If you’ve been thinking about upgrading your PC with some new RAM recently, then you can currently get an [cms-block]-approved 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX kit clocked at a very agreeable 3600MHz for just $60 over at Newegg at the moment, which is the cheapest this set has ever been.
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to become a very tiny child forced to survive in the jungle that is your own back garden, well, today is your day. Obsidian’s Honey I Shrunk The Kids-like, Grounded, releases in early access at around 6pm BST, inviting you to make spears out of twigs and create armour from the carcasses of your buggy foes. I mean buggy as in, you will have to fight bugs – though it is in early access, so I suppose you could be fighting the other kinds of bugs, too.
Pokémon Go developer Niantic has doubled its donation to Black Lives Matter charities and initiatives, from a minimum of $5m up to a final total of $10m.
The studio previously said it would donate all of its own proceeds from last weekend's Go Fest 2020 event to US nonprofit organisations helping Black communities rebuild, and to support Black developers creating projects using its own games platform. The Pokémon Company subsequently said it would match that $5m minimum pledge.
Niantic has not announced a final number of Go Fest 2020 tickets sold (though a week before the event, it had shifted more than a million). Instead, it stated "millions of people took part in the ticketed experience" from 124 different countries and regions.
Here's the TL;DR on this one upfront because the one-sentence summary is so ridiculous that it deserves to be front and center: Ubisoft hired Dragon Age's creative director to make a new fantasy game, and then canceled it because an executive didn't like fantasy games.
In a report from Bloomberg, we learn that Ubisoft had a King Arthur-themed project in the works at Ubisoft Quebec which was the lead development studio on Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Ubisoft had hired Mike Laidlaw from BioWare to head up the project; Laidlaw has cachet to his name, as he was credited as lead designer on Dragon Age and its sequel before serving as creative director on Dragon Age: Inquisition. Internally, the game was codenamed "Avalon."
Ubisoft was gunning for an interesting market with Avalon. It was structured as a cooperative multiplayer action RPG akin to Monster Hunter. It's easy to imagine how Assassin's Creed Odyssey's core combat infrastructure could be adapted and expanded into something that fits the Monster Hunter mold.
However, it was all for naught. Laidlaw left Ubisoft in early 2019 and the project was canceled shortly thereafter. Reportedly, Ubisoft chief creative officer Serge Hascoët hated the fantasy setting and had ridiculous mandates that it be "better than Tolkien." Suddenly, this Round Table fable "full of knights and legends" had to pump the brakes to appease one executive. The development team tried shifting to a new setting to no avail.
Slowly but surely, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is adding in the features fans fell for in previous entries of the franchise. A few weeks ago, swimming and deep-sea diving were added in the first of two promised summer updates. Only July 30, the second update will drop, adding weekly fireworks shows to your island and the ability to visit distant lands when you sleep.
Last weekend's so-called gigaleak of Nintendo data continues to turn up treasure - and now fans have been poring over cut content from N64 Legend of Zelda games Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask.
As rounded up by Switcher, the leaked source code for Ocarina of Time apparently includes a set of unused dungeon rooms which appear to be from a kind of boss rush mode.
The code also includes bits of map which ended up in Majora's Mask, labelled as "64DD". This likely refers to Ocarina's planned expansion for Nintendo's disc-based 64DD expansion unit, which only released in Japan and was scrapped after a year.
Mums, eh? Can’t live with ‘em, literally can’t live without ‘em. Sadly, some take this as a certificate of ownership, allowing them to subject their offspring to the worst things imaginable, like offering them as a guinea pig to a class of trainee hairdressers. A perfect storm of nerves and scissors. Sorry, I should probably keep this for therapy. The point I’m getting to (ignoring the ones jammed into my 11-year-old head) is that whatever their faults, no mother has anything on Othercide’s matriarch, birthing an army of warrior daughters to fight a flood of meat monsters. No thermal spa voucher for her next Christmas.
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Factorio mods
have been around almost as long as the game itself – and for good reason. While already an enormous and startlingly polished game, introducing the right mods into the fold will not only expand the game with tonnes of new features to discover and master, but also simultaneously improve the base game experience with dozens of quality of life improvements.
Keep reading for our list of the very best Factorio mods out there, along with instructions on how to get started downloading mods of all shapes and sizes to augment your game.
Hollywood superstar Brie Larson has once again expressed her desire to don the famous power armour of Samus Aran, should Nintendo ever see fit to producing a movie based on beloved sci-fi franchise Metroid.
The Captain Marvel star reiterated her hopes of playing the legendary bounty hunter in a recent interview on Gary Whitta's quirky Animal Talking show, where the host interviews stars within a virtual Animal Crossing-style TV studio. When asked about the potential role, Larson enthusiastically responded.
"I would love that so much," said Larson. "I was Samus for Halloween two years ago… It was literally a $20 costume I bought off of Amazon... I was so excited about it, and so I posted a picture of it on Instagram of me and the costume and it turned into this thing of people being like 'woah!' [Samus] was always my character that I played in Super Smash Bros. and I just loved her. So that whole thing started and I’ve definitely not put a squash to that story and I definitely want to make that movie... So, Nintendo, once again, I would love to do it!"
Wagashi (和菓子) are traditional Japanese sweets made with mochi and sweet fillings to be enjoyed with tea. This week, Dragon Ball themed confections are going on sale at Family Marts across Japan.
[Update: Today on Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest stream, Studio MDHR's Maja Moldenhauer confirmed that Cuphead will hit PS4 today. The Delicious Last Course DLC will eventually launch on "all platforms day one." You can read more about Cuphead's PS4 release on the PlayStation Blog.]
"Leak" might be an especially-fitting term when discussing a game about cups that are full of liquid. Or, maybe that's overthinking it and we should just relish an incredible indie game finally arriving on its final major platform.
An international PlayStation Store listing has popped up that outs a PS4 port of Cuphead. Coupled with that -- err, "cuppled?" -- is a tease from Geoff Keighley that promotes "a special update from one of our favorite indie game studios."
A wild mix of PS4 and Xbox One games are available at some ridiculously low prices thanks to an impromptu clearance sale at Asda and Amazon UK.
Looking at this morning's flurry of activity over at Hotukdeals, Amazon appears to be price-matching Asda on a number of console games that have been reduced by the supermarket both in-store and online. Naturally, the online stock has vanished in seconds, but Amazon is still showing wide availability for most of them.
The prices on some of these are quite absurd - with some like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered and State of Decay 2 dropping to as low as £5 - so I don't expect them to stick around for long. Assassin's Creed Origins is supposedly £2.50 at Asda, but your mileage may vary depending on stock at your nearest store.
The next Tetris 99 Maximus Cup event will feature Paper Mario: The Origami King - and another exclusive theme for the puzzle game.
This event - the game's 15th special tournament - will kick off on Friday, 31st July and run until 3rd August.
As ever, playing Tetris 99 during these times will net you reward points. The better you do, the more points you'll get. Earn 100 points - likely an hour or so if you're average like me - and you'll get the Paper Mario: The Origami King theme to keep.
It's almost like I felt a wave of collective "oh nos" this morning as everyone on the internet rushed to check their PSPs.
As pointed out by IT Media, cases of PSP owners reporting that their cases are bursting open due to battery expansion has been surging these past few weeks. I went and checked mine right away (a slim and a regular): you'll note the 3.6v 1200mAh battery on the former and the 3.6v 1800mAh on the latter (which is a snug fit). Take a gander at the pictures linked in the previous passage in case you need help locating your battery. Here is a picture of a battery gone horribly wrong.
Now, this is not out of sorts for lithium-based batteries. I've experienced this before with legacy phones and wireless headsets. But it's a good reminder nonetheless to check your stash and make sure everything is good to go. Sony has provided a statement to IT Media, noting that people should "refrain from using [the system] when the battery has experienced swelling," and to not game with the battery cover off. Ensure that you dispose of it properly.
This weekend on Japanese Twitter, “PSP バッテリー” (PSP battery) started trending. Owners of the Sony handheld began noticing that the batteries were swelling up, and in some cases bursting open.
Disgaea RPG by ForwardWorks and Nippon Ichi Software is getting a PC release via DMM Games this summer in Japan.
The post Disgaea RPG is Headed to PC via DMM Games This Summer in Japan appeared first on Siliconera.
How does Sony sell people on one of the most wildly successful PlayStation exclusives featuring one of the most wildly famous and iconic comic book heroes? By confusing them! Very thematic! Just like Mysterio.
We already suffered from mixed messaging when Sony appeared to debut Spider-Man: Miles Morales as a full sequel; then had to very quickly walk everything back. Now, it seems as if they may have undersold the game out of the gate. According to a writeup in Game Informer magazine (as spotted by Reddit member 77good123), Miles Morales will include a "remastered version of Insomniac's Spider-Man [PS4] that takes full advantage of the PS5 hardware." Record scratch: whaaaaat.
While a lot of people assumed this was coming (Sony touted a Spider-Man remaster as one of the first PS5 tech demos), it's strange that this wouldn't be the upfront message right inside of the showcase it was presented in. Insomniac has clarified that Miles Morales is a standalone game, but that doesn't prevent it from being bundled with a separate remaster.
We've reached out to Sony for clarification on the matter, because anything is possible with this game. At this point we are treating it as a rumor.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales [Game Informer via Reddit]
1sland moves slowly out of the fog and surf, a dreamy sort of game that has had me in a dreamy sort of spell these last few days. It sells itself as a "paddle royale", but any sense of violence or even urgency is swept away by playing it. Water laps at the hull of your little boat, ice dissolves quietly on impact. "Good morning," the game tells me when I first check in each day, soothing, like the greeting on arrival at a spa.
This is a competition, though it's one I don't take in an enormously competitive spirit. Your mission in 1sland - everyone's mission - is to find the island that lurks somewhere in a vast ocean. You see this ocean from above, as much of it - not much - as will fit on the phone screen that's centered high over your little boat. The first to find the island gets big points. Everyone else gets...smaller points, I guess. But it's not the points anyway - it's the simple lure of being told there's an island out there.
You use flares to track it down. One kind tells you how far away you are from the island. Another tells you which rough direction it lies in. A third allows you to place a buoy that will help you in getting a sense of how far you've travelled. Using these three bits of information, and spending in-game currency to buy new flares when you need 'em, you're off on a leisurely quest. Along the way the sun rises and sets and the sea changes colour. Visibility draws in at night, icebergs cluster in certain parts of the sea, and there's always someone else's boat to drift past.
Back in June, Niantic CEO John Hanke announced that his company would be donating $5m USD in revenue to support a range of black gaming initiatives, projects and communities. However, Pokémon GO Fest 2020 - held on Niantic's AR title this past weekend - proved such a huge success that the company will now double its donation to $10m.
Pokémon GO Fest usually sees players from around the world gather together for a physical weekend of fun and critter-hunting, but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic forced the annual event to go all-digital this year. However, as reported by Eurogamer, this did not discourage would-be trainers, as "millions" of players from over 120 countries spent an astounding $25 million in-game during the weekend of July 24-26. These numbers boost Pokémon GO's yearly revenue to around $540m, with its global lifetime revenue reaching $3.7bn.
While Niantic is yet to state specifically how the $10m donation is to be divided, it had previously said that half of the money would go toward funding black gaming projects and creators that can live on the Niantic platform, while the remaining half would be spent on supporting local black communities and businesses. In addition, Niantic has made a donation to the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, an organisation dedicated to protecting and defending the rights of black trans people. Niantic is also in the process of creating a new training programme to better educate its employees in combating systemic racism.
Look, we’ve not got time for life histories here. If you’ve read anything of mine on this site or elsewhere, you’ll know full well I really like, y’know, fish and that. Sea Geezers. Damp Daniels. The Wet Squad. Call them what you will, I’m into them. I subscribe to Practical Fishkeeping magazine. My office at home has ten fish tanks in it. If you weren’t aware this was my thing, you are now. So you can imagine how keen I’d be on the prospect of a proper aquarium management game. Now admittedly, Megaquarium is not my ideal aquarium game. But since that would be a game so hideously in-depth and dry that it would probably sell about eight copies, all to me, I feel it’s a decent compromise with the appetites of reasonable humans.
CrossCode has been on PC for a while now but it only recently made its way over to the Nintendo Switch this month, and it’s still just as good as you remember it… but with a few hiccups along the way. While the game was very much playable at launch, there were a few annoying issues such as slow load times when opening menus, menu crashes, as well as performance issues while exploring the world.
Thankfully, Deck13 has just pushed out a patch for CrossCode on Switch, and most of these issues have been addressed.
Here are the fixes included in the patch, which is already live at the time of writing:
The menu issues were definitely the biggest hiccup with the Switch launch, but with this patch, it’s finally no longer a problem. CrossCode is now available on the Nintendo Switch.
The first trailer for the upcoming Monster Rancher 2 port shows some of its +400 monster species that you'll raise and battle.
The post Monster Rancher 2 Trailer Gives Us a Look at the Enhanced Port for Switch and Smartphones appeared first on Siliconera.
Today Sega released a brand new AC Scratch collection for the English version of its MMORPG Phantasy Star Online 2.
The collection is titled “Seaside Vacation” and it includes plenty of summer wear including bikinis, swimsuits, and more exotic outfits, on top of emotes and other goodies.
It launches tomorrow (July 29) at 12:00 am PDT and ends on August 25.
If you’re unfamiliar with AC Scratch, that’s basically the game’s loot box-like mechanic that you can get through tickets purchased with Arks Cash.
You can check out a trailer below and read the official blog post for a full list of the items.
Phantasy Star Online 2 is currently available in the west for Xbox One and PC for Windows 10. More PC platforms have been promised with a recent trailer.
MinJi K Yoon is an artist at Powerhouse, an animation studio that has worked on games like The Banner Saga and Mortal Kombat.
Nintendo of America has announced tonight that the 15th Tetris 99 Maximus Cup will be centered around their latest game, Paper Mario: The Origami King.
Like in all previous Maximus Cup competitions, earning 100 event points in this event will reward you with a special in-game theme that you can use while playing Tetris 99. This time, the theme is all about Paper Mario: The Origami King.
If you’ve never heard of Tetris 99, it is a take on the original game of Tetris in which players face against 98 other opponents and play until only one person remains. There are added features to make it more interesting, though, such as attacking opponents to make it harder for them.
Points in the Maximus Cup are awarded based on how well players rank in each battle: 1st place receives 100 points, 2nd place receives 50 points, 3rd place receives 30 points, 4th-10th place receives 20 points, 11th-30th place receives 15 points, 31st-50th place receives 10 points, 51st-90th place receives 5 points, and 91st-99th place receives 1 point.
The game Tetris 99 is exclusive to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers, so you must have an active online membership in order to download and play the game. The physical copy of the game comes with a 12-month online membership.
The 15th Maximus Cup will begin on July 31 at 12:00 a.m. PT and will end on Aug. 3 at 11:59 p.m. PT.
If you’re interested in competing to try and win the in-game theme, you can read about the rules and guidelines on Nintendo’s website.
Today’s selection of articles from Kotaku’s reader-run community: An Introduction To Webcomics • Future’s Favorites: Nintendo DS Edition • TAY Retro: Nintendo Entertainment System - Super Glove Ball (free with Power Glove) [TV Commercial, NA]
I’m not going to mince words: Daigo Umehara is the greatest fighting game player of all time. His legacy added a new footnote over the weekend when he dominated a stacked Street Fighter V tournament. And it’s strange that folks still managed to be shocked by the results.
This week, a whole slew of games release in Japan, like Gundam Extreme Vs. Maxiboost ON, Fairy Tail, and Root Film.
The post This Week In Imports: Gundam, Fairy Tail, and Root Film appeared first on Siliconera.
The other day, my partner and I were discussing time travel, and I brought up recent science surrounding the multiverse theory—that it’s mathematically possible for multiple (though not necessarily infinite) branching universes to exist, and time travel would merely cause us to move between them, sans paradoxes. I…
These big Nintendo leaks aren’t just for curiosity’s sake; there’s a real practical element to them as well, like the fact modders have been able to find lost and unused enemies in titles like Super Mario 64 and get them back in the game.
A time traveler called John Titor surfaced on Twitter to enlist people's help to stop WWIII... and it seems it may be connected to Steins;Gate?
The post Steins;Gate’s John Titor Appears on Twitter for a Mysterious Teaser appeared first on Siliconera.
The internet was recently set ablaze by a dump of Nintendo assets known as the “Gigaleak.” This batch includes incredible finds, like early Yoshi prototypes and even Luigi files in Super Mario 64. But my favorite part has been hearing the Star Fox 64 cast speak with crystal-clear clarity via new digital audio files.
Impulse Gear is looking for an experienced Art Director with a thorough understanding of video game development and production pipelines ...
Rabbit & Bear Studios’ JRPG Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes has just passed its stretch goal set at $1,000,0000 on Kickstarter, and it’s a rather important one.
Following the stretch goal that unlocked the “Fortress Mode” at $750,000, this one promises backers a console release for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and a potential next-gen successor of the Nintendo Switch.
These platforms are, of course, in addition to the initially-confirmed PC version.
Following the launch of the Kickstarter campaign earlier today, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes achieved its primary funding goal in about two hours.
This shouldn’t be too surprising considering that it brings back together Suikoden creators Yoshitaka Murayama and Junko Kawano, and appears to be a spiritual successor of the popular franchise.
Speaking of stretch goals, two more have been revealed. At $1.25 million, the game will include a cooking minigame. $1.5 million will unlock the New Game Plus.
If you’re wondering what the developers mean by a possible next-gen console by Nintendo, you can read their full statement on platforms below.
Code, assets, and other files for a number of famous Nintendo games like Mario Kart, Star Fox, and The Legend of Zelda has leaked online in what†s being called the 'Gigaleak.' ...
So the Xbox One†s pre-release demo event is currently running, and hopefully some of you have checked it out - here's a run-down and analysis (alongside other game discovery news.) ...
