Despite the extremely upsetting news about what nate has been having for breakfast this year, we maintain our composure to deliver an episode of The Electronic Wireless Show podcast all about the Steam Next Fest, currently running until next Monday the 16th. You've got a whole weekend of free demos to try, and we've knocked back a few to regurgitate into your open mouths as suggestions for what to try first. Plus, we've been playing a few current games, and have some juicy recommendations of non-game things.

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I'm honestly a little surprised by how much I'm enjoying Star Trek: Infinite. It is not the ultimate Star Trek strategy game, but nor is it a bog standard 4X strategy in an unfortunate 80s leotard. "Lets you play your own Star Trek story" is a fair summary of what it's about, even if the bulk of that story in practical terms is building space stations to claim territory, and filling up planets with farms, cities, and empire-specific labour camps, forums, and whatever hippie garbage the feds have. Of course, it has the advantage of riding the coattails of already-established fiction and maybe that's cheating a little, but the result is a sort of grand 4X that in most regards I've enjoyed more the longer I played it.

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As President T'Pragh of the United Federation of Planets, it's routine for me to hear from the USS Enterprise, the pride and joy of our fleet. It's another for the message sender to be tiresome prodigy Wesley Crusher, historical bearer of unwanted news. This time, Wesley isn't the problem. The problem is that the Federation doesn't even have the Enterprise yet - building the flagship is a milestone mission in the game, and at this current point in time, there is no possible Enterprise from which Ensign Crusher could be hailing me from. On an episode of The Next Generation, this could easily be a setup for a fun pocket dimension-themed episode or a time loop narrative, but it's not. This is the erratic world of Star Trek: Infinite, a grand strategy reskin of Stellaris that boldly goes to places that don't always make sense.

Both the Rebuild of Evangelion Asuka Shikinami Langley and Rei Ayanami Nendoroids by Good Smile Company are being rereleased. Pre-orders are open again. They will both be priced at $33.99/¥5,300. They are expected to ship out in May 2024 in Japan, while they will show up in North America in Q4 2024. To pre-order them from the United States and Canada, see them listed on the Good Smile Company US online shop. Both originally appeared in 2020.

The Rei Ayanami and Asuka Langley Nendoroids both come with three optional face plates to swap out. They also both come with optional parts to recreate poses and scenes from Evangelion. Rei’s Nendoroid will include a removable eye patch and bandages, a rag and bucket, and her school bag. Asuka’s Nendoroid will come with a pointing hand part as well as a face plate that shows her playfully sticking her tongue out.

First, here's a reminder of how the Rei Nendoroid looks.

[gallery link="file" columns="5" size="full" ids="990993,990994,990995,990996,990997"]

Next, here's the Asuka Nendoroid.

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Market research firm Niko Partners released its 2023 India Games Market Report and says the country's game revenue is poised to reach $868 million this year.

This year's projection represents a growth of 21% year-over-year compared to 2022.

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Tekken 8's upcoming Closed Beta Test has been cracked over a week before it actually begins. Footage of gameplay is spreading online as those with the cracked files play early, ahead of everyone else.

The CBT (rest in piece CNT) will take place next weekend from 20th to 23rd October. Those with access will be able to try out head-to-head competitive play with cross-platform matching, and the Tekken Fight Lounge, described as an "immersive lobby" where players can interact and explore different features and game modes.

Footage from the beta can easily be found on social media sites, as well as bewilderment from fans. Bandai Namco rolled out a pre-load update for the beta on Steam and Xbox on 10th, giving those with the know-how the opportunity to crack the PC files.

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For quite a while the gaming market was considered by some to be an evergreen industry that thrives regardless of the worldwide economic situation.

And it's no wonder such beliefs were common, as the videogames market has been growing for the last 30 years, performing relatively well even during the tough 2007-2008 crisis. In 2020, not the best time for many sectors, the revenues of video game companies increased by 23.1% (Newzoo).

However, everything changed when 2022 hit the world. According to data.ai, the size of the video game industry in 2022 amounted to $193 billion, a 5% decrease from the 2021 figures. Another "novelty" was that the leader of the fall was the mobile games segment which comprised more than half of the overall gaming industry and declined by almost 7%.

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Lords of the Fallen sounds like the best and worst parts of the Soulsborne genre all rolled into one. Hexworks’ grim action-RPG arrives in a year full of homages to FromSoftware’s Dark Souls, and so far critical assessments run the gamut from high praise to exhausted disappointment.

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The Genshin Impact Cogs in the Machine Wriothesley web event is live and tasks people with helping him with investigations in the fortress. Players can head to the official site to play through it until October 17, 2023. That also happens to be the day his banner will begin in-game. So accompanying the news, HoYoVerse also shared the four-stars who will be featured on his and Venti’s wishes.

As he’s the Fortress of Meropide Administrator, the Wriothesley event involves him doing his job while we assist him. After logging into the game with your HoYoVerse account, you’ll help him investigate four inmates. In each case, you’ll need to look at suspicious spots around them to figure out what’s going on. So, as an example, you might need to look around any boxes near them to search for evidence. However, you might also need to perform certain actions, like watching the latest Genshin Impact trailer for him, to earn points to continue the search.

The Pokemon Trading Card Game Illustration Contest 2024 began, and this year's theme is “Magical Pokemon Moments.” For this contest, artists from around the world can submit their art to be recognized by established Pokemon artists and win prizes. The official Pokemon YouTube channel now features an announcement video promoting the contest, which is also on the website.

View the announcement video below:

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64MCUqvs5-Y[/embed]

The entry period for the contest is from October 12, 2023 to January 31, 2024. Creatures and The Pokemon Company International will be taking submissions from residents of Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Submissions will not be accepted from minors. Only those ages 18 and older may be eligible for entry.

The contest will be split into two divisions, which are standard card illustrations and ex card illustrations. Each applicant may submit three illustrations only.

Applicants may submit artwork of the following Pokemon in accordance with the theme, including a background:

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Valve is introducing SMS verification for developers as part of its new security measures on Steamworks. This follows earlier incidents of hackers taking over several developers' accounts on the platform, where they added malware to various game builds.

These attacks, which were verified by PC Gamer, only affected less than 100 Steam users, although NanoWar: Cells VS Virus (pictured above) developer Benoît Freslon recently revealed the hackers had taken control of his browser access tokens. This essentially gave the hackers access to any service Freslon had been logged into.

"I just used my dev account to release the game few hours before the hack I suppose," he shared on X (formerly Twitter).

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I was mixed on Dambusters' Dead Island 2 - I thought the combat had flair but not much depth, loved the game's decadently disastrous Los Angeles, but hated how exploration boiled down to nosing around for crafting materials. The game's first story DLC expansion, Haus, amps up the weirdness of the environments by transporting you to a "surreal, psycho-horror dreamscape" in blissful Malibu.

There are flashes of Glass Onion and The Menu here, but I was reminded just as much of the eerier parts of Bioshock, that underwater monument to crackpot billionaires with far too much time on their hands. Here's a video of the opening.

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Over three decades after the original manga Yu Yu Hakusho appeared in Weekly Shonen Jump, the series will be adapted into a live-action Netflix series. It will premiere worldwide on December 14, 2023. An official announcement and trailer was uploaded in a post from the Netflix social media account. Also, another teaser trailer for season one can be viewed on Netflix itself. An advance screening event for the live action Yu Yu Hakusho Netflix series will be held in Tokyo, Japan on December 13, 2023, a day before it releases to the general public.

The live-action series will be directed by Sho Tsukikawa. He also handled other anime-to-live-action projects, such as Let Me Eat Your Pancreas and My Little Monster. According to Netflix, the series has been in production for five years prior to its completion.

Here is a list of previously announced cast members and their roles:

• Jun Shison as Kurama
• Kanata Hongo as Hiei
• Shuhei Uesugi as Kazuma Kuwabara
• Takumi Kitamura as Yusuke Urameshi

As a note, Kitamura also played Takemichi Hanagaki in the Tokyo Revengers movies.

More than three decades after Yu Yu Hakusho by Yoshihiro Togashi first captured the imagination of readers, the beloved manga gets a live-action adaptation.

When you first fire up The Making of Karateka, Digital Eclipse’s excellent interactive retrospective about Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner’s 1984 masterpiece, you’re greeted with this quote from his journals, written when he was just 18 years old:

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In this week's episode of The Game Informer Show, the crew breaks down our Lords of the Fallen review and subsequently rips into publishers for naming video game sequels the same name as the original game, like "Lords of the Fallen" instead of "Lords of the Fallen 2." After, Alex talks about why action puzzler Cocoon nails player feedback, and then we dive into the anals of our 2023 gaming backlog, highlighting releases we want to revisit or play for the first time before Game Informer's Game of the Year discussions in December.

Finally, our Listener Questions segment returns, discussing treating carpal tunnel and answering specific questions like, "What happened to the promised 120FPS console releases?"

Listen to Game Informer's Lords of the Fallen Review Discussion:

Follow us on social media: Alex Van Aken (@itsVanAken), Marcus Stewart (@MarcusStewart7), Wesley LeBlanc (@LeBlancWes).

Lords Of The Fallen is a reboot of CI Games and Deck 13's 2014 action-RPG called… Lords Of The Fallen. We thought the original was average and largely forgettable, so how does the new LOTF stack up against it nine years later? Well, it's definitely going to appeal to more folks by being a fairly enjoyable soulslike that ticks most checkboxes, and that rises above most of the competition by popping a magic lantern in your hands.

Raise a light to the dark fantasy world and it'll reveal a more dribbly parallel universe you can warp between at almost any time. This spooky lantern might open up some cool realm-hopping twists on your grim adventure, and the game as a whole might instil a sense of exploration sure to please souls fans after a familiar hit of uncertain peril, but its finer details chip away at your patience. It's not long before your tentative pushes through horrible towns and creaky walkways soon give way to wild sprint finishes born from pure frustration.

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She's a fierce warrior, but she's crying tears of blood. After a tense battle of graceful sweeping sword arcs - and me frantically dodging - she sprouts a set of scarlet wings, flies upwards, and proceeds to rain down hell.

This is Pieta, the first proper boss in Lords of the Fallen after the tutorial. Or, as I like to call her, Budget Malenia. It's abundantly clear where developer Hexworks has taken inspiration, leaning into the most popular aspects of FromSoftware's Souls games - here Elden Ring's most celebrated encounter. Pieta is emblematic of the game as a whole: Lords of the Fallen looks like Souls, it plays like Souls, but it's an inferior imitation that's rough around the edges.

If the name seems familiar, you may remember the 2014 Lords of the Fallen from developer Deck13 and publisher CI Games that also attempted to replicate the Souls experience. I went back to that for the purpose of this review and it certainly hasn't aged well with its lumbering combat and generic visuals. This new Lords of the Fallen is a complete reimagining from Hexworks (once more published by CI Games), with improved combat and a fresh story.

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I recently got to test out PlayStation Access at a hands-on event in London, Sony's new customisable accessibility controller. I was one of a handful of people attending, some with disabilities and some without. With the device before us all, we prodded and poked, we customised, we compared our setups. And we were able to play a number of games ranging in complexity.

Sony recognises that disabilities are different for everyone and the Access isn't a universal solution. What works for one player may not work for another with the same disability. But that's why the Access is so reconfigurable, and Sony has carefully considered so many options. Even the packaging is accessible: evenly weighted and opened with one hand.

So how do you design an accessibility controller with so many variables? Sony looked at three major areas that informed the design: how people will hold the controller, how they will be able to accurately press buttons, and how they will be able to use the sticks effectively. It can be held, used on a surface, or screwed into a tripod with no set orientation, its large magnetic buttons are reconfigurable, and the stick has a flexible position with swappable caps.

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Reviewed on: PC
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Publisher: CI Games
Developer: Hexworks
Release: October 13, 2023
Rating: Mature

Lords of the Fallen captured my interest in its early hours more than its 2014 predecessor of the same name ever did. But despite a solid gameplay foundation, stunning world, and unique two-realm mechanic, by the time I reached credits after 48 hours, I was overjoyed to be done. What begins as a remarkable soft reboot unravels by the halfway point due to pacing issues, abundant repetition, and lackluster level design, unfortunately leaving a disappointing back half to slog through. 

Atlus offered a glimpse at what Iwatodai dorm life is like for characters who are a part of S.E.E.S. in a new trailer for Persona 3 Reload. In this new trailer, we get a glimpse into what a typical night at Iwatodai Dorm could look like in the game.

Iwatodai Dorm is where the main characters in Persona 3 Reload reside as they attend school and live out their daily lives as high school students. When Makoto and company aren’t busy combing through the floors of Tartarus, they could be spending their time together engaging in a variety of activities in this installment. For example, as shown in the trailer, the protagonist Makoto could be making coffee with Ken in the communal kitchen, eating cooked meals with Shinjiro, or watching TV with the mascot canine Koromaru.

Some of the activities shown can even provide a stat boost or buff in combat, such as reading books together with Fuuka to increase Makoto’s Academics level or learning new tactics while tending to a vegetable garden.

Check out some activities S.E.E.S. characters can do in the new Persona 3 Reload trailer below:

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

Persona 3 Reload will be released worldwide on February 2, 2024 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and PCs via Steam.

Counter-Strike 2 players have discovered a novel method of peek-shooting, the Michael Jackson Peek, which makes them look like the King of Pop, doing one of his slip-slidey dance moves. You might say there's been an outbreak of Smooth Crime, hee heeee! Sorry, I wish I were cool enough to explain this properly. It's probably best you just watch the footage below.

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Assassin's Creed Mirage hit PlayStation, Xbox, and PC last week and both critics and fans alike are quite happy with the series return to its roots. Unlike Assassin's Creed Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, in which Basim is featured, Mirage is a smaller, more condensed adventure, unlike the prior open-world RPGs. Now, roughly a week later, Ubisoft has revealed that Mirage's player count is in line with Origins and Odyssey. Plus, Mirage is Ubisoft's biggest new-gen launch in terms of sales. 

Thank you all for joining us on Basim's journey in 9th Century Baghdad!

We are thrilled by the response from the community and for embracing our homage to the roots of the AC franchise. #AssassinsCreed pic.twitter.com/KnL2YxGION

The Switch version of Mortal Kombat 1 has received a new update that's now live, promising numerous improvements.

The latest in the fighting series was released last month across PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo's console. However, the Switch version was plagued with numerous issues and vastly inferior visuals.

This new update includes visual improvements and bug fixes, performance improvements, and stability fixes, according to the patch notes.

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Platinum Games co-founder Hideki Kamiya announced last month he was departing from the studio. Having founded it in 2006 in Osaka, Japan, later working on games like Bayonetta and The Wonderful 101, he left his reason for leaving up in the air. He simply said, "This came after a lot of consideration based on my own beliefs" and that he feels "this outcome is for the best." Now, just a few weeks later, Kamiya has started a YouTube channel – aptly called "Hideki Kamiya Channel" – and in his first video, he reveals he's not retiring, as first reported by VideoGamesChronicle. 

In the video, we see Kamiya presumably leaving his office with a box of knick-knacks and more in hand before leaving in a Lamborghini. In the first video, he talks about how he's currently unemployed, joking that people need to subscribe to his channel. VideoGamesChronicle reports that Kamiya says he actually hasn't been to work for a while.

Dead Island 2 invites players to indulge their fetishes with its first story expansion, Haus.

This expansion is set to arrive next month, on 2nd November, across PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC (via the Epic Games Store).

It promises players a "surreal, psycho-horror dreamscape" as they use their investigative powers to check out a mysterious Malibu cult in a completely new story and setting.

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Fragbite is set to acquire Fall Damage, the Swedish-based studio behind the upcoming free-to-play competitive title Alara Prime.

The Swedish firm will pay an upfront fee of approximately SEK 20 million ($1.8 million), acquiring all outstanding shares in Fall Damage.

Half of the fee will be paid in cash "to an external institutional owner" and the other half in over four million shares at SEK 2.33 ($0.21) per share issued to the founding members of Fall Damage.

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I always find it difficult to pick out which demos are worth my limited time whenever Steam Next Fest rolls around again. The process is made a lot easier when I find something which promises the zen-like quality of PowerWash Simulator.

It may not seem like it at first, but somehow Crime Scene Cleaner manages to deliver on that promise. Despite the lack of cats and the abundance of dead bodies and blood.

You take on the role of a single dad who's a school caretaker (or janitor, seeing as the game takes place in the US) by day, and a mob cleanup crew by night. The mob pays much better than the regular day job, and we need the money to pay for our sick daughter's healthcare. Ah, the good old American healthcare system.

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Pokémon Go looks set to introduce the ability to party up, and explore alongside friends in-game.

A teaser image posted on social media shows the silhouettes of four in-game avatars standing next to a gym with a raid egg, suggesting that four-player teams will be able to travel together and head as one into the game's PVE battles.

Pokémon Go developer Niantic captioned the image with a teasing eye emoji, an emoji wearing a party hat, and the hashtag #GoStartTheParty.

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