In this week's episode of The Game Informer Show, Kyle Hilliard takes over hosting duty with Alex Van Aken just being present to be part of the ride. Charles Harte is also in attendance, as is special guest Sarah Thwaites. We kick off the show discussing Helldivers 2 and Mario vs. Donkey Kong before jumping into a big discussion about a number of compelling indie games like Lysfanga: The Time Shift Warrior, Crow Country, Pepper Grinder, Helskate, Project O.R.C.S., and Nightingale. We also chat about the recent Tomb Raider Remaster collection before diving into the initial broadcast of our new recurring segment, The Lunch Break: Like A Dance Break but with Lunch (Working Title).

Watch Our Weekly Gaming Podcast:

Follow us on social media: Kyle Hilliard (@KyleMHilliard), Alex Van Aken (@itsVanAken), Charles Harte (@chuckduck365), Sarah Thwaites (@sarahathwaites).

Free-to-play shooter Halo Infinite just got a long, long overdue update to one of its more troubled modes: Big Team Battle. Featuring 24 players at once, Infinite’s large-scale playlist was always beleaguered by the fact that it had too few maps. Any session spent in large brawls would inevitably orbit the same…

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Satirical sci-fi shooter sequel Helldivers 2 is off to a flying start, and now its creator Arrowhead Game Studios has put out a call for fresh development talent so it can "accelerate and beef up" its post-launch content plans.

Despite some early technical woes, which Arrowhead has been hard at work trying resolve since Friday's release on PlayStation 5 and PC, Helldivers 2 has enjoyed a positive critical reception and strong player numbers, even becoming PlayStation Studios' biggest Steam launch to date as it amassed over 150,000 concurrents this weekend.

Amid that early success, Arrowhead CEO and Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt has taken to social media on a recruitment drive, seeking out "more amazing developers" who can "help [the studio] accelerate and beef up our content plans".

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It’s Valentine’s Day, which means love is in the air. Maybe you have someone to squeeze, or maybe you’re holding on to an unrequested crush. And to be clear, we’re talking about video game characters. Because let’s be honest, for some of us who have been playing video games since we were kids, game characters helped…

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In Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, characters mostly appear as names, voices, and sometimes an attached giant robot, but that hasn't stopped fans falling in love with them. So much so that one fan is developing an unofficial Armored Core dating sim featuring the game's various pilots with original designs and illustrations called Amour’d Core.

Developed by Austin-based artist Beth Short, Amour'd Core is a fan-made dating sim currently featuring nine Armored Core VI characters as romance options, with more planned. These include fan favorites like Handler Walter and Rusty, less prevalent characters like Pater and Maeterlinck, and even non-human characters like Ayre and ALLMIND.

Currently, there is no release date or list of expected platforms, and as an unaffiliated fan work the game's development is supported by Short's Patreon. There are several tiers of support available that include exclusive content and illustrations, and even the chance to appear in the game's credits.

You can find the creator's Valentine's Day tweet below:

The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D is my current go-to high-end gaming CPU recommendation, on account of its brilliant top-tier performance at a mid-tier price. The CPU normally costs around £375, but today it's down to £350 at Amazon UK. This isn't the cheapest we've ever seen this model, but it's the best price recorded in 2024 so far and a solid £25 below the going rate.

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Update: 2/14/24, 3:30 p.m.:Last week’s demo for the hotly anticipated RPG Final Fantasy VII Rebirth hit digital shelves and although public perception remains positive, there has been some concern over the visuals, specifically when using the game’s high frame rate “Performance” mode. That’s hopefully going to change…

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The RTX 4070 Super is a rather good deal, offering a significant boost in gaming performance over the earlier RTX 4070 - in fact, it's closer to the 4070 Ti than the vanilla 4070. That makes it a great choice for gaming up to 4K, while costing just a bit over the £500 mark - £539 to be accurate after a £50 discount that puts it below the UK RRP of £579.

That price is for a relatively modest Zotac Twin Edge model which fits easily even into small form factor PC, but thanks to the efficiency of the Ada Lovelace architecture the card should still run quite cool and quiet.

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There’s a lot going on with Anycolor, the company behind the Nijisanji Vtuber agency, with the English branch seeming to fall apart in December 2023 and January 2024 following situations surrounding Selen Tatsuki. However, this is more than just some recent issue, as the decline could even start to be traced as far back as 2022 when the Korean and Indonesian branches were first folded. It’s a lot! Especially if you’re new to Vtubers.

What’s going on with Anycolor, Nijisanji, Selen Tatsuki, and its other English and Indonesian Vtubers?

This timeline will only go over confirmed and known information and announcements as of February 14, 2024. As the Selen and Dokibird situation is a bit more specialized as a result of Doki specifically saying requesting people tell others "this is where I am now” on social media on February 5, 2024, that is the only performer identity that will be discussed out of respect to the people behind the Vtubers. In addition, not all Nijisanji graduations between 2022 and 2024 will be noted. 

The start of February brought a short list of new games to PlayStation Plus, and while it did have some underrated gems, it was lacking big hitters. The subscription service is rectifying that in a big way as it approaches the end of February by adding a slew of new hugely popular titles for subscribers. It’s an…

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The Pokémon Company is bringing its hugely popular Pokémon Center pop-up store back to London for four days this April, with promise of more exclusive Pokémon merchandise.

The Pokémon Center's return to the UK coincides with this year's Pokémon Europe International Championships, which take place at ExCeL London from 4th to 7th April. The store will be open at the venue from 10am to 8pm every day except Sunday, when it's set to close at 4pm.

Previous Pokémon Center pop-ups in the UK have attracted huge crowds, and The Pokémon Company is clearly expecting similar attention this time around. It notes that while entry to the store is open to the general public and won't require a competitor or spectator badge, reservations are mandatory - even for badged attendees. More information on the reservation process is set to be shared "closer to the event".

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Last time, we conducted citizen science with a rare suggestion from a reader, and you decided that being able to reroll your build is better than instant-death bottomless pits. May you live a long and happy live refining by degrees, rather than slamming into hard lessons. This week, in celebration of Valentine's Day, we turn to matters of the heart, of loves and organs. What's better: health pick-ups looking like cartoon hearts or Doomguy's pet rabbit, Daisy?

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Sony announced its third-quarter earnings on February 14, and they weren’t exactly full of glad tidings for PlayStation fans. For starters, the company revealed it doesn’t plan to release any new titles in its major franchises for the remainder of 2024. Sony execs also said that its current-gen hardware, the PlayStatio…

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People playing Granblue Fantasy: Relink multiplayer on the PS4 or PS5 may notice improved matchmaking starting today or find they will see a higher drop rate when breaking foe parts thanks to a patch. The 1.0.4 update is now live and, while small, fixes two major issues people may have experienced when trying to play alone or with others.

After the game’s launch, there were reports of people on the PS4 or PS5 not getting foe parts after breaking certain areas on enemies. For example, a friend of mine noticed an issue trying to get Vitality Hoof from Furycane when fighting it. Downloading and applying the Granblue Fantasy: Relink patch should fix the drop rate going forward.

As for Granblue Fantasy: Relink matchmaking, it only applies to a specific multiplayer situation. If someone has Power Adjustment on, they should see a different in ensuing match ups and fights. This change doesn't have any kind of effect on general matchmaking outside of that particular situation.

When MLB The Show 24 launches next month, it will include a female baseball player who made history in 1953. That inclusion will break new ground for the game series, too, as it’s never featured a playable woman character before.

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Co-operative PvE extraction shooter Helldivers 2 features a number of different enemy types, many of which you may have to take out to complete specific challenges. A recent challenge requiring players to take out 20 Scout Striders is one such, and it might be giving you a bit of a hard time if you’re not too…

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The Pokemon Center has released a new line of goods called the Pikachu Everyday Fun Kitchen. The concept behind these products is that using them will make cooking more fun.

You can find all of the products via the Pokemon Center website. In total, you can purchase 17 different products for your kitchen, all of them starring Pikachu. Aside from direct references to Pikachu, all of them are red and yellow to match Pikachu’s color scheme.

Here is the list of Pikachu Everyday Fun Kitchen items that you can buy from the Pokemon Center:

• Apron: $29.99
• Bowls (4-pack): $39.99
• Ceramic Butter Dish: $29.99
• Ceramic Salt & Pepper Shaker Set: $19.99
• Cookie Cutters (8-pack): $14.99
• Cutting Mats: $12.99
• Dinner Plates (4-pack): $39.99

Sony has unveiled its PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium game catalogue additions for February, which this month include Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Need for Speed Unbound, The Outer Worlds, Tales of Arise, and more.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla is arguably the biggest biggie in there, whisking players away for a Viking adventure set against an open-world backdrop of Anglo-Saxon England at the end of the ninth century. A lavishly designed "saga for the ages", is what Eurogamer called it back in 2020.

Valhalla is joined by the developer Criterion's equally recommended arcade racer Need for Speed Unbound - the "best Need for Speed in a generation" we said when it released in 2022 - as well as Obsidian Entertainment's slightly less gripping 2019 satirical adventure The Outer Worlds, a "conventional, easygoing scifi RPG...that fades very quickly from the mind." And here's the full list of February's PlayStation Plus Extra games.

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Destiny 2 ain’t no spring chicken. Bungie’s popular intergalactic looter shooter has been around since 2017, and in that time, the game has received numerous updates and expansions. Now, a new deal collects almost all of those expansions and updates into one $40 Steam bundle making it easy for anyone to jump in and…

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Overwatch 2’s ninth season has begun, and while most players are talking about the reworks and sweeping changes Blizzard has made, there’s a small subset of people whose most anticipated part of the seasonal drop is a heart. No, not the heart-shaped balloon Reaper pops in his Valentine’s Day emote; the heart-shaped…

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Toby Fox released a Valentine’s Day Deltarune and Undertale newsletter that offered an update on Chapter 3 of the new game. A brief update on Chapters 4 and 5 also appeared, and there is a new producer involved in development. 

Apparently, the team is now working on the Japanese localization before finishing up the project. This is one of the final steps before that portion of the game is done. 

As for Deltarune Chapter 4 and 5, the update mentioned progress on both as well. The fourth part is now the primary focus, and there is an unnamed internal deadline for that. This portion of the announcement also mentioned the new producer, though the member of the team wasn’t named.

Here’s the full update from the newsletter: 

Happy 2024, everyone! The Deltarune team (and I) were taking a break for the holidays to visit our families, but now everyone's back and excited to get back to the game.

Re: Chapter 3, we are working on the Japanese localization. Then we will begin porting and bugtesting the Chapter, after which it will be... totally complete!

A new update for The Sims 4 has added options to give characters vitiligo, the autoimmune disorder which causes patches of skin to lose pigmentation. Rather than a handful of preset full-body patterns, The Sims 4's vitiligo impressively comes as loads of patterns for separate bodyparts, so you can create a wide range of effects. And no, you don't need to buy an expansion for it.

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An update to the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo will improve the visual quality of Performance mode.

The update is due 21st February and will add a section of the Junon area specifically for the demo, as well as this visual improvement which will also apply to the full game.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth supports both Graphics and Performance modes, with the latter providing a smooth 60fps.

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The Fantastic Four finally arrive in the Marvel Cinematic Universe next year, and Marvel Studios has officially revealed who will don the team’s iconic blue suits.

The Fantastic Four was first announced in 2019 and is scheduled to premiere next year as the second film in Phase Six of the MCU. In a sweet Valentine's Day message, Marvel announced the following actors will portray Marvel’s First Family: 

Happy Valentine’s Day from Marvel’s First Family! Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn are The Fantastic Four.

Marvel Studios' #TheFantasticFour, in theaters July 25, 2025. pic.twitter.com/dOmLG0m7ie

— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) February 14, 2024

Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic - Pedro Pascal (The Last of Us, The Mandalorian)

Sue Storm/Invisible Woman - Vanessa Kirby (Napoleon, The Crown) 

Johnny Storm/Human Torch - Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things, Overlord)

Ben Grimm/The Thing - Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear, The Punisher)

We've eschewed any Valentine's theming this year, but Edwin put this in our news queue last night as a sort of dare for our evening shift, and let the record show I am less of a coward than Graham Smith. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, a visual novel Tarot-themed card game from perennial (perhaps perineal, in this case) favourites Deconstructeam, was praised by Edwin in his review, and I was going to use the same strapline for this news post had he not got there first. Because now, in time for the season of romance, they've teamed up with sex toy purveyors Uberrime to create a frankly prohibitively massive dildo as an official tie-in for the game, which can be won in a free competition by three lucky people living in either the UK, EU, US or Canada (as in, they each win their own dildo; they don't have to time share).

I mean I say "prohibitively", but I don't know your life.

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There’s another new Princess Peach: Showtime trailer, and this video introduces four different powers and roles for her, as the game will include dashing thief, figure skater, mermaid, and mighty forms of the character. Each one, as usual, has its own specialties.

Things begin with Figure Skater Peach. When playing as her, people will glide over icy platforms and rinks and attack enemies. The Dashing Thief Peach uses a grappling hook to maneuver. Meanwhile, Mermaid Peach sings to gather fish in that portion of the clip. Finally, Mighty Peach is a super hero. That segment shows her fighting enemies on foot as well as flying through the sky to tackle additional foes.

Here's the Princess Peach: Showtime trailer going over the figure skater, dashing thief, mermaid, and mighty roles.

Overwatch 2’s ninth season is underway, and it’s bringing some sweeping changes to the hero shooter. On top of reworking Pharah and giving every hero both a health buff and a passive heal, Blizzard also increased the projectile size of most heroes’ weapons. In layperson’s terms, they made the bullets bigger. This…

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A number of Ubisoft France employees are on strike today after the collapse of union negotiations with Ubisoft management, who have reportedly proposed a budget for wages "that would be lower than inflation for the second year in a row". The strikers are calling it a "badly balanced rewards system". Cheeky devils!

The news comes care of a post from Le Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo, who have evidently been doing their homework on videogame humour. That research has paid off, for here I am writing about the strikes, though I think I probably would have written about them anyway.

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After months of speculation, the cast for the upcoming Marvel film The Fantastic Four has been announced by way of adorable Valentine’s Day-themed art. The art also revealed a release date: July 25, 2025.

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Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Director Naoki Hamaguchi confirmed the FFVII remake demo update will add new content and a performance update. He shared the official announcement on social media, mentioning this is an issue that will be remedied in both the base game and trial.

Here’s Hamaguchi’s statement, which he made when sharing the announcement from Square Enix. The patch for the demo was confirmed both on the English and Japanese accounts.

When it comes to co-op shooters and most other multiplayer games, it's often the case that friendly fire is switched off by default or there are endless systems in place to make it a punishable offence. In Helldivers 2 it isn't actively encouraged, nor is it punished. Accidentally vaporising your teammate with an air strike is all a part of the campaign for democracy and freedom, a hilarious byproduct of human error. I gushed about it in my review, and cheery RPS fanzine PC Gamer wrote up a quick piece on the specific ways it eeks out silliness.

But comedy isn't just accidental in Helldivers 2, oh no. I think it encourages playground behaviour of the worst order: smacking your mates into things.

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HoYoVerse uploaded three pieces of artwork to its Genshin Impact social media account to celebrate Valentine's Day 2024, and this year Jeht, a notable NPC, appears among the characters.

This year’s characters are Navia, Lynette, and Jeht. With the exception of Jeht, both Navia and Lynette are newer characters who debuted in 2023. All of the posts have an accompanying blurb that’s written as if the character is talking to you. Navia gives you macarons, Lynette gives you a box of Cafe Lutece’s new stacks, and Jeht gives you a little wrapped trinket.

You can check out all of the Valentine’s Day 2024 for Genshin Impact below:

Nintendo has revealed some more of Peach's transformations in Princess Peach: Showtime!.

Following on from last month's reveal of Ninja Peach and Cowgirl Peach, Nintendo has shown off four more roles Peach can don in the upcoming Switch game.

Take a look at the second transformation trailer showing Figure Skater Peach, Dashing Thief Peach, Mermaid Peach, and Mighty Peach.

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Ys X: Nordics, the latest entry in the long-running Ys series, is making its way to the West. Nordics stars a younger version of series hero Adol Christin embarking on an adventure in the Obelia Gulf, a collection of northern islands.

He finds himself thrown in the middle of a conflict between the islands’ residents and a seafaring tribe, as well as mysterious immortal monsters called the Griegers. Adol joins a Norman warrior named Karja to sail the seas aboard a ship, including exploring an open ocean and engaging in naval combat. 

Ys X: Nordics was first released in Japan last September and will come stateside this fall. It will be available for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC.

Have you always been curious about the Ys series but don’t know whether to jump in? Former editor John Carson explains in this feature why RPG fans shouldn’t sleep on Ys. You can also check out our 40-year retrospective on developer Nihon Falcom. 

Puzzles are a tricky thing to perfect in video games. They're present in so many different genres - typically giving us some small goal to work towards between blasting enemies and searching for resources - but are also rarely as engaging as they could be, when not a game's main focus. For more creative solutions (and creative problems) we have to turn to the dedicated puzzle genre, of course. These days, indie games rule the space, but with so many out there in the wild west of digital storefronts what makes a puzzler stand out? Paper Trail answers this with one basic idea: folding paper.

Folding the piece of paper your character is standing on reveals the picture on the underside of that page, which can have keys, doors, and pathways to your destination. Or, the underside can fill in part of a pattern required to magically unlock other areas. You can fold pages from the top, bottom, sides, or four corners. Playing Paper Trail is as straight-forward as that, but simple controls do not equal a simple game.

I'd hazard a guess we've all had to push a heavy object onto a switch to get through a door at some point in our gaming histories, so it's no surprise Paper Trail includes this almost customary puzzle in its demo. However, I've never had to fold my way to the solution before. With this one addition, a mainstay puzzle suddenly requires a whole new way of thinking. What corner do I fold first? In what order? Where should the statue be when I start to fold? Where should I be standing? It doesn't have a wildly complicated solution, but it does feel satisfying when the lightbulb moment happens. This one new layer of thinking is easy enough to comprehend, but tough enough to impress.

On March 22, Princess Peach: Showtime! will give us a standalone Peach game, rather than relegating the princess to the role of side character in yet another Super Mario Bros. title. We haven’t gotten a solo Peach game since 2005 (and that one was pretty shallow and insulting), so this is long overdue. The upcoming…

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Granblue Fantasy: Relink is a JRPG that is ticking off many of the action RPG tropes. It would be in danger of becoming workmanlike, such are the number of things you can tick off on your fingers like a plumber ordering parts: boss fights against improbably huge glowing monsters, an evil god, catboys, numbers popping off enemies, women who appreciate the combat applications of a thigh-high split skirt, anachronistic sunglasses, horned giants carrying halberds of the same approximate size as a caravan.

In practice, though, you sort of can't be mad at Granblue Fantasy: Relink. It's built around a layered combat system that seems impenetrable if you don't take some time to understand it. But really, Granblue Fantasy: Relink is just a game so committed to the rule of cool that the entire setting is physically impossible, and every battle is a disorientating Panic! At The Firework Factory that flirts with being a photosensitivity nightmare. I'm not selling it as such, but it's actually charming.

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After the welcome reception of the Super Mario RPG remake just three months ago, Nintendo is back with another remake in the form of Mario vs. Donkey Kong. The original 2004 title on the Game Boy Advance was a charming puzzle platformer that pits the two titular stars and age-old rivals against each other once again.…

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The creator of the classic JRPG series Suikoden and Eiyuden Chronicle, Yoshitaka Murayama died. The announcemet comes via a statement by Rabbit and Bear Studio, which is currently developing Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes.

Murayama, who originally created Suikoden while working at Konami, passed away on February 6, 2024 due to complications from an illness. At the time, he was working as a scenario writer for Rabbit and Bear Studios to develop Suikoden spiritual successor Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. That is set to release in April 2024.

The statement was signed by fellow designers Junichi Murakami and Osamu Komuta, as well as Junko Kawano. Kawano worked with Murayama on the original Suikoden. His colleagues expressed regret that he would not get to see the fan reaction to Eiyuden Chronicle, but vowed to press on with development nonetheless.

Here is the full statement shared on the Rabbit and Bear website:

If you were wondering what Sony’s up to after its latest State of Play presentation didn’t have much in the way of first-party games, it sounds like there was a reason for that. It looks like PlayStation 5’s 2024 will have a dearth of first-party games over the next year, as the company has confirmed it won’t be…

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