October 2023

Another new member of Sanrio’s Fragaria Memories appeared on the project’s official social media account and it is Puruth, the knight of Pompompurin. He now appears alongside all of the other knights who have been announced so far on the official website. Voice samples of each knight have recently been added there as well.

You can see the Puruth reveal in the post below:

[embed]https://twitter.com/fragaria_sanrio/status/1709131178404638911?s=46&t=SNtyEdQZL6ezAJBHG2IubA[/embed]

Puruth is a compassionate free spirit. He treats his lord Pompompurin like a true friend, rather than a master. He is honest, friendly, and chooses to indulge in traveling and poetry. He is voiced by Takuma Terashima, who also voiced Lent Marslink in the Atelier Ryza series. His character art was illustrated by Tsubata Nozaki.

Puruth is a member of the Red Bouquet in Fragaria Memories. Earlier, it was announced that all of the members of the Red Bouquet would be revealed first. So, another member of the Red Bouquet will be shown next. Last time Merold, the knight of My Melody, was revealed.

Reviewed on: Xbox Series X/S
Platform: Xbox Series X/S, PC
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
Developer: Turn 10 Studios
Release: October 10, 2023
Rating: Everyone

It can be rare for a newer franchise to challenge a well-established genre leader for the throne, but that’s precisely what the Forza Motorsport series has done since its first entry in 2005. Since then, the sim-racing genre has featured dueling front-runners, with Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport taking turns in the lead. The latest entry, simply titled Forza Motorsport, takes a back-to-basics approach to keep pace with its chief rival.

Speeding around the track has never felt better. A palpable sense of speed accompanies excellent physics and visuals to create a superb racing experience. A multitude of factors converge, including track surface, weather, the wear of your tires, and the various tuning elements of your vehicle, to determine how your vehicle handles and feels.

In the view of Forza Motorsport, cars are serious business. This you can tell from the score, by Peter G. Holmström, which is laden with hammer blows and ticking synth. It sounds like the work of Hans Zimmer, and you could lift it out and lay it snugly over a Splinter Cell or a Deus Ex - one of those tech-infested thrillers in which the world is redeemed by hardware, and the solitary souls who guide it. (Such is racing, I guess, in the eyes of its admirers.) This approach differs from that of Gran Turismo 7, the chief rival of Forza Motorsport in the mainstream simulator stakes. That game presents its races in a café, amid the glint of coffee pots and the steam of lightly brewed jazz. Slotted together, both works spin and blur into a similar conviction; when you apply the brakes, you notice that they lie at opposing ends of it. Do cars make life worth living, or does life make cars worth driving?

Spend an afternoon with Forza Motorsport, in its thuddingly epic air, and you may stagger away convinced of the latter. But think of the efforts that it makes to welcome you. We are ushered into a string of races, as though it were no big deal. The difficulty is dampened by default, with brakes that kick in to carry you around each bend. The career mode is approachable - wrapped into parcels of races. The Legacy Tour. The Power Tour. The Enthusiast Tour. Within these you find themed events: Practical Performance, Super Sedans, Built For Sport. Start one of these series, and you get a potted history lesson, albeit with a steely edge: "Modern high-performance hatchbacks have evolved into serious street and track weapons," we are told by a stern narrator. You'll never look at a Renault Megane, loaded and cocked in a Tesco car park, the same way again.

Forza Motorsport on Xbox Series S

As far as racing simulation goes, Forza has been a name synonymous with the genre since the first Forza Motorsport in 2005. As time has gone on, those titles have transitioned from only the Motorsport titles and into the Horizon as well, but after a 6 year gap between the previous racing sim with Forza Motorsport 7, 2023’s Forza Motorsport had some pretty big tires to fill and did so with finesse.

I’ve fallen off from playing racing titles in recent years, mainly because they can tend to feel repetitive after a while of playing. Forza Horizon is a different story because there’s a lot more freedom in the environment, so those have been the titles that I’ve focused on despite having started out playing the Motorsport games. However, the new Forza Motorsport is an entirely different story. From the moment I finished the first race, I could tell that I was playing something at the cutting edge of what’s possible, and couldn’t take my mind off of it.

September 2023 came and went like a whirlwind. Our enormous backlog just can’t seem to catch a break with heavy hitters like Starfield, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, Lies of P, and Baldur’s Gate 3 dropping one after the other. Well, October isn’t devoid of GOTY contenders either! Heavy hitters from Ubisoft and Nintendo such as Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Super Mario Bros. Wonder promise to envelop us in their worlds in October. And with the holidays right around the corner, why not save some cash with these sleeper October titles instead? Here are 6 games that will (probably) fly under your radar in October 2023.

Anyone who has played Apex Legends for a season — and sometimes even less than that — will undoubtedly know that the game has problems. Certain issues like hits not registering are claimed to be fixed, but creep back up as time passes. Again, this is just kind of what you accept as an Apex Legends player. And yet, a recent problem stemming from an event is still a little bit funny and frustrating.

The recent Harbingers Collection Event started on Sept. 19 and brought out a new Revenant-themed grenade called the Rev Shell. When thrown, it will travel in a straight line until it senses an enemy and then quickly change course to track them. They are hilariously persistent and provide a fun twist for the game’s Halloween event. The Rev Shell also factors into one of the event’s challenge badges that required players to deal 1,000 damage with them.

A new Final Fantasy 14 expansion means new jobs to level. Which jobs are coming with next summer’s Dawntrail expansion have been a mystery ever since the reveal earlier this year. That was until the new Growing Light update hit servers today. Now, it seems, a major hint has been dropped which might just reveal the first of the two jobs we’ll see in the expansion.

Read on to find out what it might be, but be warned, this article contains major spoilers for patch 6.5 – Growing Light.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and when it comes to video games like Starfield, that phrase could not ring any truer. Indeed, in a rapidly evolving medium where enjoyment can be a deeply personal and ephemeral commodity, trying to condense an epic 100-hour RPG down to a one-size-fits-all score can be as challenging as trying to defeat a Terrormorph with a wheel of cheese.

Nevertheless, it’s important to open a dialogue about these things, as discussion makes the world galaxy go round. From this perspective, it seems that Reddit user Touny420 has well and truly struck the motherlode.

Completing Final Fantasy 14’s main story — including all its expansions — takes somewhere in the region of 350 hours. Even the hardiest RPG fan would have to admit that this is a lot. That’s also assuming you’re concentrating solely on the story and not getting pulled away by any of the impossible number of other distractions the game throws at you.

This was how I approached my first major stint in Final Fantasy 14. Head down. Tunnel vision. Plowing through it. I overcame the very real boredom of the game’s first 50 or so hours, was blown away by the next 200, and, as the credits rolled on the Endwalker expansion, came to realize that I’d just finished one of the greatest games I’ve ever played.

The Nintendo GameCube, the little box that could. Nintendo’s fourth home console ran through its share of problems and ultimately sold on the lower end for a Nintendo system, but it’s gained quite a cult following over the years (it’s one of this writer’s favorite systems). And why not? It’s got a truly tremendous library of games, and it’s home to some of Nintendo’s most creative, inventive, and memorable titles yet. It’s been especially great to see some fantastic GameCube titles return on the Switch, giving people another chance to experience some truly remarkable games.

As great as the GameCube is, however, it’s certainly got some stinkers. Much like any great console, some developers may look to make something to earn a quick buck, thus focusing less on making a great, quality title first and foremost. And no doubt, the GameCube is home to some garbage. Here are 10 of the worst Nintendo GameCube games that we love to hate.

Every Call of Duty player typically takes a liking to a particular gun, whether it be the classic Assault Rifle or dynamic SMG. However, once you reach the maximum level of the weapon, the loadout is reasonably limited to a certain amount of attachments, often leading you to try out a new gun just for the sake of new content.

Fortunately, Modern Warfare 3’s Aftermarket Parts will bring a new life to these somewhat dull weapons, where players can get their hands on exclusive attachments from the latest Conversion Kits. This feature could essentially introduce an entirely different blueprint from the weapon’s original version, allowing you to return to past guns you may have forgotten.

It has been two years since 11 bit studios revealed to the world that the team is working on Frostpunk 2, with the highly acclaimed society survival game set to get a sequel that will hopefully build on everything that has made it so special. And based on a hands-off preview led by the developers, there is a growing belief that it will do just that and more, testing players’ ability to build, manage, and juggle all the responsibilities of a post-apocalyptic world.

Rather than focus on the narrative-driven experience that will await players in the main campaign, 11 bit studios took the opportunity to show off its Utopia Builder, the sandbox gameplay imbued with unique Frostpunk elements that will create tales of survival and failure alike.

It’s widely known now that Starfield’s planets rely on procedural generation to populate worlds with locations to explore. This has proven to be an economical system that, in theory, creates an infinite amount of content to engage with. However, the experience of exploring a world has turned out to be rather lackluster and somewhat underdeveloped, making Starfield’s planets feel barren. Now, players are discovering some immersion-breaking limits to the procedural generation system.

Reddit user “Gregistopal” shared a puzzling Starfield experience. While exploring a world, they found a science outpost that was strangely close to one of the alien temples where players receive Starborn powers. Usually, the game populates the area surrounding these temples with other alien anomalies, so any other type of building is peculiar, to say the least. This user reasonably called into question the likelihood of anyone building an outpost in such close proximity to an unknown structure without studying it extensively.

Coming off the critical success of Destiny 2’s Witch Queen expansion, Bungie held a presentation at GDC Vault in 2022, outlining their workflow and explaining how they deliver content to their players. To briefly sum it up, they created a system of content delivery that’s safe, measured, and, above all, expected.

Now, that was all fine and dandy to everyone who first saw it coming fresh off of the Witch Queen launch. The highs were high, and the future was very bright. Surely, the following year’s seasons and next year’s expansion would follow a similar high-quality trend. For a while, things really did seem that way.

Season of the Witch is underway in Destiny 2, and with it comes a shift in the meta. Some weapons jump the ranks in usage, while others fall short of what they once were. Arc weapons are no exception. So today, we’re discussing the Top 10 Arc Weapons in Destiny 2 as of the Lightfall DLC and Season of the Witch.

Within the gaming industry, every month represents an opportunity to enjoy a slew of new free games on the Steam platform. Unsurprisingly, purchasing two or three of those new games can be quite the drain on your wallet and savings, but not every new game released costs as high as 70 dollars. With that in mind, let’s explore the top 5 free games worth checking out in October 2023.

Milthm

Kicking off our list is Milthm, a free rhythm game on Steam with a delightful anime aesthetic and tasty tunes to match.

Nintendo has announced it is ending online play services for both the 3DS and Wii U. These services will be terminated "as of early April 2024," the company wrote in an update earlier today.

Nintendo has been steadily winding down its support for these older consoles, having sunsetted the eShop for both platforms last year. Of course, this had no effect on the online play capabilities of the games.

However, as of April next year, games on either the Wii U or 3DS will only be playable offline. This means "online cooperative play, internet rankings and data distribution" will also be affected. It also means no more online town hopping in Animal Crossing: New Leaf (pictured above).

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Five of the Best is a weekly series for supporters of Eurogamer. It's a series that highlights some of the features in games that are often overlooked. It's also about having your say, so don't be shy, use the comments below and join in!

Oh and you can find our entire Five of the Best archive elsewhere on the site.

Hoho - I imagine Martin will be livid with these suggestions. But if he's not here to tell us any better, what does he expect? And anyway: great video game cars aren't limited to racing games. I don't need to know the intricate differences between a Honda Civic and a Toyota Yaris to appreciate a fine ride (do you see how knowledgeable I secretly am?). So let's get into it. Four wheels or many wheels, two doors or many doors - or perhaps no doors at all. Which are the best cars in games?

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Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PC, iOS
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Bordeaux
Release: October 5, 2023 (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, PC), 2024 (iOS)

For years, the Assassin’s Creed franchise has expanded the scope of its entries, offering ever longer adventures across increasingly vast open worlds. For players who first tried the series through those entries, Assassin’s Creed Mirage may be a shock. Set mainly within the single city of ninth-century Baghdad and playable to completion in under 20 hours, Mirage harkens back to the earliest entries starring Altaïr and Ezio. For more longtime fans, many elements will feel like a return to familiar territory, with the commensurate highs and lows that characterized those early installments.

The free-to-play MOBA-meets-hero-shooter game Gigantic is being revived for a "limited time throwback event".

Fans of the game began receiving emails yesterday from Gearbox Publishing, née Perfect World Entertainment, inviting them to play Gigantic from 5th to 7th October.

Gigantic was released in 2017 as an Xbox One and PC exclusive. Almost exactly one year later, developer Motiga closed Gigantic following its struggle to "break through in a crowded market". The game was delisted and its servers were shut down.

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Ahead of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's launch, Nintendo released a quietly devastating trailer for its game that showed a real life, 'everyday' man going about his business in a rather subdued manner.

Even his home life seemed to have become mundane, with him and his wife only really seeing each other briefly after a long day in the office, before she popped off to bed. Well, thank goodness for Zelda, as not only did Tears of the Kingdom give a welcome boost to our suffering man's evening, it now seems that it has also improved his marriage.

In a new trailer, we are once again reunited with Nintendo's sad man and his wife, and once again, he is playing Zelda. But, oh! He seems to be having a bit of trouble with one of the game's many shrines. His partner looks over, and gives some sage advice. "Ah, that's how it's done," he seems to think, while throwing her an adoring smile (honestly, it is so pure and lovely, and kind of the way my dog looks at food).

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Reader, I am in love with the House of Wisdom. Who wouldn't be? A vast palace of books with thick walls, beautiful ceramic window inlays and plenty of what the Californian real estate industry would refer to as an enviable indoor/outdoor flow. In the 9th Century, when Assassin's Creed Mirage is set, the House of Wisdom was one of the biggest libraries that had ever existed, mounted like a jewel inside a ringed city, Baghdad, that was on its way to being the largest city in the world. All of the Golden Age is visible here: the love of learning, of curating the lessons of the past but also looking to the future. Criers invite people for what amounts to TED Talks on astronomy, on the use of the astrolabe. Celebrity poets argue in the courtyards. Political intrigue is everywhere you look. Everybody has heard a rumour about something or other. There's a whole hierarchy of learning, both academic and, hmm, more illicit, to be navigated.

I love it. But what I think I love more is the immediate environment the House of Wisdom lies within. Surrounding the House is a lovely scholarly part of town, leafy climbing vines and cool honeyed brick, all lit by a clear morning sun. The shops scattered around the House, all angled lines and blind turns, are filled with stacks of books, shelves of books, books lying splayed on tables next to fruit and bowls of spices. I wandered here, mid-mission, for an hour yesterday, with no aims other than drawing it all in, all this detail and character. And I was rewarded, of course, as Assassin's will always reward the distracted. I found a bookcase with a secret behind it. I found a tall building with astronomical contraptions on the roof.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage takes a massive risk by returning to the series roots in more ways than one. For instance, it returns to the stunning Middle East setting that started it all years ago with Altair’s story. In addition, it forsakes the RPG mechanics and leveling systems of the last three titles in favor of a more streamlined experience. Unfortunately, it loses itself in this major shift back to the roots. I imagine some players will really appreciate the grounded and less fussy approach in Assassin’s Creed Mirage, but it doesn’t work for me after three excellent titles back-to-back. Outside of the gorgeous and surprisingly varied setting of Baghdad and the surrounding areas, the return to the series’ start feels fairly unnecessary.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage isn’t like the past few games in the series. It’s not like Odyssey, and it’s not like Origins. Those games both evolved the series into something bigger, adding hundreds of side-quests and newfound RPG elements, like loot drops and enemies with levels. Those games were fun. I enjoyed exploring…

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Earlier this year, Nintendo ended eShop functionality for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, marking the beginning of the end for these devices. Now, Nintendo has announced that online play and other device functionality that requires online communication is coming to an end, too. 

More specifically, Nintendo says online services for these devices will end in April 2024. 

As of early April 2024, online play and other functionality that uses online communication will end service for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software. Thank you very much for your continued support of our products.

Find out more: https://t.co/nOyzBImHCE

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) October 4, 2023

"In early April 2024, online play and other functionality that uses online communication will end for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software," Nintendo's announcement reads. "This also includes cooperative play, internet rankings, and data distribution."

I'm close to being whatever the Assassin's Creed equivalent of a Pokémon genwunner is. It's not like I'm snobby about the newer, more action-oriented Creeds; I welcomed the shift brought in by Assassin's Creed Origins, which shook the series up a bit, and I loved Cassandra kicking her way around Ancient Greece. Valhalla, although it had a relative dearth of things to parkour around, was a fun open-world RPG. Which I suppose is the point.

Assassin's Creed hasn't been a game about a group of assassins following a creed and striking from the shadows for a long time. Here I would say that Basim, protagonist of Assassin's Creed Mirage kicks down the door and kills everyone in the room, except this new entry in the series is smaller, more focused, and once again concerned largely with stealth, and is all the better for it. So it's more appropriate to say Basim snuck in through an open window and is choking everyone out one by one.

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Yesterday I had a lovely chat with the brainy folk of Oxide Games, developers of Ashes of the Singularity and the forthcoming Ara: History Untold, a historical 4X strategy game that puts a baroque spin on the classic Civilization format, with each player's turn unfolding simultaneously once you've queued up a bunch of commands.

There's a lot to sift through there, which we'll get into next week, but we also found time towards the finish for some off-the-cuff chinwaggery about dream 4X or strategy game projects. What would the Oxide team make, if they didn't have to worry about budget, audience expectations or any of the other commercial factors that guide the creation of videogames? The answers may surprise you. They might also make you hungry.

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Square Enix shared a social media post explaining the symbolism behind the wings that some characters like Sephiroth in Crisis Core FFVII and FFVII Remake have. To be more specific, the post explains the meaning behind Sephiroth, Genesis, and Angeal’s wings, which includes the positioning on the side of the character’s back and the different colors.

Note: There will be spoilers for the plot of Crisis Core FFVII and the original Final Fantasy VII when discussing the symbolism behind the wings.

Both Angeal and Sephiroth have wings on the same side because of both characters’ unique connection to the Buster Sword. Angeal is the original owner of the sword and passed it down to Zack, who would eventually pass it down to Cloud, Sephiroth’s nemesis and rival.

Meanwhile, Genesis’ wing is on the opposite side of Sephiroth’s wing to symbolize them being different beings. They were created by Project G and Project S, respectively. Angeal’s white wing symbolizes the character not falling down the wrong path, with Sephiroth and Genesis’ indicating the opposite.

In September 2023, the classic arcade rhythm game Dance Dance Revolution turned 25 years old. To celebrate the game’s 25th anniversary, Zuiki has started a project to bring the arcade dance machine and the games to people's homes on a much smaller scale. The Dance Dance Revolution Classic Mini, a miniature version of the cabinet, appeared on the company’s website through a new promotional video. Zuiki plans to begin crowdfunding for the project on October 10, 2023. The product has an official website and was announced on the Zuiki social media account.

The Dance Dance Revolution Classic Mini is a replica of the classic DDR dance machines, but it is one fifth of the original size. Players can play either on the five inch long built-in screen or through another screen via HDMI. The resolution is set at 720p. A two player mode is also supported. The first three generations of DDR can be played. So far, 19 songs have been announced, with more to be added in the future.

You can watch the promotional video for the DDR Classic Mini below:

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ODbC913LMI[/embed]

Nintendo will put yet another nail in the coffins of the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U as it announced online play and other functions that use online communications will end in April 2024. According to the official website, this includes online multiplayer modes, internet rankings, and data distribution. More information on a specific date will come out closer to the shutdown.

The only online service that will be available after April 2024 will be Pokemon Bank. However, Nintendo warned that it may also end Pokemon Bank support sometime in the future. It also stated that there’s a chance it will end online functionality earlier than April 2024 if difficulties crop up between then and now. As a side note, you’ll still be able to use StreetPass (since it’s local communication) and access the Nintendo eShop to download purchased software and DLC.

Five former Ubisoft staff members have been detained by police and questioned over allegations of sexual misconduct while employees of the company.

These ex-employees included the company's now-disgraced chief creative officer Serge Hascoët, once the right-hand man to Ubisoft's overall boss Yves Guillemot, as well as its former editoral boss Tommy François, French newspaper Libération reported today.

The five ex-Ubisoft employees were reportedly picked up by police over the past 24 hours and questioned at a police station in Paris. The action comes three years after claims of sexual misconduct involving Hascoët, François and others came to light, as part of a wave of allegations that rocked Ubisoft in the summer of 2020. Both Hascoët and François departed the company shortly afterwards.

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