What better game to look at during Music Week than a narrative rhythm action adventure?

Look at that font. 70s poster font. Gig font. A font with flares. Lurid and a bit goofy, it tells you so much about the game. More, even, than the title: A Musical Story.

No, that's probably not fair. A Musical Story is a musical story. A musician lies in a hospital bed with no memories. So you use music to recreate them. It's a narrative rhythm action game and it's already pretty special.

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Loop Hero on PC

The idea for Loop Hero came about when studio Four Quarters thought about whether it could still make an interesting game by taking away control from the player. The idea of sending a player character out into a terrifying world filled with monstrosities with no way to affect what goes on in a battle is frightening but ultimately serves as the main conceit in Steam’s latest indie hit.

There is no control in Loop Hero. There is only the endless cycle of death and combat, with no clear way out.

Part deck-building strategy game, part rogue-lite RPG, there’s nothing quite like Loop Hero. The main gameplay loop (ha) centers around you sending out your hero on a journey to fight enemies and gather resources to upgrade your campsite.

Map layouts are procedurally generated with each expedition, but the road always forms a closed loop. The hero starts at camp, then begins walking around the road until they return to camp, and then the loop starts again. Along the way, you’ll fight slimes, which have the chance to drop gear and resource cards for you.

Cards make up one important half of the game; at any point in time, you can pause the loop to study your cards, then place them down on the map whether it’s to the side or along the loop itself. These cards can provide benefits, such as Meadows allowing you to restore a set amount of HP with each passing day, or Rocks and Mountains that increase your max HP.

Special guests include Capcom director Morimasa Sato and Square Enix producer Yoshinori Kitase.

The post PlayStation Broadcast to Feature Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade and Resident Evil Village appeared first on Siliconera.

Earlier this week, Double Eleven put the word out to the wastelands that its survival epic Rust would be making its way to PS4 and Xbox One in the coming months. Following on from the port's first trailer, the publisher has released two "uncut" gameplay videos showcasing Rust: Console Edition in action on both platforms.

The first video runs a lengthy 17 minutes and spotlights Facepunch Studios' multiplayer adventure as it appears on PS4 Pro. The video features a raid on an isolated village, followed by a spot of scavenging and scrounging for food, weaponry, and other resources. After all, the local 7-11 is hard to come by in Rust's brutal wilderness. At this stage, gameplay looks relatively smooth, with the PS4 Pro handling Rust's action with comparative ease.

When you think of Pokémon, you probably don’t think of sunscreen. Well, maybe you do. I know I don’t!

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Go on dates with Chongyun, Noelle, Bennett, and Barbara of Genshin Impact in the new Version 1.4 update.

The post Take Genshin Impact Characters on Dates in Hangout Events appeared first on Siliconera.

Capcom just put out a new Monster Hunter Rise demo, which you can download now on the eShop.

As announced, this demo is practically identical to the first one, but with one major difference; it adds a Magnamalo hunt. It's described as a "seasoned hunter" challenge, but it'll also have the other four quests available if you're not up for it.

To accompany this new big bad, Capcom has posted a new clip that showcases Magnamalo firsthand, with a few of their abilities in tow. I gotta say, the neon purple aesthetic and the Akuma-like fireballs really make it stand out. That huge amiibo is going to look nice in the collection case.

As a reminder, this is the last demo planned for Monster Hunter Rise. The game is launching at the end of the month after all!

Monster Hunter [Twitter]

Well, the Apex Legends port for Switch is finally here, and sadly it's not a particularly pleasant experience. Muddy visuals, frame-rate problems and cross-play issues abound: and that's just in docked mode.

Over the past few days I've been playing Apex on my Switch, primarily docked using Joy-Cons, and I've spent most of it wishing I was playing on any other platform. For me, the main problem is the visuals - everything feels incredibly blurry, ranging from skin textures to enemy outlines. On Switch, Apex officially targets a resolution of 720p in docked and 576p in handheld, with a frame-rate of 30FPS in both. Yet even without an FPS counter it's obvious that the game is frequently running below 30FPS, with significant frame-rate dips during gunfights. Not so great when you're being shot at. I initially thought the frame-rate and blurriness problems might be limited to handheld, but sadly the docked mode doesn't fare much better. I'll be interested to hear what Digital Foundry has to say about this, so stay tuned for their verdict.

Pokémon Go's loot box-style eggs can now show a list of their possible contents - a first for the nearly five-year-old game.

The feature is now being tested with a selection of users before being rolled out more widely, developer Niantic announced last night.

Clicking on an egg will now show a table of possible contents, which differ between egg type and regularly change as the game cycles through events featuring specific creatures.

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With each and every passing statement, Xbox continues to lean in harder on the exclusivity benefits the green brand has earned thanks to its mighty pricey purchase of ZeniMax Media and its subsidiary studios, most notably the AAA developer/publisher Bethesda Softworks.

During yesterday's "roundtable discussion" video, where Xbox and Bethesda converged on stream to discuss the multi-billion dollar buyout, Xbox VP of Gaming Phil Spencer stressed the exclusivity potential of Bethesda's wares, particularly as it pertains to the Xbox Game Pass subscription service.

"We have games that exist on other platforms, and we're going to support those games on the platforms they're on," said Spencer on the subject of console exclusivity. "There are communities of players. We love those communities and will continue to invest in them."

"Even in the future, there might be things that have either contractual things, or legacy on different platforms, that we'll still do [...] But, if you're an Xbox customer, the thing I want you to know is this is about delivering great exclusive games for you that ship on platforms where Game Pass exists."

During the stream Xbox and Bethesda also revealed a slew of the latter's titles that are being added to the Xbox Game Pass service. You can check the full list out right here.

How better to draw Music Week to a close than with a look at what happens when the past and the present collide?

Video game music is big business. Chances are if there's a game you're eagerly anticipating, the release of its original soundtrack isn't close behind, whether it's conveniently on Spotify or pristinely packaged as a vinyl record from iam8bit or dozens of other specialists that have emerged in the recent years.

Yet for Remute, that's all a bit too safe and conventional. At least for a producer who specialises in electronic music.

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Movies on PSP UMDs. Motion pictures on the Game Boy Camera. 3D movies on the 3DS.

Plucky young filmmakers have been messing with the medium for ages now under the lens of video games, but this YouTuber has taken it to a new level. Putting Christopher Nolan's film Tenet on a Game Boy Advance.

Wulff Den decided to riff on the idea that Nolan "really wanted people to see Tenet in theaters" during a global pandemic last year. Amazingly, it also dunks on the notion that some of Tenet's dialogue was hard to hear in theaters: an ongoing debate that has come up in several Nolan features.

The full film actually spans five Game Boy Advance carts, and uses "a legally obtained copy of Tenet," and a bunch of GBA carts to "cannibalize." As expected, the framerate tanks, it's hard to hear, and clocking in at two hours and 30 minutes, it needs to span all those carts to account for the 30 minute maximum per cart. They are .avi files and need to be scrunched down far below 480p.

The amazing thing about all this is how it reminds me of David Lynch's (NSFW) "playing the movie on a telephone" rant. Lynch is able to just say what Nolan takes multiple paragraphs to spit out in an instant.

Today Atlus announced a new shipments milestone for Vanillaware’s critically-acclaimed game 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim.

The game has now shipped over 400,000 copies worldwide as of today, March 12, up from 300,000  in January.

On top of that, we learn that the game was honored as a “recommended” work at the prestigious Japan Media Arts Festival, which just concluded its 24th edition.

This is basically the equivalent of our honorable mention by the Jury of the festival.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is now available exclusively for PS4.

Madden on Switch? Wait, Madden wasn't already on Switch?! Nope!

It's crazy isn't it? I mean, I thought at some point in the last eight years or so that Madden had graced the Wii, Wii U, or Switch. For a while everything still got Wii ports: just ask Ubisoft.

But nope, there hasn't been a Madden game on any Nintendo console since Madden NFL 13 in 2012. That's almost a decade ago. But that could change, based on the verbiage in this new job listing for a Madden developer.

According to YouTuber Doctre81, not only does the listing mention "Nintendo game consoles" by name, but it's not typically wording found in specific software engineer postings for franchises: indicating that this could be proof of a Madden Switch port. As Doctre81 points out, EA is finally making an effort to port games on the Switch and get in on that money train. It's possible! Even if it's a stripped-down or spinoff version.

Even if it's not for Madden 21 this year, it could very well be proof of the next Madden hitting Switch. EA would be crazy to leave all that money on the table now that the Switch has proven it can hang.

Online Software Engineer - (C++) - Madden [EA via YouTube]

I was recently idly wondering whether we'd ever see another true WipEout again when I decided to download the Omega Collection via backwards compatibility on PlayStation 5. This loving compilation of Studio Liverpool's last three entries in one of PlayStation's most iconic series might be showing its age - you can trace the roots here back to the series' PSP outings, and at times they certainly show - but that doesn't stop it from being as sublime to play today as it's ever been, especially in all the Omega Collection's 4K/60fps glory. It's pretty much as good as futuristic racers get.

Apologies for starting a review of one game while talking about another, but there's no other way when it comes to Pacer really; this is a futuristic anti-grav racer that goes out of its way to evoke memories of WipEout. As it has every right to, seeing as some of the original team behind its development, back when it was still known as Formula Fusion before its 2019 rebranding, worked on WipEout 3. Pacer leans into the golden age of Sony's series, recruiting The Designers Republic and Warp Records, two names as synonymous with the bleep scene of the 90s as WipEout itself.

So yes, Pacer feels familiar, which is no bad thing at all. You're running ship to ship at speeds in excess of 1000kph, working up to the near-impossible-to-handle elite class from the starting ranks of the F3000 class. There's a nice little nod there, if you're of an age to feel a rush of nostalgia when listening to Autechre, to the F1 feeder class that used to pound the streets of Birmingham through the late 80s, and the SuperPrix circuit feels like it'd slot nicely into Pacer somewhere. This is a scuzzier, downbeat view of the future, more in keeping with the likes of WipEout 2048 than the more pristine earlier entries.

PlayStation Japan has announced a special live stream discussion to showcase some of the most exciting titles headed to PlayStation in 2021. "Play! Play! Play!", as well as sounding vaguely threatening, is described as "a talk show that makes you want to play" and will be broadcast March 21 at 20:00 JST and will run for around an hour.

Scheduled to make an appearance on the stream are Capcom's sepia-tinged horror Resident Evil Village as well as Square Enix's upcoming PS5 release Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. A selection of hosts will be on hand to discuss their respective titles, including Capcom director Morimasa Sato, and Square Enix producer Yoshinori Kitase. It is unclear whether the presentation will include English subtitles, but hopefully there'll be lots of juicy new video for our eyeballs.

If you want to watch the Play! Play! Play! presentation, then you can check out the action on the PlayStation Japan YouTube channel. In the west, the stream will broadcast on March 21 at 03:00 PT / 06:00 / 11:00 GMT... Maybe just wait for the highlight reel on this one.

There are good rom-coms, bad rom-coms, and so-bad-they’re-good rom-coms. And then there’s Failure To Launch, a 2006 Matthew McConaughey/Sarah Jessica Parker vehicle so inexplicably bizarre it almost feels like a meta parody of every terrible romantic comedy trope. With a slight shift in tone, Failure To Launch …

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Today Koei Tecmo released a new gallery of screenshots of its upcoming Musou game Samurai Warriors 5.

First of all, we get to see the art for the latest four characters announced, Oichi, Azai Nagamasa, Toshiie Maeda, and Tadakatsu Honda.

Next, the first screenshots showcase the story, which takes place after the end of the Ounin War. It begins with Oda Nobunaga and his childhood friend Toshiie Maeda attacking the army of Imagawa to take back Tokugawa Ieyasu, who has been made a hostage.

On top of the Musou actions returning from previous games like Hyper Attacks, this time around we get new action named Ultimate Techniques (“Sengi” or Flash techniques in Japanese), and you can equip four of them per character.

Each has a different attack power, area of effect, and cooldown, on top of types of enemies against which it’s effective. You can choose them to suit your needs on the battlefield, and they consume a dedicated gauge upon use. They also cancel actions, so they can be used to continue long combos.

We then see a bonus costume offered in Japan by Amazon, which gives Nouhime a Yuki-Onna theme.

We also hear that another livestream dedicated to the game will air on March 24.

New stills and storyline details reveal Leon and Claire will be fighting zombies in the White House.

The post Capcom Reveals Resident Evil Infinite Darkness Stills and Storyline appeared first on Siliconera.

Netflix has released new details regarding its upcoming CGI animation series Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, which will premiere on the TV/movie streaming service later in 2021.

The series will see two of Resident Evil's most likable heroes, Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield, cross paths once again when their individual investigations converge, pointing toward more shady conspiracies, reanimated horrors, and a zombie raid on The White House itself. In a very fan-pleasing piece of news, Netflix has confirmed that actors Nick Apostolides and Stephanie Panisello will be reprising their roles from 2019's excellent Resident Evil 2 Remake, adding some immersive familiarity to the show's protagonists.

Behind the scenes, the production of Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness will be supervised by Capcom's Hiroyuki Kobayashi, who has worked in close proximity on many Resident Evil games and anime adaptations. The animation is being produced by the legendary TMS Entertainment, a long-running anime studio most recently renown for their great work on CGI movie Lupin III: The First.

While no specific date has been announced for Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness' premiere, the show will feature at the Anime Japan 2021 festival on March 27. Hopefully we'll receive further details, and perhaps even a new trailer, during the course of that weekend.

It seems that Respawn's Apex Legends is set to have a crossover with BioWare's Mass Effect. Although neither developer Respawn nor EA, which publishes both games, have officially announced the event, the Xbox Series X dashboard currently shows an image of an N7 item that Apex Legends players can acquire.

The item is listed as a Game Pass perk, but attempting to redeem the offer just takes users to the perks page, where there is no mention of the Mass Effect reward. The promotion likely went live ahead of time. The item itself looks to be a weapon charm.

An image of the item was sent into GameSpot by a reader (thanks, David), and then confirmed by a staff member. You can see both images below.

Good Smile Company promised the Pyra and Mythra figures would return at the end of 2020, and it turns out they'll reappear in 2022.

The post The Good Smile Company Pyra and Mythra Figures Will Return in 2022 appeared first on Siliconera.

Today Kodansha released a new trailer of the upcoming anime dedicated to Edens Zero, the latest manga of Fairy Tail creator Hiro Mashima.

The trailer showcases the cast, including a look at Elsie Crimson and Ziggy, that just got the announcement of their voice actors, respectively Sayaka Ohara and Houchuu Ootsuka.

We also learn that Mother will be voiced by Kikuko Inoue.

The anime will debut in Japan on April 10.

Update: the anime is also coming west on Netflix.

We also get to take a look at the art for Elsie and Ziggy, and the key artwork.

Netflix has quite a few gaming adaptations coming down the pipeline, including a CGI Resident Evil series called Infinite Darkness. Netflix did share a teaser video back in January, now the streaming company has dropped another new look - this time with new key art and a full synopsis. 

The TV and movie giant has previously teased the new Resident Evil series, saying "When biohazards run wild, only a pair of veteran zombie slayers can get the job done." Now, we've got an even closer look at Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield with new stills in addition to an impressive-looking poster: 

Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness is bringing back the RE2 remake’s Nick Apostolides as Leon Kennedy and Stephanie Panisello as Claire Redfield. pic.twitter.com/qjIa13hfZc

— NX (@NXOnNetflix) March 12, 2021

Regarding the story, Netflix has been pretty vague regarding what the tale will entail other than the series being set within the canon Capcom universe. Now, we've got our first look at the story for the upcoming show: 

Metro 2033, 4A Games’ first-person shooter and survival horror game, is now free at Steam for PC for a limited time.

The free offer is the original 2010 version which was delisted from the digital storefront after it was remade in 2014 as Metro 2033 Redux. The new version had taken the enemy AI, controls, weapon handling, and more from its sequel, Metro Last Light, into the first game.

Metro 2033 has been relisted on Steam to be given away and can be claimed until Monday, March 15 at 1 p.m. ET. Both the original and the new version have been given away for free in the past.

The franchise is currently celebrating its 10th anniversary with the free offer and a sale for the entire franchise on Steam. Both Metro 2033 Redux and Metro Last Light Redux can be bought for $3.99 each, while Metro Exodus, its Gold Edition, and various downloadable content are heavily discounted as well.

The franchise bundle containing all three games and add-ons can be had for about $30. The sale will last until March 15, same time as the free offer.

Developer 4A Games announced last year that it had begun working on the next installment of the franchise planned for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Announced with a creepy teaser trailer last September, Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness is a brand new animated series based on Capcom’s Resident Evil franchise that’s coming exclusively to Netflix this year. In the trailer, we only got to see shots of series mainstays Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield coming up against zombies, but not much else.

With the series set to release this year, Netflix has just revealed that the voice actors for Leon and Claire in the excellent Resident Evil 2 remake will be reprising their roles for this series. Nick Apostolides will return as the rookie cop Leon, while Stephanie Panisello will make a return as Claire.

Everyone’s favorite video game archaeologist Lance McDonald is back with a new Bloodborne video. This time around, he’s exploring unused dialogue for the Doll, the 2015 game’s level up-granting NPC. And while the alternate voice acting is neat, it’s what she used to say that really piqued my interest.

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Loop Hero is the latest indie hit on Steam that’s been tearing up the charts since its release last week. Developed by FourQuarters and published by Devolver Digital, Loop Hero is a deck-building rogue-lite RPG that feels compelling and totally unique compared to its peers in the same genre.

It’s no surprise, then, that the game has sold so well in its first week. The developers announced that it’s officially hit and passed 500,000 units sold. In addition to that, the devs have also stated that more quality-of-life improvements will be coming to the game soon.

After that, players can expect new content in the form of brand new cards to play around with, new classes, and even more new music to add to the already kickass soundtrack.

“Next up, we’re working on patches with quality-of-life updates you all asked for, including a system for saving during expeditions, new speed settings, and a deck of traits gained from bosses! After that, you can expect to see lots more content added to the game, such as new cards, transformations, classes and new music. We can’t wait to share more updates with you all soon!”

Loop Hero on Steam

Loop Hero is now available on PC via Steam.

The post Loop Hero Surpasses 500,000 Units Sold, Devs Promise Quality-of-Life Updates & More Content appeared first on Twinfinite.

Steamroll your opponents with DIO (Greatest High Ver.) in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Last Survivor!

The post DIO (Greatest High) Slams Into JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Last Survivor appeared first on Siliconera.

More portions of Destiny 2 will be removed from the game and placed in the "Destiny Content Vault." Bungie says the Forsaken expansion is next on the block to get pulled from the game in the developer's ongoing attempt to balance Destiny 2's install size with seasonal content drops and yearly expansion releases.

"Forsaken content will be vaulted at some point," Bungie general manager Justin Truman said in an interview with Eurogamer. That means at least some portions of the game that were added with the 2018's Forsaken expansion--including the Tangled Shore and Dreaming City locations, the Last Wish raid and Shattered Throne dungeon, and their related activities and story content--could be removed from the game. When the Beyond Light expansion was released in 2020, Bungie removed vanilla Destiny 2 content and content from its first two expansions, Curse of Osiris and Warmind, to make space. In all, four planetary locations and three raids went into the Vault, along with all their story and activities.

"I think in the same way we don't want eight raids, it's the same thing with storylines--we don't want when a new player enters into Destiny, there's five different competing storylines that they could start playing and in some of them, Uldren's a good guy, and in some of them he's a bad guy, and it's not clear if you're playing them out of order," Truman explained, referring to the character Uldren Sov, who was an antagonist in Forsaken but has returned in a new role in the most recent Destiny 2 seasons.

Have you ever wondered why brand-new televisions with massive, bright, and vivid screens are so cheap these days? It's all about the ads. Once relegated to the cheapest televisions, owners of LG's flagship CX line are now discovering that they, too, are enjoying unprompted advertising on their television sets, according to a report from The Verge.

The Verge's Chris Welch was updating streaming apps on his television when an ad popped up and played with sound in the corner of his screen without a way to skip it or stop it. It was a short one, but a pop-up, hover-over ad all the same. Other users on Twitter and Reddit have noticed the same behavior, so this doesn't appear to be an isolated occurrence. What's new about this is that the LG CX television Welch witnessed the ad on is one of the brand's upper-middle range televisions, the ones that users buy for a premium experience. Every smart TV has ads to some degree, but this a step beyond ads showing up in the corner of the app browser or input menu.

A 2019 interview by The Verge with Vizio Chief Technology Officer Bill Baxter does a good job of explaining this. "This is a cutthroat industry. It's a 6% margin industry. The greater strategy is I really don't need to make money off of the TV. I need to cover my cost," Baxter said. "It's not just about data collection, it's about post-purchase monetization of the TV."