The official Xbox Game Pass Twitter account is hinting at a new game that's supposed to hit the service soon, and it seems to be People Can Fly's third-person shooter Outriders.

According to an email from the imaginary executive senior vice president lieutenant of general video game communications "Melissa McGamepass," "that new game has been confirmed and is officially coming to the service." While it doesn't explicitly state the game's name, the references to "mysterious signal" and "anomaly" has people talking about Outriders.

In an Outriders story and world reveal from February 2020, a "mysterious signal" is what drives the superpowered militia group to face off against the "anomaly." At the end of the Outriders demo, players end up chasing a mysterious signal in the distance. These two callbacks are seemingly enough for people to assume that Outriders will make its way to Xbox Game Pass.

There’s not a lot to do, and not much reason for doing it

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After you spend thousands of hours playing online survival games – even the newest, most popular ones like Valheim – it can be easy to become bored with the more repetitive tasks. Outside of any major quests or boss fights, you can only chop down so many trees and mine so many chunks of ore before you have to get creative.

On March 16, Rainbow Six Siege gets a big update featuring a new character and much more with the Crimson Heist season. In the spirit of a giant new content update, Ubisoft has released a story trailer to kick things off before it actually launches. You can watch it right here!

Of note with the Crimson Heist content pack is a rework of the Border map, Newcomer playlist, a new weapon, and more. Of course, that wouldn’t be enough, there has to be a new Operator too right? It’s Flores. Flores is an offensive attack that comes with a bang-up kit that includes an explosive remote-controlled RCE-Ratero Charge. This hot new tech lets you blow up stuff safely at a distance, allowing you to bust holes in walls or taking out the opposing tech without putting yourself in harm’s way.

Numerous changes have occurred in the Border map in the name of quality-of-life improvements, including new walls, interiors, and exterior changes. Many other changes are coming in this patch as well, which you can read about here.

Agent 47 would be my favorite pitcher on the Padres

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You may have heard that Xbox Game Pass has now added 20 of Bethesda’s most popular games, thanks to the newly minted partnership between the companies. More good news: Some of them are getting an FPS boost courtesy of the Xbox Series X and Series S.

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim Special Edition, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Dishonored: Definitive Edition, and Prey are all getting the option to boost their framerate. Xbox’s Larry Hryb and Jeff Rubenstein shared the announcement and details during Friday’s recording of the official Xbox podcast.

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If for any reason you actually prefer to play the games at their original framerates, Rubenstein confirmed that players will be able to toggle the setting on their consoles. Rubenstein added that players can expect an “increase from 30 up to nearly 60 frames per second” when FPS boost is activated. The boost will require you to update your system to the latest version.

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The upcoming release of a new Story of Seasons has us thinking about farming games! Which are the best ones? The Siliconera staff is here to help with some handy recommendations.

The post Which Farming Games Are Worth Playing? appeared first on Siliconera.

Top Product: Hori Split Pad Pro | $40 | Amazon

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The question at the heart of this week’s incessant NFT debate is one of ownership: How, in the digital age, can one really own anything? And when somebody purchases a glorified gif or jpg for mind-boggling amounts of money, what do they even own? Not rights. Not the sole copy of the image. So what? Now indie developer…

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Microsoft Flight Simulator is continuing to get new content from third-party developers and today isn’t an exception, with releases and more sneak peeks.

We take a new look at DC Designs’ F-14 Tomcat add-on, which is in very active development, as you can read in the update provided by the developer.

Ooops, sorry you just missed it.

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Following in the footsteps of the Persona and Sonic The Hedgehog series, the official soundtrack for Astro's Playroom, the pack-in game bundled with every PlayStation 5, has been released on all major streaming services.

The official soundtrack, composed by Kenneth C.M. Young, who's also worked on games such as Astro Bot: Rescue Mission and the LittleBigPlanet series, is comprised of 20 original tracks that correspond to themes of each of the game's levels, which in turn are inspired by the hardware of the PlayStation 5. Check out the entire track list below:

Three Dota 2 community members give you all the lore you need

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Heart Machine is looking for an extraordinarily talented Senior Gameplay Engineer for current and future projects at its growing studio! ...

Allen Pan, who runs the Sufficiently Advanced YouTube channel, has published a new video showcasing how anyone can wield a giant anime sword with a little help from an exoskeleton.

In an approximately 13-minute video, Pan discusses how he achieved the ultimate goal: swinging a generic replica of Cloud Strife's Buster Sword. To do this, he used his stimulus money to enlist a friend to build the sword. But how does someone pick up the Buster Sword, a comically large weapon that looks very heavy? A $900 Steadicam exoskeleton, that's how.

The sword in Pan's video, built by his friend at 3.6.9 Design, is 50 pounds. It's not that heavy, but because of the way it's picked up, Pan's generic Buster Sword actually generates 150 pounds of torque, the same amount of force a car engine produces. This is where the $900 used exoskeleton comes in, to help offset the weight of the Buster Sword.

Inspired by Doug Liman's Edge of Tomorrow, Pan modifies a passive camera-stabilizing exoskeleton with additional springs to further account for the sword's weight. He initially wanted to wield the sword just as Cloud does but was convinced the suit wouldn't be able to withstand the force of the sword without assistance. So he went a different route: attach a ring to the center of the blade and clip that to the exoskeleton as a means to offset the heaviness.

While there isn't an exact time or date, the PC Gaming Show 2021 will be held in June. Last year's event was in June and lasted 2 hours.

The post PC Gaming Show Will Appear in June 2021 appeared first on Siliconera.

A new fad is highlighting long-standing issues

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Torn Banner Studios released a new trailer of its upcoming medieval combat multiplayer game Chivalry II.

This time around, we take a look at the Wardenglade map, where knights and man-at-arms will be able to beat the crap out of each other in the upcoming game.

Incidentally, an open beta will be hosted on PC between April 23 and April 26, and pre-ordering (only on PC) will grant accesss.

You can check out the trailer below.

If you’re unfamiliar with the game, this is how the developer describes it.

Return to the ultimate medieval battlefield

Chivalry 2 is a multiplayer first person slasher inspired by epic medieval movie battles. Players are thrust into the action of every iconic moment of the era – from the thunder of cavalry charges, to storms of flaming arrows, sprawling castle sieges and more.

Epic cinematic experience dominate massive 64-player battlefields

Catapults tear the earth apart as players lay siege to castles, set fire to villages and slaughter filthy peasants in the return of grand Team Objective maps. Ride to war on horseback and claim glory by your blade.

Become a knight of legend escape your mundane life

Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, the latest entry in Activision's long-running platform series, will be making its way to PC on 26th March.

As the '4' in the title indicates, It's About Time is a direct continuation of 1998's Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped - a game that got a gorgeous remake as one third of 2017's Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy - and very much takes inspiration from the early series' brand of platform action.

There are wrinkles to the formula, of course, including masks that slow time, flip gravity, and phase objects in and out of existence, as well as various new modes and playable characters - each with their own unique abilities and stages - but it should all be immediately familiar to Crash fans. It's About Time even leans into the early games' brutal difficulty - although a choice between Modern and Retro modes help ease the sometimes immense challenge.

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You'll get by in the early going of Valheim with leather armor made from Deer Hide, but if you want to explore Viking purgatory in a meaningful way, you need to enter the Bronze Age. Bronze Armor offers a significant upgrade in protection, and you'll need Bronze tools to access a lot of new materials. Making Bronze isn't easy, though--which is why we've got a complete guide to help you find the materials you need, make the right crafting stations, and start blacksmithing.

What To Do First

To start harvesting the things you need to make Bronze, you'll need to venture into the Black Forest biome. This is a step up in difficulty from the early game location of the Meadows, where you'll mostly deal with boars and Greylings. The forest houses much tougher enemies, including a variety of Greydwarf types, Skeletons, and Trolls. You might run into them in the Meadows, but going into the Black Forest is a pretty big risk early on.

To handle it, you're going to at least need Leather Armor--but if you can get Troll Hide Armor, you should. But to make the weapons needed to succeed in the Black Forest, you must first deal with your toughest early-game challenge so far: Eikthyr, the Meadows biome boss.

Apex Legends is one of my favorite games to come out in recent years. Respawn took bits and pieces of Titanfall and managed to successfully form them into an engaging battle royale experience that’s hard to put down. Unfortunately, that Apex Legends experience just isn’t the same on the Nintendo Switch.

The game is known for being a fast-paced shooter that challenges players to balance the characters’ abilities with dynamic movement and gunplay. Yet, it’s extremely difficult to individually do any of those things efficiently in a firefight on the Switch, let alone doing them all at once to actually win the fight.

Full disclosure: I’ve been playing Apex Legends since Season 1, so I can only imagine how demanding the mechanics would feel for a beginner when playing this port.

It looks like an Armageddon-style fun time, and it isn’t

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Marvel today shared a trailer for Assembled: The Making of WandaVision, and also premiered the episode on the Disney+ streaming service – so you can go watch it right now. Beyond this initial episode, Assembled is being billed as a broader series that focuses on both Marvel’s TV series, as well as its theatrical releases, so fans can expect to see a lot more from the series in the coming months and years – perhaps sooner than later.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has some major beats on the horizon, including the impending launch of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which is set to premiere its first episode next week, on March 19. The nearness of that premiere to WandaVision’s conclusion strongly suggests that Marvel is looking to keep a steady flow of new content coming to fans, capitalizing on the way many have tuned in every week for a new peek at Wanda and Vision’s troubled suburban life. This new Assembled release drops exactly one week after the previous show concluded, and ahead of the next show’s beginning, acting as a bridge for enthusiasts hungry to learn more about the ever-growing fiction.

Somewhere in Harvest Moon: One World there's a really interesting seed of an idea for a new take on farming sims, which would be much appreciated after 25 years of very similar games. And in the right hands, turning a farming simulator series into a plot-driven, exploration-focused adventure game sounds like a brilliant idea. And yet One World fails in just about every way to do anything interesting or innovative with this new idea other than layer it on top of a deeply mediocre farming sim.

The Assoluto Bisonte seen above weighed about 2,750 pounds in its 1999 race trim and derived its power from a mid-mounted pushrod V8 of 3 liters. The four different teams that ran it during the Real Racing Roots campaign that year quoted different power figures, though the most well-known example run by Racing Team…

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A weekend crossover event between the wildly popular Genshin Impact and Kentucky Fried Chicken had to be shut down at Shanghai and Hangzhou locations after apparently violating China’s ongoing covid-19 prevention measures, the fast food chain announced on Chinese social media site Weibo today.

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Today Cloud Imperium Games released new video content related to its growing space simulator Star Citizen.

The first video is a trailer of the upcoming Cyclone MT armed buggy. On top of that, it also touches on the “Stella Fortuna” St. Patrick day event.

The second video is an extensive roundtable session with the VFX team, including the relevant developers working on the many effects that help making the game beautiful.

You can watch both below.

In other Star Citizen news, the crowdfunding total  has just passed a groundbreaking $350 million and it’s currently at $350,077,930

Friday’s Best Deals | Kinja Deals

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Doki Doki Mode feels out of place in the main story, but thrives in the new Doki Doki Carnival.

The post Doki Doki Carnival in Gal Gun Returns Mitigates Out-of-Sync Mechanics appeared first on Siliconera.

For the longest time, the anime community has been filled with arguments surrounding Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach, as fans speculate which new anime could replace these “Big 3” juggernauts. While we may still not have a definitive answer to that question, the community has at least shifted to a slightly more modern take on it: What anime will replace Attack on Titan?

So far, a few different anime have floated to the top of that discussion, with the frontrunners being Re:Zero, Demon Slayer, and JuJutsu Kaisen. On paper, they’re all good candidates: Each is at the top of their genre in terms of popularity, storytelling, and animation, just like Attack on Titan has been for the past eight years.

Unlike most Isakai, Re:Zero is an anime that isn’t afraid to approach dark and inhumane subjects for the purpose of characterization and telling a great story.

Similarly, Demon Slayer’s fantastic watercolor visuals and character designs help put it a step above the rest of the battle shonen series that saturate the market.

JuJutsu Kaisen is even more impressive, as it manages to strive in both of those departments. The anime boasts a hilarious ensemble of characters and some of the most beautiful fight scene sakuga ever created in anime, let alone amongst supernatural battle shonen.

Yet, despite how popular they are, none of those anime can hold a candle to the success Attack on Titan found in the mainstream, especially in the west.

Continuing to capitalize on the fact that it’s easier to get adults to buy toys than try to pull kids away from screens, Hasbro’s tapping into late ‘80s nostalgia with new releases of Kenner’s classic The Real Ghostbusters toys, including the iconic Ecto-1 and the terrifying toilet ghost.

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Doom

Doom, alongside its sequel, Doom Eternal, is hands-down one of the best single-player FPS games to come out in recent memory. It and Titanfall 2 proved last-gen that shooters don’t always need to be entirely focused on multiplayer and that there’s a market for just the story and gameplay experience that doesn’t need to involve other people.

You’d be forgiven if you forgot that, at least in the case of Doom, there was a multiplayer mode as well. It had a few game modes and experimented with a Demon Rune that allowed players to transform into a demon, which likely formed the basis of Doom Eternal’s multiplayer.

But at the end of the day, it’s not what the fans are buying Doom for, nor is it what they are staying for. At least in the case of Doom (2016) further adding to the game’s single-player features probably would have been the better call.

Cobra Commander and Duke from the G.I. Joe franchise are coming to World of Tanks today. In addition to two new 3D styles for the TS-5 and the T-54, World of Tanks is offering themed missions, decals, and emblems. This crossover also includes a promotion through Amazon’s Prime Gaming, which will offer two unique crew commanders for players beginning March 18. Check out the trailer!

The Wargaming brand is no stranger to crossovers, with all kinds of bizarre things making the shift to worlds at war, including anime and Transformers lately, so G.I. Joe actually fits the battle brand even better than some of its other recent splashes. The new G.I. Joe Breakthrough Tank and the Cobra Battle Operational Assault adds two new vehicles to the game that fit the universe, based on the TS-5 and the T-54. Nostalgia has been a particularly strong go-to for many brands as of late, as they tap into those childhood vibes from the 80s and 90s with classic cartoons, characters, and flavor. Hey, what’s better than aiming some artillery with Cobra Commander? 

With the arrival of Call of Duty’s Season 2 on February 25, zombies took the story spotlight. Black Ops Cold War got a great Zombies “Outbreak” mode, and Warzone’s Verdansk map got a ship full of the undead. Warzone is slowly being infected by the undead, leading up to a potential new mode or map.

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With the official announcement that Square Enix will soon unveil a brand new Life Is Strange game, it got us thinking about everything we’ve enjoyed about the series so far and what we think could be improved. Below are three things we want Life is Strange to improve moving forward in the series.

Who Makes the Cut?

Modders have already created some first-person camera for Breath of the Wild, but one player has managed to figure out a glitch that should (in theory) let anyone look at Hyrule from a totally different perspective.

As reported by Kotaku, Twitter user A.xk managed to discover a specific button input that would trigger the camera to clip down to a roughly first-person view. Check out the gif below from A.xK's YouTube channel.

Want to try it for yourself? Here’s A.xk’s instructions:

New item hold glitch

↓

Camera

↓

Item hold

↓

Item hold cancel

YouTuber Peco also managed to recreate the glitch if you want to see some longer clips of the first-person view.