February 2024

McDonald’s Japan has revealed the Happy Meal toys for its upcoming Pokemon collaboration. You’ll be able to start getting them in McDonald’s from February 9, 2024.

There will be two types of toys. The first type will be tags that you’ll be able to use when playing Pokemon Mezastar. Pokemon Mezastar is limited to Japan, and it is an arcade game that you can play using physical tags.

These tags contain the Pokemon that you'll use, and when you catch a Pokemon, it'll spit out another tag for you to keep. There will be six variations of Pokemon to collect from the McDonald’s Happy Meals, including Terastallized versions of Koraidon and Miraidon.

The other type of Pokemon Happy Meals toy is likely what McDonald’s teased in late January 2024. The teaser then showed several Pokemon, such as Pikachu and Espurr, standing in a house. From February 9, 2024, you’ll be able to get stickers and coloring books of cute Pokemon and common household items. The name of this series is Pokemon Peaceful Place.

February's Steam Next Fest is still not here, though plenty of games have jumped the gun with demos to get extra attention. Goodness me. Before a second surge hits, what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!

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There are many factors that go into making a good game, and there are some brilliant ones out there to choose from. But, what about the 'bad' games that are also out there? What is it that actually makes a game bad? And then, if we know what makes a bad game, could we somehow harness that, and make something that is, by the nature of its very badness, actually quite entertaining too?

Enter Carsen Rapp, a man who has purposely set out to make "the worst video game of all time" with a little help from his TikTok community.

Rapp has been making video games since he was 14 years old, but has been sharing videos online since he was 11. By 12, he was one of the most popular YouTube streamers for Adventure Quest Worlds. "I've been doing this for a while," Rapp tells me over Zoom. "It led me to work in the tech industry, I used to be a web developer. Now I have a boring 'email job' in the tech industry, but I have kept making games."

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We’re starting to get a much clearer look at the 2024 gaming calendar, after the Xbox Developer Direct on January 18 and now Sony’s State of Play event on January 31. The Sony event gave us an in-depth look at Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding sequel, On The Beach, and boy was there a lot going on. We also got a teensy…

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The more recent Persona games always offer situations where there is so much to do, but not enough time to do accomplish everything. With Persona 3 Reload, I ended up finding the Dating Site Note and shared computer in the dorm to be one of the best quality of life features, and it saved me from wasting so much time.

Not, the Dating Site Note isn’t exactly what it sounds like, but at the same time totally is. Once you get to November in the game — which is starting to be crunch time as we all know — the Paulownia Mall URL vendor at the club will begin selling the Dating Site Note. Unlike his other URLs, you can buy multiples of it. This is because for each use, you can choose one of your social links and get a two point boost to the relationship. 

After years of trailers, delays, controversy, and leaks, Rocksteady’s big, live-service, open-world, villain-themed, DC third-person looter shooter—Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League—is finally out (for real). The narrative that has formed around this game over the last few years has grown as large and epic as a…

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Final Factory seems expansive as far as factory builders go, given that it features not just the sprawling bases you expect but also spaceship construction, interstellar exploration and fleet combat. On the other hand, as far as 2D, topdown space games go, it seems much more approachable than most.

There's a demo available right now.

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Starfield's next update to appear on the Steam beta branch will add support for AMD's FSR 3, the magic frame-boosting tech that makes games run smoother without extra strain on your hardware. It should arrive in beta next week and in a final release later this month, Bethesda say.

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Palworld's servers have so far cost 70.53 million Japanese yen to run (around £376,276/$475,349). This is according to a tweet from Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe. "Wait, maybe they'll go bankrupt due to server fees?" Mizobe joked.

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RGG Studio has announced that it will release free DLC for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. This is to thank fans for its 1 million units milestone.

The free DLC is an in-game Celebratory T-Shirt Set. Some of the designs that RGG Studio shared in the Tweet include one of the playable characters, one of the Sega logo above pixel art versions of the main characters, and two shirts with Kiryu and Kasuga’s full names on them. The replies to RGG Studio’s Tweet have been very positive. Some users are even asking if there are any plans to manufacture and sell these shirts in real life. There will be more designs as well. Sega will give more information about when the Celebratory T-Shirt Set DLC will come out for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth in the future.

Microsoft's next console release may lag behind Sony's due to a delay in signing contracts with technology partner AMD.

That's according to podcaster Moore's Law is Dead, who stated earlier this week that Microsoft was "seriously, seriously shopping around with Intel and even NVIDIA apparently for their next-gen console".

"As of one month ago, no next-gen contract with AMD had been signed with Microsoft," they said.

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The end of January and first week of February brought with it the launch of a couple long-awaited RPGs—Atlus’s remake of a 2006 classic, Persona 3 Reload, and the Hawaiian-style yakuza tale Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. The “Pokémon With Guns” sensation Palworld continues to grow in popularity, closing in on more…

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If you pay attention to industry layoffs, you'll know the news media - media in general, really - is in a bad spot right now. I can't remember the last time it wasn't in a bad spot. Perhaps in the 1930's, which is the setting for News Tower, a newspaper management sim in which you attempt to construct your empire in New York from 1929 onwards.

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There is no better time than the present to be a visual novel and adventure game fan. The genre has experienced a sort of renaissance within the last decade, with plenty of new and creative titles like the AI: The Somnium Files series or Paranormasight keeping things fresh, and timeless classics like Famicom Detective Club or Type-Moon’s legendary Fate/stay night receiving their first ever English release. However, among the genre's vast catalog, I am sorely missing Kyle Hyde’s Hotel Dusk: Room 215 and Last Window: The Secret of Cape West.

The upcoming free-to-play skateboard sim, Skate, will be available on PC via Steam.

The news was confirmed by lead creative writer Cuz Parry, who revealed that the fan-favourite skating game would be coming to PC via Steam for the very first time in a Q&A video posted to YouTube just a couple of days before the holidays.

As PC Gamer points out, the news went largely unnoticed at the time, so it was only when the social media team confirmed it was "stoked to announce Skate will be available on Steam for PC players" earlier this week that news began to spread.

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Naughty Dog co-president Neil Druckmann says he has a "concept" ready for a third and final chapter of The Last of Us series.

Talking at the very end of the fascinating behind-the-scenes documentary, Grounded 2: Making The Last of Us Part 2, Druckmann acknowledged that whilst he didn't yet have a story fully fleshed out, he did have a kernel of an idea that "is as exciting as [The Last of Us Part 1]".

"If we never get to do it again, this is a fine ending point. The last bite of the apple, the story's done," Druckmann said.

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If you follow Japanese merchandise sites, you might have already realized that Tom and Jerry is surprisingly popular in Japan. So much so that Cartoon Network Japan even aired short, incredibly cute episodes of an original anime based on the duo. I mean, look at this.

Konami is reportedly "potentially porting" the Silent Hill series to contemporary consoles.

That's according to one of five short documentaries Konami published on YouTube the night it shadow-dropped The Short Message.

In the fourth video, a level designer who worked on the highly-anticipated (and long rumoured) playable teaser revealed that Konami had originally reached out to the team at Hexadrive – a studio that had primarily worked on porting older games until it helped an internal Konami team develop The Short Message – "about potentially porting the Silent Hill series".

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Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community creations from the last week.

First, as some of you are aware, multiple employees at GameSpot and Fandom were laid off last week. As Grubb and others have stated, these layoffs have not impacted any of the personnel associated with Giant Bomb, but some people let go were personal friends and associates to the staff. Please be considerate and reach out on social media to those still looking for help and support.

For reasons that are still unknown, notifications on Giant Bomb have been up and down. I actually had a meeting with the reps from Fandom last week and they indicated that previously, the notification system was busted across multiple sites and not Giant Bomb. This issue appears to be fixed, but feel free to let me or @dtoast know if it breaks again.

Speaking of that meeting, the topic of the video player came up and while I cannot divulge too much, I can affirm that resources and manpower is being relocated to address this problem. Likewise, while I cannot reveal everything, there are some ideas on how to get new traffic on the boards and site. I'm not going to say any of these ideas will get things back to a self-perceived "glory days", but it is something that's being discussed and will be tested in the future.

EA has apologised to FC 24 fans after a bugged challenge accidentally awarded thousands of players an incredibly expensive and hard-to-get TOTY player.

According to a blog posted on the official website, it seems that for 24 minutes on 30th January, players partaking in the new Squad Builder Challenges (SBC) had a spectacularly high chance of securing the 86+ OVR untradeable Lionel Messi card worth hundreds of pounds.

EA was notified of the issue and pulled the challenge within half an hour, but it was already too late; thousands of players had already snagged it, leading those who had not been so lucky to call for EA to level the playing field – literally and metaphorically – and gift the card to all.

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Imagine being the only person in the building allowed to go into a room because there's a top secret console inside. It's bizarre and yet it happens - console manufacturers are famously secretive about their new hardware. And this is how a man called Simon Pick found himself shut away in a room with a new machine Sony was working on, called, at the time, the PSX - better known to us today as the PlayStation 1.

Pick worked at a studio called Probe Software, which had been commissioned to make a PlayStation game for the Crystal Maze, a TV game show - except it wasn't on the TV at the time and there were problems with it, so the game tie-in was abruptly canned. Pick had signed an NDA to work on it, and Probe had PlayStation hardware because of it, so both now needed something else to do.

Cue a piece of history in the making: Fergus McGovern, the boss of Probe Software, pokes his head around the corner to make a suggestion to Simon that he cannot resist. "Sorry, it's cancelled," McGovern says, according to Pick, who I'm talking to now. "But I can offer you this other thing which is a film tie-in." Simon Pick's ears prick up. "We want to make a Die Hard Trilogy video game. Are you interested?"

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Sundays are for watching yet another episode of Catfish. Let's feign surprise as we read the week's best writing about games and game-related things.

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In case you haven’t heard, Persona 3 Reload is out, and it’s awfully darn good. Whether you’re a longtime series die-hard or just hopped on the bandwagon after Persona 5, there’s a lot to sink your teeth into here. But not every game left us feeling quite so satisfied this week. Read on for our thoughts on Silent…

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I wasn’t afraid of the Reaper in most iterations of Persona 3 prior to Persona 3 Reload. I played every version, mind you, both for work and fun. But because of the way that I played, I didn’t fear Tartarus’ greatest foe.

Persona 3 Reload made me genuinely fear the Reaper.

Okay, so, in past games I always go for efficiency when exploring Tartarus. Especially after getting through the first 100 floors, because by that point I’m sort of done. I don’t want to waste time exploring. I’ll probably even forget to rescue people who wandered in by that point. I just want to reach the next wall so I can go back and do the daily life stuff and see the story. This means I never really encountered the Reaper unless I was trying to. If you aren’t lazing about, that boss isn’t going to show up.

In Persona 3 Reload, other elements culminated to make an opponent who didn’t see unless I was really looking for it before turn into a genuine threat. It first happened around November in-game. I was going in a bit more often when not engaging in daily life due to finishing the Mutatsu and Tanaka social links. I realized that if it was a darkened floor, the Reaper was not only more likely to appear, but would show up more quickly. 

The Pokémon Company has confirmed it will re-stock the infamous Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat card in a bid to defeat scalpers that sold the free card for hundreds of pounds.

The card was initially a free add-on for Pokémon customers, given out at a rate of one card for each item in the Van Gogh collection bought, but scalpers descended onto the store in droves, wiped out the supply, and then immediately put their wares on internet auction sites at grossly inflated prices.

Shortly after, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam confirmed it will not be restocking its promotional Pokémon card following "safety and security concerns" for its staff and customers, and we learned just last month that four employees of the museum in Amsterdam were eventually suspended for misconduct.

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The voice actor who played Abby in The Last of Us Part 2 has revealed that not only did she receive abusive messages when the game was released, but abusers also sent death threats about her infant son, too.

Talking in the fascinating behind-the-scenes documentary, Grounded 2: Making The Last of Us Part 2, Laura Bailey confirmed that the "real hardcore death threats" were so concerning, they were passed on to police, whilst her baby son – who was "born during all of it" – also received threats, too.

The threats – sent because the fictional character she played did something to another fictional character that a subset of so-called fans didn't like – became so serious that she even had to turn some over to the police to ensure her safety.

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I hate moths. Stupid, silent, fluttery little things that come out of the darkness when I least expect it and flitter across the back of my neck like creepy little ghost fingers. Urrrrgh, utter a-holes the lot of 'em.

And what are they even made out of? Dust by the looks of things, and I mean, how does that even work?

I honestly don't know. But I do know that Mixture, a hybrid first and third person VR game does work, because I've played (most of) the upcoming Steam Next Fest demo for this week's VR Corner.

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A smokescreen blankets the war-torn street. Squadmates eliminated and health dangerously low, you fling your teleportation bracelet toward a distant building and slip away from the firefight. Once inside, you press your body to the front door and pop a regenerative Phoenix Kit, vitality slowly returning with each second. But the healing process is halted when Seer stuns you through the wall with his micro-drone scanner. Read more...

Konami is releasing a collection of Yu-Gi-Oh! games for Switch and PC via Steam.

Right now the publisher is holding back on what, exactly, the collection will comprise of, but did tease the names of two games that will be joining the bundle: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 4: Battle of the Great Duelist and Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 6: Expert 2.

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There are "five Resident Evil games in dev[elopment] right now, including Resident Evil 9".

That's according to notable leaker Dusk Golem, who – whilst not without a couple of misses – has previously accurately leaked insider information about several then-unannounced horror games, including Resident Evil 8, the Silent Hill 2 Remake, and Silent Hill: The Short Message.

As spotted by the eagle-eyed members of the Gaming Leaks and Rumours subreddit, Dusk Golem reportedly made the announcement on Discord.

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With an extended development cycle, plenty of controversy, multiple delays, and a rocky preview period, it's fair to say that Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League isn't making the smoothest landing. However, in my case, this simply increased my desire to see what this game was about and after spending a decent chunk of time playing it, the news is much more positive than I expected - but there are caveats.

The expectation surrounding the game is outsized, simply because of the pedigree of the developer. When Batman: Arkham Knight was released in 2015, Rocksteady delivered a new high watermark for visual design. Built in Unreal Engine 3, no less, Arkham Knight remains striking to this day with gloriously detailed environments, great modelling and superb VFX. It was a genuine visual tour de force. The question is, does lightning strike twice with Suicide Squad?

Well, there's little doubt that Suicide Squad is a very different looking game. Right from the introduction sequence, it's clear that the team has shifted towards a brighter colour palette set during the daytime. Metropolis is a very different place, thematically, compared to Gotham City but there is a lot to like here.

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After 8 long years, Granblue Fantasy Relink is finally here and playable, with a sizeable roster of characters set to be added with post-launch content. But with a cast so large, who exactly will Cygames add? Here are a few of our picks.

Black Knight and Orchid

Apollonia, the Black Knight, plays an important part in the earlier arcs of Granblue Fantasy's story. First as a menacing adversary working for the Erste empire and later as a begrudging ally. I've been asking, nay, begging Cygames to add her to Versus since it released, but she could be just as interesting to see implemented as characters in Relink.

The Last of Us Part 2 was originally designed as an open-world action game that was heavily inspired by Bloodborne.

Confirmation came via co-game director Anthony Newman, who revealed during in the fantastic behind-the-scenes documentary, Grounded 2: Making The Last of Us Part 2, that for the first four or five months of development, The Last of Us Part 2 was a "purely melee focussed" game that "kept getting bigger and bigger as you explored", as inspired by FromSoft's fan-favourite adventure.

"When we started out making The Last of Us Part 2, Neil actually wanted to be very ambitious about changing the game almost entirely," explained Newman.

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Pocketpair is spending around half a million dollars a month – that's around £378,000 – to keep its sleeper-hit Palworld's servers online.

In a tweet, Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe posted a snippet of how the cost of servers have changed since the game launched just a few short weeks ago, joking – I hope, anyway – that the studio could "go bankrupt from server fees".

Not that that kind of cost is prohibitive, apparently; Palworld network engineer Chujo Hiroto replied to their boss' message, revealing to the world that they'd been instructed to "never let the service go down no matter what".

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The Persona series has always had a wide cast of characters. Whether you loved them or hated them, they often left an impression. Below, we've made a list of who we think could be the best Persona character in the series. Feel free to let us know what you think in the comments.

Don't get mad at me, but Yosuke from Persona 4 is the best character. Why might that be? I think he's a character who undergoes a lot of growth. He starts out hypersensitive about what people think about him and wants to prove himself as somebody worthy of attention rather than derision.

He can be rather bigoted over things he doesn't understand, and many of his jokes come at the expense of hurting other's feelings, but as Persona 4 progresses, he learns how to let go of his prejudices and become a genuine friend. He's loyal, goofy, and always striving to do the right thing. He's a dumb teenager, but he's also a dumb teenager who cares about others. Also, he has a disco frog as a Persona, and that's really neat. — Arielle

I might get flak for this one, but my favorite character in Persona is actually Rise Kujikawa from Persona 4. I know, at first glance, she's the typical pop idol, but her story really resonated with me. At first, Rise is a bubbly celebrity who beams with energy. But then we quickly learn that she's actually struggling with her happiness and the image she has to project for others.

In 2022, Paramount+ finally released the first season of Halo, the long-awaited live-action adaptation of the popular video game franchise. While various action scenes served as fan-pleasing sequences, the series was maligned among the community for simply not feeling true to the source material. In addition to focusing on too many side characters and interpersonal drama, the series also took far too many liberties with its main protagonist, Master Chief. With Season 2 starting on Paramount+ this week, I sat down with Xbox's head of IP expansion and entertainment Kiki Wolfkill and Halo Season 2 showrunner and writer David Wiener to learn more about the direction they're taking.

According to Wolfkill, who has worked on the Halo series since her role as executive producer on Halo 4 in 2012, making the Paramount+ series more faithful to its game series was of the utmost importance going into Season 2. Even though the team was working on Season 2 before having the opportunity to collect feedback from the series' viewers, once the reviews and fan feedback came across the team's desks, they knew that they had committed to the correct changes. 

The clouds over London have settled into the shapes of loading icons. The birds are singing old Celtic ditties. There are extinct species of fern growing through the vents of my i7 12700F. All these troubling signs point to but one, dire outcome: it's time for another week of new videogame releases, and another week of feeding videogame gossip and reportage to the Maw, our weekly news liveblog.

Here are a few games we're aiming the ol' scrying crystals at this week: alchemy-themed puzzle adventure CLeM (6th Feb); 1980s-styled "Tetris + flying car" puzzler Space Garbage (6th Feb); Coven-building "4X card game" WitchHand (7th Feb); spoofy sci-fascist shooter Helldivers 2 (8th Feb); alt-theological dark fantasy The Inquisitor (8th Feb). Mind you, this week it's all about the demos. That's right, it's time for another Steam Next Fest - have you had a chance to play any demos so far? Participating developers have taken to stuffing them up a few days in advance to beat the rush.

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Major Xbox console exclusives such as Bethesda's Starfield and the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are being considered for launch on Sony's PlayStation 5, as part of a huge shift in strategy by Microsoft.

Previous reports suggested Xbox would bring a handful of smaller titles to PlayStation beginning this year, including Hi-Fi Rush - something Eurogamer understood to be true and also which has now seemingly been confirmed by its in-game files. But the idea that Microsoft will also - at some point - drop exclusivity for some of its biggest games marks a policy change far bigger than previously expected.

A swathe of reports emerged last night suggesting Microsoft's PlayStation plans now included Starfield - Xbox's tentpole release for 2023, albeit one which received a somewhat mixed reception - and potentially also Indiana Jones - the company's biggest release currently on the calendar for 2024.

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Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. We're a bit short this week because of the rolling technical disaster that is modern Twitter, but I've still enjoyed ogling everything from a must-have immersive sim feature and a very unpleasant nighttime drive to lovely simulated water and strange spaceship shenanigans. Check out all these attractive and interesting indie games!

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Action-RPG Granblue Fantasy: Relink has had a successful launch weekend on Steam, peaking at over 100,000 concurrent players and debuting high on the global top-selling games chart.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink recorded a peak of 114,054 concurrent players last night (recorded by SteamDB), which makes it one of the most played action-RPGs alongside Monster Hunter: World on the platform.

Currently it's the second top seller globally on Steam, beaten only by the record-breaking Palworld.

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