Flashpoint is back as part of Apex Legends' latest time-limited event, Unshackled.

Launching on 19th April, Unshackled will include the return of Flashpoint, where the ability to regenerate health and shield is removed, along with healing and shield loot. Instead you must get to Flashpoint zones to regen health although, as you may well expect, you may have to fight for control of it…

There's also the usual new themed cosmetics - badges, charms, skins, and the like - and new weekly challenges to take on, too.

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Sudays are for getting on a little two carriage local train, chuntering over a precarious track through an estuary, and arriving at the cinema to see Sonic 2. Before you buy your ticket, enjoy some of the best writing about games (and game-adjacent cultural things) from this week.

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Just for the Taste of (sh)it. Howdy buckeroos! And welcome to Whatcha Been Playing? This week’s entry is most certainly...

The post Whatcha been playing this week, Destructoid? appeared first on Destructoid.

Murder She Wrote It is the year of our lord 2022, but that will not stop developers from exploring the...

The post The Centennial Case: A Shijima story is an FMV mystery from the director of 428: Shibuya Scramble appeared first on Destructoid.

We live as we dream — in 8-bit glory A very unlikely franchise was born about 12 years ago on...

The post Review: Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness appeared first on Destructoid.

Who remembers the winter of 1985? In the UK, it was one of the coldest for many years, although east-west tension was beginning to thaw as US president Ronald Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev in November. I was 12 years old and unworried by historic political meetings or war in the middle east. All I wanted to do was play computer games. And I wanted to play them on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

I'd first been introduced to the Speccy three years earlier. Growing up, everyone seemed to have that one friend whose parents bought them everything. Mine lived across the road, and one Saturday morning, I strolled into their lounge where he had a 16K Spectrum set up, the tiny computer dwarfed by the large television and furniture. We soon had a game loaded, and, of course, I recall which one: Escape by New Generation Software. A simple maze chase-‘em-up, Escape had us enraptured as we plodded around the faux 3D screen, dodging dinosaurs while trying to locate an invisible axe.

Another friend received a 48K Spectrum for his birthday the following year. He brought it around one afternoon, plugging it into our black and white kitchen TV. Then the day disappeared, swallowed up by the delight that was Melbourne House's Scramble clone, Penetrator. We created our own maps using its in-built level designer when we’d finished playing. In an era where computers were financially out of reach to many people, this genuinely felt like the most exciting time of my life.

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Today Atlus released another of its daily sequence of trailers of the upcoming JRPG Soul Hackers 2, showing another demon included in the game.

This time around we get the reveal of Bicorn, a demon that has been included in the Shin Megami Tensei series for a long time, including the recent Shin Megami Tensei V.

As usual, the trailer also includes the daily horoscope with a ranking of signs from the luckiest to the unluckiest. Taurus is at the top, while Aquarius is at the bottom of the fortune ranking.

Soul Hackers 2 releases for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC (Steam and Windows Store) on August 26, just one day after the Japanese launch on August 25.

Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight. I, @zombiepie, am honored to be your host as we once again look back at the best community-created works from the past week!

First, I want to start things off thanking all of the community members that showed up last weekend to support the Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run! Thanks to everyone's hard work and support the event was able to raise over $13,000 for Pencils of Promise! Special commendations to everyone that streamed video games for the event and many thanks to all who donated. If you missed the event, the team page will be up indefinitely. So, you still have plenty of time to donate.

Besides that, we have a LOT of updates regarding bug reports about the site.

With the first episode of the Spy x Family anime’s sub having already aired and Crunchyroll’s livestream of the dub, it’s time to get a look at the opening you can expect to see before every episode. Well, not every episode, as it doesn’t appear in the first episode.

You can see the adorable opening here and below showing off cute family moments with some cool spy action.

The song in the opening is Mixed Nuts by Official Hige Dandism.

That same YouTube video gives a story summary in the description, writing:

This classic code unlocks characters and courses Mario Golf joined the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack library this week,...

The post Now that Mario Golf 64 is on Switch, you may want this old cheat code appeared first on Destructoid.

Today Aniplex released a trailer showcasing the next season of the massively popular Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba anime series, the Swordsmith Village arc.

The trailer provides the first look at the animation, which is created by acclaimed studio Ufotable, including some of the characters who will appear.

You can check it out below, while we wait to learn when the season will be aired, which has not yet been confirmed.

Incidentally, if you’d rather play than just watch, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles, is currently available for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, Xbox One, & PC. You can read our review.

A Nintendo Switch version is coming in June, and a brand new set of DLC characters has been announced, focusing on the Entertainment District arc.

Waffle is a free, browser-based word game with a single puzzle each day and plentiful green and yellow squares. Beyond that, it has some pretty major differences from Wordle. It doesn't require you to type the letters, for one.

Instead, Waffle presents you with a grid of five intersecting words with all of the letters already present. Most of the letters are jumbled up, and it's up to you to identify the correct words and spell them out by swapping the letters with each other using as few moves as possible.

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The latest update of Final Fantasy XIV included the opening of the Empyreum housing wards in Ishgard, and with it, a new lottery system aimed to make land purchase relatively fair.

Yet, something appears to have gone wrong, as players started to report lotteries that returned the name of the winner simply as “0,” failing to allocate a numb er of the plots entirely.

Square Enix has reacted by issuing two separate posts on the official Lodestone website, the second of which was signed directly by producer and director Naoki Yoshida.

The gist is that the developers consider this a “major issue” and they are currently prioritizing the investigation into it.

Unfortunately, since the code involved is complex, pinpointing the exact issue is going to require some time.

Yoshida-san apologized for the inconvenience and asked players for patience.

As a consequence, the lottery result announcement period (which was supposed to end on April 20) will be extended. On top of that, the next lottery cycle will not begin until the issue is identified and fixed.

This has caused a certain amount of frustration among players, especially considering that the housing system has been identified by many as a source of friction due to its limited nature that locks many out of that content.

Cblogs of 4/9 to 4/15/2022 –Lord Spencer reviews Dino Crisis as part of his PS1 REVIEWS blogging series. –Black Red...

The post What are your favourite dinosaur video games? appeared first on Destructoid.

Earlier this week, the PlayStation Studios website was updated so that the banner image included an picture of Sam Bridges from Death Stranding. Yesterday, Death Stranding designer and Kojima Productions founder Hideo Kojima tweeted a picture said banner.

People then got excited, thinking this wordless tweet meant that Sony had acquired Kojima Productions. It caused enough of a fuss that Kojima did a follow-up tweet saying, hey, sorry, that hasn't happened.

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It's been a while since we've checked in on the Elder Scrolls Online, Bethesda's take on a Tamriel you can play with pals. If you've never checked in on it, now is a good time: the base game and its Morrowind DLC are currently available to play for free until April 26th.

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No More Heores 3 is headed to PC. The excessive, rude 'tude hack-and-slash from Suda51's Grasshopper Manufacture released on Nintendo Switch last year, and now publishers XSEED say it'll splash onto our favoured platform this autumn.

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Blizzard Entertainment released a new video about the new character named Sojourn that will be playable in the Overwatch 2 beta.

We hear from lead hero designer Geoff Goodman and narrative designer Miranda Moyeras they explain the origin of Sojourn and how she plays.

Specifically, her playstyle revolves around her railgun (that doesn’t always act as a railgun for balancing reasons) and her cybernetic enhancements, which allow for fast powerslides followed by high jumps.

You can hear it all directly from the developers below.

If you’re eager to play Sojourn, you’ll be able to try her out during the beta that will be made available on April 26.

If you’d like to see more, you can also watch her origin story trailer and her gameplay trailer released a few days ago.

The Daniels explain a sequence they cut, which would have echoed Douglas Adams and Charlie Kaufman

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From the creative director of Hitman GO I’m in the mood for good, clean tower defense, and Isle of Arrows...

The post Isle of Arrows is a stylish tile-drawing tower defense game appeared first on Destructoid.

Today third-party developers released a couple of new airports for Microsoft Flight Simulator, on top of a relevant mod becoming much more accessible.

We hear from Salty Simulations, creators of the popular realism mod for the default 747-8, adding tons of features aimed to achieve a much better simulation and continuously growing.

The mod is now available within the FlyByWire installer in both the stable and development versions.

The installer can be downloaded here and you can follow the development of Salty Simulations’ 747 on their official Discord server.

Next, MFSG released the Microsoft Flight Simulator version of Aomori Airport (RJSA) in Japan.

It’s available on SimMarket for $14.14 plus applicable VAT.

It’s worth mentioning that this is a port from older simulators, the versions for which are included in the same package. Since the developer did not provide any images making it practical to judge the quality of the addon in Microsoft Flight Simulator, I purchased a copy and took some screenshots for you, which you can see below.

While I usually don’t include extensive assessments of quality in news posts, let’s just say that it’s a bit rough.

Maidenless No More This week’s entry to Hamster’s Arcade Archives is something a little obscurer, a little less-played, and a...

The post Namco fantasy classic The Legend of Valkyrie joins the Arcade Archives appeared first on Destructoid.

Regency romances and swashbuckling adventures for ribald role-players

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Following a successful first season in 2017, Production Reed has announced that In Another World with My Smartphone will be back with season two.

Announced alongside a teaser image, it would seem that the adventures of Touya Mochizuki are far from over.

If you are unfamiliar with In Another World with My Smartphone, you can check out an official description, courtesy of J-Novel Club, right down below.

The developers at Sabotage Studio continue to release small but interesting clips of their upcoming RPG Sea of Stars on the weekends, and today another one has been shared.

The brief video shows another RPG staple, the fishing minigame, which looks quite fun in all its pixel art glory, culminating with the capture of a Lunar Trout.

You can check it out below.

No More Heroes 3 is headed to PC, PS4, PS5, and Xbox consoles later this year.

"Our favourite otaku assassin returns!" tweeted XSeed games. "Travis Touchdown has been forced out of retirement to defend not only Santa Destroy, but Earth itself! Bring on the beam katana and take on Travis' toughest challenge yet in No More Heroes 3, coming this fall to PS4, PS5, Xbox, and PC!"

As yet there's been no word on a specific release date, but right now we can expect it sometime autumn 2022 - or Q3, if you're in the southern hemisphere, of course.

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Axie Infinity is the crypto-backed Pokémon clone in which cute little creatures that double as NFTs battle for fun and profit. It’s also a pyramid scheme that relies on cheap labor from countries like the Philippines to fuel its growth. Now, fictional inflation, combined with a historic crypto heist allegedly…

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You can now hunt Easter eggs as well as ghosts in the latest Phasmophobia update.

Hotfix 0.6.1.3, which is available now, introduces "bug fixes and a weekend Easter event" with every location hiding "several Easter eggs to hunt and find".

But it's not just a meaningless holiday activity; collect all the eggs in every location - you can track how many you have beneath the map in the truck - and you'll restore each team members' sanity to 100 per cent, too.

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Ad-chievement unlocked Microsoft may be looking to insert more in-game ads into free-to-play Xbox games. A new report indicates the...

The post Microsoft reportedly working on putting in-game ads in free-to-play Xbox games appeared first on Destructoid.

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Back in January, Colopl and Mages teased that the Alice Gear Aegis franchise was going to get a console game, and today it was officially announced.

The game is titled Alice Gear Aegis CS: Concerto of Simulators and will be released in Japan on September 8 for PS5, PS4, and Nintendo Switch. An upgrade from PS4 to PS5 will be provided at no additional cost.

If you’re not familiar with the original Alice Gear Aegis, it’s a popular mobile game released in 2017 with a PC version launched in 2019. It features a team of girls fighting against a mechanical life form called “Weiss.”

The game is a 3D battle action title with multiplayer supporting up to six players. You can select your character and her weapons and fight on a 3D battlefield.

The concept of the game is basically a simulation between the girls created by AEGiS.

The game will be priced at 8,580 Yen in physical retail form, while the download version will be priced at 7,480 yen.

A limited edition priced at a whopping 25,080 Yen (approximately $200) will include action figures portraying two characters on top of decals for their Megami Devices and in-game items.

You can check out the first screenshots in the gallery below. At the moment, no western release has been announced.

Without thinking too hard about it, what’s the maximum number of coins you can knock out of multi-coin blocks in the original Super Mario Bros.? Did you say 10? Well, you’re wrong, but it’s not your fault. You just haven’t done a deep dive into the almost 37-year-old game’s code like a complete weirdo.

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Child of Light director Patrick Plourde is the latest senior developer to announce they are leaving Ubisoft after almost 20 years at the company.

The creative director - who has also worked on Watch Dogs 2, Far Cry 3, and Rainbow Six Vegas - announced his departure earlier this week, and confirmed he's moving on to form his own "independent creative consultancy".

"R6 Vegas, AC, FC3, CoL, WD2... it’s been a privilege to collaborate with everyone at Ubi on these great games!" Plourde tweeted.

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It’s a wizarding summer at the movies

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China is reportedly stepping up its regulations around streaming "unauthorised" video games.

As reported by Reuters (thanks, PC Gamer), Chinese government agency The National Radio and Television Administration has justified the move by insisting that "for a period of time, issues such as chaotic online livestreaming and teenage addiction to games have raised widespread concerns in society and effective measures need to be taken urgently".

The statement seemingly comes after some fans were able to view games China deems as "unauthorised" - such as Elden Ring - via Chinese streaming platforms, even though many are not available to buy in the country.

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Sucker Punch has confirmed it has stopped "actively working" on additional patches and content for Ghost of Tsushima.

In the patch notes for Patch 2.18 - or 2.018.000 as it's known on PS5 - for Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut and the Legends standalone, the team confirms that the update "focuses on Legends items changes, bug fixes, and improvements as well as small single-player changes".

However, at the end of the update, the team confirmed that there are no additional patches planned "at the moment", and thanked players for "the incredible amount of support and feedback" it has received.

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A fresh fairy tale with a hand-crafted look Zoink’s dice-slinging fairy-tale adventure game Lost in Random is now playable through...

The post Don’t miss Lost in Random while it’s on EA Play and Game Pass appeared first on Destructoid.

If you've got some downtime in the next week or so, you may be interested to know that The Elder Scrolls Online is currently running a free play trial to whet your appetite ahead of its upcoming expansion, High Isle.

From now until 26th April, players can jump into The Elder Scrolls Online and try it for free on PC via Steam, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5, and Stadia, although the small print hints that the Stadia version is available "only in limited territories" and Xbox players will need Xbox Live Gold to play.

You'll get access to the ESO base game including four classes, 23 story zones, Battlegrounds and Alliance War PvP, "and more", plus the Morrowind DLC, Vvardenfell zone. You can even try the prologue quest for the upcoming High Isle expansion (thanks, NME).

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Hideo Kojima has shot down rumours that Kojima Productions may be acquired by PlayStation.

It was Sony itself that sparked speculation after a ResetEra user noticed that the banner topping PlayStation Studios' website had been updated to include Sam Bridges from Kojima's Death Stranding game.

The banner also included a shot of Bluepoint's Demon's Soul remake, which was acquired by Sony last year. Despite the fervour, the banner has not been taken down, suggesting its change was neither premature nor accidental.

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