Destructoid

Seriously, if you haven't checked out Titanfall 2 yet, here's your opportunity to do so. Respawn Entertainment is making its 2016 sci-fi FPS temporarily free-to-play from now until May 3 at 10 a.m. PT on Steam.

We heard people want to play Titanfall 2 this weekend? So do we!

Join us on Steam when we make TF2 temporarily free-to-play starting RIGHT NOW through May 3rd @ 10am PT.

Get it here: https://t.co/rn4rUSF0RG

Your journey begins here, Pilots. pic.twitter.com/SQ9eAIAWka

— Respawn (@Respawn) April 30, 2021

Titanfall 2 has been having a bit of a moment, thanks to Apex Legends' new season dredging up a lot of Titanfall 2 lore with its new Legend, Valkyrie. And while the new Arenas mode for Apex Legends doesn't hit until next week, a free weekend to play Titanfall 2 seems like a nice way to gear up for it.

Also, if you haven't played Titanfall 2 yet, go do it! You can probably knock the campaign out in an afternoon, and then there's plenty of multiplayer action to hop into. I know I'll probably set aside some time to squad up again this weekend. See y'all during Happy Hour!

I'm actually enjoying the relaxed and fireside manner in which Microsoft is giving us Halo Infinite updates.

They took the memes to heart when it was shown off that fateful afternoon, and the Halo Waypoint blog has been a font of information for the game. That goes double for the update this week, as 343 is really going hard on the PC version of the game.

343 producer Jeff Guy calls this a "native first-class PC experience," with options for 21:9 ultrawide views, as well as 32:9 and a 120 FOV slider (by default it's set at 78). Guy also muses: "There’s also a TON of preventative problem solving. Things like making sure our game plays nice with specific families of hardware or fighting hard to ensure we don’t add intrusive DRM to our game. The problem with preventative problem solving though is you never see the crisis averted."

Look at that timing! New Pokemon Snap is out today on Switch and someone went ahead and posted about remote Joy-Con picture taking. Life just kind of works out like that sometimes.

Redditor Byotan showed us this neat little trick, where you can pair your Joy-Con to your phone to take pictures remotely, with the controller serving as a shutter button. It'll work for pretty much any Bluetooth device, including some headphones, Bluetooth remote shutter devices, and Bluetooth controllers: but the Switch Joy-Con just feels right.

Remote picture taking has myriad uses, including framing up a perfect shot without moving the camera, or capturing a subject that you may not be able to get close to. Having picked up bird watching recently, I can relate to the natter necessity!

Note that it works on Android devices, as standard iOS ones don't play nice with Switch controllers. Also, and this is very important: the Pikachu toy is from the 2012 Latin America McDonalds Pokemon set.

TIL you can pair a joycon with your phone and use it as a shutter button to take photos remotely [Reddit]

Very recently we discovered that Monolith Soft has been expanding year after year, but now we have some idea of just how big that expansion is straight from the company itself.

As we know, the studio is working on whatever projects they have under their belt, as well as ancillary support on first-party Nintendo titles, including Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2. So a ramp-up is definitely warranted!

TikTok, Enthusiast Gaming, and e.l.f. Cosmetics are hosting a big talent hunt with a head-turning grand prize up for grabs, and — wait. Hold up. For once, the competition is laser-focused on gamers.

TikTok Gamers Got Talent is a seven-week live series (complete with celebrity judges) that kicks off Sunday, May 9 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern — but first, auditions. For a crack at the $25,000 prize, you'll have until May 2 at 11:59 p.m. ET to send in a TikTok video showcasing your talent. Open-ended, we know.

@luminosity

Got a talent? Show us what you got for your chance to be featured in our live show. Powered by: @elfyeah ##TikTokGGT ##Contest

♬ original sound - Luminosity Gaming

What exactly are the judges looking for? TikTok Gamers Got Talent submissions will be scored based on "entertainment value," "quality of presentation," and "level of skill demonstrated."

The platform-royale Fall Guys was set to make both its Nintendo Switch and Xbox console debut this summer. That goal's been delayed, but the move has opened Mediatonic up to work on another much-requested feature: crossplay.

In a blog today, Mediatonic confirmed Fall Guys won't make its previously announced summer 2021 window for Xbox and Switch, as it's "unfortunately just too soon" to include all the features it wanted to. The delay does open up some new possibilities, though; the delay means that crossplay can be added, so when Fall Guys comes to new platforms they'll be able to play with everyone else.

Epic Games recently picked up the Tonic Games Group, which includes Mediatonic. In a statement at the time, the Fall Guys developer said joining Epic would "accelerate our plans to improve the game and bring Fall Guys to as many players as possible, while continuing to support the community."

Alongside the Switch and Xbox versions, Mediatonic is also working on the upcoming Season 4.5 update, which will add two new rounds alongside some new options for your Fall Guys wardrobe. No date has been set for that yet.

World of Warcraft updates have been exceedingly slow, and although it's obvious why, a lot of other MMOs are picking up the slack. Shadowlands has slowed to a crawl in recent months, as we wait for the next big content patch to drop.

The hope is that it actually delivers a huge new area and tons of stuff to do, but a lot of folks are speculating that it's going to be a small to mid-sized update. So what is Blizzard to do in the meantime? Break the emergency sale glass.

Illfonic's asymmetrical survival shooter Predator: Hunting Grounds is now available on PC via the Steam platform, having passed its one-year exclusivity deal with Epic Games Store. The new release is published by Sony under its new label PlayStation Mobile.

Originally released in 2020, Predator: Hunting Grounds sees a team of players camo-up as a squad of heavily-armed soldiers, dropped into a map with the goal of hunting down another player, who gets to don the gauntlet and weird slimy jaws of the galaxy's greatest hunter. And if dodging the deadly red dots isn't difficult enough, the fireteam must also keep one eye for invading mercenaries and militants, eager to wipe everybody off the map.

So this is new!

Imagine for a second that you jump into a ranked game of Apex Legends, and you're having a bit of fun. Suddenly, your teammate urges you into a specific area. "OK, I'll follow their lead, if we split I'll probably get teamshot" you say to yourself. Yep, sound decision. Then you're teamshot anyway as your "teammate" sits idly by. Then he respawns you, and the same enemy squad takes you out again. And again. Uh, Groundhog Day anyone?

There's no kooky Bill Murray character here, it's one of the latest tactics from ranked players to farm kills. How it works is two squads are in cahoots, farming kills at the expense of someone else. It's important to note that if that person who gets punked leaves, they'll incur a penalty for doing so. So it's a lose-lose.

The process was shared on Reddit by user MohSSEEZZ, who chronicled it via video. As soon as they shared their story, more shared theirs in solidarity. As Eurogamer points out, this has been happening on a lower key stage than the recent Reddit blowup post for a little while now. The aim for some is merely boosting accounts for rewards, but some players are also selling those very same accounts for straight cash.

Obviously this is against the TOS, and will need to be addressed at some point. If you play, keep an eye out for it and trust no one!

The official Twitter account for Sega's hard-brawlin' detective franchise Judgment has been posting a selection of short gameplay clips, ahead of its mysterious "Judgment Day" announcement.

While most of the video is taken from the original 2018 RPG, some of the clips feature unrecognizable locations, enemies, and cinematic setups, which would suggest that they have been captured from a possible sequel or spin-off. This all but officially confirms that there is a new Judgment title in the works, likely to be revealed on Sega's "Judgment Day," May 7.

All we can ascertain about the new title from these short clips is that it will once again star gritty, double-fisted investigator Takayuki Yagami, and will feature the bone-crunching action that won over so many fans in the original. Team Yakuza is, of course, renowned for producing multiple sequels that follow extremely similar gameplay designs as their predecessors. As such it would stand to reason that a "Judgment II" would essentially be more of the same, but with a fresh story and a few tweaked features and mechanics. We'll see soon enough.

Judgment, previously available exclusively on PS4, launched this week PS5, Xbox Series X, and Stadia.

It was only a few months ago that Square Enix announced multiple Final Fantasy VII projects like it was the 2000s again, but the VII universe is here to stay.

Part of that multifaceted plan includes The First Soldier, a free-to-play-with-microtransactions mobile battle royale. It's something I'm sure no one asked for, but I'm interested in seeing how it goes all the same. I mean, for free, I'll try it!

The game is gearing up for release at some point this year, and for now to hype it up, Square Enix created an official Discord server for the game. In the past year or so it's become more and more prevalent for publishers to control the message and use their influence to create their own curated communities; rather than let unofficial ones run wild.

You can find the direct link to join the server right here.

As of the time of publication it has over 1500 members, with channels to view game news in both English and Japanese. The ability to chat with other players is "coming soon."

Speaking of soon, there's a livestream arriving on May 7 at 20:00 JST. We embedded the direct link below!

Final Fantasy VII The First Soldier [Twitter]

Lionsgate continues to round-up stars for the cast of its wild-sounding cinematic adaptation of Gearbox shooter Borderlands. The latest industry veteran to join the all-star cast is the wonderful Gina Gershon, who will be taking the coveted role of Mad Moxxi.

Moxxi, as Borderlands fans will be aware, is the highly charismatic and sexually charged hostess of The Underdome, where she presides over explosive and chaotic deathmatches with a flamboyant P.T. Barnum spirit. Despite her wild attire and entertaining hostess nature, Mad Moxxi is a powerful and feared figure in Pandora, as unpredictable and dangerous as she is charming and captivating.

It's a snug role for Gershon, who has spent much of her career playing sexy femme-fatale types in movies such as Red Heat, Bound, and Face/Off. Gershon has more than proved her penchant for glam idol roles in her appearances in Ugly Betty, House of Versace, and Paul Verhoeven's camp classic Showgirls. On a personal note, Gershon is also one of my favorite actors, so you'll forgive your boy a hint of bias when I say I'm really excited for this casting choice.

That Guardian in the header staring into the sky kind of sums up how I've felt about the Destiny series' various implementations of MMO-like features pretty much since it started.

In case you missed it, Bungie finally explained what transmog (appearance changing) will actually require of players in Destiny 2 and it was worse than we could have imagined. To change your gear's look you need to chase multiple new items, complete pseudo-bounty busywork, and go through even more effort to alter a limited amount of gear per season.

Instead of the studio heads addressing the issue, that falls to community manager Cozmo23 (who frequently cleans up top brass messes with finesse) , who stated on Reddit: "We are definitely monitoring feedback around Armor Synthesis and sharing it widely within the studio, but I didn't think that mentioning the issue without any new information would be constructive here. Happy to hear thoughts on this for the future though."

In some ways, it makes sense not to react this quickly. But on the other hand: how did this system possibly even get greenlit? Not only has Bungie made a decades-old system needlessly complicated, but they also tied it directly into FOMO and monetization. It's actually a step up from their usual routine of implementing something backwards.

In other news though, heavy weapons, one of the few weapon types that are being altered next season, are getting some changes. Linear Fusion Rifles are getting buffed in PVE and nerfed in PVP, and in Season 14, shotguns are going to be tweaked with "specifics coming later."

The rumor mills are abuzz this morning, courtesy of a report from Windows Central that suggests IO Interactive is currently at work on a brand new fantasy IP, with the project allegedly in development as an Xbox exclusive title.

The unnamed game (codenamed "Project Dragon") is reportedly a large-scale, AAA adventure, set in a medieval fantasy world. It should also be noted that development is in its very early stages, and the title is not expected to see the light of day for many years. The game is also expected to be IOI's fabled "unannounced IP" that was teased back in the summer of 2019.

IO Interactive continues to see good fortune since it rolled the dice and broke away from Square Enix back in 2017. Having gone independent as both developer and publisher, IOI has seen amazing success with Hitman, bagged a highly lucrative license in the form of "Project 007", and recently secured its third studio in beautiful Barcelona, Spain. Right now, the sky's the limit for the Danish developer.

With Hitman cemented as a long-running flagship franchise — and two potentially huge titles on the horizon — IOI could be poised to become one of the biggest and most recognizable developers in gaming's ninth generation. And it deserves every measure of said success.

[Update: Akrenix taketh away, but they also giveth. The inverse of the "no more Fire Emblem" mod is also out, and it's called "no, more Fire Emblem!" which got a hearty chuckle out of me. This one actually only allows Fire Emblem content and nothing else, which is actually a cooler idea!]

By the time Byleth hit Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in early 2020, enough was enough for a lot of people. Some people were sick of Fire Emblem characters flooding the game, and even though Nintendo hasn't repeated the cadence since (afterward we got Min Min, Steve, Sephiroth, and Pyra/Mythra, every single reveal folks are expecting it. Well, now you can just mod them out entirely.

This mod from creator Akrenix takes all of the Fire Emblem stuff out of the game. That includes the characters, stages, and all references. Yes it's a bit extreme, but it's kind of funny, and something I'm going to be thinking about if we ever get another Fire Emblem character. Speaking of!

While this whole conversation has reached meme levels, and it's gotten to the point where Sakurai has to say publicly every few months that he doesn't have final cut on who makes it in; any character that's fun is going to get playtime out of me, full stop. If we get yet another Fire Emblem character and their design holds their own, so be it.

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) has dropped a new listing for Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom Prince's Edition on Nintendo Switch. The port has yet to be announced by Nintendo or publisher Bandai Namco, but has been on the wishlist of fans for some time.

[Update: Waggoner re-clarifies that he is working in system design, and is not the new creative director of the game. Also, he officially starts at Crystal Dynamics next month, and anything he works on is going to take time, so don't expect overnight change.]

Marvel Avengers is hurting as a live service game, which pretty much everyone could have predicted right after reaching the end of it near its launch. But Crystal Dynamics might have a secret weapon up their sleeve: their newly-hired former Marvel developer Brian Waggoner, who worked on Marvel Heroes. This directly follows the departure of the game's creative director just a week before.

So here's what Waggoner has to say about his addition to the team. As a systems designer, he is going to help them "build new systems and features" (naturally!). But he also publicly shared his trepidation for working on a Marvel game again "after what happened at Gazillion."

Here's a quick recap. So Marvel Heroes launched in 2013, and was trucking along as a free-to-play MMO in the space with Gazillion and Secret Identity Studios co-developing. Four years in, amid a great purge of Disney-related developers from their licensing agreements, Disney pulled the plug and Gazillion as a studio effectively shut down that month. This is just a year after Disney crushed Avalanche Software into dust and obliterated Disney Infinity, among other projects.

Still, it was enticing enough for Waggoner to bite, and he felt like the "passion for making a game fans love and knowing the potential" was enough for him to make the move to Crystal Dynamics and give it another go. Waggoner cites the "leadership" of the studio as a big draw, as well as the ability to receive "honest feedback" with "no egos."

[Update: Sometimes it just goes this way. At the exact minute this article went live, Lizardcube announced that Streets of Rage 2's star wrestler Max Thunder will be joining the SoR 4 roster as part of the incoming Mr. X Nightmare DLC. Check out the new trailer below. Sorry 'bout my damn luck.]

Today is the first birthday of the fantastic brawler sequel Streets of Rage 4. Yep, that's 12 whole months of pavement-pounding, nose-breaking, croissant-eating chaos, as Axel, Blaze, Cherry, Floyd, and Adam take matters into their own hands, treading the mean streets of Oak Wood City to liberate the people from the evil machinations of The Y Siblings.

It was such a long wait, but it absolutely paid off. Co-developers Dotemu, Guard Crush Games, and Lizardcube delivered a gorgeous looking, great sounding, and slickly playing action title, packed with character, style and, most importantly, depth. A worthy successor to the Sega Mega Drive originals, and a fine way for any video game fan to kill a few hours, Streets of Rage 4 is a must-play, and is on track to get a whole lot better.

[Update: Double Fine and 2 Player Productions released The Amnesia Fortnight Movie on YouTube.]

I love a good Double Fine behind-the-scenes video, and so far, they've all been good! Over the years, 2 Player Productions' documentaries, in particular, have been entertaining and insightful looks into how multiple disciplines can come together to imagine a video game and then somehow make it real.

One of the recurring themes is a two-week internal game jam called Amnesia Fortnight, although admittedly, it's been a while; the last event, in 2017, led to prototypes like Kiln, a pottery game where you sculpt makeshift armor, and The Gods Must Be Hungry, a cooking adventure with giant ingredients.

The goal of Amnesia Fortnight is to give staff a chance to pitch something wild and refuel their creative energy for longer-term and far more consequential projects. For us at home, it's fun to watch along. I rarely play the four winning entries that make it through the game-jam gauntlet, but I always tune in.

In today's contest you can win a physical Switch copy of ABZU from Super Rare Games!

Hey gang, remember me? I'm the guy who used to give stuff away like every single day. Then life happened and well it's been a few weeks. Allow myself to reintroduce...myself. I'm Wes, I'm 34 years old, and I like to roll around on the ground with bubble wrap duct taped around my body.

Super Rare Games just dropped their physical release of ABZU, so grab some bubble wrap and win yourself a copy!

In recent years, we've seen a whole bunch of official new micro versions of some of our favorite old consoles, the most respectably ridiculous of which has got to be the Game Gear Micro — a system so small, you might as well keep a magnifying glass in your pocket. But when it comes to custom builds in the modding community, there's been a renewed interest in bulking up retro consoles to a silly degree.

We recently showed you a room-filling Nintendo Switch that, realistically, would need at least two players to handle hitting all of the buttons. Now here's a hulking Game Boy — excuse me, Game Man.

The creator of this "handheld" console, Grumpy Modeler, showed off the system in a video last November. I missed it, but now that it's making the rounds again (good eye, SIFTD), I couldn't resist. In the builder's own words, the Nintendo Game Man is "completely impractical and pointless."

The sheer size of this thing is entertaining in its own right, but what makes this build so appealing is that it captures the authentic look of the original Game Boy. What about the inside? There's a Famicom board crammed in there, not repurposed Game Boy innards. Yeah. It's an illusion, but a fun one at that.

Sony debuted a new State of Play today that was centered around one of its big upcoming PlayStation 5 exclusives, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. A large portion of that consisted of gameplay of the new platformer-shooter, and lord, it looks good.

Some games are still in the half-step between console generations, but Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is one of a few big next-gen exclusives Sony has lined up for the year so far. With that in mind, today's showcase was both a good look ahead at the next Ratchet & Clank, and a bright sign of what's to come on the new generation of consoles.

As detailed in the accompanying PlayStation blog, Rift Apart is making use of haptics inside the PS5's DualSense, as well as the adaptive triggers; Insomniac showcased how one gun fires single shots with half-trigger pulls, and goes into full auto when the trigger is pulled all the way down. That's alongside the rift-jumping dimensional chaos that Insomniac has shown off before, which it says utilizes the PS5's SSD.

A really cool note is the focus on accessibility options, too. Insomniac says there's more to share in the future, but spotlighting it in the State of Play is pretty rad, and the early glimpse we saw today reminded me a bit of The Last of Us Part II's impressive accessibility features.

The super-popular social deduction game Among Us is coming to PlayStation consoles this year. And as a bonus, patient PlayStation players are getting some cosmetics when it arrives.

Among Us' PlayStation 4 and 5 debut will have online and crossplay, but importantly, PS4 and PS5 players will get an exclusive Ratchet & Clank skin, hat, and pet. So you can have Ratchet ears and have a little Clank follow you around on all your tasks (or pretend-tasks).

The PlayStation Among Us will also come with all four maps available to play. It's already a number of other systems, like PC and Nintendo Switch, but more mediums for impostor games is never a bad thing. There's no firm date set yet, but the PS4 and PS5 launch of Among Us should arrive sometime later this year.

During this afternoon's State of Play stream, Sony gave minor updates on a pair of indie games, and one of them was Subnautica: Below Zero of all things. Not that I'm complaining — I adore Subnautica.

We got some familiar footage of this standalone new underwater adventure, along with word of a performance mode "targeting 60FPS" and that gotta-have-it haptic feedback support on PS5.

Nice gesture: there's a free PS4-to-PS5 upgrade offer for Subnautica and Subnautica: Below Zero.

As explained during the stream and on the PlayStation Blog, "If you already own a physical or digital version of the first Subnautica on PS4, you'll be able to upgrade to the digital PS5 version at no additional cost." The same goes for Subnautica: Below Zero, which is launching on May 14, 2021.

I imagine a lot of people recently picked up the first game for free from Sony's Play at Home 2021 promo — if so, enjoy. And if you happen to have a PS5, even better. I'm tempted to replay it.

After much back-and-forth-ing about whether or not I should play Below Zero while it was being built in Early Access, I've pretty much run out the clock. I resisted, and there are only two weeks left to go.

[Update: The mostly Ratchet & Clank-focused State of Play stream is about to start.]

We just got a new look at the upcoming Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart this morning, but that isn't the only one we'll see this week.

Sony has announced a new State of Play for Thursday, April 29 at 5 p.m. ET / 2 p.m. PT. In today's PlayStation Blog, it says there will be more than 15 minutes of gameplay to show, as Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart will be the focus of the show.

For those who don't just want to see Ratchet and Clank venture through dimensional portals though, there will be some other news. On Twitter, PlayStation confirmed that there will be updates on "a pair of upcoming indie titles."

My Nintendo is at it again, and it seems like "roughly a day or so before a first-party launch" is going to be the cadence for new rewards.

In case you missed all the fanfare, New Pokemon Snap is out this Friday on Switch, and My Nintendo just added a 400 Platinum Point option to pick up: a letter set. It's literally just 12 letter sheets and two envelopes, containing various facets of Pokemon lore. The envelopes also double as a photo stand for 4x6 images. You can find the reward directly on this page.

While the letter set is front and center on the main rewards page, you may have missed the proper news article for the announcement. While most of the details are the same in regards to the letter reward, the page also teases an upcoming "clear zipper case set," which will go for 500 Platinum Points. You can find the mockup of the reward below.

As a reminder, you can find our full Platinum Point guide here. Bookmark it for when you need quick points for a reward! As a refresher, the Bowser's Fury Cat Mario keychain is back in stock, as is the Racer ID holder and lanyard, the Mario & Me Three Year Journal, the Smash Ultimate greeting card set, the Bravely Default II reversible poster, the Pokemon Sword and Shield four pen set, the Pokemon memo pad, and the Pokemon sticker set.

New Pokemon Snap Letter Set [My Nintendo]

If you've poked around Destructoid's original features section lately, you might've noticed something new — a curious little embedded audio clip at the top of certain articles where there wasn't one before.

Wait, when did that happen? Just recently! It's a still-fresh experiment.

For this test run, we tapped Dan Vincent and Josh Picard to lend their voices to ten long-form Destructoid articles — some that you likely read when they were originally published, and some that you might've missed. We're talking Zelda's musical legacy, Rule of Rose's rat-on-a-stick, Diablo II: Resurrected's magic trick, and a glowing Portal 2 anniversary retrospective, among other recent topics.

For future narrations, we'll strive to have the recording available day-and-date when a new article first hits the site so that those who prefer to listen aren't left waiting around wondering what's up.

Although plenty of Destructoid readers still prefer to go through articles at their own pace — what's your WPM?! — we're considering these audio versions to be another option if and when you need it.

I've just gone from barely keeping tabs on New Pokémon Snap to seeing the entire list of featured Pokémon in a single image. Talk about whiplash! I hadn't really thought about the potential for this photo-hunt adventure to be datamined, but that was so naive. It's still Pokémon — we gotta see 'em all.

This is just the latest effort from dataminer @SciresM, whose Nintendo-related findings we've reported on several times over the years. They've shared other New Pokémon Snap info today as well, but for most of us — the folks who can't resist peeking — the game's full launch roster is the focal point.

You're going to want to bounce off this post right now if you're averse to spoilers.

Here's your full pokemon snap roster!

Blank spaces are reserved pokemon IDs with empty data (could change in a future update, maybe).

Expect the usual datamining tools release from @Kaphotics and I later today :) pic.twitter.com/faAiaXet3k

Picking just one story to sit down with can be a bit of a task. So rather than one, Deconstructeam is launching an anthology of 10 short narrative works, under the name Essays on Empathy.

Published by Devolver Digital, Essays on Empathy is a collection of 10 unique stories coming to Steam on May 18, each an experiment in narrative storytelling from the team behind games like The Red Strings Club and Gods Will Be Watching.

The Essays include several former Ludum Dare entries from the team, like Zen and the Art of Transhumanism, Eternal Home Floristry, and Dear Substance of Kin. There's also a brand-new short experience exclusive to the compilation called De Tres al Cuarto, about a couple of comedians trying to make it. Check out the trailer, though heads-up for folks at work, there is some mature content:

I dug the tough choices of Gods Will Be Watching, and while The Red Strings Club is still on my backlog, Deconstructeam also made one of my biggest surprises of 2020, a short game called Interview with the Whisperer. It's a free Chatbot-fueled game where you play a journalist interviewing a man who says he can commune with God through his radio, and it's absolutely worth your time.

If this collection has some of the same inventiveness behind it, it'll be one to look out for. 

Publisher Koei Tecmo, alongside developer Team Ninja, announced that its yokai-hunting RPG series Nioh has hit an impressive double milestone. 2020 release Nioh 2 has recently achieved a total of two million shipments and digital sales, which brings Nioh's overall franchise sales to the stately five million mark.

It's time for another rare week with a first-party Nintendo release.

New Pokemon Snap is ready to open up its doors on April 30, alongside of R-Type Final 2. Folks have been waiting a long while for the former, as the Switch once again welcomes the return of an age-old franchise. In this case, it's been dormant since the Nintendo 64 era for over 20 years!

As a result, we're "only" getting 17 other games on the eShop this week, including Angels with Scaly Wings, which probably isn't in the same universe as Angels with Filthy Souls. Nintendo really doesn't have a lot of competition for their first-party release to put up with!

During Sony's last State of Play presentation, we got our first look at the next chapter in the extremely popular, jumpscare-tastic franchise Five Nights at Freddy's.

Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach will transition the typical CCTV action of its best-selling predecessors into full-on first-person gameplay. Players will gingerly pick their way through a "Wacky Warehouse"-style play center, desperately trying to remain at claws' length from a band of murderous animatronics, led by terrifying host Freddy Fazbear.

Before launch, Nier Replicant head honcho Yoko Taro and company promised some form of free DLC bonus for the re-release, and we just got it. Quietly!

In true Taro fashion the new "4 YoRHa" pack rolled out on all platforms (PC, PS4, Xbox One) in the past 24 hours, and now everyone can download it at no cost. This doesn't seem to be a limited-time run or special initial offer either, as the DLC descriptions in all three marketplaces say that it is a "free downloadable content."

It's a very simple little add-on, hearkening back to the days of open world "item pack" DLCs. This one comes with "four costumes and four weapons" (ha, "4 YoRHa") from Automata, transported into the Replicant world. The development team also notes that the costumes might not actually show up in some cutscenes due to the nature of the story.

The listing also gives us a chance to revisit the ESRB "mature content description" straight from the studio: "NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139… contains adult scenes and theme, strong language in certain areas of the game, including blood, violence, criminal acts and killing." Nice.

You can find direct links for all three storefronts right below. You may as well redeem all of them in case you end up getting it on one of those platforms at some point.

The highly acclaimed exploration title Sunless Skies is almost set to bring its awe-inspiring universe to the console market. As announced by developer Failbetter Games, the 2019 adventure will be docking on PS4, Xbox One, and Switch platforms May 19, in the form of an enhanced "Sovereign Edition".

For a lot of World of Warcraft players, the wounds from Sylvanas are still fresh.

It's really interesting though, as the Shadowlands storyline is taking its sweet time to carry on, and it'll be a while until we start to see more of her motivations and plotline play out. Will she redeem herself? Will it be satisfying enough of a conclusion for her tale, if there even is a conclusion anytime soon? Well it's modern-day WoW, so the odds are about 50/50.

In the meantime, you can check out her novel, which is set to debut on November 9, 2021. The gist is that it ties directly into the events of Shadowlands, as Sylvanas wrestles with her past and how she got to be in the position she's in with the Jailer: the presumed big bad of the new expansion that might not actually be the big bad, in classic WoW fashion.

It'll deal with her past in some fashion, as these books tend to roll with. You can find the official synopsis below. It's also going to be narrated by Patty Mattson, who voices the character: neat little option!

Warcraft: Sylvanas [Battle.net]

One of the last generation's big Star Wars games is getting a new next-gen version. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order will have its own PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S release this summer.

The announcement comes as part of the lead-up to May 4, the generally agreed-upon "Star Wars Day." While details are sparse for now, it is confirmed that there will be a cross-generational upgrade path for current owners of the game, and the next-gen version will bring "a number of technical improvements" to Fallen Order on the new consoles, presumably a further improvement on its previous next-gen optimizations.

If you didn't pick up Cal Kestis' journey the first time around, there will also be a sale on Standard and Deluxe Editions, which started April 28 and should run through May 12 on PS4, Xbox One, Origin, and Steam.

The Star Wars blog lists a bunch of other deals that are happening around Star Wars Day, from Squadrons to oldies like Knights of the Old Republic. And hopefully, with how well games like Jedi: Fallen Order have been doing, we'll keep seeing more Star Wars games in the future.

Nintendo Wire is giving us another demake mockup, and once again, I wish it was real.

In case you forgot, the Pokemon Snap series (it's a series now!) allows players to take photos of creatures, facilitated by an on-rails mechanic. Your job is to capture as many Pokemon characters as you can on film, sometimes in different poses or situations.

This mockup shows us a full stage (Beach Course 1-1), from the start to the final assessment from Professor Oak, where you get scored on your photos and choose which one to use to put your best foot forward.

The sights, the sounds, it's all just lovely. Even some of the more grating noises! And the little "power" light on the side of the Game Boy Color is making me want to boot my original back up. The Color was such an ingenious idea: it not only paid off big time for Nintendo (it gets lumped into the original and currently has the all-time third spot in terms of game systems sold), but it's also a very forward-thinking device with backward compatibility for old games.

The Game Boy Advance took all this even further, in a frankly unprecedented era of care for preservation and backward compatibility. We're kind of beyond that now outside of efforts by basically just Microsoft.

Microsoft has released its latest financial results for its most recent quarter, and things are most assuredly looking up in The House of Xbox. Overall gaming revenue has been boosted by 50% year-on-year, driven by the launch of its next-gen hardware, Xbox Series X/S.

The 50% increase translates to an overall draw of $3.53 billion USD, as noted by analyst Daniel Ahmad. While Microsoft did not reveal specific figures regarding the sales of the new console platforms, it has stated that "demand significantly exceeded supply", which makes for a great soundbite from a corporate standpoint, but undeniably sucks for customers.

The huge numbers include revenue gained from the sales of Xbox hardware and first-person software, as well as Xbox Game Pass subscriptions, Xbox Live Gold purchases and, importantly, revenue gained via ZeniMax subsidiaries — such as games developed by Bethesda Softworks. This latter factor alone places a large stake in Xbox Content & Services revenue, which increased 34% on the previous year.

Looking ahead, Xbox hopes to see its good fortunes continue. There's no denying that the brand has started the ninth generation in a stronger position — financially and reputation-wise — than the controversy that plagued the launch of Xbox One in the previous generation. Microsoft warns, however, that it expects Xbox Series X/S availability to be "constrained" for the coming months, as both Xbox and PlayStation struggle to get more stock onto store shelves and, ultimately, into the hands of the players.

Artyom's exodus from the Metro is getting a pretty big overhaul next week. 4A Games has confirmed that the PC Enhanced Edition of Metro Exodus will launch on May 6, 2021.

The upgrade is free for all owners of the original game, whether it's on Steam, the Epic Games Store, GOG, or the Microsoft Store. It also requires Windows, so Linux users and Google Stadia or Amazon Luna players won't be able to check this out just yet. (4A notes that Mac users can play the PC version via GeForce Now in its blog.)

The PC Enhanced Edition will also require Ray Tracing capable hardware, and you cannot run it without Ray Tracing on. It's estimated the install size, including the base game and its two DLC packages (The Two Colonels and Sam's Story) will come in around 80 GB. So what are you getting for all that heft and storage?

Well, according to Digital Foundry, who got an exclusive first look at the upgraded PC version, it's a "phenomenal improvement" over the 2019 game. And just watching the video, that's pretty easy to see.

Google, a tech company well-known for its search engine Google, has announced that its cloud streaming service Google Stadia is getting a search bar.

In a community update today, the Stadia team says the search bar on Stadia for Web is rolling out now and should reach all players this week, and will make finding your favorite games much easier.

Good news - a search bar is now rolling out to the #Stadia store. Get a sneak peek into the next features coming to Stadia in today's blog.https://t.co/G5njP5PZFm pic.twitter.com/2UZRzniY4G

— Stadia (@GoogleStadia) April 28, 2021

The Stadia team also showed off some new features it's working on, like an activity feed. The screenshot in the above tweet also seems to hint at some new Assassin's Creed titles coming to the service, which Stadia users will now be able to Google when and if they hit the store.