Welcome to another installment of “What Weird Thing Has Someone Ported Doom To This Week?” This time, it’s a user on Reddit who has translated the game into an audio signal that can be displayed by a spectrogram.
Square Enix took to social media to share an array of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth cards ahead of Valentine’s Day with 10 major characters on them. Each is designed to either be shared online or printed out and used.
Things started out with two valentines of Cloud and Barret. Following those two, ones with Tifa, Aerith, Cait Sith, Vincent, Red XIII, Yuffie, and Cid appeared. The final one involved Sephiroth.
Most of these cards feature messages connected to elements of the character. So Cid’s says, “My heart would damn well fly anywhere for you.” Aerith’s references the fact she hired Cloud as a bodyguard by saying, “Will you be my bodyguard?” Some aren’t though, as Cloud’s says “I ship us.”
Here’s a full gallery showing off all the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Valentine's Day cards.
Nintendo announced repairs for the Nintendo 2DS and the New Nintendo 3DS line will soon be no longer available in Japan. Nintendo announced that the time limit for the company to retain spare parts for the handheld consoles had passed. Therefore, it no longer restocks the spare parts and will stop repairing the consoles after it has completely run out of parts.
The models affected by this announcement are the regular Nintendo 2DS [FTR-001], New Nintendo 3DS [KTR-001], and New Nintendo 3DS LL (XL) [RED-001]. The New Nintendo 2DS LL (XL) that came out in 2017 is the only console in the 3DS family that still has a steady supply of spare parts as of this announcement.
Nintendo has been gradually phasing out support for its 3DS consoles, along with the Wii U. The company has shut down the eShop on both platforms in March 2023, and it will also cease most of the console's online services on April 8, 2024.
Nearly one in five gamers are members of the LGBT+ community, yet LGBT+ storylines and characters account for less than two percent of all games.
That's according to the first ever GLAAD Gaming Report, the global leader in advocacy for LGBT+ representation, alongside market research company Nielson.
A previous report from Nielson three years ago stated 10 percent of gamers were LGBT+. Now that's up to 17 percent - an increase of 70 percent.
Inkulinati will leave early access later this month, on 22nd February, at which point it will become available for the first time on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation.
Previously, Inkulinati was only available on PC via Steam Early Access and on Xbox through Game Preview.
"Your support and feedback during the Early Access period have been invaluable to us. Your comments, suggestions, feedback, reviews, and words of encouragement have made Inkulinati a better game. And behind the scenes, we've worked really hard on making Inkulinati an engaging and polished experience," Yaza Games and the teams at Daedalic wrote on Steam.
Overwatch 2 is bringing a lot of sweeping changes in its season nine balance patch, and some of them are controversial. Between giving every hero a passive self-heal and every character getting a health buff across the board, Overwatch 2 feels like it’s shifting from a team-based shooter into one that values hero…
One of the best things in games is the freeform ability to type commands for another character, then having them respond with voiced dialogue recognising your weird directions. That's one of the joys of Cryptmaster, an upcoming typing-driven dungeon crawler where one of the first things you can do in the demo is get your disembodied necromancer pal to lick a mysterious metal object to help identify it (it's a helmet). He's like if Hand Of Fate's dastardly dealer was a bit of a dingus and also your only hope of escaping the underworld. I love this guy.
D3 Publisher announced that it has delayed the Western releases of Earth Defense Force 6 to Summer 2024. The game was originally slated for release in Spring 2024. That means people in the West will have to wait for an additional season until they can play the new mainline Earth Defense Force entry.
This delay also affects the Japanese PC release, as the platform will have a single universal build for all regions. But while the English announcement mentioned additional finishing touches as a reason for the delay, the Japanese press release instead noted a revision in the game's production schedule.
Following the release of the video message Elira Pendora, Vox Akuma, and Ike Eveland shared on behalf of Anycolor that discussed confidential materials shared by Selen Tatsuki and her lawyer, a number of livers affiliated with the company did not share it on social media. Nijisanji EN Vtubers Kotoka Torahime, Kyo Kaneko, and Scarle Yonaguni were the four who didn’t as of time of writing.
As a reminder, Kyo Kaneko is a Nijisanji EN Vtuber about to graduate on February 17, 2024. Following Anycolor’s statements and release of a video from Elira, Vox, and Ike, he also announced he’d delay his February 13, 2024 Bokura stream with fellow performer Ren Zotto.
Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered begins with a content warning that explains the trilogy contains "offensive depictions of people and cultures rooted in racial and ethnic prejudices".
The message states that these depictions are "inexcusable" but have been kept intact to acknowledge their "deeply harmful" inclusion and learn from it.
There's no detail in the statement on which specific elements of the games it refers to - though one likely example can be found in Tomb Raider 3, Eurogamer fans of the games tell me, where stereotypical South Pacific islanders attack Lara Croft with bows and arrows.
Dungeons & Dragons turns 50 this year, and as you’d expect, Wizards of the Coast is marking the anniversary with big announcements—some of which look to the tabletop roleplaying giant’s rich past. Announced today: six book releases, upcoming gaming events, and brand collaborations that run the gamut from “makes sense”…
2023 was a year of amazing games, but Starfield was not one of them. The spacefaring role-playing game from Bethesda was supposed to be the next Skyrim, but bigger. Garnering mixed reviews and player reactions, it quickly became clear that Starfield would not reach the heights of Bethesda’s best work. Now, less than…
Actor Elias Toufexis is probably most famous for his role as the gravelly-voiced cyborg Adam Jensen, the protagonist in Eidos Montreal’s Deux Ex prequel games. He loves to talk about the character and his possible future, but according to Toufexis, the studio that owns the franchise would rather him not talk about…
There is one video game series that will forever loom large in my mind, and it is SSX. With no new entry in the extreme snowboarding franchise since its 2012 installment, it seems like there is little hope for it to ever make a comeback. Which makes it all the more depressing to hear that we could have seen the series…
Helldivers 2 is a third-person co-op shooter that's centred as much around action as it is comedy. Gigantic insects and red-eyed robots threaten the sanctity of Super Earth and, frankly, this isn't on. As a Helldiver, you must team up with your compatriots and pulverise these menaces for freedom (a shoulder-mounted laser cannon) and democracy (an aerial bombardment). Seriousness is reserved for the act of extermination, which adds tactility to the familiar motions of a shooter, making for horde management that promotes efficiency and frequent lapses of judgement in equal measure. Helldivers 2 is a slapstick masterpiece.
Eeek. Writer and narrative designer Rhianna Pratchett has kindled a little frail hope that we might one day play another brand new Discworld videogame, while responding to earlier comments from Perfect Entertainment co-founder Gregg Barnett about who exactly owns the intellectual property rights to Perfect's old Discworld adventure titles from the 90s.
I love the idea of cosy living, which is why it was that Tiny Living update that dragged me back into The Sims 4 for a few years there. The issue of course, is that in real life, if forced to live in a space the size of the interior of a camper van, I would pile things on every surface within about 12 hours. Chaos would reign. I would hate it. But I don't hate the idea of it, which is why i enjoy things like Outbound, which is a game about living in a camper van.
A hotel in Bali will feature special rooms with Pokemon decorations from March 2024 until the end of the year. Hotel Nikko Bali Benoa Beach has opened a new webpage revealing the special collaboration rooms that will be part of a major Pokemon event in Indonesia. It will open reservations for the rooms on February 15, 2024, with prices starting at 2.5 million rupiahs (~$159) per night.
Numerous Pokemon will appear to decorate the rooms both around the bed and inside the bathroom. People who stay inside the rooms will also receive two free Scarlet & Violet starter decks from the Pokemon Trading Card Game.
The special hotel rooms will appear as part of a large-scale Pikachu's Indonesia Journey event in Bali. The main event will take place in the island's provincial capital city Denpasar on March 2-3, 2024. It will also include a Pokemon GO live event that features several region-exclusive creatures, such as Chatot and a Pikachu wearing an Indonesian Batik shirt.
We’ve known the Splatoon 3 Side Order DLC is on the way for a while, but Nintendo didn’t share how the gameplay will exactly work for it. Now a new trailer goes over every element of this mode with roguelike elements.
When Side Order begins, the player’s avatar will head to the Spire of Order. A drone version of Pearl will be at their side. When players head in, they’ll choose a floor and go up one by one, choose their Color Chip enhancement when they do to determine abilities, and then will complete the objective for the area. So in the example shown, the seven floor could be an Easy difficulty Rolling.Floor, a Normal difficulty Escape-Artist.Floor, or a Hard Whirling-Shell.Floor. Each one had a chip tied to it, with the one shown being a Main Ink Coverage Color Chip that increased turf inking coverage by 67%. When on a floor, someone may need to defeat enemies, control turf, or destroy enemy portals. The over 60 Color Chips people get can be placed on their avatar palette to augment abilities.
WWE 2K24’s Showcase mode will let players relive some of the most iconic matches in WrestleMania history. A new trailer shows off a few of those bouts, and 2K has unveiled some of the matches the mode has to offer.
Like previous years, Showcase challenges players to play significant matches and recreate pivotal moments by fulfilling historical objectives. The matches occasionally transition to real footage of the match, letting you watch as well as engage. 2K24’s Showcase of the Immortals consists of 21 matches, and 2K has revealed 16 of them below.
There was a time when Tomb Raider stood as one of the most recognisable game series in the world, but decades later the original entries are largely unknown to those that didn't grow up with them. That's where Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered comes into play, a collection of brand-new versions of the first three titles with enhanced lighting, improved detail, high-res textures and better performance. Remastered feels both fresh and retro at the same time - and I've been playing it over the last week to determine how it stacks up against the original games in terms of visuals, controls and more.
Back in 2016, I created an episode of DF Retro covering the original Tomb Raider where I compared the PlayStation, Saturn and PC versions while showcasing some of the underlying technology in action, such as Sega Saturn's unique sprite-driven 3D rendering. Since that video, the Tomb Raider scene has continued to thrive with the release of the open-source Tomb Raider engine OpenLara, not only showcasing impressive new visual feature features but also enabling the community to go wild with porting. There now exists, for instance, versions of Tomb Raider that can run on classic consoles like the Sega 32x, 3DO and Game Boy Advance.
The rebooted series itself has also gone on a hiatus of sorts, disappearing following the release of Shadow of the Tomb Raider as we await a new installment. In the here and now though, we have this brand-new re-release of the first three games thanks to Aspyr and, save for a few minor issues here and there, my experience has been excellent.
Games can be beautiful because they are timeless, but they can also be beautiful because they are timely. When it comes to timelessness, you're going to struggle to beat Tetris. Its stark and nested blocks face every age with the same eternal silence, while the impulse to organise and tidy that they inspire is so deeply rooted in living things that it probably transcends species. Just this morning I watched a crow on TikTok working a stick into a clear plastic tube to dislodge a treat. This crow, that lives in a tree somewhere and probably eats the eggs of other birds because it is compelled to, this crow was ready for Tetris.
For timeliness, though, I give you Tomb Raider - the early Core games. These are the same games that have just been repackaged and remastered in a new collection with an annoyingly unwieldy name. And that all fits, to be honest. To play these games is to play - if you're me - something gorgeous and awkward, something that is gorgeous in part because it is awkward. But the timeliness of it all! I cannot even see these games without slipping back to the 1990s. Scream is on at the cinema. My ex-girlfriend is back from a gap year in Australia and keeps saying everything good is "immense". Everyone I know seems to have bought the same record bag to university. Chocolate bars are going through a great Cambrian explosion (forget Snickers, pick me up a Maverick!), and in every halls of residence there is at least one grubby grey plastic PlayStation, sat upside down so the laser works, with people clustered around Lara Croft's latest. They're stuck on a puzzle. They're playing together, as a kind of chorus. They're calling out suggestions. They've all missed the key that is hidden on the floor behind them.
Palworld, the animal-catching survival game available on PC and Xbox (it’s free on Game Pass), tasks you with fighting and catching creatures called Pals. That’s on top of basic survival tasks like resource farming, and maintaining bodily needs like hunger. While you can issue a variety of tasks to your Pals once…
How you define “remastered” means will certainly color your experience of playing Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Starring Lara Croft—the full, extraordinarily silly title of this collection. It’s an ambiguous word, and one that in gaming can mean anything from new packaging to remade from scratch. In the case of Ms.…
You know those portals that appear in Diablo IV when you teleport or fast-travel somewhere? Wouldn’t it be neat if you could change how they look? Maybe alter their colors? Yeah. Well, you’ll need to pay Blizzard $30 to do so.
Arrowhead Game Studios’ third-person co-op shooter Helldivers 2 has had a rough launch. It’s been plagued with server issues, progression problems, and more, and after several rapid fixes failed to fix things, studio CEO Johan Pilestedt issued an apology to players.
Third-person cooperative shooter Helldivers 2 recently landed on PC and PS5. Featuring intense, chaotic gun fights against alien threats across the galaxy it’s proven pretty popular—so much so that you might be struggling to get into a match right now due to server load. Assuming you can get into one, I’ve rounded up…
In 2024, AAA games are often built around the idea of continuous revenue streams with microtransactions and live-service elements. Perhaps it’s corporate delusion that makes leadership think a needlessly large budget makes for a better game, but making adequate money back on a big-budget blockbuster to satisfy the…
If you’d been gazing at the present glut of new survival games and bellowing for more, as though engaged in a drinking competition with some kind of cartoon Viking, then rest easy. Gord developers Covenant.dev have announced To The Star, a "whimsical" survival adventure that takes heavy inspiration from Alice In Wonderland, and features a cooking system that lets you combine monster parts with "suppressed emotions", so as to produce both consumable foodstuffs and weapons.
Foamstars is the latest live service game hoping to gain huge success off the back of being one of the monthly free PlayStation Plus games. It’s a bold strategy, but is Foamstars more Fall Guys or do we have another Destruction AllStars on our hands?
Foamstars is a squad-based multiplayer shooter. However, unlike other games in the genre, this game is built around a party atmosphere. It’s set in the vibrant city of Bath Vegas, where two teams of four battle it out in a chaotic soapy mess. You see, in this town, the battles are fought with bubble guns that shoot thick bubbly foam that glues itself to the scenery.
The main gameplay mechanic here is using your foam guns to cover your opponents in suds before surfing up to them and kicking them out of the arena. The game’s main mode, Smash the Star, requires players to get seven KOs (or “chills” as they’re inexplicably called here) which makes the rival team’s best player the final target. This Star Player gets boosted significantly to protect them, but as soon as they’re taken down, you win.
One of the new mechanics in Honkai Impact 3rd Part 2 will be the Astral Ring system, with AstralOp System characters like the Dreamseeker able to assist such characters. HoYoVerse offered an update on who this character is and how they will work.
There are both male and female versions of the Dreamseeker avatar in Honkai Impact 3rd, just like Caelus and Stelle in Honkai: Impact 3rd. This character is from Oxia and explores alongside the other new characters at the Sea of Data. We’ve caught a glimpse of the female version of Dreamseeker before. In the HoYoVerse for the 7.3 Battlesuit Deepspace Anchor: First Light, the story segment at the introduction showed Senadina interacting with her. After acquiring them from reaching level 30, you can change their name and appearance at Antares Building. Someone will also be able to use them when there.
As for how Dreamseeker works, they will appear if an Astral Ring Battlesuit is the team’s leader. When the Stellar Outburst state isn’t active, the team DMG will increase and attacks boost Astral Ring Intensity to eventually trigger Stellar Outburst. When a player makes a Stellar Outburst happen, the Dreamseeker AstralOp will appear to do things like deal additional lightning damage to enemies.
Pokémon with guns (aka Palworld) is a massive hit and a lot of kids and teenagers are enjoying the open-world survival crafting game. It’s likely to be a popular source of inspiration for this year’s Halloween costumes and so, as expected, some companies are already producing unofficial merch that might end up on…
On February 14, 2024, Hololive EN Myth Vtuber Calliope Mori will hold her first charity stream. It will begin at 5pm PT/8pm ET and benefit Cats Protection UK.
Following the announcement, Calliope shared a detailed schedule going over all of the events happening throughout the stream. While it official starts at 5pm PT/8pm ET, there is actually going to be an opening karaoke segment at 4pm PT/7pm ET. There will also be a number of collabs that will include both members of Hololive EN and MAI PRINCESS’ Milky Queen. Her fundraising goal on Tiltify is £50,000. As of time of writing, she already passed £15,500.
Here is her full schedule for February 14, 2024:
The patch notes for Final Fantasy XIV version 6.57 are out and list changes to the Pandaemonium: Anabaseios (Savage) raid encounters, among other things. The patch also adjusts the weekly limit for Comedy Tomestones and PvP win requirements while removing overflow instances from some zones.
The most interesting part of the notes for raiders will be the removal of several restrictions on the 8-player raid Pandaemonium: Anabaseios (Savage). Players can no longer only enter or receive rewards a set number of times a week. Encounters will now always reward 2 treasure coffers rather than 0-2 based on how many party members had previously cleared it that week. Farming for gear will also be made easier with the addition of the general-purpose Echo buff and the ability to skip to specific encounters.
Other changes brought by FFXIV's patch 6.57 include doubling the weekly limit for earning Allagan Tomestones of Comedy from 450 to 900, removing extra instances from areas like Radz-at-Han and Old Sharlayan, and adding the Thaleia raid to the Alliance duty roulette. PvP players will also note that the Fields of Glory (Shatter) frontline campaign has also had the amount of data required to win reduced from 2,000 to 1,600, and defeating enemies will reward you with 8 units of data, up from 5.
Atlus shared yet another Unicorn Overlord gameplay trailer, with the focus this time being on features that help make characters stronger like training and class promotions. It spends three minutes going over how players can strengthen their army outside of battle.
As usual, this clip is framed as the player’s avatar Prince Alain being trained by the Holy Knight Josef. Things begin by looking at the different classes each character in the army belongs to. It then notes how adapting the army to each situation will help with winning. As you earn honors as you play through quests, you can spend them to promote a unit. The example in the Unicorn Overlord video shows the Swordfighter Giselbert becoming a Swordmaster after the player uses 30 honors to change their class.
There will also be supplemental battles for players called Auxiliary Stages. These are Sigils of the Ancients fights that offer opportunities to fight. The example shown in the video was The Sigil’s Trial, Beginner 1 and involved Knight and Soldier enemy classes. These offer opportunities to earn experience and can be repeated. The video also showed a reward from the fight could be a Treatise, like a Novice Military Treatise item that gives a minimum 50 EXP to a unit when used.
Ethereal Hand is one of the many rare golden shadows players can find in Tartarus in Persona 3 Reload. This particular one is somewhat easier to take out than others if players plan ahead before they find it. Here’s what you need to know about the Ethereal Hand weakness and how to beat it.
You can find the Ethereal Hand through sheer luck or by using a fortune on floors 144-171 of Tartarus in the Tziah block. It has a single weakness available for it, which makes defeating this particular rare shadow a bit easier to defeat than some of the others. That weakness is none other than electric.
DC Universe Online developer Dimensional Ink Games and its publisher Daybreak Game Company have been hit with layoffs.
According to Kotaku, Dimensional Ink lost an unknown number of senior staff, with Game Developer reporting reductions in the art, community, and narrative departments. The team is best known for developing the superhero MMO DC Universe Online. Daybreak Games (formerly Sony Online Entertainment) has worked on several multiplayer games, including EverQuest II, H1Z1, Star Wars Galaxies, and Planetside 2. The exact number of affected employees from both studios is currently unknown.
This is, unfortunately, the latest of an alarming trend of game industry layoffs that plagued 2023 and have only intensified in 2024. Over 5,500 jobs have been cut within January alone. Last year, over 10,000 employees in the games industry or game-adjacent industries were laid off.
It seems like just yesterday that we were reporting that the Asus ROG Ally had dropped to £539 in the UK, and now we have a similarly good deal for the US market: the same Z1 Extreme 512GB model for just $599 following a $100 discount at Best Buy.
Sapphire's Radeon RX 7800 XT Pulse 16GB card has dropped to a new low price at Amazon US, where it's available for just $490. That's a solid $30 below its new list price and a great bargain for a capable current-gen GPU for 1080p or 1440p gaming with 16GB of frame buffer memory.
Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters will make its way to Steam on February 19th. It's a version of 1992 strategy classic Star Control 2 that takes advantage of updates from its long-running open source project, and it'll be completely free.