Pro-democracy activists in Thailand have been calling for the government’s dissolution. They’ve even roped in the cute Japanese character Hamtaro to help out.
— تسريبات FIFA21 (@FIFA21Betaa) July 25, 2020The footage shows off an updated, purple-hued UI for this year's instalment, which is comparable to the colours used in the official FIFA 21 Twitter branding.
This weekend, images surfaced online from gaming-friendly snack brand Doritos, offering further confirmation that this year's Call of Duty entry will be Black Ops: Cold War.
The unverified photos, posted on dedicated CoD fan community ModernWarzone, seem to show a tie-in campaign set for the next release in Activision's blockbuster franchise. Pictured is the supposed logo for the new game, along with the novel competition prize of "Double XP for a year," truly a reward for the modern day if ever there was one.
This Doritos campaign further turns the "Cold War" rumour mill. Back in May, sneaky hackers were able to access locked assets within battle royale sister title Warzone, finding vintage spyplanes and nuclear weapon iconography, suggesting that Black Ops' time-hopping narrative will indeed focus on this frightening conflict of unease and distrust.
Given that we're heading into August, it feels like this year's Call of Duty release should have already been officially showcased. Perhaps the collapse of E3 set Activision on a new road, and we'll see the next entry make its grand appearance during Gamescom instead.
CoD Black Ops Cold War revealed through Doritos promo [ModernWarzone / Eurogamer]
For years I've been following the Mega Man film (over three now!), waiting and hoping that something will come of it: just on principle, regardless of quality. Annually, someone usually comes out and says "it's still alive!" and now we have our fill for 2020.
Speaking to IGN, co-directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman promise that a new writer is now onboard (Mattson Tomlin - Project Power) and that the project is still moving forward. The team is apparently "super excited" about the addition, and they "think [they're] going to have some big news" regarding the movie soon. This is it! No takesies-backsies. Maybe.
I hope it's as endearing as the Sonic film was: though of course, there was plenty of room for improvement there. Given that the directors are "fascinated by robotics and the future of automation," there's a chance it could have some heavy themes.
Mega Man Live-Action Film Is Still Happening and 'Big News' Is Coming Soon [IGN]
Track: Sweet Caroline | Artist: Neil Diamond | Album: Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show | Mood: UTV
Every so often I come across a piece of art that makes my jaw drop: and this mural from artist fro_yla did the trick.
For those of you who haven't dug into the latest Paper Mario game yet, this piece is of King Olly: the game's main antagonist that wants to turn everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom into origami beings in his image. The artist says it took roughly an hour and a half to complete.
Before anyone pipes up about the technicalities of tagging (yawn): this wall was declared a community canvas, otherwise known as a "free wall." For reference, it's the Bremerton, Washington Manette graffiti wall: fro_yla says that it's a Pokestop!
If you dig this, check out the rest of fro_yla's powerful and impactful work here on Instagram. They've also done Origami Princess Peach!
Today Koei Tecmo announced its financial results for the first quarter of the fiscal year 2020, related to the period between April 1 and June 30, 2020.
As you can see in the table below, the figures are extremely positive, driven by the Entertainment business, which includes games.
Entertainment sales grew 68.2% year-on-year, while profit grew a massive 484.7%. This is, of course, due to the increased popularity of entertainment products due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a surprising announcement, it appears that '00s TV gaming channel G4 is getting ready to make a comeback in 2021, following a teaser trailer broadcast during this weekend's Comic-Con@Home digital event.
The short clip - which you can check out below, courtesy of IGN - sees a camera pick its way through an abandoned warehouse, filled with gaming paraphernalia old and new, along with references to classic G4 shows, hosts, and running gags. A quiet game of Pong is then interrupted by an "Incoming Transmission," followed by the G4 logo and the simple statement "We Never Stopped Playing." The G4TV Twitter has also been reactivated.
Today several Japanese fighting game publishers and developers announced a dedicated livestream coming soon via press release.
The broadcast, titled Japan Fighting Game Publishers Roundtable does exactly what it says on the tin.
The program will star Arc System Works’ Daisuke Ishiwatari and Kazutoshi Sekine, Arika’s Ryo Nishitani, SNK’s Yasuyuki Oda and Nobuyuki Kuroki, Capcom’s Shuhei Matsumoto and Takayuki Nakayama, Koei Tecmo’s Yohei Shimbori, and Bandai Namco’s Katsuhiro Harada and Motohiro Ookubo.
The developers involved will talk about a variety of topics involving the fighting game industry and provide the latest information about their games.
The livestream will air on August 1 at 9:00 am Japan time.
It will be hosted simultaneously on the YouTube channels of the developers and published involved, and below you can find one of the embeds if you want to watch it live.
We’re likely to hear more about games like Guilty Gear -Strive-, Tekken 7, SoulCalibur VI, Fighting EX Layer, Samurai Shodown, Street Fighter V, and more.
I have misplaced the book - I can at least tell you it's called Two Girls, One on Each Knee and it's by Alan Connor and it's wonderful - but I remember reading that a newspaper (I think the Telegraph) at one point (I think it was the 1990s) tried to meddle with the way Cryptic crosswords got made.
Crucially, they tried to meddle with the authorship. Real humans would still set the individual clues, but then computers would step in and build the clues into complete puzzle grids. If you're not into Cryptics, you're probably like: so what? But people who were into Cryptics were very much not: so what. They were very much: what.
Cryptic crosswords are the crosswords that have the really confusing clues. Here's a favourite. You, 500 (4). That four means the answer has four letters in it. The other bit is the clue, which with a good Cryptic such as this one should contain a literal definition of the answer and also a bit of wordplay designed to help you to the answer. You solve Cryptics in kind of a pincer movement. I actually solved You, 500 (4) myself when I first saw it (well, after about twenty minutes of getting grumpy), and it was one of the highlights of my life. The answer is "thou". "You" literally means thou. And "500" is half of a thousand, just as half of a thousand is also...thou.
Pathfinder is one of the more popular characters in Apex Legends and he recently got a new dive animation at the start of matches. And if that animation looks uncannily familiar to you, it’s probably because you’ve watched The Wizard of Oz and you’re familiar with the Tin Man’s dance.
Reddit user NitroThunderBird posted a clip of Pathfinder’s dive animation, showing him off doing a little dance, directly contrasted with the iconic Tin Man dance from the 1939 movie.
Where Pathfinder’s most recent dive animation comes from! from r/apexlegends
It’s a pretty nice throwback to the movie, and it’s also fitting that Apex Legends’ popular robot character would be the one to get the Tin Man animation as well.
Apex Legends is now available as a free-to-play battle royale game on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC.
The post If Pathfinder’s New Dive Animation in Apex Legends Looks Familiar to You, Here’s Why appeared first on Twinfinite.
It was teased for a fall release just last month, but now we finally have a solid release date for the official Kingdom Hearts III soundtrack. Announced via Square Enix Japan’s Twitter account, the soundtrack will be available worldwide on Nov. 11 of this year.
In addition, the digital version will be released on the same day as well, with more details to follow at a later date.
It’s worth noting that at the moment, it doesn’t seem like you can purchase the Kingdom Hearts III soundtrack on its own. It’ll be released as part of a set along with the soundtracks of Kingdom Hearts 2.8, Unchained x, and Union x as well.
As we inch ever closer to the official launch of Cyberpunk 2077, fans are getting restless with hype for this game, and that’s led to some pretty amazing fan-made creations as well. One such example if the Nightcity Cyber Boy, a Cyberpunk 2077-themed Nintendo Game Boy by Tomek Dittrich, as part of his new Blender project.
With the San Diego Comic-Con cancelled (at least in person) for 2020, one of the best cosplay events on the planet ended up being cancelled along with it. Bummer. To help remember a time when people could get together in crowds and dress up, then, here’s a retrospective of the last few year’s worth of Comic-Con…
First off, do be warned that this article does contain major spoilers for the ending of The Last of Us Part II, so if you haven’t finished the game, you might want to look away now.
The ending of the game has been divisive and controversial to say the least, with fans either loving or hating it, and even wondering what the point of the game’s final boss fight was. There are a few interpretations for that final fight –we’ve tried to dissect it ourselves– but in a spoiler-filled interview with Eurogamer, director Neil Druckmann explains his thought process behind the construction of that fight and definitely helps to clear up a lot of things.
In the interview, Druckmann explains the purpose of both Ellie and Abby’s journeys. Ellie’s journey was one of revenge, where she was actively seeking out Joel’s killers so that she could get her revenge on them, hoping that it would finally fill the void that’s been left inside her. She builds up this idea in her head about how her final confrontation with Abby would be like, and it’s nothing like what she imagined, as she realizes that revenge wouldn’t solve anything –it wouldn’t bring Joel back, it’s pointless.
On the flip side, Abby’s journey is one of redemption. She’s the opposite of Ellie, she’s someone who actually did manage to get her revenge but quickly realizes that it’s hollow as well. She then spends her time in the game trying to help these two young people from an opposing faction get to safety.
By the time we reach the final fight in The Last of Us Part II, we’re meant to root for both characters at the same time. We want Ellie to realize the pointlessness of her quest for revenge, and we want Abby to make it out okay now that she’s rediscovered her purpose in life.
Doom is famous for running on everything from graphing calculators to ATMs, so I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising to see it playable here inside another video game, especially since that game is Minecraft.
One of the longest-running and most interesting stories of 2020 has been the slow emergence of a ton of confidential, historic data contained within some big Nintendo leaks. Another round of stuff originating from this data spill landed over the weekend, and it covers everything from Super Mario 64 to Star Fox 2 to …
The physical video games sales charts by Gfk for last week in the United Kingdom have confirmed the primacy of Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima.
According to the report by Gamesindustry, the recently-launched game held the first place in the weekly chart after debuting at the top last week.
While sales dropped by 68%, which is usual for an AAA game on its second week on the shelves, it wasn’t enough for Animal Crossing: New Horizons to catch up.
Speaking of Animal Crossing, it remains fairly stable in sales, having lost only 8% week-on-week.
F1 2020also remained stable in third place, while Paper Mario: The Origami King dropped from 2nd to 4th place, also dropping 64% in sales week-on-week.
You can check out the full top 10 below.
Nintendo leaks have appeared once again, this time with data from games like Super Mario 64 and Pokemon Diamond and Pearl.
The post Third Round of Nintendo Leaks Involve Super Mario 64 and Pokemon Beta Data appeared first on Siliconera.
Kaze Emanuar, who we normally post about thanks to his astounding work modding Mario games, has with the help of some friends only gone and made an all-new Legend of Zelda game.
The "legendary kusoge" Hoshi wo Miru Hito will release on the Nintendo Switch on July 30, 2020, letting more people experience this “classic.”
The post Legendary Kusoge Hoshi wo Miru Hito Will Come to the Switch on July 30 appeared first on Siliconera.
With the popularity of Fate/Grand Order, it shouldn’t be surprising that there are figures portraying its characters fitting pretty much every wallet size.
A new one portraying Nero Claudius in her bikini has been made available for pre-order by Our Treasure.
You can find it on Ami Ami priced at 4,930 yen, which translates approximately into $46.
The price will likely reveal that there is a catch, as this is an assembly figure kit. It requires assembly and possibly painting before you display in on your shelf.
That being said, this kind of kit is a lot simpler to put together (and cheaper) than the more high-end resin model kits.
Nero’s head and sword are painted and pre-assembled, while the rest is a multicolor mold kit.
The scale is a relatively small 1/8, measuring 14 cm in height even due to the kneeling position.
The prototype was sculpted by Hiroki Hayashi and painted by Sakura.
You can see what she looks like in the gallery below.
Speaking of the Fate series, a remake of Fate/Extra (which also heavily features Nero Claudius) for modern platforms has recently been announced by Type-Moon.
Azur Lane publisher Yostar revealed what players on the English servers can expect with next week’s maintenance.
First of all, we will get “Strive, Wish, and Strategize” added to the War Archives, even if this one won’t bring back any shipgirl since its rewards are already included in the standard construction.
“Back to School” will also make a comeback, providing players with a chance to unlock Craven’s skin “Cheerleader On The Playground.”
PR1 Rookie Missions will also become repeatable (at least once), which means there are now more chances to get get data packs to complete your PR1 shipgirl collection.
Last, but not least, the pre-event”Nocturne Before Nightfall” will serve as a prelude for “Aurora Noctis,” which has already been released in Japan and China.
PUBG Corporation released a new trailer of its popular battle royale game PUBG, a.k.a. Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds if you like mouthful titles.
The trailer focuses on a new challenge that are included in the Sanhok map with Season 8, which already launched on PC and will come soon on consoles.
Armored loot trucks spawn from four different garages on the island and then roam the roads. Damaging and taking them down can yield level 3 loot and even uniquely skinned weapons.
You can check out what they look like and how they work in the video below.
PUBG is currently available for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia.
Season 8 released on PC a few days ago, while consoles will receive the update on July 30.
Here’s how the new season is officially described by the developer.
“Our classic tropical island is now overgrown and long abandoned, with locations and assets that have been reworked from the ground up for fun, balance, and performance.
Check out new locations and hidden secrets as you plan your ambush for the new Loot Truck, a behemoth of a vehicle that travels the map, transporting a king’s cache of loot.
2K Games is showing off the courses that players will be able to play on in the upcoming PGA Tour 2K21.
We get to see five trailers each giving a brief overview of a different course, including East Lake Golf Club, TPC Sawgrass, TPC Scottsdale, TPC Twin Cities, Riviera Country Club, TPC Boston, TPC Louisiana, TPC San Antonio, and TPC Southwind.
You can check them all out below.
Sega and Amplitude released a new video of their upcoming 4X simulation game Humankind.
The video is narrated by executive producer Jean-Maxime Moris and Narrative Director Jeff Spock, as they talk about Civics, Ideologies, and narrative event.
Those three factors will basically shape your society organically through each playthrough, and due to the fact that narrative events are closely tied to the situation, you may end up having completely different runs.
You can check the video out below.
Humankind has been announced only for PC and will come in 2020.
If you’re unfamiliar with the game, here’s an official description. You can also read my own preview.
“HUMANKIND is Amplitude Studios’ magnum opus, a Historical Turn-Based Strategy game where YOU will re-write the entire narrative of humankind – a convergence of culture, history, and values that allows you to create a civilization that is as unique as you are.
Create your own civilization by combining 60 historical cultures from the Bronze to the Modern Age.
Begin as Ancient Egypt, then evolve into the Romans, the Khmers, or perhaps the Vikings.
Ooblets lets you start making friends even in its early access phase. Doing so isn't terribly challenging and can be quite rewarding.
The post Ooblets Friendships Can Happen Rather Easily appeared first on Siliconera.
The second series of the hugely successful live-action The Witcher show on Netflix is the latest project delayed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Redanian Intelligence - a site dedicated to news about Netflix's The Witcher series - filming for the second series is expected to commence again on 7th August, 2020. If true, this will see filming start around the same time it was, pre-pandemic, expected to finish, and pushes the end of filming to around February 2021 (thanks, Comic Book). This inevitably impacts on The Witcher's originally anticipated release window which - if it aligned with the first season that debuted in December 2019 - might have been initially slated to debut at the end of 2020.
The show did manage to secure five weeks of filming before the pandemic halted activities, however, and now series leads Henry Cavill and Freya Allan are rumoured to already be back on-site at Arborfield Studios, preparing to restart shooting next month.
[There are some corners of the world where the video game development scene isn’t spotlighted quite as well as others, and that’s a shame. There’s so much cool stuff being put out into the universe from really unexpected places that we don’t hear about nearly enough. Community member Nior is here to tell us about a game called Dandara, which was created in their home country of Brazil, and why it means so much to them to see their culture represented in this industry. - Kevin]
The Brazilian gaming industry has made quite a lot of progress in the last ten or so years. Part of that stems from the rise of a new generation that grew up playing video games who have now become developers themselves, and partially thanks to Steam and other methods of online distribution, our games have finally been allowed to reach a much wider audience. One side effect of that upbringing is that the majority of games coming from these lands are nostalgia-fueled rides.
The Idolmaster: Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage and Million Live! Theatre Days will host crossovers for the series' 15th anniversary.
The post The Idolmaster Mobile Games Host Crossovers for the Series’ 15th Anniversary appeared first on Siliconera.
We got to see some gameplay from that new Halo game coming out later this year. It didn’t look...amazing. But it did give us a next-gen Brute. And he looks sad. Let’s get him out of Halo Infinite and let him explore other worlds!
Cblogs Recap: Week 30
-Chingona13 reviews Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
-Eggrollbuddy discusses his thoughts regarding The Last of Us Part II one month later.
-Lord Spencer reviews Eternal Eyes as part of his PS1 REVIEWS blogging series.
-Lord Spencer reviews Monkey Hero as part of his PS1 REVIEWS blogging series.
-Exber reviews Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, the progenitor of all Mario RPGs.
-Neronium reviews Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions on the Nintendo 3DS.
-My Enormous Hairy Downstairs Kitchen discusses Social Distancing and Isolation in video games.
-BRAVO F1VE reviews Animal Crossing: New Horizons from a newcomer's perspective.
-Black Red Gaming "mini-reviews" some Nintendo Switch indies (or smaller sized games).
Phantasy Star Online artwork | Graphic: James Bareham/Polygon | Art: Sega
How Sega’s Dreamcast and Phantasy Star Online connected the world by ushering in the true first generation of online console gaming
Image: 2K Games via Polygon