Valve’s Dota themed auto-battler, Dota Underlords, finally leaves early access on February 25.
Dota Underlords, Valve’s Dota themed auto battler, launched on Steam in June 2019. Ever since then its been in an early-access state, running a “beta season”. Over that time Valve has expanded the game’s reach, making it available mobile devices through both the App Store and Google Play Store. This long beta-phase has undoubtedly hurt the game’s active player numbers. Today Dota Underlords had a peak of 12,000 players on Steam. Although a solid number, that puts it under other Valve games Counter-Strike and Left 4 Dead 2, both of which launched over a decade ago at this point.
Thankfully, Valve has announced that Dota Underlords season 1 will officially launch on February 25. On the Dota Underlords update notes, Valve shared that “this will be our last major update before we come out of Early Access and ship Season 1. The team is now heads down adding features, creating content, and polishing UI. With Season 1, Underlords will introduce new content with City Crawl, new rewards with a full Battlepass, and a new meta with a Hero / Item rotation. Oh, and we have a date – Dota Underlords Season 1 is shipping February 25th.”
Along with finally launching its first competitive season, it looks like there is going to be an influx of new content coming in Dota Underlords. Hopefully, this announcement and the launch of season 1 will encourage more people to give Underlords a shot. Until then, you can read the full patch notes for Underlords latest update, and hone your skills for the season 1 launch.
Pokemon Day will bring in a new mythical Pokemon, a new Max Raid event, and new content updates and information for the mobile titles.
Pokemon Day, which is February 27th, will herald in new announcements and reveals. The first is a brand new mythical Pokemon that will star in the new Pokemon the Movie – Coco as well as appear in Sword and Shield. There will also be a special Max Raid battle event running during that time.
On the mobile games side, a special event will run in Pokemon GO and new information about Pokemon Masters will be revealed. Currently the Wild Area has shifted and with that change comes a new Max Raid battle event featuring Milcery. Ribbon and Star Sweets will be available to players who beat Milcery.
In huge news from Nintendo’s nine-month earnings report, released Thursday, it was revealed that Sword and Shield has sold more than 16 million copies since its November release, becoming the latest highlight in an already strong fiscal year for the company.
The recent Nintendo Direct two new expansion packs for the mainline games, called Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra, were announced with plenty of details. The former will launch in June 2020 and the latter sometime in Fall 2020. A remake of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX for Nintendo Switch was also revealed and you can check out our preview of the demo here. Finally the new Pokemon Home service is set to drop in February and will be available for both the Switch and mobile devices with a variety of plans.
According to the latest NPD data, the latest installment in the long running series has the highest launch month dollar sales in Pokemon franchise history. And for the month of November, Sword was the third best selling game, the double pack including both titles ranking at fourth place, and Shield being in fifth place. However, if you combined those sales then total it would bring them to the number two spot.
In other recent news, Sword and Shield are already the eighth best-selling Nintendo Switch games of all time at six million units sold during its launch weekend alone. Check out pictures of the game’s launch event held at Nintendo NYC. And in not so cheery recent news, Pokemon Company International is looking to sue leakers who spread around pictures of their then unreleased official strategy guide.
Pokemon Sword and Shieldreleased for Nintendo Switch on November 15th. Meanwhile check out our in-depth review for the game here, in which the News Editor states that “Sword and Shield are a lot of fun, even if the series is experiencing growing pains with the transition to home consoles.” You can purchase Sword here and Shield here.
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Stunning custom Xbox controller designs will have 49ers and Chiefs fans drooling.
Super Bowl LIV takes place this Sunday, February 2, in Miami, Florida. Sports fans across the U.S. are excited to watch San Francisco’s 49ers take-on the Kansas City Chiefs. Meanwhile, the non-sports audience looks forward to a night filled with drinking, snacks, and ridiculous advertisements. Twitter user @XboxPope displayed their enthusiasm for Sunday’s showdown by showing off some custom Xbox One controllers. These 2 stunning controllers can be seen below.
The two controllers’ designs are based this year’s Super Bowl competitors. A subtle yellow-gold controller featuring a red directional pad, sticks, and bumpers, as well as the 49ers logo centered on the controller. The Kansas City Chiefs got a similar treatment with a maroon-red controller and sticks paired with flashy gold bumpers. Both designs look fantastic and are perfect for fans of the teams. Among other purposes, the Kansas City controller works wonderfully in Madden NFL 20, where salty Chiefs fans will spend next week rematching a computer-controlled 49ers team after San Francisco inevitably takes home the Vince Lombardi trophy on Sunday night.
Above all else, these are some beautifully designed controllers, but only a fraction of the countless designs XboxPope has created. In order to view their other designs–including a recent touching tribute to the late Lakers Legend Kobe Bryant–make sure you check them out on Instagram. Finally, enjoy yourself and have a safe Super Bowl weekend, regardless of who you’re rooting for.
Portal-inspired puzzle game–The Turing Test–finds a new home with a great port to the Nintendo Switch.
The Turing Test is a first-person puzzle game by Bulkhead Interactive that first released for current systems and PC in 2016. The game’s design draws heavy inspiration from Valve’s Portal series, while the narrative is an original mind-boggling adventure. The puzzles don’t develop into a worthy challenge until late into the game; however, the story is unique and intriguing and keeps you playing until reaching the game’s greatest sectors. This 2016 puzzler runs wonderfully to the Nintendo Switch’s hardware, hopefully allowing a new audience to experience a Turing Test of their own.
Over recent years, game ports have been controversial, especially when porting to the Nintendo Switch; a relatively weak system compared to competitors. I’m happy to report that this is a masterful port. The game is absent of bugs–or at least I didn’t experience any–and the game looks great on Switch. Aside from some brief slowdown within one of the game’s 7 challenge areas, The Turing Test ran perfectly smooth.
The Turing Test is one of the most aptly named games I’ve ever played. A Turing Test is a test created by famous English mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950. The test involves a human having 2 separate text conversations, one with a human, and one with a machine. However, the human participating in the test is fully unaware of which conversation is with a fellow human, and which is with a machine. Ultimately if the human participant is unable to determine which conversation was with the machine, then the machine passes the test. Turing created the test to answer the question, “Can machines think?” a question you’ll be asking yourself while playing The Turing Test.
You control Ava Turing, a researcher sent from the International Space Agency to excavate Jupiter’s moon Europa in the 23rd century. Awoken from cryogenic sleep by T.O.M., an artificial intelligence that surveys Europa’s excavation for the ISA, you depart for Europa’s freezing surface. Greeting you is a seemingly-empty space station, prompting the question, “Where is the research crew?” To answer that question, you’ll need to work your way through the game’s 70 puzzles and pay close attention to the dialogue and your environment along the way.
Along with having an AI as your only conversation partner, puzzles are solved by using an EMT gun to power different machines–drawing obvious comparisons to the Portal games. The puzzles take place in white and grey environments very reminiscent of Portal’s testing chambers. Each level is called a sector, and there are 10 sectors and 1 challenge level called “restricted areas” in each chapter. The first few chapters are extremely simple and introduce new puzzle elements too quickly without fully testing players on recently learned mechanics.
These levels were simple enough, but I often had trouble properly aiming my EMT gun; an issue that gyro controls could have easily solved, if included. Each chapter’s ending rewards you with an explorable area of the station packed with notes and audio-logs which help you understand the story in a similar fashion to games like Gone Home.
Fortunately, about 65% of the way through the game, a new mechanic is introduced which gives the game a unique twist. This new gameplay element–which I don’t want to spoil–complicates all sectors following its introduction, and gives the game a level of challenge that it had been missing. At this point instead of breezing through puzzles, I encountered a few rooms that had me thinking for 20-30 minutes before finally conjuring a solution. Honestly, I wish this mechanic would have been introduced sooner, or have been the main gameplay mechanic rather than the EMT gun. Regardless, this mechanic’s introduction is a needed change of pace and breathes life into the game which felt like it had been dragging for a few sectors until that point.
The game closes with its most difficult puzzles, and the story ends at a climax which may satisfy, depending on the choices you make. I’m very impressed by the story in The Turing Test. After learning that Ava’s last name was “Turing”, I spent the first few chapters hypothesizing whether T.O.M. was the computer, or I was. I noticed that I was working my way through puzzles purely because a computer was ordering me to; in that sense was I in charge, or was T.O.M.? The dialogue between the two characters only contributed to my theory.
T.O.M.’s voice acting is wonderful, he sounds intelligent and robotic, while also slightly sinister. Meanwhile, Ava sounded genuine but didn’t appear to understand any information read in notes or heard in audio logs. I really wish Ava would’ve learned with me instead of being seemingly clueless as to what was going on. However, when I finally reached the game’s conclusion and the credits appeared on my screen, I was blown away by what I read.
The Turing Test is a well-made puzzle game that translates well onto the Nintendo Switch. Although its mechanics could be better utilized to create slightly more challenging puzzles in the first few chapters, Bulkhead Interactive started to perfect the formula by the game’s conclusion. Meanwhile, the narrative features solid voice acting performances and motivates you to keep playing through the game’s slow sections which are few and far between. Bulkhead Interactive did a lot right, and if they take another shot learning from the few mistakes they made, they could have a puzzle masterpiece on their hands. Regardless, The Turing Test is a very good, well-priced puzzler that is well ported and certainly worth trying on Nintendo Switch.
Fears that the upcoming animated film Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge wouldn’t contain enough brutality seem to have been overstated.
If you were worried that the upcoming animated movie Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge wouldn’t be as violent as the video game series that it’s based on, you can probably quell those concerns.
Earlier this week, Warner Bros. released the first trailer for Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge and one of the main criticisms from many fans was that the movie didn’t look violent enough. However, this trailer was clearly made with all audiences in mind and didn’t show some of the more brutal sequences that may appear in the movie.
When announcing its plans for Final Kombat this week, a Mortal Kombat 11 tournament that is slated to take place in early March, it was unveiled that the event will also feature the first red band trailer for Scorpion’s Revenge. If you don’t know what a red band trailer is, essentially, it’s a trailer that is allowed to show some of the more R-rated aspects that could be involved with a movie. This means that violence, swearing, and anything else that might not be able to be shown in a general audience trailer can be shown in the red band version. So if I had to wager a guess, the next trailer we see for Mortal Kombat Legends could be much more brutal.
In addition to hosting a tournament and releasing this new trailer, Final Kombat will also be the location in which Spawn’s first gameplay trailer for Mortal Kombat 11 will also be revealed. Spawn creator Todd McFarlane and the voice of the character, Keith David, will also be present at the event alongside NetherRealm’s Ed Boon to show off just how the iconic comic book character will look in-game.
If you’re looking to play some Mortal Kombat, the latest edition in the series, MK11, is available now on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch, and Stadia. Meanwhile, you can check out the initial trailer for Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge down below.
A new soundtrack album featuring the licensed music from Death Stranding is now available with the music of Low Roar, CHVRCHES, and more.
Since its release this past November, Hideo Kojima’s long-awaited Death Stranding has continued not only to garner attention for its story and world, but also its visuals and music. The music of Death Stranding especially gained acclaim for its haunting songs from artists such as Low Roar and CHVRCHES, with a new soundtrack album for the game now available to stream or purchase digitally.
Kojima Productions shared today that the full soundtrack for Death Stranding featuring the game’s licensed music is now available across digital and streaming platforms, titled Death Stranding (Songs from the Video Game). Notably, this soundtrack differs from the previous two albums that have been released so far for the game, which included its full score album and Death Stranding: Timefall, which was comprised entirely of the original music in the game contributed by artists such as CHVRCHES, DJ Lazer, and more.
DeathStranding OST “Death Stranding (Songs from the Video Game)” is available now. 22 tracks total.18 tracks by LOW ROAR, 2 tracks by SILENT POETS and the ending track “DeathStranding” by CHVRCHES and “PATH” by APOCALYPTICA that was used for the trailer. https://t.co/UHNdRezPCw
This album instead is made up of the licensed tracks from the game, primarily consisting of Low Roar’s music from various points throughout the game. However, there are also several tracks from CHVRCHES, Apocalyptica, Silent Poets, and several other artists that contributed to its soundtrack. Between the three soundtrack albums, you’ll now have the perfect opportunity to relive some of the game’s most memorable moments through its music, and I’ll for sure be putting the soundtrack on the background in the future.
Death Stranding is available now for PS4, and will be coming to PC sometime this summer from 505 Games. If you have yet to experience the game for yourself, you can pick it up right now over on Amazon for PS4. For the soundtrack album itself, you can listen to it below via Spotify:
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The Animal Crossing Nintendo Switch might look amazing but you know you don’t need a new console. Nintendo might have a solution.
The Animal Crossing: New Horizons branded Switch did its best to break the internet today. It’s fair to say the online reaction was rabid. Animal Crossing is a beloved franchise, with a loyal fan-base that has been waiting a long time for the latest iteration of the series. The special edition console, from the marketing photos shared by Nintendo, show off a much more comprehensive branding treatment than previous video game tie-ins. The sometimes cheap-feeling vinyl transfer imagery has been replaced by a seemingly etched backplate, which sports Animal Crossing iconography.
The pastel shades of blue and green make their way onto the Joy-Cons, whilst that loan shark Tom Nook steals center stage on the outside edge of the dock. This isn’t the first time a Nintendo title has got the branding treatment. It wasn’t that long ago that Pokemon Sword and Shield had a similar outing, but this version certainly seems like the best finish so far from Nintendo. Bringing a new version to market is a sensible decision for Nintendo, after all, they’re in the money-making business.
As much as there is certainly a market for it, many will have the same problem. They love the design of this new version but don’t actually need a new console. It’s a conundrum that could be solved by trading your old one in, but that’s a hassle. Fortunately, Nintendo might have a surprising, but welcome, solution.
Picked up by Nintendo Life, following reports on Twitter, the Animal Crossing: New HorizonsSwitch dock and Joy-Cons have been spotted as a separate purchase item on the Japanese Nintendo website. No news yet on whether this will be region-locked or whether Nintendo has plans to bring the Animal Crossing accessories to Western markets, but this early sighting is positive. The cost of the Joy-Con bundle, transferred from Yen at the current exchange rate is around £60 or $75. The dock is priced at around £45 or $60. You can’t currently place an order through the Japanese site but you can pre-order them from the 8th of February.
Is this money-saving alternative an option you’ll gladly take Nintendo up on? If they don’t come to the West will you be splurging to import these? Let us know in the comments below as well as what other Nintendo titles you’d like to see get a bespoke Switch overhaul.
As for Animal Crossing: New Horizons itself, the latest entry in the series will arrive on Switch on March 20, 2020.
The Taipei Game Show 2020 has been delayed this until this summer as a result of the rampant spreading of the coronavirus.
The 2020 edition of the Taipei Game Show was slated to kick off next week, but that will no longer be the case.
Announced earlier today, the organizing group behind the Taipei Game Show revealed that this year’s edition of the convention has been postponed. The reason behind this cancellation is due to the Wuhan coronavirus, a new disease that has been quickly spreading across China over the past month. The World Health Organization declared just yesterday that the virus was now considered a global emergency. To help prevent the sickness from spreading even further, the Taipei Game Show, which was set to take place from February 6 until the 9th, will no longer be happening at this time.
That said, the convention will still be occurring this year, it just doesn’t have a new date or time as of this writing. The group behind the Taipei Game Show has said that the convention will still take place at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center and it will occur at some point this summer. More specific dates and times will be announced in the coming weeks.
While this new might be a bummer for those looking to attend the Taipei Game Show, its surely better to be safe than sorry at this point with how contagious the coronavirus seems to be. Let’s hope that come this summer, the outbreak will have died down in the region and the convention can be held without any reservations.
Lair of the Clockwork God, the next game from BAFTA-winning indie developer Dan Marshall, will arrive for PC on 21st February and is available to wishlist on Steam right now.
Marshall – creator of The Swindle, Gun Monkeys and Behold the Kickmen – revealed the date alongside a new trailer, which you can goggle at below.
“It is VERY difficult to cut a trailer for #ClockworkGod because so much of it is spoilers and I really want you to experience it properly,” he wrote on Twitter. “So it’s short and sweet.”
The footage shows off the game’s knowing takes on various video games via its genre-busting version of point-and-click adventuring, as self-referential heroes Ben and Dan return in an attempt to prevent all the apocalypses.
A new photo featuring Hideki Kamiya is once again either a tease or a playful joke at The Wonderful 101 returning to the Nintendo Switch.
Since its release, the Nintendo Switch has not only delivered a ton of incredible exclusives over the years, but has also acted a way to revitalize the library of its predecessor, the Wii U. One of the Wii U’s lesser-known games, The Wonderful 101, is a title that fans have been clamoring for a Switch port over for some time. While no official announcement has come just yet on those prospects, PlatinumGames once again is teasing that the game may wind up coming to Switch, or at least giving fans a bit of hope at the possibility.
A new photo from the PlatinumGames Twitter account features some behind-the-scenes shots from the studio’s office in Japan with Hideki Kamiya. However, if you take a closer look at the photo, the two things that will obviously stick out the most are the fact that the time on the computer that Kamiya is near says “1:01” (and the date is “10/1”), along with the Nintendo Switch casually laying down next to Kamiya.
That of course has led to fan speculation that PlatinumGames may once again be teasing a port of The Wonderful 101 for Nintendo Switch, and it seems like the studio is having some fun with that in the photo. However, this isn’t the first time that a port of the cult action game has been teased, such as this teaser photo from over two years ago.
The Wonderful 101 originally released on the Wii U in August 2013 from PlatinumGames, and while the game itself received positive reviews, it was a known commercial disappointment with low sales. We happened to like the game quite a bit when it first released, and despite its low sales at launch, it has maintained a bit of a cult following since then.
Given that the Nintendo Switch has already had a ton of the Wii U’s library ported over in the past three years, including just recently with Tokyo Mirage Sessions, The Wonderful 101 is one of the few notable Wii U games that has yet to make it over to the Switch. With Platinum having teased it so many times now, we can only hope that one day the heroes of The Wonderful 101 can finally be rediscovered for a new audience on the Switch.
2020 will see PlayStation launch PS5 and Microsoft launch Xbox Series X – but it won’t see Nintendo release a new Switch model.
Nintendo broke the news in a presentation to investors today, telling them not to expect any new model over the next 12 months.
The company will instead focus on further extolling the virtues of Nintendo Switch Lite, its handheld-only Switch model which launched last year and is off to a strong start.
Nintendo’s confirmation is not a huge surprise. This year will be a crowded one for new console launches, and any new model released in 2020 would inevitably draw comparisons to Sony and Microsoft’s next-gen machines.
Talk of a souped up Switch began in March last year, when a Wall St Journal report stated two new Nintendo Switch models were on the horizon. One would be a cheaper option, which Eurogamer sources told us was designed for a handheld-only audience, later revealed as the Nintendo Switch Lite.
Rumours of a beefier Switch “Pro” model coming down the line remain just that – rumours. And while the eventual release of one would make sense, you shouldn’t expect it this year.
Get your first look at Red XIII, Jenova, Scarlet, the Leviathan Summon and more iconic scenes in the newest Final Fantasy 7 Remake theme song trailer.
Square Enix published a new trailer for Final Fantasy 7 Remake, revealing the theme song of the game, along with with many iconic moments and returning faces from the original PS1 classic.
The trailer first depicts Cloud and Tifa in their childhood, with Cloud mentioning his dream to go to Midgard and become a Solider like Sephiroth. We next see Cloud together with Barret, Tifa, and Aerith, and what seems to be a vision of Sephiroth triggered by Cloud’s proximity with Mako reactors. Next, we get glimpses of some of the main faces of Shinra for the first time in the Remake, including Scarlet and Reeve. Next, we can see Cloud crossdressing, Red XIII’s first meeting with the party, and a Jenova boss battle. The trailer ends with Aerith cryptically mentioning how Shinra isn’t their true enemy, implying the phantom-like, Nomura-esque Guardian of Fate things are.
The Final Fantasy 7 Remake theme song is titled Hollow. The song was composed by Nobuo Uematsu. The vocals are by Yosh (Survive Said The Prophet). The lyrics are by Final Fantasy 7 Remake scenarist Kazushige Nojima, and they were translated by Ben Sabin and John Crow. Lastly, the arrangement & synthesizer programming was handled by Kenichiro Fukui.
The Final Fantasy 7 Remake theme song trailer is included below. A making-of video of the theme song was also published by Square Enix. You can find it below along with the Japanese dubbed and the English dubbed versions of the trailer.
After years of canning single-player Star Wars games, it looks like EA finally has a hit on its hands, as Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has sold 8m copies so far – exceeding the publisher’s own expectations. Who knew there was demand for single-player Star Wars games?
In a Q3 earnings call, CFO Blake Jorgensen said EA had expected Fallen Order to sell between 6m and 8m copies by the end of the fiscal year on 31st March – but the game has already passed the high end of this target. EA now predicts Fallen Order will likely reach 10m copies sold by April, and says it has “significantly beat[en]” expectations.
“Respawn delivered an expertly crafted high-quality experience with outstanding gameplay that thrilled players, made many of the game of the year lists and sold beyond our projections for the quarter,” EA exec Andrew Wilson added.
“Our portfolio of Star Wars games across all platforms has never been stronger.”
The expression the EA execs had on their faces when reading the results, probably.
The praise for Respawn didn’t stop there, too, as Apex Legends was similarly held up as an example of a strong IP, with season three performing better than season two in terms of daily active users. EA was eager to reassure shareholders that Respawn founder Vince Zampella – who recently announced he would be overseeing DICE’s new LA studio – will remain heavily involved with Respawn. Which is just as well, as judging by the amazing developments in Apex Legends lately, they seem to be on a roll.
In terms of EA’s future plans for this year, we can expect to see four new sports titles (including new FIFA and Madden titles), four titles from smaller developers, and another four which “draw from the breadth” of EA’s IP. If this plan goes effectively, they could be seeing further mass sales in 2020.
Davy Productions’ brilliant Cuphead stop-motion fan video Chaotic Casino captures everything great about the shoot-em-up game.
Ever since Cuphead released in 2017, the lovingly-crafted animated indie game has provided a wealth of incredible fan creations. A lot of that can be attributed to its vintage animation style and art, and in the case of this stop-motion fan-made video, it’s even more incredible to see how its art translates to the real world.
Davy Productions (YouTube) released a fan-made Cuphead stop-motion video called “Chaotic Casino,” which imagines and adventure between the two anthropomorphic cups as they work their way through the Devil’s casino to reclaim their souls and fight a few familiar bosses from the game.
According to Davy Productions, he was inspired by Cuphead after playing it in 2017 and wanted to create an animation as a tribute to the game. After the release of the Cuphead construction sets by McFarlane Toys, he used those figures to create the stop-motion video, which took around four months to put together and edit.
Even Studio MDHR took the chance to recognize him for the incredible work on their official Twitter account this week:
Words can hardly describe our reaction when we saw this unbelievable video from @DavidGa44259875.
Using figures from our @Todd_McFarlane toy collection, David spent a whopping 4 months crafting this stop-motion animated film. It’s a must-watch!!https://t.co/22TBMNhwRR
While Cuphead has been the source of several other fan creations and videos, we won’t have to wait too much longer to see Cuphead and Mugman continue their adventures with the upcoming Netflix animated series, The Cuphead Show. Animated in the same 1930s style as the game, the series was announced last summer by Netflix, though no other information on the show has arrived at this time.
Cuphead is available now on Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac, and for some reason, Tesla cars. For a closer look at the game made in beautiful stop-motion, you can check out the video from Davy Productions below:
Five of the Best is a weekly series about the bits of games we overlook, those poor old things. I’m talking about crowds, potions, mountains, hands – things we barely notice at the time but can recall years later because they’re so important to the overall memory of the game.
Now is the time to celebrate them – you and me both! I will share my memories but I’m just as eager to hear yours, so please share them in the comments below. We’ve had some great discussions in our other Five of the Best pieces.
But this week we’re all about…
Console startup screens! These are the places where those lovely boxes under the telly first get to introduce themselves, get to show a little bit of character. They’re also the sorts of things we tune out after a while, it seems: they become such a familiar part of the game playing process that we can cease to see them anymore.
Unless they’re absolute classics, of course. Here are five of our favourites, all of which are worth a rewatch.
GameCube
There’s something Mario 64-like about the GameCube’s interactive startup – echoes of that big plumber face gurning as you twisted and pulled his features like Play-Doh. A roll of your thumb over the GameCube controller’s analogue stick and you could turn the console’s cheerful logo left and right as it unfolded, even spin it fully round on its axis, while listening to not one but two secret loading sounds.
It was a whimsical loading screen, one which danced about at its own pace, doing its own thing. Yes, I’m purple, it said. Yes, I have a carry handle. Now, are you ready for some fun?
Xbox
The original Xbox had a very simple pitch. It was all about power. Hence the startup sequence, with its sense of futuristic machinery that builds and builds and builds until the energy can no longer be contained.
I absolutely love this startup screen. It’s so unapologetically everything that Microsoft was going for. A console with a controller as big as the original Duke needed a startup as over the top as this. Well played!
GBA
Minimalist charm here, but no matter. This may be my very favourite startup ever. It’s just the name of the console, the name of the manufacturer and…that’s it. And yet!
And yet! The spectrum of colours! The way those letters dance onto the screen! The fact that you hold the entire thing in your hands. And best of all, that last twinkle noise on the soundtrack, and the beat you have to wait through before it comes along. Nintendo is brilliant at this stuff, and as Chris Tapsell just pointed out while I was rewatching this, it’s an absolute crime that the Switch is so underserved in the startup game.
PlayStation
This is surely one for the ages. When Sony decided to announce its arrival in the homes of millions as it stepped into the world of video games, it did so with this: a spacey seance that’s as iconic as the PlayStation logo itself. It’s a soothing sweep, a sci-fi sawtooth synth working off a soft tinkle that sounds like a shopkeeper’s bell as it invites you into another world. IIt’s the rumble of one of gaming’s most seismic shifts about to take place.
NeoGeo
Everything that SNK did in the 90s had so much swagger, probably nothing more so than the Neo Geo’s audacious boot-up screen. Want to flex your muscle and provide some specs for the arcade-based powerhouse? Sure you do, but why not do it in style. And so 330mb ROM size becomes ‘MAX 330 MEGA, PRO-GEAR SPEC’. It’s utterly preposterous, almost entirely meaningless and absolutely brilliant – the swagger of SNK delivered in one chunky slogan.
I only really noticed this recently, but I am big into Neptune. I’m into a lot of planets, to be honest, because I just think planets are pretty interesting, but there’s something about Neptune – above the big, beige, sickly ’70s kitchen swirls of Venus, Jupiter and Saturn, or the slightly threatening blankness of Uranus, or Mercury (boring), or Mars (old news, too many dead robots) – that makes Neptune stand out.
I think a lot of it is how it’s pictured, which itself is obviously a lot to do with just how far away it is. We’ve only ever sent one spacecraft (Voyager 2, in the ’80s) far enough out there into the abyss to actually capture images of Neptune up close. It’s the only planet in our solar system so far away that it can’t be seen without a telescope. The only one, as a result, the world’s ancient civilizations never discovered – and doesn’t it look the part? It feels like every image of Neptune is the same: deep, magnetic, hungering blue with the odd streak of white, stark against pure black. Massive, terrifying. I love it because it just seems so completely unknowable. If I think for too long about what it would be like to see Neptune in person I start to feel a little sick, like vertigo, or a sort of inverse claustrophobia. The same sense of cloying panic only from being so totally overexposed and far away, cut off and adrift, not just from Earth and home and people but from everything. From infinity! Eugh.
This image of Neptune is from the Voyager 2’s narrow angle camera through green and orange filters, according to NASA. Image Credit: NASA/JPL via solarsystem.nasa.gov
Anyway, I got to thinking about Neptune because I was, first, thinking about why some recent space-faring games – that I promise I want to love – have been so good at putting me off. Journey to the Savage Planet is the obvious one, but there’s also The Outer Worlds which, to someone who has no desire to play any more of either, might as well be the same thing. The trend in these sorts of space games, it seems, is to use that setting’s infinite opportunity for invention to make slightly wet, slightly clunky, slightly (but not entirely) self-aware London Underground poster jokes about capitalism and consumer culture – and to ignore all the actual space stuff.
The real tragedy though, more than just the moustache-twiddling zingers, is the sheer amount of clutter, and that’s a fault that lies with games as a thing more than a couple of unlucky examples. Games in search of a wide audience are compelled to give you something to do. You can’t go to a planet and find out it’s just a big, dry, empty red rock. Or a swirling mess of thick gas and heavy, half-frozen liquid. It’s not fun! So we get purple grass and jumbo flowers and little giggling critters, all a bit foreign-looking but mostly just spliced across two earthly concepts, that just so happen to be the perfect height to pet or harvest or loot for resources from which to craft. We get the not-so-savage planet.
For the likes of The Outer Worlds and Journey to the Savage Planet, this is arguably quite forgivable. They’re trying to do different things, in different ways, to other games and works set in space. Arguably they could have done those things anywhere, and space itself is absolutely wasted on them, but regardless the greatest frustration is with another game entirely. One that looked, at first, to really, truly get it. The real disappointment is No Man’s Sky – or rather, No Man’s Sky’s big Next update, and more recently the one that came with Beyond.
I find it hard to think of a better example of a studio not understanding their own magic than with No Man’s Sky. The base, original game, with its empty dirt-brown planets and lonely, unmanned outposts was magic. The loneliness was the magic. The classic No Man’s Sky was the closest video games have ever come to 2001: A Space Odyssey, the obvious references notwithstanding. Solitude and silence and, dare I say it, occasional boredom, spread out across a layer of existential genius, was something to be found in both. The lack of other players is the point. The lack of things to meaningfully do is the point. There were breadcrumbs of an old civilization, but they’re probably long gone. There were a handful of characters dotted around the galaxy, but they were hard to understand and, even if you could translate the chatter, there was very little of actual meaning or consequence that they had to say. This was a game about drifting, alone, from one great, inhospitable giant to the next. It was a game about being crushed under the weight of your own thoughts. A few bings and boongs of equipment, the odd little creature if you were lucky, but otherwise: nothing.
The updates since, at the steaming request of fans, have brought with them a sense of unending life. You can now craft bases, and build cool stuff that you could probably build a bit easier in Minecraft, and hang out with friends, and visit the social hub where people can jump on your head and queue up to receive quests from the great quest-giving machine. What it brought is a sense of industrialised, homogenised, mass-produced checklist-fun. Content and clutter at the expense of natural magic. In other words, exactly what those quippy workplace posters and sidekick robots are on about in The Outer Worlds and Journey to the Savage Planet. Poetic!
Really, to bring it back to my good friend Neptune, the point here is that there is a vast – literally vast – opportunity going to waste. The fact that sci-fi and, within it, outer and inner space sci-fi has been such a home for humanity’s great existential stories is not a coincidence. 2001 is the obvious one yes, but also Solaris, or the close horror cousin Alien, or the modern imitators like First Man and Ad Astra or even just the hints at off-world emptiness in Blade Runner. Even the moments in FTL – one of the few games, alongside Outer Wilds, that actually gets it – where you just sit there after a battle and silently drift amongst the stars. All of them use space for what it is: the perfect backdrop, the perfect threatening, isolating environment for introspection. The void that stares back, and all that.
You don’t even have to go as far as Neptune to get it. Sometimes I think about what it’d be like to go to the Moon – or better yet play a game about it, seeing as I’ll obviously never really go – and I’m really not sure why we haven’t nailed it yet. You’d go to the Moon, in this game or in reality, and when you arrived you’d stand and you’d see Earth, distant and quite upsettingly alone in all that empty black, and you’d think: “We are very small, what is the point of it all?” And then, at the very least, you’d hope that game would have something to say about it.
Our latest look at Square Enix’s Final Fantasy 7 Remake offers a peek inside the Honey Bee Inn, an adult club and brothel where dancers dress in skimpy honey bee outfits.
The Honey Bee is an optional location in the original Final Fantasy 7, and one where Cloud can crossdress. Fans had wondered how all this would be handled in the game’s modern remake – and now we have at least some of the answers. Honestly, Cloud, you’ve never looked hotter.
The footage also gives us our best look at furry companion Red XIII, rotund boss Palmer, and the ruthless Scarlet using some bloke as a foot stall.
I’ve already spent all my pocket money on a limited-edition Pokmon Switch, but if I could, I would almost certainly splash out on the new Animal Crossing console.
Last night Nintendo unveiled the new Nintendo Switch bundle – which is themed around the upcoming Animal Crossing: New Horizons – and it’s fair to say the internet has fallen in love. It’s got an island full of Nooks on the dock, a cute pattern on the rear of the Switch, and soft pastel-coloured joy-cons with white backs. Oh, and a download code for New Horizons is included.
If that’s not enough for you, an additional Animal Crossing-themed carrying case and screen protector set is also being released, which has some lovely leaves emblazoned on it.
It’s fair to say this will be a popular edition, so you’ll probably need to get in early when both the console bundle and the case set become available in stores on 20th March (that’s launch day for Animal Crossing: New Horizons). In the UK it’s already listed for pre-order for 329.99 via Game, while in the US it’ll cost $299.99 (228) – although that version is coming out a little earlier, and the New Horizons download code is not included in the bundle.
Until then, I’ll just be searching every nook and cranny for spare change to get that case.
“You, I reckon, are definitely a roper.” I had known Aidan for about twenty minutes by the time he made this judgement. It stung a little. How could he be so certain after such a short period? How – augh! – could he be so right?
Worms 2 came out while I was at university, and we all fell for it quite hard. This is social gaming at its most brilliant: a bunch of friends wash up on some procedural 2D island and then they take turns trying to kill everyone else off. Weapons are dropped in crates, mines litter the landscape. You can die by losing all your health or by falling in the water. It is simple, but fraught. It can be wonderfully maddening.
“Roper” referred to “ninja rope”, one of the few Worms items that wasn’t explicitly about doing people harm. You can move about in Worms 2, but it’s a pretty slow, incremental business. But if you used your ninja rope, that fired off like a Batman gadget and allowed you to swing around and launch yourself across the map, man, if you used that you could really cover some distance. It was very risky: mines, the beckoning yawn of the ocean. But done well it meant you could bounce all the way from one side of the screen to the other and menace people who had assumed they were safe.
Reader, I used the rope a lot. I was, I reckon, definitely a roper. And this meant that I was a smart-arse, a show-boater, a person who didn’t just want to win, but who wanted to win in the most annoying manner possible. Because, along with the rope, and this felt unspoken but present in Aidan’s accusation, I was also a fan of “prod”.
Prod! Oh man. Worms 2’s arsenal was filled with massive explosive unpleasantness, starting with the humble bazooka and building to the legendary Concrete Donkey, and even a nuclear bomb of some kind, that went off at the bottom of the sea and raised the water level while the Marseilles played for a few seconds. But at the other end of the scale was prod. Maybe it was called poke. Whatever. You would walk up to an enemy worm and prod them. If they were in the middle of the island, this did very little. If they were on the edge of the waterline it would knock them in and kill them. If they were close to a mine, well, who knew? (The secret thrill of Worms was that, because it was turn-based, once your turn was done you had to just stand there and witness whatever was coming your way, powerless to do anything. That’s why stuff like prod was so brilliantly upsetting.)
Despite being such an unbearable jerk, with my roping around and my poking people to death, it wasn’t hard to get people to play Worms 2 back then. In 1997 it ruled. All day Worms 2 sessions, lectures ignored, seminars left unattended. Worms 2 campaigns, spite matches, the works.
Where does Double-A come in? Well there was this other thing about Worms 2. It was lavishly made, but it wasn’t 3D and it wasn’t a big budget affair with cut-scenes and voice acting and bosses and whatnot. I had been out of games for a few years – left during the tail end of the 16-bit era and missed the birth of next-gen consoles. So I found 3D gaming really disorientating. Worms 2 looked a lot more like the games I recognised. Double-A not because it was 2D so much as because it was informal, jokey, because nothing really mattered. You could name your worms teams after local takeaways and give them a silly accent and when they were all done you’d just make some more and give them new names. Nothing really was at stake.
Nothing was at stake until a spot of ninja-roping went very wrong, of course. A worm lost through showboating! The shame of it all. The endless shame.
Set for a Spring 2020 release on iOS, Android and Amazon devices, there is little known about what this mobile experience entails, save for the fact that it appears to be focused on Young Xehanort and his rise into the series’ main villain.
As for the “Guess the Name” contest that coincided with Dark Road’sannouncement a week ago, 10 winners have been selected based on what Square Enix deemed the best guesses. Looking at the replies to the initial campaign tweet, at least one was right on the money (or…munny).
Kingdom Hearts: Dark Time
Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road ???#KHNameContest
Hero pools, experimental cards, and “aggressive” balancing is coming soon to Overwatch.
Today Blizzard released its first Developer Update video for 2020 on the official Overwatch YouTube channel. As per normal, lead director Jeff Kaplan sat down to speak about upcoming changes and additions coming to the game. These topics include balancing and the introduction of hero pools for competitive mode and Overwatch League.
In the past, PC players were able to opt into a Public Test Region version of the game where they got to try out the most updated version of the game before it would come out to the public so the changes could be tested beforehand. Sometime soon in the future Overwatchwill add a new function known as the “experimental card.” The experimental card is said to appear every now and then that will allow players on all platforms to try out potential changes that the development team is looking at pursuing. These tweaks will not always revolve around buffing or nerfing a character and instead could focus on making alterations to a specific game mode or map.
Kaplan wanted to be transparent in saying that all the progress that one makes while using the experimental card will carry over. When it comes to the Public Test Region you get early access to the upcoming patch, but whatever you earn doesn’t transfer over. This way will allow players to play with changes being considered while still being rewarded for it.
On top of the experimental card, Kaplan explained that the team is changing its balance philosophy. “Now we are going to balance more aggressively targeting the meta, and moving you off the meta as frequently as possible,” said Kaplan. With this new way of thinking the development team will buff or nerf heroes more often and won’t be afraid to revert the decisions that they make later if necessary. The goal of the Overwatch team is to take the community’s feedback and put it into action.
Kaplan continued to explain about more ways they are going to keep the meta moving by bringing hero pools into play. Hero pools is a mechanic to where certain heroes will not be selectable for use during competitive play forcing players to be more flexible regarding who they use. The hero pools will be implemented starting in March with Season 21 of competitive and the pool will change every week, but is possible to change in the future. Hero pools will also be a part of the upcoming season of Overwatch League.
These are all major changes coming soon to Overwatch and it will be interesting to see how the community feels about them. As an Overwatch fan myself I also felt that there weren’t enough balance patches leading to seeing similar team builds in competitive play, but now that the development team is going to be more open and ambitious it makes me excited for the future of Overwatch and it makes me want to jump back in now more than ever.
