Sushi Ben Japanese Cast Announced

6 months 1 week ago

sushi ben cast

In a new trailer for upcoming narrative VR adventure, Sushi Ben, Big Brane Studios has shared some of the Japanese voice cast. The game will not only be available with Japanese audio, but it will also have Japanese text support for those who want or need it. Some members of the cast consist of industry veterans with a long and established career. [Thanks, Famitsu!]

You can see the full Sushi Ben announcement trailer below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icOJ4LxR-qg

In the trailer, we can confirm that Minami and Mashiro will be voiced by Chiaki Takahashi and Eiji Takemoto, respectively. Takahashi has previous appeared as Litchi in BlazBlue and Xinyan in Genshin Impact. As for Takemoto, his previous roles include Raven from Tales of Vesperia and Tsukishima in Golden Kamuy. Other members of the Japanese Sushi Ben cast include Mamiko Noto (Fuuka in Persona 3, Enma Ai in Hell Girl).

Author
Stephanie Liu

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Spy x Anya: Operation Memories Trailer Shows Anya Having Fun

6 months 1 week ago

spy x anya: operation memories trailer

Bandai Namco has uploaded a new trailer for Spy x Anya: Operation Memories. The video is just over two minutes long and shows off various aspects of the gameplay, as well as which characters from the series will appear in the game. The trailer has English subtitles for international viewers.

You can watch the newest Spy x Anya: Operation Memories trailer here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKLsB1cZs9E

The game's plot revolves around Anya making a photo diary for school. She wants the project to be a success so that she can show it off to Damian with the hopes of befriending him to help Loid with Operation Strix. To complete her task, Anya has to complete various activities to make interesting diary entries. Most of the game centers around Anya spending time with the Forger family and friends at home and around town. You can also take pictures and save them in her photo diary.

Author
Stephanie Liu

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Kotobukiya Selling Limited Edition Run of Tales of Arise Pitanui Plush Dolls

6 months 1 week ago

Kotobukiya Opens Pre-Orders for Tales of Arise Pitanui Plush Dolls

Kotobukiya is selling a limited edition run of Tales of Arise Pitanui plush dolls featuring Alphen, Shionne, Rinwell, Law, Kisara, and Dohalim. The Pitanui dolls can hang from people's bags, be sat down on a flat surface, hold on to the side of things, and even carry items in their hands.

The Tales of Arise Pitanui plush dolls are 15cm tall while sitting and cost ¥3,300 (approx. $22 USD). Fans can order the Pitanui plush dolls from the official Kotobukiya Online Shop.

Product images of the Tales of Arise Pitanui plush dolls can be seen below:

[gallery columns="2" link="file" size="full" ids="990477,990478,990468,990471,990472,990473,990475,990476,990470,990474"]

Author
Arielle Haddad

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Activision says its games won't come to Game Pass until 2024 if Microsoft deal goes through

6 months 1 week ago

With all signs pointing to an imminent successful end for Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition saga, Activision has moved to address the issue of its titles appearing on Game Pass, saying not to expect that to happen until next year if the deal goes through.

To date, Activision titles have been notably absent from Game Pass, but the assumption has been that would change if Microsoft's $69bn bid for the Call of Duty publisher succeeded. And with the deal now anticipated to be finalised this week, assuming the UK's Competition and Markets Authority gives it the green light as is generally expected, questions around an Activision presence on Game Pass have shifted from 'if' to 'when'.

And the company has now addressed fan queries on social media, writing, "As we continue to work toward regulatory approval of the Microsoft deal, we've been getting some questions whether our upcoming and recently launched games will be available via Game Pass."

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Author
Matt Wales

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Unity CEO John Riccitiello Resigns

6 months 1 week ago

John Riccitiello resigns from Unity

Unity CEO John Riccitiello has announced that he’s retiring from the company effective immediately. The news comes almost a month after the company announced plans to introduce a controversial install fee for developers, which resulted in an industry-wide backlash.

Riccitiello is stepping down as CEO, president, and a member of the board of directors. In a press release, Unity states that James M. Whitehurst will take over as interim CEO while the board seeks a permanent replacement. Whitehurst is a tech veteran who served as president at IBM from 2008 to 2020 and as a senior advisor from 2021 to 2022. 

“It’s been a privilege to lead Unity for nearly a decade and serve our employees, customers, developers and partners, all of whom have been instrumental to the Company’s growth,” Riccitiello says in a statement. “I look forward to supporting Unity through this transition and following the Company’s future success.” Riccitiello became CEO of Unity in 2014 following his tenure as CEO at EA. 

Author
Marcus Stewart

Minecraft Players Trying to Stop Mob Vote With Propaganda Posters and More Than 220,000 Signatures

6 months 1 week ago

Since 2016, Mojang has been hosting an annual mob vote that lets players choose the next creature it adds to Minecraft. In recent years, though, players have grown increasingly unhappy with the tradition, and this year they've taken to "unionizing" to express their disappointment.

Last Thursday, the team behind Minecraft revealed 2023's mob vote and its three options: a crab that drops claws that can boost a player's reach when placing blocks, an armadillo that drops scutes which can be crafted into wolf armor, and a penguin that boosts the speed of nearby boats. However, quite a few players have become disillusioned with what they perceive to be lost content.

Now, fans on TikTok are creating and spreading war propaganda-inspired posters to encourage other players to "unionize" and boycott the mob vote. Many of these posters have adopted communist terminology, with some players calling others "comrades," while others have praised modders for bringing Mojang's "scrapped" mobs into the game.

Author
Amelia Zollner

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John Riccitiello retires as Unity CEO after nine years

6 months 1 week ago

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Less than a month after detailing a controversial change to its business model, Unity has announced that John Riccitiello will retire as CEO and president.

Riccitiello has served in the role since 2014, and the executive will also leave his position on the board of directors as chairman.

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Author
Jeffrey Rousseau

Unity CEO John Riccitiello 'retiring' from company weeks after pricing controversy

6 months 1 week ago

Unity has announced the departure of its CEO John Riccitiello, just weeks after the company became mired in controversy following hugely unpopular changes to its engine pricing model.

At the end of last month, Unity announced sweeping changes to its Unity Engine business model that would force developers to pay an additional monthly Unity Runtime Fee every time their game was installed, on top of their existing licence subscription, after reaching certain revenue and life-time instalment thresholds. The backlash from the development community was immediate and intense, and Unity eventually announced significant changes to its initial plans - but by that point, the damage was done.

And now Unity has announced that John Riccitiello, the CEO who oversaw its reputationally devastating pricing changes, "will retire" from all his roles at the company - president, chief executive officer, chairman, and a member of its board of directors - effective immediately.

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Author
Matt Wales

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Activision Blizzard Games Should Hit Game Pass In 2024

6 months 1 week ago

When speculation rife that Microsoft expects to finalize its purchase of Activision Blizzard this week, and COD: Modern Warfare III out in a month, it seems people have been wondering when Activision’s games will start appearing on Microsoft’s Game Pass. According to a tweet from Activision Blizzard, it should be some…

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John Walker

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Activision Blizzard Has No Current Plans to Put Diablo IV on Xbox Game Pass

6 months 1 week ago

Activision Blizzard has No Current Plans to Put Diablo IV on Xbox Game Pass

Activision Blizzard announced through social media that the company currently has no plans to put Diablo IV or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III on Xbox Game Pass. In a brief statement made on Twitter, the publisher discussed how they have been receiving numerous questions about putting upcoming and recently launched games up on Xbox Game Pass.

Activision Blizzard mentioned that while working towards regulatory approval for the Microsoft deal, they do not have plans to add these games to Game Pass. Once the deal has closed, they will be working closely with Xbox to bring games to players around the world. The company anticipates adding games from their catalog to Game Pass by next year.

You can see the full statement from Activision below:

https://twitter.com/atvi_ab/status/1711464921077006751?s=46&t=H5PQOQrVgcNnJC_jNkLBGA

Author
Arielle Haddad

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Steam's Next Fest is back with more dev streams and "hundreds" of demos

6 months 1 week ago

Steam's Next Fest has returned for another week-long showcase of future releases, including developer livestreams, chats, and, of course, "hundreds" of playable demos.

Valve's latest Steam Next Fest is already underway and runs until 5.59pm BST/9.59am PST on Monday, 16th October. That means you've got just under seven full days at the time of writing to furiously claw your way through another bumper crop of playable demos before they potentially vanish once more into the ether.

We're well beyond the days when you could feasibly work your way through the entire list before the end of Next Fest (unless you're particularly determined and hate sleep, I suppose), but Valve has, at least, assembled a special event mini-site, splitting available demos down into mere easily perusable and digestible categories.

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Author
Matt Wales

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Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis Season Pass Treasure Hunt Season 2 Begins

6 months 1 week ago

Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis Season Pass Treasure Hunt Season 2 Begins

Season 2 of the Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis Season Pass Treasure Hunt has begun and will run through to November 5, 2023. If players purchase the Season Pass for $13.99 and complete the season, they will earn a Gear Voucher and the "Four SOLDIERs of Shinra" wallpaper, which features young Sephiroth, Glenn, Lucia, and Matt in combat.

Each season of the Treasure Hunt features two pathways to obtain special rewards: Normal Hunt and Premium Hunt. Normal Hunt allows all Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis players to obtain rewards for free as long as they complete Daily Exploration, Weekly Exploration, and Season Exploration tasks. However, they will not be able to obtain special rewards on the Premium Hunt path, such as the Gear Voucher or the special wallpaper. Only players who purchase the Season Pass to unlock the Premium Hunt can collect those rewards as well as 4,500 Blue Crystal currency.

Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis Season Pass Treasure Hunt Season 2's Normal Hunt's Total Rewards include:

  • Blue Crystal: 1,500
  • Memory Voucher: 20
  • Stamina Tonic: 12
  • Gil: 11,000
  • Grindstone Chunk: 5
  • Materia Booster (L): 8
  • Bookmark: 3
  • Chocobooster: 3
  • Title Plate: 1

The FFVII Premium Hunt's Rewards include:

Author
Arielle Haddad

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Activision Blizzard Shares Xbox Game Pass Plans, Leaves Door Open for Diablo IV on Game Pass in 2024

6 months 1 week ago

Activision Blizzard has given the first glimpse of their plans for Xbox Game Pass once the Microsoft deal has closed, saying they expect to start bringing their games to the service next year.

Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard is expected to close this Friday. Even still, in a statement on X/Twitter today, the company said not to expect titles like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Diablo IV to hit Game Pass this year.

"As we continue to work toward regulatory approval of the Microsoft deal, we’ve been getting some questions whether our upcoming and recently launched games will be available via Game Pass," says the statement. "While we do not have plans to put Modern Warfare III or Diablo IV into Game Pass this year, once the deal closes, we expect to start working with Xbox to bring our titles to more players around the world. And we anticipate that we would begin adding games into Game Pass sometime in the course of next year."

Author
Alex Stedman

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The Suika Watermelon Game Excels in Its Simplicity

6 months 1 week ago

The Suika Watermelon Game Excels in Its Simplicity

I first heard about Suiko Game (Watermelon Game in English) because of streamers. I follow a bunch of them for news-related purposes, and they’re all playing. I started with the free version, which you can play in your browser. I enjoyed it and the price for the official Switch version is right. (It’s 240円 in the Japanese eShop, which is about $1.60.) Now that I’ve (unintentionally) spent about five hours playing, I get it. It’s the simple nature and ability to go very right or very wrong in an instant that sells this gem. 

Suika Game’s premise is simple. You drop foods from above into a box. If they overflow out of the space, you lose. Making ones of the same type match transforms them into the next type in the line. So cherries are the tiniest. Two cherries combine into a strawberry. Two grapes become an orange. Two oranges become an apple. You get the idea. The “best” one is the coveted watermelon. You get points for how many you manage to make and fill the space with before they hit the line at the top, overflowing and ending the game. However, as you don’t know which fruits could show up next when you get to make a drop, it’s impossible to really plan. You need to go with the flow.

Author
Jenni Lada

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How Super Mario Bros. Wonder's Developers Created The Game's Unique Power-Ups

6 months 1 week ago

The June 2023 reveal of Super Mario Bros. Wonder was met with many excited reactions; the art direction, the music, and the new enemies all looked like fun evolutions of what fans had grown accustomed to in the New Super Mario Bros. series. However, it was the final shot of the trailer that garnered the biggest reaction, as Mario grabbed an odd-looking fruit and turned into a massive elephant version of himself. Elephant Mario, who appears larger than life on our current cover art, quickly became one of the most recognizable elements of Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

Players won't need to wait long to play as Elephant Mario, as it appears in the very first stage, Welcome to the Flower Kingdom. The Elephant Fruit emerges out of a block, and true to the trailer, Mario transforms into this new form. Though not unexpected since I've seen that reveal trailer more times than I can count, it's still somewhat jarring to watch one of the most iconic characters in pop culture undergo such a different transformation. In this form, Mario can swing his trunk to attack enemies and break bricks from the side, but he can also spray water to cause reactions like those seen in special flowers called Wow Buds that bloom and reward previously unseen items and collectibles.

Author
Brian Shea

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum devs were expected to make an ambitious triple-A game on a tenth of the budget, report claims

6 months 1 week ago

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is one of the more notable video game messes in recent years, with the Tolkien spin-off releasing earlier this year to universally negative reviews and claiming the unwanted position of being the worst game of 2023 so far on Metacritic and OpenCritic.

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Author
Matt Jarvis

Halo Infinite Season 5 Brings New Arena Maps and the Return of a Halo 4 Game Mode

6 months 1 week ago

Halo Infinite Season 5 is arriving just in time for the multiplayer's second anniversary and it's bringing a whole lot of new content and quality-of-life updates for players to sink their teeth into.

The new season, Reckoning, is bringing new maps, modes, and a new battle pass with Flood-themed cosmetics when it launches on Oct. 18.

Reckoning's biggest adds are its two Arena Maps, which are both completely new. Forbidden is a straight-forward, symmetrical map that prioritizes short and mid-range combat while Prism is set in the same mines where the Covenant harvests crystals for The Needler, one of the Halo franchise's most iconic weapons. It's also strewn with environmental hazards and old mining equipment and seems well-suited for sniping and ranged combat. IGN's Stella Chung breaks it all down in the video below.

The new mode may be more familiar to fans of previous Halo games. Extraction from Halo 4 is returning as a new PvP option. Both of Season 5's new maps are compatible with the mode, though it's unclear if Extraction will work on all Arena Maps, or only Forbidden and Prism. Firefight: King of the Hill is also coming to Season 5, though it sounds like this new PvE option isn't going to be included when the new season launches.

Releasing as Spooky Season hits a fever pitch, the cosmetics in Reckoning's battle pass are all inspired by Halo's zombie-like alien hivemind, The Flood. Dedicated players can also earn Master Chief's armor from Halo Infinite's campaign mode: The Infinite Mark VI Armor alongside some exclusive coatings.

Author
Charlie Wacholz

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Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Screenshot Compares Bottomswell Battle to Original FFVII

6 months 1 week ago

Square Enix has been sharing screenshots comparing Final Fantasy VII, which was released on PlayStation back in 1997, to the 2024 remake Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. In their latest comparison, the developer showed the massive differences between the original Bottomswell battle and the updated version players will experience in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

In the screenshot of the original release of Final Fantasy VII, the Bottomswell boss is shown floating above the shore of Under Junon while fighting against Cloud, Tifa, and Yuffie. In the 1997 version, the battle is instigated when Bottomswell attacks a young girl named Priscilla, who is playing with her aquatic friend, Mr. Dolphin. In the screenshot from FFVII Rebirth, the boss looks terrifying as every slimy scale on its body is now presented with its detailed high-definition model. The side-by-side screenshots also show the contrast between the original's turn-based battle system and the real-time action combat featured in the modern remakes.

The comparison screenshots of the Bottomswell battle can be viewed below:

[gallery columns="1" size="full" link="file" ids="990417"]

Author
Arielle Haddad

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Starfield's new patch adds FOV sliders and "performance improvements"

6 months 1 week ago

If Starfield's space travel has been getting you down because you haven't been able tilt your virtual eyeballs far enough apart, then today's your day! The sci-fi RPG's previously promised FOV sliders have arrived - along with some "performance improvements" and a bit of a quest fix - courtesy of Bethesda's latest Starfield patch.

FOV (that's field-of-view if your abbreviation list isn't up-to-date) can now, with the arrival of Starfield's 1.7.36 update, be adjusted in both first- and third-person perspective, and that comes alongside a whopping three additional bullet points in Bethesda's patch notes.

The studio is also touting improved stability for PCs using Intel Arc GPUs, and there are some nebulous "stability and performance improvements" promised for all platforms.

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Author
Matt Wales

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Say hello and welcome to our new Reviews Editor, Ed Thorn!

6 months 1 week ago

Good news, folks. Today, I'm very pleased to announce our new Reviews Editor, and it's our very own Ed Thorn! After spending two and a bit years flexing his typing arms as our senior staff writer, Ed will now be stepping up to wrangle our reviews section into bigger and better shape than ever before - or rather, he already has, as he officially took over the role at the start of October. He will henceforth be known not simply as Edders, but as the new and improved Reviews Edders, so please come and congratulate him on his ascension in the comments below.

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Author
Katharine Castle

Only a month after Starfield’s release, someone has already surveyed every planet in its universe

6 months 1 week ago

Starfield has only been out a month, and someone has already been to every planet in its universe. While Todd Howard said we’d be able to visit over 1,000 planets, the Bethesda dev actually undersold the sheer scale of Starfield’s galaxy - there are actually close to 1,700 planets, and now someone’s seen them all just weeks after launch.

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Author
Matt Jarvis

Square Enix Explains the Cover Art of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

6 months 1 week ago

Square Enix Explains the Meaning Behind Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's Cover Art

Square Enix has provided fans with a detailed explanation of the meaning behind the cover artwork of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. According to the developer, the artwork represents the "three worlds" that form the "axis" of the story in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Square Enix doesn't go into further details about what these "three worlds" actually are, but it does explain what each character on the artwork is meant to represent. Creative Director Tetsuya Nomura is credited for creating the vibrant artwork that features Cloud Strife, Sephiroth, and Zack Fair.

The social media post also explains that Sephiroth is standing in the center of the artwork, as he was the instigator of events that occurred in the past. Cloud and Zack stand on opposite sides of him, representing their destinies being "torn apart" by the antagonist.

You can see the full post from Square Enix below:

https://twitter.com/finalfantasyvii/status/1711072031058620506

Author
Arielle Haddad

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EA Sports FC 24 trumpets 11m players in first week, 1m more than FIFA 23

6 months 1 week ago

EA's long-running football series might have jettisoned the FIFA license, but the publisher's keen to let everyone know it's doing just fine without it - and has announced that this year's iteration, EA Sports FC 24, has reached 11.3m players in its first week of release.

That's compared to the 10.3m players that hopped into last year's FIFA 23 during the same period - a figure EA referred to as "record-breaking" and the "biggest launch period" in the franchise's history at the time.

EA Sports FC 24's 11.3m players would certainly suggest the series' success hasn't been hampered by the loss of the FIFA brand, then, but EA does note this year's figures include EA Play subscribers, so those numbers don't necessarily all equate to sales.

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Author
Matt Wales

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Frame-rate and resolution discourse is "getting a bit out of hand", says Alan Wake 2 dev

6 months 1 week ago

In the nicest possible way, and with the greatest of respect, Remedy's comms director Thomas Puha would like people to stop fixating on frame-rate and resolution and get on with their bloody lives. Or at least, that's my summary of his thoughts following the recent announcement on Xitter that Alan Wake 2 will have a performance mode on PS5 and Xbox Series X, allowing consoleers for whom responsiveness is a priority to eke a higher frame-rate out of a game "built from the beginning as a 30fps experience focusing on visuals and ambiance."

Puha has subsequently been chatting to press about the creation of the mode and Alan Wake 2's visuals at large. In what has become a time-honoured ceremony for any AAA game developer a month or two before release, he took a moment to observe that focussing on frame-rate vs resolution is missing the wood for the trees. (The trees in question do take a toll on Alan Wake 2's performance, but we'll get to that further down the page.)

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Author
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

New Crisis Core FFVII Trivia Explains the SOLDIER Recruitment Process

6 months 1 week ago

New Crisis Core FFVII Trivia Explains the SOLDIER Recruitment Process

Square Enix shared brand new trivia on the official Final Fantasy VII Remake social media account detailing information about how SOLDIERs get recruited during Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion. According to the developer, there are two main routes to recruit SOLDIERs for the Shinra Electric Power Company.

One pathway to being recruited into SOLDIER at Shinra is taking a public exam, which is the same test that Zack and Cloud took. The other pathway is a written exam that SOLDIER prospectives take. Even if a potential candidate can pass the written exam, what really matters is the physical fitness test. Anybody can become a SOLDIER as long as they have the physical and mental strength to withstand being exposed to Mako when injected.

You can see the full post from Square Enix below:

https://twitter.com/FFVIIR_CLOUD/status/1711305506902663501

Author
Arielle Haddad

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Top 14 Best Easter Eggs in Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 and Phantom Liberty

6 months 1 week ago

Randomly stumbling across a hidden easter egg is always a fun moment in any CD Projekt RED game. I managed to find four easter eggs organically going through Phantom Liberty, which is impressive on its own. Well, turns out there’s a whole lot more that are worth tracking down — 14 to be exact — and we’re here to break them all down with a list of 14 best easter eggs in Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 and Phantom Liberty.

Author
Matthew Carmosino

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Gritty Action RPG, ASTRA: Knights of Veda, To Be Featured During Steam Next Fest (October 9th-16th)

6 months 1 week ago

ASTRA: Knights of Veda is a brand new 2D action RPG that was just announced by publisher HYBE IM and developer FLINT will participate in this year’s Steam Next Fest from October 9-16. The story-driven title was introduced at gamescom 2023 to over 2,000 players for limited playtesting, but now a full demo will be featured for all to try during Steam’s event. While you may not have heard of HYBE and its subsidiary HYBE IM before, the company is best known as a global entertainment lifestyle company. This is their first venture into game publishing.

ASTRA: Knights of Veda is a 2D side-scroll type game with modern elements that promises engaging, real-time tactical combat against gargantuan beasts and relentless undead as well as 200 cutscenes and over 1800 gritty illustrations. The game takes place in the land of Planis where the hero king Magnus, who once saved the land from evil, has begun executing those who oppose him, plunging the Kingdom of Neejeram into chaos and destruction. To put an end to Magnus and his tyranny, his son Edward and the liberation army succeeded in their attack on Gigantfall, the capital of Neejeram. But, encroached by an unknown otherworldly power, Magnus was reborn as a gigantic Tree of Death and covered Neejeram, stealing numerous lives on the continent, including the 5th Liberation Army. To save the world from its cursed fate, The goddess Veda has chosen you as her knight. Together with other Knights of Veda, the journey across the continent begins.

To reflect these story beats, the game’s unique art style that encompasses the intricate detail with a terror-infused twist.

Author
Kenny

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12 Steam Next Fest demos to try first this October

6 months 1 week ago

The latest Steam Next Fest is upon us, bringing with it a freshly packed week of new, free demos to try until Monday October 16th. There are literally hundreds you could try installing if you were that way inclined - you can view the full list right here if you'd rather browse through it at your own leisure - but we've been playing some of these demos in advance to help make wading through its torrent of shiny new games a little bit easier. Below, you'll find 12 of our favourites so far, ranging from snazzy-looking shooters and big RTS games to neat little autobattlers, indie immersive sims and retro puzzle platformers. If you're in need of some guidance this Steam Next Fest, read on.

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Author
Katharine Castle

Got $90? Want a full-size mechanical keyboard, mouse, mousepad and grip tape from Razer?

6 months 1 week ago

Razer make some of the best gaming peripherals in the business across a wide range of categories, and now you can take home a whole set of them for 90 bucks over at Woot.

The "Heroic Bundle V2" includes a mechanical keyboard, mouse, grip tape for the mouse and mousepad, offering a 40% reduction on buying these items separately. That's an awesome deal and well worth considering - the only peripheral you'd really need to add is a headset!

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Author
Will Judd

Assassin's Creed Mirage special move looks busted on purpose

6 months 1 week ago

Ubisoft's new Assassin's Creed entry is all about stealth and subtlety, but main character Basim still gets a ridiculous special move.

It's called Assassin's Focus, and it allows you to freeze time and paint a reticule over multiple enemies to teleport between them all and murder them in quick succession. It's like Red Dead Redemption's Quickdraw mode, except you're physically knifing people in the neck with every bullet.

At the beginning of Assassin's Creed Mirage, you can only pull off this effect with two enemies at a time, but with further upgrades you're able to expand this effect to quickly end a whole group of foes at once.

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Author
Tom Phillips

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DF Weekly: Is AMD's FSR 3 frame generation actually useful for consoles?

6 months 1 week ago

The latest edition of DF Direct Weekly arrives today, discussing Red Dead Redemption's 60fps upgrade for PlayStation 5 consoles, plus controversy surrounding Microsoft's Forza Motorsport presentation - where debut media features ray tracing effects considerably more impressive than the shipping game's. We also follow up on our recent coverage on AMD's FSR 3 frame generation by seeing just how effective the technology is on console-equivalent hardware in the wake of Ascendant Studios suggesting that they're looking into its application for Immortals of Aveum.

We're on the record in expressing some degree of caution about frame generation on consoles, for all the reasons stated here. Essentially, frame generation has a computational cost of its own, so even if you have a game running at a rock-solid 60 frames per second, there's no guarantee whatsoever that your frame-rate is amplified to 120fps. The same thing applies when considering a 60fps upgrade from 30fps, of course. On top of that, there are latency concerns (input lag will be worse) plus the issues we saw with frame-pacing in our first look.

Author
Richard Leadbetter

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Latest Starfield Update Lets You See More of the Universe

6 months 1 week ago

The latest patch has just been released for Starfield, delivering a handful of minor tweaks to Bethesda’s universe-spanning RPG. Chief among the update’s additions is a Field of View slider, allowing you to see more of the game’s worlds than ever before.

As much as FOV sliders can offer players the opportunity to view a little more of the world around them, it’s also an important accessibility feature. Users on Reddit have been asking for their addition since the game launched, as they suffer from motion sickness when playing games with narrow FOVs.

Author
James Crosby

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Your girlfriend is burying you alive - what are you going to do about it?

6 months 1 week ago

I do love a game that tells you upfront what it's about while making nary a lick of sense, and visual novel Stop Burying Me Alive, Beautiful is certainly that. You are, indeed, being buried alive. The person burying you is your girlfriend, who waves aside your protests that you aren't dead yet, pointing out that this is exactly what a dead person would say if they were trying to avoid being buried. Can't fault the logic.

Click the downward arrow below the animated image of your girlfriend burying you alive and you'll discover a murky fungal blackscreen where cartoon rats periodically try to eat you, unless you click to get rid of them. Below that, there's a kind of Alice in Wonderland-style alcove in which a tousled lady with a rat on her shoulder reassures you that being buried alive ain't so bad. As she points out, "underground is like, the only place to escape capitalism, plus it's nice and cool". Again, I can't fault the logic. Then she offers to play cards with you. The cards in question have rats doodled on them, including a wonderfully festive rodent Joker. There is passing mention of a "rat god".

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Author
Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Game Reviews and The Impossible Problem of Bugs

6 months 1 week ago

When I reviewed Star Wars Jedi: Survivor back in April, I gave it a 9 after playing through its campaign on PlayStation 5 without major issues… only to wake up the next day to hear horror stories of the PC version performing terribly. (This gave me flashbacks to when the same thing happened with Batman: Arkham Knight in 2015). The same month, Luke Reilly had to hit Redfall hard in his review with a score of 4 after numerous bugs drained the lifeblood out of what was already not a great time. At a glance, this certainly could give the appearance of reviewers being inconsistent: why does one game with a reputation for bugs get raked over the coals while another “gets a pass?” Like so many other things it’s not nearly that simple, and to a large extent there is no one-size-fits-all solution for game critics to employ when it comes to something as notoriously slippery as bugs – but we do our best anyway.

There’s never been a game that doesn’t have bugs of some sort, but they’ve become an even hotter topic of discussion in the extraordinary gaming year of 2023. We’ve seen troubled launches of the likes of Redfall, Jedi: Survivor, and Baldur’s Gate 3, which – underneath the near-universal praise – has sparked a conversation about how many bugs are acceptable in highly ambitious games.

Author
Dan Stapleton

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