confident picking my favourite space derelict, which would include choice excerpts from the debris field of trashed starcraft you traverse in the otherwise-questionable Dead Space 3. I'm hoping for more of that kind of thing in Starfield, in which you'll encounter a wide range of scuttled vessels plus still-crewed, decidedly hostile "Legendary" ships that could play a part in the hotly upcoming Bethextravaganza's capacious endgame. There's fresh news on this front from senior level designer Zach Wilson, who has been waxing lyrical online about "the tragedies and perils of space travel".

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It's only been a few days since Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon released, and yet fans are already finding unique ways to play.

Although a core appeal of the game's mechas are the fun guns and lasers you can outfit your robot with, you can still have a great time without them.

This is what YouTuber ZeroLenny set out to prove by beating Armored Core 6 without any weapons - no guns, no rockets, just pure force and punches.

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The developer behind upcoming zombie MMO The Day Before has filed a new trademark for something known as Dayworld, suggesting a name change is in the pipeline.

This new trademark, spotted by WellPlayed, covers a range of categories, including "downloadable game software; computer game software downloadable from a global computer network; downloadable computer game software for use on mobile devices", and more.

As a quick reminder, The Day Before was originally meant to release on PC back in March. However, in a bizarre series of events, it transpired that developer Fntastic had failed to trademark the game's name, which had subsequently been contested by a company behind a calendar app.

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Armored Core 6 features the Moonlight Greatsword from Dark Souls, which makes it a Soulslike.

I jest of course. The Armored Core series is very much its own thing. But the inclusion of this iconic weapon is a fun Easter egg present through most FromSoftware games.

The weapon first appeared in the studio's 1994 game King's Field as the Moonlight Sword and has since appeared in most of its games in various guises, from Dark Souls to Bloodborne, Elden Ring, and past Armored Core games.

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One of the monthly games for subscribers to PlayStation Plus for next month will be the Saints Row reboot, according to a leak.

Saints Row, along with two other games, will be available for all PS Plus subscribers as part of the Essential tier of offerings, reliable leaker Billbil-kun has stated.

Billbil-kun also stated the three games will be available for subscribers to claim from 5th September.

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When Starfield arrives, the Premium and Constellation collector’s editions bring a The Art of Starfield art book app with it. This is an app people can use to hear music from the game, as well as see Bethesda concept art that helped lead to the final product. To help provide people a better idea of what to expect from it, there’s now a teaser trailer just looking at this supplemental program.

Here’s the full The Art of Starfield art book teaser trailer. Rather than actually showing inside of the app itself and “pages” from the concept art sections, it’s a video of its main menu. However, rather than a static menu, it shows off different areas inside of a ship, highlighting the design and ways in which different areas look. As it does, a song from the game’s soundtrack plays in the background. In addition to workspaces, we also get to see a dining area and a private space someone can use as a bunk to sleep and relax in.

Reminder: #Starfield Premium and Constellation Edition owners will have access to the official soundtrack and art book app! Here's a sneak peek. pic.twitter.com/hTa2yq1gY9

How do you condense the vast, far-reaching tendrils of Paradox's open world Sims-killer Life By You into 20 minutes? The short answer is you can't, really, but while most of my brief, guided Gamescom demo covered very similar ground to what I saw back in March when it was first announced, there was one little detail that really grabbed my attention - and that's how everyone has eyes like a hawk in this game. They're almost constantly aware of everything that you're doing. So much so, that they can even get a little bit creepy about it, as was made plain in my hands-off demo session.

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Granblue Fantasy: Relink has been on my most anticipated games list for two-years, with all of my anticipation based purely off bitty trailers that haven't revealed anything other than its flashy action RPG combat and deeply anime towns. So, I was rather excited when I had a chance to play it for all of ten minutes in one demo, then around 40 minutes at this year's Gamescom.

Blazing fast mental arithmetic puts my total time with the game at around 50 minutes... with a catch. The two demos were identical, though, so all of my time was dedicated to smashing the same large skeleton and large rock man. I got to know them and it's battle system intimately, I suppose, so while I can't speak for the quests, but the fights? Gloriously chaotic.

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Activision has given us our best look yet at Tomb Raider's Lara Croft in Call of Duty.

The design has taken most of its inspiration from the 'Classic Lara' look of old, with her dual pistols, tank top and braid all taking pride of place in the promotional shots released so far (see header above, and image below).

This version of Lara also wears the necklace from the Tomb Raider reboot games, perhaps giving us a look at how Lara might appear in the series' future, unified timeline. She certainly looks older than the 'Survivor' timeline Lara, who we last saw in 2018's Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

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When Lies of P released a demo back in June, many players found its dodge to be, well, dodgy. It was sluggish and imprecise and made tackling the game's towering bosses more challenging than it should have been.

Now that's changed. After receiving feedback from players, developer Neowiz Games has spent time tweaking the dodge ahead of the game's launch next month.

"When we switched the dodging part, we made it smooth and flexible when you dodge," game director Jiwon Choi told me at Gamescom. "Also when you change to another movement or action, we made it shorter and smoother to make it easier to switch."

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A spirit tormented by board games must have used its Diet Pepsi breath to take over my desire, because, for the past two weeks, I have been consumed by the need to play the tabletop version of Dominion, the feudal-style deck-builder. I love coming up with bite-sized strategies for its 30-minute rounds, and I’m…

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Koei Tecmo released a third trailer for Fate/Samurai Remnant ahead of the game's release on September 29, 2023. This time around, the trailer focuses on the relationship between Miyamoto Iori and his Saber-class servant. However, it also teases some of the systems we'll get to play with in the game, including equipment, skill trees, and a whittling minigame.

The trailer begins with Saber remarking on Iori's personality in a far gentler tone than we've seen in previous trailers, before we transition to a scene of them clashing. We then get a title cut before being shown some new gameplay footage including a look at Gilgamesh's shop, a woodworking minigame, and an equipment screen that should look familiar to any players of Omega Force's previous games. A skill tree is briefly shown before Li Shuwen shows off his special attack and Circe transforms Iori into a pig with the magic of ancient Greek hallucinogens.

As the music kicks, in we see some more special attacks and some close shots of the various masters, servants, and other characters in the game. The video then ends with a rundown of the pre-order and special edition rewards.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgxC3edcEnY[/embed]

Nintendo announced its next Direct will be a variant focusing on Super Mario Bros Wonder. People can learn more about the game on August 31, 2023 at air at 7am PT/10am ET/4pm CET. The title was first revealed during the June 2023 Nintendo Direct. This is the new 2D-style Super Mario game set to debut in October 2023.

The placeholder is already present on YouTube for the event. We also know this will be one of the shorter Direct offshoots. It will only spend 15 minutes looking at the new game ahead of its debut. This should mean new gameplay footage and looks at what to expect from this installment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0m_uNaSres&ab_channel=NintendoofAmerica

As a reminder, the gimmick here is that there will be Wonder effects that changes how the stages and game will look. This means that we could see silhouette stages or things like moving pipes. There will also be some new power ups for characters to use. The one showcased in the June 2023 Nintendo Direct was Elephant Mario. However, another showed Mario turning into a spiked ball underwater to smash through things. Nintendo also confirmed that Daisy and Yoshi will be joining Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Toad as playable characters.

Super Mario Bros Wonder will come to the Nintendo Switch on October 20, 2023, and the Direct looking at it will air at 7am PT/10am ET/4pm CET on August 31, 2023.

A new animated Honkai: Star Rail trailer featuring Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae and Dan Feng is now available via the various HoYoVerse YouTube channels. It focuses on the crimes Dan Feng committed (though we do not yet have all of the details regarding them), as well as Dan Heng’s determination to break free of his past. The members of the High-Cloud Quintet also make cameos.

You can watch the trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6jvUuarJbg

It is also available in Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean.

In the trailer, Dan Heng and Dan Feng meet and discuss how Dan Heng is unable to escape his past. In all languages, Dan Heng and Dan Feng do not share a voice actor. The voice director for HoYoVerse has said in the past that this is to reflect that Dan Heng may be Dan Feng’s reincarnation, but the two are ultimately different people.

Square Enix revealed that Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis pre-registrations reached over 1.5 million worldwide. To celebrate hitting this milestone, It will be giving all players who pre-register a free gear voucher. This allows players to redeem it for one of the available costumes in Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis.

The company also announced a new milestone goal for 1.7 million pre-registrations to the upcoming mobile game. It will be giving away 7.7 billion Blue Crystals currency to be split between all players who play FFVII Ever Crisis. The amount of Blue Crystals to be given to each player will be based on the number of downloads within the first three days of the game's launch, and all players are eligible even if they did not pre-register.