Road 96 touts a procedurally-generated narrative about several teens crossing the border of the nation of Petria. Of course, we’ve seen our fair share of procedurally-generated levels in roguelikes. Still, the promise of a shifting, randomized story made Road 96 an ambitious experiment to watch when it dropped for Switch last year. And even though it might feel as if Road 96 flew under the radar, it was listed as one of the Switch’s best-selling indies in 2021! Today, DigixArt’s third title cruises onto PlayStation and Xbox.

You can watch the Xbox launch trailer below:

The trailer showcases Road 96’s vibrant, cartoony aesthetic, but don’t mistake that for narrative lightheartedness. Political and personal tension lies at the heart of the adventure game’s dynamic storylines. While interacting with several NPCs (friendly or otherwise) and selecting choices that influence various outcomes, you’ll be exploring a wilderness hosting desert expanses, lush forests, and more. This all comes packaged in a 4K 60fps experience. As the trailer’s narrator states, “each decision could shape your destiny and Petria’s too. Time for you to hit the road.” 

When it comes to roguelites, players have been quite blessed over the years. There is the excellent Hades, while Dead Cells is also a great way to spend some quality time. An upcoming release is hoping to join those ranks, and judging by its looks, the upcoming Samurai Bringer is impressing already on the visual front.

Coming to the PS4, PC, and Nintendo Switch via developers ALPHAWING and publisher Playism, Samurai Bringer puts players in the role of Susanoo, an ancient deity from Japanese mythology. Unfortunately, his powers have been stripped away and the threat of Yamata-no-Orochi, the legendary eight-headed dragon, needs to be dealt with.

Deep Rock Galactic, the co-op mining shooter which shot to 10 million registered players after arriving on PlayStation Plus, has detailed plans for its next season.

Season 02: Rival Escalation will arrive via Steam on 28th April and for PlayStation and Xbox on 5th May. A new, free season pass will unlock fresh cosmetic rewards for your dwarven character - including beards and helmets.

A fresh seasonal event and enemy sees the game's Rivals faction increase their attempts to out-mine you. In response, you'll gain access to new secondary weapons - one for each player class - each with their own upgrade trees and customisation options to find.

Read more

Hello Games, the British studio behind No Man's Sky, is working on its next new release.

In an interview with IGN, studio co-founder Sean Murray said his next game would be just as ambitious as No Man's Sky.

"For a while now we've been working on something pretty ambitious in the background. It's a small team but we like it that way," said Murray.

Read more

Following an audio livestream and subsequent feedback from its community, EA Motive has changed the sounds of both the Plasma Cutter and Pulse Rifle in its upcoming Dead Space remake.

"Things you did: Shared feedback on our Plasma Cutter and Pulse Rifle," Motive tweeted, referring to the fact that many felt the guns now sounded weaker than their original counterparts.

"Things we did: Listened and made modifications."

Read more

Scavenger is a type of character in LEGO Star Wars Skywalker Saga that can create nets, blast down special doors, and glide for a short time.

There is no Skywalker Saga cheat code to unlock a Scavenger early, but you can get a Scavenger from the beginning of the game if you have purchased The Mandalorian Season 1 Character Collector DLC. Unfortunately, even if you do have this DLC, you must play the story until Scavenger Tools are unlocked.

This guide will explain how to unlock a Scavenger and Scavenger Tools in LEGO Star Wars Skywalker Saga, and also list every Scavenger character and how to get them.

Read more

An official-looking teaser video showing what new Overwatch 2 character Sojourn can do has leaked onto the internet.

The Chinese-language video originated on YouTube before being shared by popular Overwatch personality (coach and streamer) Stylosa.

In it, we get a HUD-less montage showing what Sojourn - Overwatch's first black female character - can do. We see her dual-purpose gun, which has what looks like a machine-gun primary fire and a railgun alternate fire. And judging by the video, the railgun is deadly and potentially passes through enemies too.

Read more

The excellent ship-dissecting salvage game Hardspace: Shipbreaker will hit version 1.0 and launch out of early access on the 24th of May, the makers announced today. And oooh it'll come to Game Pass the same day. It has been a cracking game even in early access, a satisfying first-person simulation of carefully cutting up junk spaceships with industrial lasers for maximum profit and minimum workplace injury.

Read more

Halo Infinite's player count has dropped below that of Halo: The Master Chief Collection for the first time on Steam.

The franchise's latest title, which was released late last year, has steadily shed its player base as it became frustrated with the lack of content updates in addition to ongoing issues surrounding the game's monetisation.

As it currently stands, The Master Chief Collection had a peak player count of 9123 over the past 24 hours, in contrast to the 7842 players on Halo Infinite.

Read more

FixFox came out a couple of weeks back, and I am in the process of reviewing it. This process is, currently, one in suspended animation, and has been for longer than I anticipated. I moved just before the release and my PC is still somewhere in or about the Irish Sea. Luckily I can link this to FixFox thematically, as a big exciting incident for the story involves waking up a man who was stuck in a cryopod. Around that, you, a fox called Vix, fix things in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi future where your tools are bananas and stamps.

I was several hours into FixFox before I left it, and discovered it was much larger than I expected. It's paradoxically cosy and friendly even as its world is vast and strange. I had some minor annoyances with this - you do a lot of travelling around, and in the early stages of the game there aren't many fast travel options to mitigate this. But now I've been without it for two weeks, I've found myself missing the big spaces and warm welcomes of that world.

Read more

Sonic Speed Simulator is a new Sonic the Hedgehog game available to play now as part of Roblox.

The official, Sega-backed project lets you play as Sonic and race against friends through various worlds. Regular weekly updates will add more to the game over the coming weeks.

It also marks the first time a well-known AAA game character has been officially featured in Roblox.

Read more

With Bandai Namco’s recent JRPG Tales of Arise achieving a certain level of popularity among fans, Japanese figure manufacturers are starting to set things in motion.

Today Kotobukiya made a new figure portraying Rinwell available for pre-order. You can find her on AmiAmi for 13,800 yen, which translates approximately into $110.

She will be released in October 2022, which definitely isn’t a bad lead time considering today’s extra-long standards.

The scale is 1/8, so the figure isn’t massive, measuring about 205 mm in height. The prototype was sculpted by iTANDi.

You can check her out below alongside an official description.

Yesterday, I published a piece looking back at 10 years of Fez, and while writing it, I couldn't help but wonder what the game's creator, Phil Fish, was up to now.

Just to recap: Fish left the games industry not long after Fez's release, cancelling Fez 2 in the process. He then partially re-emerged with indie publishing label Polytron Partners a year later, in 2014, but was driven away again by repeated harassment from GamerGate. The last we saw of him was a collaboration on 2016 VR game SuperHypeCube.

I thought I'd drop him a line for editorial process' sake, then, but I didn't expect to hear anything back. A games journalist is probably the last person he wants to hear from. But I was wrong and he did reply, and so in a stretched out celebration of Fez's birthday, here's what he said.

Read more

It has, you might have noticed, been a pretty good year so far for games. Elden Ring’s arguably the greatest game that’s released since Breath of the Wild, Pokémon got the modern makeover we’ve been pining after for years, Gran Turismo is – considerable launch issues aside – close to firing on all cylinders again and even little Kirby put in his best effort to date. And that’s before you even consider more modest modern masterpieces such as Tunic and OlliOlli World.

There’s a lot, basically – so much so that keeping on top of it all can be a task itself. So here’s a handy runthrough of the best games of 2022 so far, something we’ll be returning to and updating on a regular basis. It should be the perfect companion piece should you be looking for anything to play in the more fallow months that are set to follow what's been an amazing amount of activity.

PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox, Nintendo Switch

Read more

Vanillaware has pretty much delivered whenever a new game launches, and that is the case for 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, the RTS sidescrolling hybrid that was released in 2020. Visually stunning, it makes sense then for its artwork to get critical acclaim. In celebration of the impending release of the game on Nintendo Switch, Atlus is partnering with Gallery Nucleus in Los Angeles to host a special 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim art exhibition and fan event.

Attendees will be able to feast their eyes on 13 unique works of art, each focusing on a particular pilot, and created by 13 illustrators. If any catches your eye, you can also bring them home as limited edition prints, with an edition size of 13.

The in-person event will take place on April 16 and 17, with free admission. The event’s details are as follows:

Nucleus Art Gallery
210 East Main Street
Alhambra, CA 91801

April 16 from 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM PDT
April 17 from 12:00 PM – 8:00 PM PDT

If you are excited enough to come in cosplay, there will be a special raffle held to reward the support. Do note that you will need to RSVP for the opening night on April 16, but otherwise, the event is open to all.

If steampunk is your thing, then Nacon and Spiders‘ upcoming action RPG Steelrising should be right up your alley. The combination of automata and the backdrop of the French Revolution makes for an already interesting premise, with the combat set to be another key element to draw players in. Unfortunately, that vision is going to take longer to come to life, as Nacon has officially announced a delay for Steelrising to September 8 2022.

This news comes alongside the latest gameplay video trailer shared over at Game Informer, where we can see Steelrising in action. In addition, Spiders CEO and Steelrising lead writer Jehanne Rousseau, alongside design director Sebastien Di Ruzza and localization lead Ciaran Cresswell provide some insightful commentary.

Following yesterday’s reveal, Nippon Ichi Software released the first trailer of the upcoming rea-time strategy JRPG GrimGrimoire OnceMore.

The trailer provides the first look at the remastered gameplay of the classic by Vanillaware, and gives us a chance to enjoy the developer’s trademark charming art that looks even better in high resolution.

You can check it out below.

GrimGrimoire OnceMore will release in Japan on July 28, for PS4 and Nintendo Switch.

If you’re not familiar with the original GrimGrimoire, it was originally released in 2007 for PlayStation 2. This new remaster includes plenty of new elements, on top of higher-resolution visuals and wide-screen format.

At the moment, NIS America (which also published the original game in North America) hasn’t announced a western release, so we’ll have to wait and see whether this game is brought over, but I would be surprised if it isn’t.

The horror genre continues to evolve and grow, and an interesting new addition will come our way in 2022. Coming to PC, and consoles including the Nintendo Switch, Paper Cut Mansion is being developed by UK-based Space Lizard Studio and publisher Thunderful Games.

Players will take on the role of police detective Toby in this horror roguelite set in a papercraft world. Arriving at a mysterious old mansion with a story to unravel, each floor will offer a different challenge, as will each run in the game. Within each floor lies portals that will lead to alternate versions of the same location, with twists on aesthetics and gameplay.

Today Atlus released another trailer of the upcoming JRPG Soul Hackers 2, showing another demon included in the game.

This time around we get the reveal of Quetzalcoatl, that has been part of the Shin Megami Tensei series since forever, including the recent Shin Megami Tensei V.

As usual, we also get the daily horoscope with a ranking of signs from the luckiest to the unluckiest. Scorpio is at the top, while Acquarius 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.

You can check out the original trailer, plenty of screenshots, a second gallery, more images, and a video explaining the gameplay.

MLB The Show 22 on PS5

Baseball is back. MLB The Show 22 is here and as with every year, it’s promised to be the biggest one yet. With two or three-player online co-op, a new commentary team, improvements to franchise mode, and more, it’s certainly impressive on paper. But every baseball fan knows that a good team on paper still needs to prove its worth on the field.

Right off the bat, MLB The Show 22 passes the eye test. The 4K resolution, 60 FPS framerate, and HDR all make the game look incredible. This is nothing new for the franchise on the current-gen consoles, but it’s still an impressive showing considering how few games are able to boast the same.

On top of the fantastic graphics and smooth framerate, the overall presentation keeps on getting better every year. Smash a mammoth homer or gun a runner out at first from across the diamond and there’ll be a replay with the same Google Cloud Statcast breakdown of launch angle or throwing speed you would see during a real MLB broadcast.

And what brings the whole in-game presentation together is the brand new commentary team. Jon “Boog” Sciambi and Chris Singleton are replacing the old trio of Matt Vasgersian, Mark DeRosa and Dan Plesac. Sciambi and Singleton have been calling MLB games together for over 10 years and parts of their real commentary has been captured and brought into MLB The Show 22.

Anime and/or cosplay cons are now so commonplace you can find them in cities big and small across America. But in 1995, people’s options for sharing their interests (and buying associated merch) were a lot more limited.

Read more...

Fashionistas will fall in love with this series of nail polish inspired by Pokemon that the Uka company in Japan is launching next month. The beauty company has created six different nail polishes that each feature a different Pokemon and the color associated with it.

This special line of polish has three meant for adults and three meant for children, though of course, any age can wear any of the colors. Each bottle has the silhouette of the Pokemon that the color represents.

The adults’ nail polishes feature Meowth, Eevee, and Piplup, which are designed with softer, more professional colors: beige, brown, and smoky blue, respectively.

The children’s polishes feature Pikachu, Jigglypuff, and Scorbunny with fun, brighter colors: yellow, pink, and orange, respectively.

Uka boasts that these polish colors are perfect for busy adults and children who enjoy cute colors; they say that their polishes are quick-drying and moisturize the nails. These nail polishes even use a vegan formula with 60% of its ingredients being plant-based, which is great if that’s important to you.

Each of the Pokemon-inspired nail polishes comes in 10mL bottles and costs 2,750 yen (approximately $22 USD) each. If you want all six in a special set called the Six Stars Collection, it can be preordered online between May 6 and May 11 for 18,260 yen (approximately $145 USD).

It may come at a high price, but how could you resist knowing that the colors match your favorite Pokemon?

There are certainly many options for players when it comes to the 4X strategy genre, but for those looking for a sci-fi slant to things, there is some good news. Stardock has officially announced that Galactic Civilizations IV will leave Steam Early Access on April 26, adding to the long-running series.

If you are unfamiliar with the series, it essentially tasks players with the lofty goal of leading their people into space and establishing an empire for posterity. For this sequel, however, there are new and noteworthy features that will help players achieve their goals.

“Galactic Civilizations IV is the result of years of thinking about the exciting innovations that have been occurring in strategy games,” Stardock CEO Brad Wardell said. “We want to give players the ultimate turn-based strategy experience, and we’ve accomplished this by adding in tons of new features that add to the depth and scope of the game while incorporating feedback over several alpha and beta testing phases.”

Today Bandai Namco announced that Scarlet Nexus has reached 2 million players.

According to the announcement, made on Twitter, the milestone was reached including players on Game Pass, both on PC and Xbox.

Considering that Scarlet Nexus is a completely new IP, this is certainly a flattering result.

Scarlet Nexus is available for PS5, Xbox Series X, PS4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam. You can read our review and, if you’re unfamiliar with the game, here’s how Bandai Namco describes it officially.

Sina Estavi is a “crypto entrepreneur,” who last year bought a digital token representing Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first ever tweet. He paid $2.9 million for it, and this month sought to make good on his “investment,” putting it up for auction with an expectation it could net him $48 million. It did not.

Read more...

Heatsinks are great. Not only do they serve an important purpose in keeping our electronics cool and safe, but they’ve got that neat thing going on where they’re all spiky and springy. Have you ever stopped and wondered, though, how a heatsink is actually made? I never had, until today, but am now very glad I know.

Read more...

Niantic Labs is no stranger to cute creatures featured in AR mobile games; it popularized the genre with games like Pokémon Go and Pikmin Bloom. But now, Niantic is betting on its own IP with the new AR experience called Peridot. 

The game is named after the critters at the center of the game. Peridots, or Dots as Niantic also calls them, are to be raised from birth to adulthood and can be bred to create new variations of Peridots. Because it's an AR game like Pokémon Go, you'll be able to travel with your Dots, who will help you find items in the world or can be used for a photo-op at a local landmark. 

Developer DICE is readying to launch a major new update for Battlefield 2042, with the beleaguered shooter's 4.0 release promising to deliver "400+" fixes and improvements when it arrives some time next week.

Although full patch notes won't be available until next week's launch, DICE community manager Kevin Johnson (thanks VGC) has shared some of the release's key features on Twitter. Attachments will, for instance, receive an overhaul in Update 4.0, with DICE aiming to ensure all feel unique and have an impact on loadout choices and gunplay.

Additionally, XP for Support Actions and Teamplay has been balanced "to ensure teamwork remains king", and there are balancing changes arriving for Vehicular Warfare in a bid to give Infantry/Vehicle counter play "some bite".

Read more

Hey, you! Want an absolutely massive SSD? For, you know, keeping all your games installed at once? Or downloading the entire internet, four terabytes at a time? Well, the Crucial MX500, an SSD which received the RPS seal of approval, has reached a new low price on Amazon UK. Having previously retailed for around £310 to £340, it's now been reduced to £284.50, a healthy 10% reduction.

Read more

New episodes of Moon Knight debut on Disney+ every Wednesday, and tell the story of Steven Grant's transformation into one of Marvel's wildest characters. Wait... Is it Steven Grant or Marc Spector? On third thought, is it Marc Spector or someone else? Regardless of who is in control at the moment, Moon Knight punishes evildoers and looks darn good doing it.

You will soon be able to add Steven and Marc's versions of this character to your Funko Pop and Marvel Legends action figure collections. Funko recently announced a handful of Pops based on this new show. The line consists of Moon Knight in his traditional garb (as Marc sees it), Moon Knight in a nice suit (as Steven sees it), and a comic book version of him that comes with a comic cover background. The wave also includes a Pop of Arthur Harrow, who may or may not be evil. Time will tell. You can see all of the Pops in the gallery below.

In Evil Dead: The Game, if you’re looking to play as the Demon, you have your work cut out for you. Taking on four players by yourself can be quite a task, but you have a plethora of wicked tools at your disposal. With traps, Deadites, and even possessing survivors, you can attempt to isolate and destroy your targets with precision. Each different Demon comes with a special kit that syncs up with various playstyles, so let’s take a look at the three core Demon templates you’ll have available to play with at launch. Each one of these kits can be leveled up at the account level, so you can push experience points into your favorite for added lethality and efficacy.

If you're hankering for some additional letter-based puzzling to fill the void between your daily bursts of Wordle, Mattel and developer Scopely might well have the answer - as the grandaddy of word games, Scrabble, is given a brand-new web version to mark what is apparently this year's National Scrabble Day in the US.

Scrabble Web, as this new online version of the classic word game is sensibly and unfussily known, delivers all the letter-plopping thrills of the board game original, albeit it in a free, easily accessible new digital guise. And while it might be relatively low on frills right now, it does at least feature a fairly solid range of options when it comes to ways to play.

For starters, there's a solo mode, pitting players against an AI opponent, but also some competitive PvP for those that prefer to test their word prowess against living, breathing challengers - be they randoms or friends - all served up in selectable flavours of match length, lasting between 3 and 45 minutes.

Read more