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Yakuza: Like A Dragon release date confirmed as November 13

SEGA has confirmed the release date for Yakuza: Like A Dragon with the game coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC on November 13th. This release date had leaked previously, but now we have proper confirmation. The game will be released on PS5 and Xbox Series X as well, with SEGA stating that this will be at a later date. SEGA has also released a brand new trailer for Yakuza: Like A Dragon and it is called How Will You Rise? The trailer focuses on Ichiban Kasuga, the new main protagonist of the Yakuza series, as he takes on a number of jobs.

Previously, the main cast of the game's English dub had been revealed, including the legendary George Takei:

  • Kaiji Tang as Ichiban Kasuga, protagonist of the story returning from 18 years spent in prison
  • George Takei as Masumi Arakawa, patriarch of the Arakawa Family
  • Andrew Morgado as Koichi Adachi, an ex-cop on the search for truth
  • Greg Chun as Yu Nanba, downtrodden former nurse making amends with the world
  • Elizabeth Maxwell as Saeko Mukoda, a bar hostess on a mission

Set in 2019 following the events of Yakuza 6, Yakuza: Like a Dragon follows the story of Kasuga Ichiban, a member of the formidable Tojo Clan who, much like Kiryu Kazuma, takes the fall for a crime he did not commit in order to protect the honor of his clan. When Ichiban emerges from prison almost two decades later in 2019, though, he's found that the world has changed immensely and moved on without him. Stuck as an outsider in an unfamiliar town, he gathers a crew of unlikely allies in order to find out the truth behind what happened while he was behind bars.

The game is a pretty major departure beyond just having a new lead, with new turn-based RPG encounters. Part of the reason for this switch to an RPG battle system is that Ichiban is obsessed with Dragon Quest, and the regular thugs you run into on the street will often transform into otherwordly warriors (in Ichiban's head, at least) once battle begins.

Source: Press Release

NHL 21 officially revealed and it will be out in October

EA has dropped the first official trailer for NHL 21 and confirmed that the release date will be October 16th. However, NHL 21 will not be releasing on PS5 and Xbox Series X. EA did confirm that the cover star for NHL 21 will be Alexander Ovechkin. The reveal trailer for NHL 21 can be watched below which shows very little gameplay and is focused on Alexander Ovechkin.

The official description for NHL 21 reads:

In EA SPORTS NHL 21, we're celebrating the most creative, inventive, and fearless players. Carve your path to superstardom in an expanded Be A Pro mode and go down as one of the league's greatest. On the ice, change up your attack with all new moves, dekes, dangles and evasive maneuvers, inspired by the league's most groundbreaking innovators. Recognize Creativity, Recognize Revolutionary, Recognize Future, Recognize Greatness.

EA also released details about NHL 21's Great Eight edition, and the content is listed below.

  • Up to 10 HUT Diamond Player Choice Packs (2 per month for 5 months)
  • HUT Synergy Veteran Choice Pack (Choice 1 of 10; +1 OVR per month until August 2021)
  • HUT Cover Athlete Choice Pack (Choice of: Ovechkin, Matthews, McDavid, Pettersson, Laine, Subban)
  • 3 Days Early Access
  • Be A Pro XP Boost and Bonus Trait and Specialization Points
  • 5 Unlocked World of Chel Hockey Bags

While the game is not releasing on PS5 and Xbox Series X you will still be able to play NHL 21 on the new consoles as it is a forward-compatible title.

Source: YouTube

NBA 2K21 demo out now on PS4, Xbox One, and Switch

2K Games has released the demo for the current gen version for NBA 2K21, with it being available on PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. The demo contains four teams in total to play as including Milwaukee Bucks, Los Angeles Clippers, the All-Time Lakers featuring Kobe Bryant, and the All-Time Celtics featuring Bill Russell. The MyPlayer builder is also included so you can create your player who can be transferred to the main release of NBA 2K21 when it comes out. You can also try out the new shooting system and Pro Stick. The download links are below.

NBA 2K21 will be releasing on September 4th for current gen, and at launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X. However, players will not be getting a free upgrade from the current gen version of NBA 2K21 to the PS5 or Xbox Series X editions. 2K is charging for the upgrade through the Mamba Forever edition of NBA 2K21 which will cost £84.99, and that will grant access to current-gen and next-gen versions of the game. While there is a cost to access both versions all progression will be shared across platform families, so you will not need to start again should start NBA 2K21 on PS4/Xbox One and then migrate to PS5/Xbox Series X.

The cover stars will be Damian Lillard for the PS4 and Xbox One versions, while Zion Williamson will be the cover star for the PS5 and Xbox Series X. The Mamba Forever will have Kobe Bryant who passed away in a helicopter crash earlier this year along with his daughter and seven others.

Source: Press Release

eFootball PES 2021 Season Update cover stars confirmed

Konami has announced the cover stars for eFootball PES 2021 Season Update with four players on it. You have the football legends Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, alongside the up and coming players Marcus Rashford of Manchester United and Bayern Munich's Alphonso Davies. All four of the players on the cover of eFootball PES 2021 Season Update are ambassadors for the brand, and you can check out the cover below.

Jonas Lygaard, Senior Director Brand & Business Development at Konami Digital Entertainment B.V. said:

"I am incredibly proud of the cover that we've assembled for PES 2021. We made a big change last year with the presentation of four ambassadors and we were keen to raise the bar this year with a world first – Messi and Ronaldo together at last."

eFootball PES 2021 Season Update will only be available on current-gen consoles. Konami previously revealed that a PES game will not arrive on PS5 and Xbox Series X until next year. This version of the game will include the latest club and season updates as well as the UEFA Euro 2020 content. In addition to the Season Update standard edition Konami is also releasing special Club Editions on digital stores. These Club Editions will have branded menus, exclusive kit, myClub Squad content and Iconic Moment Series players. The clubs that are partnered for this promotion are FC Barcelona, Juventus, Manchester United, FC Bayern, and Arsenal FC. These Club Editions will be priced at €34.99 / £29.99. The standard edition of eFootball PES 2021 will be priced at €29.99 / £24.99. Both will release on September 15th for PS4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam.

Source: Press Release

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is coming to mobile – in China

Good news for those of you clamouring for a mobile version of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, it's been confirmed. Bad news for those of you clamouring for a mobile version of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, it's only going to be released in China.

Senior Analyst at Niko Partners, Daniel Ahmad, tweeted "Chinese games and entertainment company Bilibili has secured the rights to publish a mobile version of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout in China."

The Bilibili website confirms the news and reveals a slight name change, in China it will be known as "Jelly Bean: Ultimate Knockout"

For those playing now on PS4 and PC a "Spicy Hot Fix" update is in the works for the cute and cuddly Battle Royale game that has taken the world of gaming by storm over the last month. Expected to drop sometime this week, it's all about making minor tweaks and updates, as opposed to adding new rounds and game modes like the last update did.

Team mode dislikers will be glad to see that these modes will only trigger if team sizes can be equal, and party players will find it easier to watch their chums should they get knocked out. There's also a handful of tweaks for exploits and crashes, and Yellow Team is no longer nerfed (we think this one's a joke).

Here's the full patch notes:

Fall Guys 'Spicy Hot Fix' patch notes

  • Tweaked round selection algorithm to select a Team game only if the team sizes can be equal
  • Party members are now sorted first in spectator mode.
  • (PS4 Only) Added Controller options, including invert X/Y axis and sensitivity settings
  • Slime Climb: players can no longer grab some of the moving obstacles
  • Jump Showdown: changed geometry to prevent a gameplay exploit
  • Jump Showdown: fixed camera auto-panning
  • Improved in-game store purchase dialog to avoid accidental selections
  • Addressed the top 5 most frequent crashes
  • Visual fixes to some of the outfits
  • (PS4 Only) Improved UI performance on non-Pro PS4 models
  • Added option to change the jump button binding for Japan
  • Trophy/Achievement names and descriptions are now correctly displayed in all supported languages
  • Removed move speed nerf from Yellow Team (Don't post this one)

This isn't the only news for Fall Guys fans this week, as it's been revealed that a sneak preview of Season Two of the game will be shown on the opening night of Gamescom's digital showcase. Keep a beady eye out at 7PM BST if you're planning to tune in.

Source: Twitter

Lord of the Rings: Gollum has a teaser trailer

After watching this new trailer for Lord of the Rings: Gollum I had to check with other TSA staff members to see if it was new. It is, but it looks very familiar to me, maybe it riffs on scenes from the films. Unfortunately it is all CGI, no game play is shown.

The game is being developed by Daedalic Entertainment and will tell a tale of the "disgustingly likeable" Gollum and will serve as a prequel to the Lord of The Rings books.

The game was announced way back in March 2019 ago for PC and "all relevant console platforms at that time" and it has now been confirmed that means Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. As you might expect, it's a stealth game.

It's a strange and unexpected take on a license that has been passed among several big-name publishers. Daedelic is no doubt wringing its hands at having the chance to explore this character and his dual personality in more depth than has ever been shown. Some of the images seem to show the Mines of Mordor and also a large number of giant spiders so we may be encountering Shelob.

The game was previewed on gamestar.de a while back but unfortunately most of the information is locked behind a paywall. The gallery was available without the paywall and we have posted a couple below for you to take a look at, for the rest of them click here. 

I suppose we should bear in mind the game is still in development but I'm not exactly blown away by those images, what do you think? Maybe that's why we're only getting a CGI teaser trailer.

Lord of the Rings: Gollum has provisional launch window of 2021 and will be coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC.

Source: YouTube

Project CARS 3 Review

There's a rather large elephant in the room when it comes to discussing Project CARS 3. So big, that you just have to get it out of the way early. If you weren't aware already – and a lot of comments and forum posts suggests many have cottoned on already – Project CARS 3 isn't trying to be a simulator any more.

Out goes the more serious motorsports tone of Project CARS and Project CARS 2, alongside tyre wear, long races and pitstops. In comes brash colours, customisation and a pumping soundtrack. Naming this latest Project CARS game with the number '3' at the end makes you believe that the series continues in the same vein. It doesn't. Not even slightly. This is far more than a fresh lick of paint.

Allow me to explain what this game actually is and then judge it based on that, as opposed to the rather large shadow of former instalments.

The aim through the career is to buy cars for your garage, starting from road cars such as a Honda Civic Type R or the latest Chevrolet Corvette C8 and progressing up to include racing vehicles such as LeMans prototypes and Formula E single-seaters.

Along the way, you participate in racing events, earning both XP to progress through overall driver rating and credits to buy new vehicle and upgrades. You can then change the way your car looks through new paints, livery creation or different wheels. Performance parts are also available to enhance various car attributes.

Project CARS 3 is best played with a gamepad. Pack away your sim rig, because while you can use a steering wheel, it feels limp and inappropriate. The vehicle handling is more about being accessible and fun, as opposed to the bleeding edge of realism. Going sideways isn't really going to slow you down, nor is bumping into rival AI cars.

The career will have you work your way through car classes and tiered events. In each race you can obviously try to win it and earn XP, but there are also three event objectives. These can be targets such as set the fastest lap or overtake a number of cars. It's actually completing these that unlock the next event set, as opposed to your race result.

Additionally, instead of a traditional racing line, there are three corner markers: braking point, apex and corner exit. Drive through these and you "perfect" a corner. Perfect all corners and you earn bonus payouts. There are further points awarded for drifting ("corner slide"), slipstreaming ("drafting") and clean overtakes. Now throw daily 'Rivals' online challenges, new multiplayer matches starting every 20 minutes or so, a pumping soundtrack, and by this point you've got the essence of Project CARS 3.

If you are reading this and thinking that all sounds a bit familiar, then you would be right. Project CARS 3 has turned out to be a spiritual successor to Driveclub. Heck, you even level up each car's individual XP by competing in events, and I swear there's a song in the menus from the Driveclub soundtrack.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Once it was patched-up and DLC'd to the nines, Driveclub was an arcade racing classic. Much like that game, in Project Cars 3 you can into a rhythm of trying to master every corner, pull off stylish overtakes and earning all the delicious experience points. Imagine having an unlimited PEZ dispenser and you will get some sort of idea how satisfying it can be.

What stops that flow are the carryover elements from previous Project CARS games. Namely, corner-cutting penalties that are stricter than a former head teacher. Run two wheels off the track on a corner exit, penalty. Cut the inside of a corner, penalty. Brush a wall on one of the many street circuits and your lap times are invalidated. This is extremely annoying during career events such as "Hot Lap" (one-lap time trial) or "Pace Setter" (three-lap timed average), leading to many event restarts. It's completely at odds with the new laidback racing vibes.

AI opponents can also be super aggressive. Thankfully, you can tune the overall difficulty and level of aggression independently, and I would recommend keeping them on the lower end through the career. For single races, you may want to ramp up the levels, set a full grid and see how high you can rise, but with large grid sizes and a tendency by the AI to force you out wide or clump together on lap one, it can be a real hindrance in the career. Especially when objectives aren't focussed on race results.

For a game that has an emphasis on customisation, some of the options are quite limited. For instance, selecting your driver's avatar is restricted to a handful of presets, and while you can remove weight from your Porsche 911 or change the air filter, you can only add one or two modifications before it moves up into the class above the event you are entering. Being able to upgrade your steed from road car to race car is interesting, but there needs to be more thought put into how much effect each upgrade creates. There are odd things like how adding a 'high-downforce pack' doesn't visually change your car too.

Each car is categorised with a PIR score. On paper, this is a great idea, balancing performance across different cars. In reality, some vehicles within the same class are still clearly more effective than others. I was in a race where all of the Aston Martin DB11s raced to the front and disappeared, making my tuned Supra feel worthless. Then there's the strange mix of being in a race against a classic BMW touring car, a rallycross car and a JDM Nissan Skyline GTR. Odd.

At least the handling model is a tad more satisfying than the recent GRID reboot, which is really this game's closest contemporary competitor. Front-wheel-drive cars feel like front-wheel-drive cars, racing cars have more grip and each car feels unique. There are some weird instances, such as a FWD hot hatch during a Hot Lap event, where the game automatically applies the handbrake to make your corner entries more sideways as if to invoke some sort of trailer for a Fast & Furious movie.

Pivoting a racing video game series to a different audience has been done successfully before, and that Slightly Mad have tried to do so isn't the real issue here – well, not changing the name hasn't helped with perceptions, of course – it's that they haven't quite pulled it off.

EPOS | Sennheiser announce GSP 601 & GSP 602 gaming headsets

In the market for new premium tier gaming headset? Today EPOS | Sennheiser have unveiled the latest model in their high quality GSP range, introducing the GSP 601 and GSP 602.

These two new dapper headsets emulate the performance and comfort of the GSP 600, now with different colour and style variations. These headsets are not only suitable for PC gaming but also PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the Nintendo Switch. Here are some of our reviews of previous models in the range:

First up with the GSP 601 with its ultra stylish blend of matte white and black with copper highlights. Speaking of which, there are copper side-plates for those who prefer the tri-colour look.

Meanwhile, the GSP 602 rocks a similarly classy navy, black, and white scheme with some gunmetal grey in there as well as the tan tones of its earmuffs. You can get a closer view of both models below.

EPOS | Sennheiser GSP 601

EPOS | Sennheiser GSP 602

Here's a breakdown of the GSP 600 series features:

Features that unleash the game
Built with the same legendary features as the highly successful GSP 600, the GSP 601 and GSP 602 both offer durable and thoughtful design that combined with the EPOS│SENNHEISER's audio technology delivers that competitive edge. Both models boast ergonomic leatherette earpads with adjustable pressure to ensure sound attenuation even in the noisiest environment.

Crisp communication for the competitive edge
Each headset's flexible boom arm microphone delivers broadcast-quality audio designed for passive background noise reduction, paired with a lift-to-mute feature for crystal-clear team communication. Similarly, the right outer earcup is equipped with a smooth volume adjustment wheel for on-the-fly adjustments. The GSP 601 and GSP 602 headsets follow the GSP 600 series for full in-game immersion, where mere seconds make the difference between winning or losing.

Multi-platform flexibility
The GSP 601 and GSP 602 headsets use an interchangeable one or two-prong 3.5 mm cable to connect to PC, Mac, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and all other consoles and mobile devices with a 3.5 mm jack input.

Clean, modern design
Just like every other component of their setups, tasteful gamers want stylish audio options that deviate from the repetitive design of prototypical gaming headsets. Now gamers can take their gaming stations to the next dimension with uncompromised proprietary engineering dedicated to The Power of Audio.

If you fancy winning a EPOS | Sennheiser GSP 601 then keep your eyes peeled as we will be giving one away this bank holiday weekend. Details will be available soon.

Source: Press Release 

Bungie detail exactly what is being vaulted from Destiny 2 this November

Bungie have clarified the content that will be removed from Destiny 2 this November when the game undergoes a major shake up to reduce complexity and get rid of some of the more tired content. On November 10th, Io, Titan, Mars, Mercury, and Leviathan will all enter the Destiny Content Vault, and two new areas, the Cosmodrome and Europa, will be added.

Now you might be thinking that as the planets no longer exist all the content on them will be removed from the game, and you'd be right. Sort of. Strikes, Raids, and story content from planets that have been removed will be binned, so the game will look like this.

Available Strikes on November 10 Moving into the DCV
EDZ

  • The Arms Dealer
  • Lake of Shadows
 Io

  • The Pyramidion
  • The Festering Core
Nessus

  • Inverted Spire
  • Exodus Crash
  • Insight Terminus
 Titan

  • Savathûn's Song
Tangled Shore

  • Warden of Nothing
  • The Hallowed Lair
  • Broodhold
 Mars

  • Strange Terrain
  • Will of the Thousands
Dreaming City

  • The Corrupted
 Mercury

  • Tree of Probabilities
  • A Garden World
Moon

  • The Scarlet Keep
Cosmodrome*

  • Will of Crota
Europa

  • [Redacted]

*Destiny's Devil's Lair and Fallen S.A.B.E.R. are coming out of the Vault in Year 4.

Available Dungeons on November 10 Moving into the DCV
  • Shattered Throne (Dreaming City)
  • Pit of Heresy (Moon)
  • Prophecy*
  • None
Available Raids on November 10 Moving into the DCV
  • [Redacted]
  • Last Wish (Dreaming City)
  • Garden of Salvation (Black Garden)
  • Leviathan
  • Eater of Worlds (Leviathan)
  • Spire of Stars (Leviathan)
  • Scourge of the Past (Last City)
  • Crown of Sorrows (Leviathan)

 

Now it gets a little more complicated, the Year 4 Gambit playlist map selection is a "best of" list and includes maps in destinations that have been vaulted. The two Gambit modes are going to be combined in to one game mode. "The new version of Gambit will be similar to Gambit Prime as a single round face off with tweaked Blockers, heavier mote drain, and some changes to the Primeval fight. We will give more details on these updates before the revamped mode goes live next Season," say Bungie.

Available Gambit Maps on November 10 Moving into the DCV
  • Emerald Coast (EDZ)
  • Legions Folly (Nessus)
  • Deep Six (Titan)
  • New Arcadia (Mars)
  • Cathedral of Scars (Dreaming City)
  • Kell's Grave (Tangled Shore)
The new Crucible map playlist will be a curated "best of" mix and will be pulled from both Destiny 1 and 2's legacy, including vaulted destinations.
Available PvP Maps on November 10 Moving into the DCV
  • Destiny
      • Bannerfall
      • Exodus Blue
      • Rusted Lands
      • Twilight Gap
  • Destiny 2
      • Altar of Flame
      • The Anomaly
      • The Burnout
      • Cauldron
      • Convergence
      • The Dead Cliffs
      • Distant Shore
      • Endless Vale
      • The Fortress
      • Fragment
      • Javelin-4
      • Midtown
      • Pacifica
      • Radiant Cliffs
      • Widow's Court
      • Wormhaven
  • Meltdown
  • Solitude
  • Retribution
  • The Citadel
  • Emperor's Respite
  • Equinox
  • Eternity
  • Firebase Echo
  • Gambler's Ruin
  • Legion's Gulch
  • Vostok
A bunch of game modes are also being retired.
Available PvP Modes on November 10 Moving into the DCV
  • Rumble
  • Clash
  • Control
      • Iron Banner Control
  • Elimination
      • Trials of Osiris
  • Showdown
  • Survival
  • Mayhem Clash
  • Supremacy
  • Countdown
  • Lockdown
  • Breakthrough
  • Doubles
  • Momentum Control*
  • Scorched*
 Note:  Expect Momentum Control and Scorched to return from the DCV at some time during Year 4.
The following exotic quests are currently located on a planet that will be removed, so after November 10th they will be moved to a Memorial kiosk situated among the Vault kiosks in the Tower.
  • Sturm
  • MIDA Multi-tool
  • Rat King
  • Legend of Acrius
  • Sleeper Simulant
  • Polaris Lance
  • Worldline Zero
  • Ace of Spades
  • The Last Word
  • Le Monarque
  • Jotunn
  • Izanagi's Burden
  • Thorn
  • Lumina
  • Truth
  • Bad Juju
Catalysts get a bad deal, eleven of them will be vanishing completely but they will return in new quests at a later date.
Available Catalysts on November 10 Moving into the DCV
  • Ace of Spades
  • Black Talon
  • Borealis
  • Cerberus+1
  • Coldheart
  • The Colony
  • Crimson
  • D.A.R.C.I.
  • Eriana's Vow
  • Fighting Lion
  • The Fourth Horseman
  • Gravitron Lance
  • Hard Light
  • Jade Rabbit
  • Lord of Wolves
  • Lumina
  • Merciless
  • MIDA Multi-Tool
  • Prometheus Lens
  • The Prospector
  • Rat King
  • Riskrunner
  • Sturm
  • Sunshot
  • SUROS Regime
  • Sweet Business
  • Symmetry
  • Tommy's Matchbook
  • Tractor Cannon
  • Trinity Ghoul
  • Vigilance Wing
  • Wardcliff Coil
  • Witherhoard
  • Bad Juju
  • The Huckleberry
  • Izanagi's Burden
  • Legend of Acrius
  • Polaris Lance
  • Skyburner's Oath
  • Sleeper Simulant*
  • Telesto*
  • Outbreak Perfected*
  • Whisper of the Worm*
  • Worldline Zero*
Bungie have also posted a short Q&A answering some questions which you can read below.
Q. What goes away when a destination is Vaulted?  
A. When a destination enters the DCV, its PvE content will no longer be available. Explicitly, this includes their unique:
  • Story missions and cinematics
  • Strikes (detailed above)
  • Raids (detailed above)
  • Dungeons (detailed above)
  • Adventures
  • Secret missions
  • Vendors and associated bounties
  • Destination-specific patrols
  • Collectables & scannables
  • Destination-specific activities (Ex: Mercury's Forge, Mars' Escalation Protocol)
  • Freely roaming the destinations themselves, exploring Lost Sectors, etc.
Q. What will new Guardians experience if the Year 1 campaigns are going away? 
A. With some of the core Year 1 destinations entering the Vault, it's true that the free-for-all-players Red War, Curse of Osiris, and Warmind campaigns will no longer be playable.
We are building a new, expanded Guardian origin story on the Cosmodrome that will launch alongside Year 4 and will be available to all Guardians to play. It is designed to introduce you to the world and mechanics of Destiny and prepare you to play the action MMO game we all enjoy. The Forsaken and Shadowkeep story campaigns will still be playable in Year 4 for owners of those expansions.
Q. What's happening to The Whisper and Zero Hour secret missions and their Exotic rewards? 
A. The Whisper is entering the Vault alongside Io, and so too is Zero Hour (given the old Tower was part of the Red War campaign and which is also entering the Vault). Their Exotic weapon rewards will not be acquirable until we find a new way to reintroduce them, so if you're keen to get them, make sure you do that now!
 
Q. With the Forsaken campaign, Tangled Shore, and Dreaming City sticking around after Beyond Light's launch, does that mean other Year 2 Seasonal content will remain playable in Year 4 too?  
A. No. The Year 2 Seasonal content – including Forges, Reckoning, and Menagerie – will be entering the DCV on November 10. Be sure to experience that content and mark the final items off your collections and checklists before they are Vaulted. Here's a cheat sheet of what to complete:
  • Ada-1, Black Armory, and Season of the Forge quests.
  • Gambit Prime, Reckoning, and Season of the Drifter quests.
  • Benedict-66, Werner 99-40, Menagerie, and Season of Opulence quests.
  • Pinnacle and pursuit weapon quests.
      • Note: These weapons will receive an alternate acquisition method. More details to come later this Season.
Source: Bungie

Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? – Infinite Combate Review

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? – Infinite Combate (which mercifully also goes by name DanMachi) is an anime that follows a 14 year old boy called Bell Cranel. He is part of Familia Hestia in service of the Goddess Hestia. She is a literal goddess, one who descended from heaven after creating the universe on the condition its inhabitants never use their godly powers, except one: the ability to level up. Like in a video game!

If you've seen DanMachi, or read the book it's based on, this is probably stuff you already know. If you haven't, it probably all sounds a bit weird. Now, being a bit weird isn't a dealbreaker by any means – most of my favourite things are at least a little bit weird – but unfortunately, as an anime and a book already exist to tell the story, Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? feels entirely pointless.

The story is retold here in a visual novel style, which means it's all mostly still images of impractically dressed characters with moving mouths to approximate speech and blinking eyes – it'd look even creepier if they were just staring. You'll be doing an awful lot of reading, as the entirety of the story plays out in those dialogue boxes whilst the characters blink at you. Much of the dialogue feels unnatural and stilted as well, often outright saying things that would, in a game with cutscenes and more animation, be communicated visually.

The story is pretty complex, but the problem is that when things happen you don't see them, there's just some sounds and a change to the music, accompanied by a different still image if you're lucky. The dialogue is all in Japanese with English subtitles and the subtitles themselves have more than their fair share of typos and words split in half across lines, all of which serves to keep you at arm's length.

You venture into the dungeon each day in the game, but this simply entails wandering through long, featureless underground corridors with the occasional rock sprite you can walk through, and rarer appearances from a bigger rock that you actually have to walk around. There are floors of the dungeon that look different to others, but even they become repetitive remarkably quickly as there's no distinguishing features or landmarks anywhere. It's just long corridors and wide rooms all the way down. Always has been.

You might think that combat and dungeon delving could be the game's saving grace, but it is shockingly simple, to the point of getting boring within an hour or two. You have three attacks, light, heavy, and magic, the latter of which isn't unlocked until hours into the game. The blend of attacking, defending, and dodging around feels stiff, as there are brief pauses on the end of all the actions, like the character is posing. The thing is, there's no reason to ever use anything other than the light attack combo.

You see, there's a brief pause after you attack, during enemies can hit you but you can't dodge away. This pause is longer on the heavy attack, whereas the light attack combo deals more damage than a single heavy attack and lets you dodge away more quickly. The consequence of this is the player just running from room to room hitting circle over and over again. There are also special attacks eventually unlocked for Bell through the story and available from the off for the other playable character Aiz. They're provided by Goddesses through story reasons and are announced by a full screen appearance of the character in typical anime style, but they have pretty lengthy cooldowns on them, so they're best reserved for when you really need them.

The best place to use your special attacks is to save you some time fighting during a "timed mission," which in video games really just means "forced stakes." The timed missions in this game don't even come with story reason for having a time restriction, and they just make you run past all the enemies, because you don't know how long the dungeon is, so you don't know how much time you have spare to fight. Running past enemies isn't challenging as they're slow, and it certainly isn't fun, so why timed missions are even here is anybody's guess.

Eventually, once you've earned enough cash, you'll be able to purchase more weapons that come with their own fighting style. They all tend to boil down to bashing the same button repeatedly then doing the same against the next enemy that gets too close. You can also upgrade the weapons/armour you already have using drops from enemies in the dungeon. The upgrades are mostly small, incremental upgrades though that don't really capture your imagination. You only need them to make enemy health bars drop a little quicker.

Speaking of which, enemies themselves look less like the reasonably imposing monsters from the anime and more like tamagotchi. Outside of the boss, they look like they've been chibi-fied, even the bigger ones look weirdly adorable for creatures that are supposedly terrorising people. Their AI is also awful, so they sometimes just stand still for no discernible reason, wander off instead of coming after you, or get caught on one of those solid rocks I mentioned earlier. They often spawn in immediately on top of an enemy you've just killed, whilst other times they spawn near each other at slightly different times and bounce each other around as they do so.

Gotham Knights is not part of the Arkhamverse

There was some understandable confusion when the trailer for Gotham Knights dropped as the story begins by using key plot points from the end of Arkham Knight. This is in the trailer so it's been already been spoiled, but in case you didn't finish the game – SPOILERS –  Batman blows up the Batcave and is seemingly dead.

The Gotham Knights trailer starts off with news reports of an explosion in Gotham City that apparently kills Bruce Wayne, his message from beyond the grave being beamed across to his former allies explains that the Batcave has been destroyed and he is passing the baton of protecting Gotham to Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl and Red Hood.

Despite all of that, WB Games Montreal has told ComicBook.com that, "Gotham Knights is an original story set in DC's Batman Universe and not connected to the Arkham series."

That means we now have two Bat universes in games, just to confuse everyone who is already grappling with three current Batuniverses in the movies (Joker, The Batman, and DCU). However, the new Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League game does follow on from Arkham Knight, so Batman is presumably dead in that game as well.

At DC FanDome WB Games Montreal came with plenty of gameplay to show with Batgirl and Robin teaming up to fight Mr. Freeze and his goons in a fortress of ice created by a large weather machine.

Gotham Knights is in development at WB Games Montreal, best known for their previous game Batman: Arkham Origins, which released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, telling a prequel story to the Batman: Arkham trilogy from Rocksteady Studios. The game has co-op so you will be able to team up with a friend to take on the bad guys and is an open world, third-person action RPG.

According to the game's synopsis, "Batman is dead. It is now up to the Batman Family – Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood and Robin – to protect Gotham City, bring hope to its citizens, discipline to its cops, and fear to its criminals. You must evolve into the new Dark Knight and save Gotham from chaos. Your legacy begins now. Step into the Knight."

Source: Comicbook.com

Marvel's Avengers PS4 trophy list has assembled

We're less than a fortnight away from one of 2020's biggest game launches. For years, Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics have been teasing us with their Marvel's Avengers project and it's almost strange to think we'll have the final game in our hands next Friday.

Ahead of its release date, we now have the full PS4 trophy list for Marvel's Avengers (which will be similar to the achievements lists on Xbox One and Steam). There's a pretty wide spread, with 51 trophies to unlock.

It goes without saying that some of the trophy descriptions touch on character and story spoilers. So, if you're looking to go into Marvel's Avengers not knowing where the main story will go you should avoid looking at the bottom third of this list.

Overall, it looks like a fairly easy road to the platinum trophy though a handful of these will take time to grind out. You'll need one of the six Avengers to be at Power Level 150 with a cumulative total Power Level of 250 across the entire roster. Anyway, here's the Marvel's Avengers trophy list in full:

Omega Level Accomplishment
Earn all Trophies		 Platinum
On the Mountaintop
Reach Power Level 150 with any Hero		 Gold
Back in Business
Earn a total of 250 Hero Levels across the entire Hero Roster
Silver
Group Effort
Reach rank 25 in any faction		 Silver
Super Hero Business
Complete 10 assignments		 Bronze
Team Player
Reach Hero Level 5 with 5 different Heroes		 Bronze
Time to Shine
Reach Hero Level 50 and purchase all skills for any Hero		 Bronze
Tentative Peace
Complete 15 Villain Sectors
Gold Star Success
Complete 100 assignments		 Silver
Treasure Trove
Open 50 Cache strongboxes		 Bronze
Honeycomb Hideout
Complete five Hive missions		 Bronze
Former Glory
Complete the "Iconic Avengers" mission chain		 Bronze
Clear Skies
Complete the "A Global Offensive" mission chain		 Bronze
To the Dark and Back Again
Complete 50 Hive missions		 Silver
Rough and Tumble
Reach a combo of 20 hits or higher		 Bronze
And That's How It's Done
Defeat 10 or more enemies with a single Heroic ability activation		 Bronze
Trying on Perfection
Earn a 100% rating on a mission without any team member being downed		 Bronze
Seeing Stars
Earn a five star rating on an objective without any team member taking damage		 Bronze
Holding It Down
Complete 30 War Zones at Challenge III or higher rating		 Silver
The Best Around
Earn a 100% rating for any War Zone at Challenge IV rating		 Bronze
More Important Things To Do
Complete any mission in under three minutes		 Bronze
The Best Defense
Defeat any 20 different enemy types		 Bronze
Old Fashioned Beat Down
Complete HARM Challenges I to V		 Silver
Prized Collection
Collect a full comic set		 Bronze
Information Overload
Collect 50 intelligence files		 Bronze
Wanting for Nothing
Collect 500 gear items		 Bronze
Odds and Ends
Collect three Artifacts		 Bronze
Savior of the People
Rescue 100 AIM prisoners		 Bronze
Become Legend
Equip all Legendary or better gear with any hero		 Bronze
Fundamentally Flawless
Defeat 50 enemies with Assault Heroic or Ultimate Heroic abilities		 Bronze
Muahahahahaha!
Fully upgrade a major artifact		 Bronze
Investing in the Future
Fully upgrade any gear item		 Bronze
Shopping Spree
Purchase an item from two different faction vendors		 Bronze
Breaking and Entering
Break into 30 Depots		 Bronze
A Surprise Every Time
Open 100 strongboxes		 Bronze
Truly Elite
Complete an Elite Heroic Hive		 Silver
Golden Ticket
Reach the VIP balcony		 Bronze
The Adventure Begins
Escape the clutches of AIM in New Jersey		 Bronze
Lost But Not Forgotten
Discover the location of the Chimera		 Bronze
A Little Bit Broken
Recruit Bruce Banner		 Bronze
From the Ashes
Recover the SHIELD Protocols		 Bronze
No Suit, No Problem
Recruit Tony Stark		 Bronze
Patent Violation
Destroy the AIM arc reactor		 Bronze
Gone To Ground
Locate the Ant Hill		 Bronze
Itsy Bitsy
Recruit Black Widow		 Bronze
A Novel Way to Travel
Rescue Inhumans from the research facility		 Bronze
Thunderous Applause
Stop the Helicarrier from crashing into New York City
Bronze
Unparalleled View
Reach the AIM space station		 Bronze
Welcome Back, Old Friend
Rescue Captain America		 Bronze
Avengers Assemble!
Reunite the Avengers		 Bronze
New Girl Makes Good
Defeat MODOK and the Kree		 Gold

 

Source: PSN Profiles

Aokana – Four Rhythms Across the Blue Review

Aokana – Four Rhythms Across the Blue is set primarily in the Kunahama Institute, a school in an alternate universe Japan where, through anti-gravity technology called "Grav-Shoes", people are able to fly. Naturally, any such inventions has given rise to a popular sport called 'Flying Circus', a kind of airborne tag, a game that practically everyone in this world is obsessed with.

At the beginning of the story, you are introduced to our protagonist (and world's luckiest pervert) Masaya Hinata. You experience the world and story through his eyes, and it is quickly revealed that, although he was heavily into Flying Circus (or FC for short) when he was younger, a mysterious incident resulted in him quitting the sport with no intention of returning.

This is until the cheery, but ditzy, Asuka Kurashina transfers to his school. Her lack of experience with flying results in Masaya helping her to learn and starts off a sequence of events that lead him to being the coach of the Kunahama Institute FC Club entirely against his will, and with him training them to enter the various regional tournaments in the sport.

It is a typical underdog story, if truth be told. I mean, we've seen these kind of narratives in films like The Mighty Ducks, anime like Yuri on Ice!, and even in other video games like – I don't know – Mario Strikers Charged. The reason why these stories endure and are still enjoyable is because they are so timeless and wholesome as to be almost entirely unbreakable.

However, there is a glaring issue with Aokana in that the serviceable albeit well-trodden plot is broken up by flashes of fan service so sudden and unnecessary that I'm considering suing for whiplash. Potentially heartfelt moments and story beats are interspersed with panty shots and questionable dialogue that evaporate any possible investment in the plot.

When mentioned earlier that Masaya was a pervert, this is seen constantly throughout the story with our noble hero taking any opportunity he can get to see a flash of panties, spy on the girls changing, or listen in on them all taking a bath together. This might be a personal thing, but it doesn't really endear him as a protagonist, more indicate he should be on some kind of list.

Inexplicably, you can actually date the main girls in the story, with each of them having a specific plot thread related to them that can be followed through the various choices the game gives the player throughout. This means there is a large amount of replayability here, should you choose to seek it out, and that the story can even end prematurely with certain player decisions.

The problem is, that the girls themselves (and all the characters for that matter) are anime tropes on legs. They're all here: the unstoppably cheery one, the obsessed with food one, the snarky one, the one obsessed with one of the others, it's like a checklist was brought into the planning. As such the characters are all distinctly one-note.

One aspect that does feel distinctly fleshed out however is the world design. A lot of care and attention was clearly paid to making FC feel as realistic as possible with a written history and well thought out rules. It could actually pass for a real world sport, if the technology existed for it to be made possible. Although, seeing as people insisted on making Quidditch exist in real life, anything's game at this point.

Another part in which the game shines is in the aesthetic. The music perfectly suits the various narrative beats and the static backgrounds the character images wiggle in front of are colourful, distinct and full of detail. This extends into the character designs as well, all of which are very pretty and (mostly) visually distinct. Even if the male characters are arguably less so.

Fall Guys update 1.06 'Spicy Hot Fix' is live – read the patch notes here

Update 24/08: The "Spicy Hot Fix" update 1.06 for Fall Guys is live, despite being expected for later in the week. All of the patch notes we posted last night still apply and can be found below, except for a tweak to the player spectating sorting.

The original post follows

A "Spicy Hot Fix" update is in the works for Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, the cute and cuddly Battle Royale game that has taken the world of gaming by storm over the last month. Expected to drop sometime this week, it's all about making minor tweaks and updates, as opposed to adding new rounds and game modes like the last update did.

Team mode dislikers will be glad to see that these modes will only trigger if team sizes can be equal, and party players will find it easier to watch their chums should they get knocked out. There's also a handful of tweaks for exploits and crashes, and Yellow Team is no longer nerfed (we think this one's a joke).

Here's the full patch notes:

Fall Guys 1.06 'Spicy Hot Fix' patch notes

  • Tweaked round selection algorithm to select a Team game only if the team sizes can be equal
  • Party members are now sorted first in spectator mode – Note: This has been delayed to the next update
  • (PS4 Only) Added Controller options, including invert X/Y axis and sensitivity settings
  • Slime Climb: players can no longer grab some of the moving obstacles
  • Jump Showdown: changed geometry to prevent a gameplay exploit
  • Jump Showdown: fixed camera auto-panning
  • Improved in-game store purchase dialog to avoid accidental selections
  • Addressed the top 5 most frequent crashes
  • Visual fixes to some of the outfits
  • (PS4 Only) Improved UI performance on non-Pro PS4 models
  • Added option to change the jump button binding for Japan
  • Trophy/Achievement names and descriptions are now correctly displayed in all supported languages
  • Removed move speed nerf from Yellow Team (Don't post this one)

This isn't the only news for Fall Guys fans this week, as it's been revealed that a sneak preview of Season Two of the game will be shown on the opening night of Gamescom's digital showcase. Keep a beady eye out at 7PM BST if you're planning to tune in.

Fall Guys has been an absolute sensation for the team at developer Mediatonic and publisher Devolver Digital, with the companies revealing that they've sold over 2 million copies on Steam in the game's first week. That's before you take into account however many people have been playing via PlayStation 4, where it's free on PlayStation Plus in August. However, that has also led to some major server issues around launch, with an entire day being effectively wiped out on Friday, as they shored up the servers and added capacity ahead of the weekend. Thankfully things have been fairly steady since then.

We posted our Fall Guys review earlier this month, saying:

Full of cute and cuddly jelly beans bumbling into each other in a race for the crown, Fall Guys is just about the most wholesome battle royale imaginable, and a whole lot of fun.

Fall Guys is out now for PlayStation 4 and PC via Steam.

Source: Twitter

Microsoft files a statement of support for Epic Games in Apple lawsuit

Today, the Apple vs Epic Games lawsuit has taken another turn as Microsoft, specifically General Manager of Gaming Development Experiences Kevin Gammill, have filed a statement of support for Epic Games. This statement related specifically to Apple's threat to remove Epic's access to the software development kit on iOS. That would be a huge and devastating move for a number of developers who rely on Epic's Unreal Engine. If Epic cannot update and maintain Unreal Engine then third party developers would be very limited in being able to update or develop games on iOS.

In the statement, Microsoft specifically references Forza Street, one of its own titles, which runs on Unreal Engine. Additionally, Microsoft states that if support for Unreal Engine is removed it would either have to develop a new engine, an option not viable for smaller devs, or leaving its iOS players behind. The full statement can be read below.

I, Kevin Gammill, declare as follows:
1. I am the General Manager, Gaming Developer Experiences for Microsoft. In this role, I oversee Microsoft's support of game creators (including game developers, audio engineers, level designers, game producers, etc.) within the Xbox ecosystem. Among other things, my team helps game creators achieve their creative goals. I have been an engineer for more than 30 years, including more than 20 years at Microsoft, and have more than 10 years of experience supporting game creators across multiple platforms.

2. Epic Games' Unreal Engine is a critical technology for numerous game creators including Microsoft.

  • (a) Game engines provide creators with a development environment that delivers the necessary graphics, rendering, physics, sound, networking, and other technologies that enable them to build games that run on multiple platforms.
  • (b) Although some large game creators choose to develop their own proprietary game engines, many others, including small and independent game creators, utilize game engines built by and licensed from third parties.
  • (c) Many of these creators do not have the resources or capabilities to build their own game engines and rely on the availability of third-party game engines, while other creators may choose to use third-party game engines to save development costs and utilize
    already-developed technologies.
  • (d) As a result, Epic's Unreal Engine is one of the most popular third-party game engines available to game creators, and in Microsoft's view there are very few other options available for creators to license with as many features and as much functionality as Unreal
    Engine across multiple platforms, including iOS.
  • (e) Microsoft has an enterprise-wide, multi-year Unreal Engine license agreement and has invested significant resources and engineer time working with and customizing Unreal Engine for its own games on PC, Xbox consoles, and mobile devices (including iOS devices).

For example, Microsoft's racing game Forza Street is currently available on iOS and utilizes Unreal Engine.

3. Denying Epic access to Apple's SDK and other development tools will prevent Epic from supporting Unreal Engine on iOS and macOS, and will place Unreal Engine and those game creators that have built, are building, and may build games on it at a substantial disadvantage.

  • (a) Developing a game using different game engines for different platforms may be prohibitively expensive and difficult. In any event, it is not as cost-effective as using a game engine that supports different platforms.
  • (b) As a result, game creators, including Microsoft, that are preparing to develop a game targeted at multiple platforms generally choose game engines based both on the functionality they provide as well as their ability to support development for those platforms.
  • (c) If Unreal Engine cannot support games for iOS or macOS, Microsoft would be required to choose between abandoning its customers and potential customers on the iOS and macOS platforms or choosing a different game engine when preparing to develop new
    games.
  • (d) Because iOS is a large and growing market for games, Apple's discontinuation of Unreal Engine's ability to support iOS will be a material disadvantage for the Unreal Engine in future decisions by Microsoft and other game creators as to the choice of an
    engine for new games.
  • (e) Even uncertainty about the Unreal Engine's ability to continue supporting iOS and macOS will make it less likely for Microsoft (and, I believe, other game creators) to select Unreal Engine for their projects. When game creators are planning development projects,
    which can last for years, it is important to have confidence that the chosen engine will continue to be available on and support all platforms on which the game creators plan to distribute their games. 

4. Apple's discontinuation of Epic's ability to develop and support Unreal Engine for iOS or macOS will harm game creators and gamers.

  • (a) For game creators in the later stages of development utilizing Unreal Engine and targeting the iOS and/or macOS platform, Unreal Engine's sudden loss of support for iOS and macOS would create significant costs and difficult decisions. The creator would have
    significant sunk costs and lost time using Unreal Engine for game creation, and would have to choose between (a) starting development all over with a new game engine, (b) abandoning the iOS and macOS platforms, or (c) ceasing development entirely.
  • (b) Apple's removal of Unreal Engine's ability to develop updates and improvements for iOS and macOS could also harm already-launched iOS and macOS games built on Unreal Engine. If the game engine can no longer develop updates that take advantage of new
    iOS or macOS features, fix software bugs, or patch security flaws, this will harm games that have already launched on iOS and macOS (and, in turn, harm gamers). In addition, this situation could bifurcate a game's player base, such that gamers on iOS or macOS cannot play or communicate with friends or family who are playing on other platforms.

Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1746, I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct and that I executed this declaration on August 22, 2020 on Lopez Island, Washington. 

All of this has come about because Epic decided to introduce a new way to pay for in-game currency that bypassed Apple's systems, dodging Apple's 30% fee on transactions processed via Apple. In reaction to this, Fortnite was pulled from the App Store, with Epic then immediately filing suit. A similar chain of events also played out on the Google Play Store on Android.

Apple have come in for strong criticism over the last few months, with a war of words with Microsoft over the exclusion of their xCloud streaming app. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will only be able to access game streaming via Android smartphones when the service launches in September.

Source: Twitter

Rocksteady issue a statement in regards of reports of sexual harassment at the studio

Rocksteady were the subject of a report in The Guardian on Monday which accused them of ignoring sexual harassment claims, followed by a emotional video from Kim MacAskil, Senior Writer at the studio until 2019.

The letter, dated November 2018 and signed by 10 of the company's 16 female staff at the time, raised complaints about behaviour including "slurs regarding the transgendered community" and "discussing a woman in a derogatory or sexual manner with other colleagues", and sexual harassment "in the form of unwanted advances, leering at parts of a woman's body, and inappropriate comments in the office".

Rocksteady gave The Guardian the following statement.

From day one at Rocksteady Studios, we set out to create a place where people are looked after, a place fundamentally built on respect and inclusion.

In 2018 we received a letter from some of our female employees expressing concerns they had at that time, and we immediately took firm measures to address the matters that were raised. Over the subsequent two years we have carefully listened to and learned from our employees, working to ensure every person on the team feels supported. In 2020 we are more passionate than ever to continue to develop our inclusive culture, and we are determined to stand up for all of our staff.

Rocksteady have now responded to the report with a full statement.

They say "we listened, and we dealt with issues raised." They also say they are employing an independent third party which Rocksteady employees can talk to confidentially, and also speaking to all female employees who have left the company in the last two years.

The statement follows an "unsolicited letter" from seven out of the ten women who signed the original letter which complained about sexual harassment.

Rocksteady's statements seem to contradict those of Kim MacAskil, a senior script writer at Rocksteady until 2019.

Kim states that higher management and a director were harassing the females, with a male colleague complaining about a female employees work after she rejected her advances.

She goes on to say she "redrafted and redrafted" the letter, during which the HR department tried to stop her twice, and members of higher management told her that if she did finish the letter her position in the company would be in jeopardy and that her future prospects at other companies would be jeopardised as she might be seen as "a trouble maker" .

Source: Twitter

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League revealed for PS5, Series X, and PC

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has been revealed as the second big game announcement at the DC FanDome stream, it is planned for release in 2022, coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC.

It's a 1-4 player co-op game with bots taking the roles of other players if you are on your own, but you can swap between characters as you play. Harley Quinn, Deadshot, King Shark and Captain Boomerang are shown, with Amanda Waller giving them orders via comms. The trailer is all CGI, with no gameplay in sight at this time, but WB describe it as having "character-driven story gameplay with third-person shooter action", and state that each squad member has a unique moveset for getting around the world.

The game is set in a ruined open-world version of Metropolis and continues the story from Rocksteady's previous Batman games, so we can expect other characters and plot threads from the Arkhamverse to continue.

Superman also makes an appearance, but has clearly been turned from the hero he once was, killing a helicopter pilot. He seems to have been infected with some sort of purple aura, which matches the colour of a monster Deadshot takes out. There's some real The Boys vibes from that particular point.

The game is out in 2022, which means Rocksteady will have been working on it for well over seven years by the time it launches. The game was confirmed earlier this month after years and years of speculation on what Rocksteady were developing after concluding their Batman: Arkham trilogy in 2015. Rumours had pointed to both Suicide Squad and Justice League games, with the truth being…. both!

Alongside Rocksteady's new title, Batman: Arkham Origins developer WB Games Montreal unveiled Arkham Knights. Set in a different version of the DC Universe, Batman is dead and Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl and Red Hood answering the call to fight crime in Gotham (and in co-op!) and end the plots of the Court of Owls, Mr. Freeze and plenty other villains.

Update: It has now been confirmed that Arkham Knights is in a separate DC universe to Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham series and Suicide Squad.

The run up to the Suicide Squad's reveal has not been a smooth one for Rocksteady and WB, as allegations of sexual harassment at the company resurfaced over the last few days. A letter penned in 2018 by former senior script writer Kim MacAskil was published by The Guardian, as she sought to highlight the behaviour that the small minority of women at the company were facing. This was followed by an ostensibly unsolicited statement from the women that were at the company during that period and have remained, and Rocksteady have now brought in an independent third party to confidentially speak with current and former employees to try and weed out abusers.

Gotham Knights first gameplay revealed – fight the Court of Owls in 2021

After months and months of teasing, Gotham Knights has been officially announced at DC FanDome today. The game is coming out in 2021 on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One and PC.

The trailer starts off with news reports of an explosion in Gotham City that apparently kills Bruce Wayne, his post mortem message being beamed across to his former allies, passing the baton of protecting Gotham from bad guys to Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl and Red Hood. With four heroes to choose from, the game will also bring some co-op play to the table, though this will be limited to two player multiplayer.

WB Games Montreal came with plenty of gameplay to show as well, with Batgirl and Robin teaming up to fight Mr. Freeze and his goons in a fortress of ice created by a large weather machine.

But what led to Batman's death? Well… maybe the Court of Owls? That's right game takes inspiration from the Court of Owls storyline that debuted at the start of DC's New 52 initiative in 2011. Writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo led a major crossover story arc which saw Batman discover a secret controlling society within Gotham, using an army of Talons, kidnapped, trained and brainwashed circus performers, much like Dick Grayson, the first Robin. With Batman and Commissioner Gordon dead, these four crime fighters have been pushed back to vigilante status and will certainly have an uphill battle ahead of them.

Gotham Knights is in development at WB Games Montreal, best known for their previous game Batman: Arkham Origins, which released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, telling a prequel story to the Batman: Arkham trilogy from Rocksteady Studios. Though obviously set in familiar territory of Gotham, it's not entirely clear if this is considered a continuation of the Batman: Arkham franchise and story.

Speaking of Rocksteady (a company currently embroiled in scandal after allegations of workplace toxicity and abuse came to light in the last week), their next game set in the DC Universe, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is set to be revealed tonight at 1:10AM BST.

Update: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has been revealed!

Something for the Weekend – 22/08/20

The heatwave we were experiencing seems to have gone for good, as Storm Ellen swept across the UK this week. Not only did it bring disruption in real life to places with fallen trees and flooding, but it also disrupted several landings (not all successful) I made in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 with live weather turned on!

Anyway, let's take a look at the past week on TSA. We've got a lot to cover…

In the News This Week

Games in Review

We had loads of reviews this week, covering a wide range of genres and scores too:

And just one hardware review this week:

Featured Articles

Similar to the reviews, it was also a busy week for the previews. Stefan kicked things off by asking whether it was game, set, and match for Tennis World Tour 2, and it sounds like once you get past the initial learning curve, this is the game that fans wanted in the first one. And, despite most theme-parks in the world being shut for Covid, he got his adrenaline fix with Planet Coaster: Console Edition.

Jonny teed off his week with GolfTopia, a golf course management sim with some futuristic additions, as Dom looked at Pacer, a spiritual WipEout successor that is looking promising. With Dom grounded by some incredibly frustrating technical difficulties, Stefan took to the skies in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and decided to try and visit his own homes in the virtual world.

After enjoying the game so much in his review, Miguel made an unboxing video of all the goodies in the Limited Edition for Death end re;Quest 2:

Elsewhere, Tuffcub went hands on with Transformers: Battlegrounds which takes "the franchise to a genre that it's never really visited before", and Steve was similarly impressed by BPM: Beats Per Minute.

Last up, Adrian took a look at whether the Peaky Blinders really existed, and asked the all-important question: were they all as well-dressed as Tommy Shelby?

Oh, and What We Played featured Flight Simulator, Peaky Blinders & PGA Tour 2K21.

Trailer Park

Martha Is Dead revealed for Xbox Series X and PC, watch the disturbing trailer here

The PlayStation 5's first TV advert is here

Your Achievements

Here's what you in our community has been up to this week:

  • Crazy_Del added two more platinums to his collection: NFS Heat and COD Modern Warfare 2. That last pesky Fall Guys trophy still eludes him!
  • hornet1990 finished reading Blood, Sweat and Pixels, and enjoyed the insight into the industry.
  • Like many of you, ron_mcphatty is still enjoying Fall Guys with his family, and is aiming to start Death Stranding this weekend.
  • tactical20 is looking forwards to new maps being added for SkaterXL.
  • After Andrewww was disappointed with the Avengers beta, he is enjoying TLOU2 and Erica (when he can get his son off Fall Guys!).
  • Last up, MrYd is on the mend after putting his back out, playing lots of games as usual, feeling mixed emotions with Death Stranding, and enjoyed finishing off I Am Setsuna.

Phew! I wasn't lying when I said it was a busy week. Have a good weekend and I'll be back soon!

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 launch trailer drops ahead of release date

September will see the launch of yet another Activision remaster. Following on from Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, and last year's Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled, developer Vicarious Visions will flip, grab, and grind with their top-to-bottom remake of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Oh, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, as well.

The launch trailer gives us a much closer look at what to expect from this hotly-anticipated double dose of skateboarding action. You can see the work that has been put into recreating every stage from the first two landmark Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games. The trailer even gives us some nostalgic side by side comparisons – oh, how far we've come!

For those who simply can't wait to get their hands on this remaster, the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 Warehouse is available to download, but only for those who have digitally pre-ordered the game. Showcasing one of the series' most iconic levels, you'll get a two-minute run as Tony Hawk himself, sampling the game some twenty years after its original release.

Drop back in with the most iconic skateboarding games ever made. Play the fully-remastered Tony Hawk's™ Pro Skater™ & Tony Hawk's™ Pro Skater™ 2 games in one epic collection, rebuilt from the ground up in incredible HD.

– Skate as the legendary Tony Hawk and the original pro roster, plus new pros
– Skate to songs from the era-defining soundtrack along with new music
– Hit insane trick combos with the iconic handling of the Tony Hawk's™ Pro Skater™ series
– Play all the original game modes and go head-to-head with local 2-Player modes
– Show off your style and creativity with upgraded Create-A-Park and Create-A-Skater features
– Take your sessions online and compete against players from around the world in Multiplayer modes and leaderboards

Tony Hawks' Pro Skater 1 + 2 will be launching next month on September 4th on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, where it will be an Epic Games Store exclusive (sorry Steam users!)

Source: YouTube

Epic adding Hitman to its free games list next week

Epic have announced their latest pair of upcoming free video games for next week: 2016's Hitman and Shadowrun Collection.

Both games will be available to download and keep forever as long you claim them between August 27th and September 3rd.

Hitman will come fully packaged with every episode and location, from Paris to Hokkaido. It's a fantastic reboot for the series with hours upon hours of replayable content. We scored Hitman an 8, praising its flawless style and inventive episodic approach while criticising load times and frustrating stretches of trial and error gameplay.

Hitman 3 was recently announced as an Epic Games Store exclusive on PC.

Shadowrun Collection is definitely worth a punt for those who enjoy quirky sci-fi RPGs. This bundle packs in Shadowrun Returns (Base Game), Shadowrun Dragonfall – Director Cut (Base Game) and Shadowrun Hong Kong – Extended Edition (Base Game).

Those wanting some free gaming goodness from Epic right now can get their hands on Enter the Gungeon and God's Trigger.

You can check out the full list of Epic free games below which started with Subnautica in December 2018. Click on the game titles to read our reviews:

Hitman August 27-September 3, 2020
Shadowrun Collection August 27-September 3, 2020
God's Trigger August 20-27, 2020
Enter the Gungeon August 20-27, 2020
The Alto Collection August 13-20, 2020
Remnant: From the Ashes August 13-20, 2020
A Total War Saga: Troy August 13-14, 2020
Wilmot's Warehouse August 6-13, 2020
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP July 30 – August 6, 2020
Barony July 30 – August 6, 2020
20XX July 30 – August 6, 2020
Next Up Hero July 23-30, 2020
Tacoma July 23-30, 2020
Torchlight II July 16-23, 2020
Lifeless Planet: Premier Edition July 9-16, 2020
The Escapists 2 July 9-16, 2020
Killing Floor 2 June 9-16, 2020
Hue July 2-9, 2020
Stranger Things 3 June 25-July 2, 2020
AER Memories of Old June 18-25, 2020
Ark: Survival Evolved June 11-18, 2020
Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection June 11-18, 2020
Overcooked June 4-11, 2020
Borderlands: The Handsome Collection May 28-June 4, 2020
Civilization VI May 21-28, 2020
Grand Theft Auto V May 14-21, 2020
Death Coming May 7-14, 2020
Crashlands April 30-May 7, 2020
Amnesia: The Dark Descent April 30-May 7, 2020
For the King April 23-30, 2020
Just Cause 4 April 16-23, 2020
Wheels of Aurelia April 16-23, 2020
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments April 9-16, 2020
Close to the Sun April 9-16, 2020
Gone Home April 2-9, 2020
Drawful 2 April 2-9, 2020
Hob April 2-9, 2020
Totally Reliable Delivery Service April 1-8, 2020
World War Z March 26-April 2, 2020
Torment x Punisher March 26-April 2, 2020
Figment March 26-April 2, 2020
Watch Dogs March 19-26, 2020
The Stanley Parable March 19-26, 2020
A Short Hike March 12-19, 2020
Mutazione March 12-19, 2020
Anodyne 2 March 12-19, 2020
Gonner March 5-12, 2020
Offworld Trading Company March 5-12, 2020
Inner Space February 27-March 5, 2020
Faeria February 20-27, 2020
Assassin's Creed Syndicate February 20-27, 2020
Aztez February 13-20, 2020
Kingdom Come: Deliverance February 13-20, 2020
Ticket to Ride February 6-13, 2020
Carcassonne February 6-13, 2020
Farming Simulator 19 January 30-February 6, 2020
The Bridge January 23-30, 2020
Horace January 16-23, 2020
Sundered: Eldritch Edition January 9-16, 2020
Darksiders Warmastered Edition January 1-9, 2020
Darksiders 2 Dethinitive Edition January 1-9, 2020
Steep January 1-9, 2020
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair December 31, 2019
Hello Neighbor December 30, 2019
The Talos Principle December 29, 2019
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun December 28, 2019
Hyper Light Drifter December 27, 2019
FTL: Faster Than Light December 26, 2019
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator December 25, 2019
Celeste December 24, 2019
Ape Out December 23, 2019
Little Inferno December 22, 2019
Superhot December 21, 2019
Towerfall Ascension December 20, 2019
Into the Breach December 19, 2019
The Wolf Among Us December 12-19, 2019
The Escapists December 12-19, 2019
Jotun: Valhalla Edition December 6-12, 2019
Rayman Legends November 29-December 6, 2019
Bad North November 21-29, 2019
The Messenger November 14-21, 2019
Ruiner November 7-14, 2019
Nuclear Throne November 7-14, 2019
Costume Quest October 31-November 7, 2019
Soma October 31-November 7, 2019
Layers of Fear October 24-October 31, 2019
Q.U.B.E.2 October 24-October 31, 2019
Alan Wake: American Nightmare October 17-24, 2019
Observer October 17-24, 2019
Surviving Mars October 10-17, 2019
Minit October 3-10, 2019
Metro 2033 Redux September 26-October 3, 2019
Everything September 26-October 3, 2019
Lego Batman Trilogy September 19-26, 2019
Batman: Arkham Collection September 19-26, 2019
Conarium September 12-19, 2019
ABZU September 5-12, 2019
The End is Nigh September 5-12, 2019
Celeste August 29-September 5, 2019
Inside August 29-September 5, 2019
Fez August 22-29, 2019
Hyper Light Drifter August 15-22, 2019
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden August 15-22, 2019
GNOG August 8-15, 2019
For Honor August 2-9, 2019
Alan Wake August 2-9, 2019
This War of Mine July 25-August 2, 2019
Moonlighter July 25-August 2, 2019
Limbo July 18-July 25, 2019
Torchlight July 11-18, 2019
Overcooked July 4-11, 2019
Last Day of June June 27-July 4, 2019
Rebel Galaxy June 20-27, 2019
Enter the Gungeon June 13-20, 2019
Kingdom: New Lands June 6-13, 2019
City of Brass May 30-6, 2019
Rime May 23-30, 2019
Stories Untold May 16-23, 2019
World of Goo May 2-16, 2019
Transistor April 18-May 2, 2019
The Witness April 4-18, 2019
Oxenfree March 21-April 4, 2019
Slime Rancher March 7-21, 2019
Thimbleweed Park February 21-March 7, 2019
Axiom Verge February 7-21, 2019
The Jackbox Party Pack January 24-February 7, 2019
What Remains of Edith Finch January 11-24, 2019
Super Meat Boy December 28, 2018-January 10, 2019
Subnautica December 12-27, 2018

The Epic Games Launcher also hosts to a variety of free-to-play games including Dauntless, SMITE, Magic The Gathering Arena, and of course, Fortnite.

Source: Epic Games

Ghost of Tsushima Legends multiplayer won't have microtransactions

Sony and Ghost of Tsushima developers, Sucker Punch, recently unveiled their upcoming multiplayer mode for the game which will be dropping later this year.

However, one question that immediately sprang to mind was whether Ghost of Tsushima: Legends will be monetised. The upcoming multiplayer component will be a free add-on for those who already own a copy of the game, so adding microtransactions such as currency/experience points boosters, as well as cosmetic items, seems like a natural fit.

When asked by IGN whether Ghost of Tsushima: Legends will go down this path, Sucker Punch made the following statement:

"There are no microtransactions in Ghost of Tsushima: Legends, and we have absolutely no plans to add them. All of the content is unlocked through play."

Legends doesn't have an exact release date for now though is due to launch in "Fall 2020" according to the developers.  Here's a quick rundown of what to expect:

You'll be able to partner up with friends or via online matchmaking and play Legends in groups of 2-4 players. Each player can choose from one of four different character classes: the Samurai, Hunter, Ronin, or Assassin. Each class has unique advantages and abilities that we'll reveal in the future.

With two players in Ghost of Tsushima: Legends, you'll be able to play a series of co-op Story missions that escalate in difficulty, building on the foundation of combat from the single-player campaign but with new magical twists that often require careful synchronization with your partner.

With four players, you'll be able to take on wave-based Survival missions, fighting groups of the toughest enemies Tsushima has to offer, Including new Oni enemies with supernatural abilities.

From what little we've seen, it looks like a fascinating expansion for Ghost of Tsushima and one no-one expected to see considering the game's open-world singleplayer focus. It will definitely have fans returning to the island to hone their sword-fighting skills once more and then there's the possibility Legends could become its own standalone game. We'll know more when it debuts later this year.

Source: IGN

What We Played #464 – Microsoft Flight Simulator, Peaky Blinders: Mastermind & PGA Tour 2K21

I have spent this week playing 'Microsoft Flight Simulator Troubleshooting Simulator' and let me tell you, it's the worst game of the year so far. I have a pretty decent PC, that plays nice with pretty much everything, but not this. It just crashes, usually just as it's loading, and it's driven me to distraction. I think it might have actually removed any love for gaming that I have.

Well, maybe not quite as I've been playing No Straight Roads for review, as well as continuing to give the Wii U some much needed attention with Wind Waker HD and Paper Mario Color Splash, but it's been a close run thing.

Thankfully, so that we can actually have a feature about the game, Tef has had far more success with Microsoft Flight Simulator, which he's happily dabbled with while playing 'Microsoft Flight Simulator Tech Support' and come up with a bunch of new troubleshooting things I can try. He's not had much luck with that.

Now that Nic B has got the internet, he's been storming through Ogre Tale — a weird 2D beat-em-up that asks what happens if you took Japan and vomited Japan all over it, with Nic telling us "It's an interesting play, if very try-hard in its writing." Gareth meanwhile has been playing Is it Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? for review. He's also mopped up some side missions in Ghost of Tsushima, which in any other year would likely be his GOTY, but The Last of Us 2 released this year. He's also jumped into some Beat Saber with the newly released Linkin Park pack.

On the watching front he's on the second season of Umbrella Academy this week, "which was good except for a few moments that relied on poor writing and nonsensical character choices to progress. Other than that, I continued to watch 30 Rock and, much to my delight, discovered that I had misremembered how many seasons it has. I have two seasons left! It's excellent, if you haven't seen it."

Aside from his usual grind on FFXIV, Reuben has been sinking some time into surviving the Siberian wilderness in Rise of the Tomb Raider and soaring through Aokana for a review too. He also says "I haven't been watching a whole lot, unless you count my millionth rewatch of Friends as background noise."

Jim hasn't really thrown himself into one game this week, juggling a few, dipping in for a couple of hours here and there. He tells us "I'm still slaying away with Dauntless, having almost maxed the new Hunt Pass and unlocked almost all the Indiana Jones adventurer-esque cosmetics. Fall Guys has obviously been in my rotation but I've probably spent more time with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5. I don't have much history with the series at all, so maybe I'm not catching the same flaws fans butt their heads against. I'm really enjoying it, firing up a session then completing a handful of missions before ducking back out."

Nick P has been mostly playing PGA Tour 2K21 for review, as well as some Ghost of Tshushima, CoD Warzone, Fall Guys and the Marvel Avengers Beta. "For things I've watched, I saw two movies, Invisible Man and Us which I quite enjoyed. I also started watching Brooklyn 99! I don't know where all this time has come from haha!"

Jason has been playing more some Halo multiplayer, saying "it's nostalgic and lets me pretend the world isn't on fire around me. I've also been spending a lot of time with Dreamscaper, which is a really cool roguelike game with some light Persona social stuff thrown in."

Over the other side of the pond, Miguel played Spiritfarer and Kandagawa Jet Girls for review. "My friends and I picked up Remnant as a co-op thing so i played the tutorial last night. I've also been doing a bunch of Final Fantasy XIV now that the Yokai Watch event is kicking off. I found out that the Regular Show creators new show Close Enough FINALLY came out so I watched that this week alongside some of Kaiji season 2 and my usual weekly anime business."

Ade thoroughly enjoyed his time reviewing Peaky Blinders Mastermind, to the extent that he's tempted to go and watch the TV show, and did a new Playing with History researching the gang's real origins. He also played the Avengers Beta and said, "it was alright," before returning to the EDF franchise and playing EDF 5 with his girlfriend – "The best in the series yet, we reckon."

Steve turned up to say that he played BPM: Bullets Per Minute, Battletoads and Metamorphosis and just got the platinum for the lovely Ni no Kuni II. He's going to watch the film with his kids over the weekend.

Finally, Aran played Death Stranding and got bored, saying "I just could not get into it at all". He also played more Fall Guys "which is a great game to unwind with", some and UFC 4 online. He's been watching more The Good Place and also watched 1917, saying "what a great film that is."

That's all from us, but what about you? Let us know what you've been playing in the comments.

Lair of the Clockwork God is coming to Switch & Xbox One in September, and "ASAP" to PS4

The quite excellent platformer point & click hybrid adventure of Lair of the Clockwork God is coming to Nintendo Switch and Xbox One on 4th September, with a PlayStation 4 version coming "ASAP" in 2020.

There's no word on if the games will be coming to next-gen platforms PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, but if they do, hopefully there will be free cross-gen upgrades and just loads of really pointless ray tracing effects that make everything super reflective. The port to current gen has been handled by Ant Workshop.

Lair of the Clockwork God sees the classic point & click loving characters of Ben and Dan return for another adventure, except this time Dan has decided that he wants to be an indie darling platformer, much to Ben's chagrin. They stumble their way into a new adventure trying to convince a guardian computer that humanity is worth saving from all the apocalypses that are happening outside. Oh dear.

it's a genuinely funny adventure that's sometimes borders on being a bit too smart for its own good. In our Lair of the Clockwork God review, I wrote:

Lair of the Clockwork God is a genre mash-up that probably shouldn't work, and yet it does. It feels a little unrefined, intentionally so, but there's plenty of comedic fodder in indie platformers, modern gaming and life for Ben and Dan to riff off through the lens of classic LucasArts style adventures.

The game is out now for PC, with that Switch and Xbox One release now penned in for 4th September, and coming to PlayStation 4 sometime in 2020 after all that businessy stuff has been sorted out.

Source: Dan

Marvel's Iron Man VR update 1.06 adds New Game Plus and new weapons

Camouflaj has announced the contents of Marvel's Iron Man VR's 1.06 update, and there are some big additions. The first is that Iron Man VR will now have a new game plus mode so you can replay the campaign with all of your unlocked gear. Alongside that, there is a new Ultimate difficulty which will be much tougher to get through than Marvel's Iron Man VR's Invincible difficulty mode. To help out four new weapons are available with those being the micro swarm, gravity bomb, EM charge cannon, and the continuous beam repulsor.  There are also some new custom armour decorations to get from the Armor Station.

As well as gameplay additions there have been some quality changes too. Load times should drastically improve when going into the Shanghai missions, with reports of times being reduced by up to 30 seconds. When you replay a mission you will be able to skip the cinematics if you wish to. There are also two missions in the game that are now skippable following player feedback. When you skip them they will be marked as completed in the campaign, but any trophies associated with them will remain locked until you go back and complete the mission properly.

In our review for Marvel's Iron Man VR, Dom wrote:

Marvel's Iron Man VR is a brilliant superhero adventure, and one that replicates its star's physicality in VR in a truly incredible way.
You can read the full Marvel's Iron Man VR review here.
Source: PS Blog

Griefhelm Review

Looking to recreate the tense thrills of medieval duelling, Griefhelm will feel strangely familiar to those who have played local multiplayer masterpiece, Nidhogg. It's a fighting game almost stripped down to the barest essential with 2D movement, simplified controls, and one-hit kills by default. While easy to pick up and play, Griefhelm requires a mix of tactical cunning and razor sharp reflexes to master.

Let's quickly dive into how Griefhelm's combat works. You'll combine timing, reach, and footwork to deliver killing blows using a small medieval arsenal of weaponry, from flails and poleaxes to clubs and claymores. Battles in Griefhelm can be over in a matter of seconds if one knight manages to land their attack perfectly.

When going toe to toe with an opponent, each weapon has three attacks for each stance – high, mid, and low – which you can swap between by simply moving the right stick. This can be done with a mouse or directional keys though Griefhelm encourages you to plug in a gamepad for the best duelling experience.

Hacking away is a tactic that will only suffice for the first AI difficulty tier. You'll quickly learn to use parries (you'll automatically parry an attack by matching their stance and remaining idle) as well as throwing in the occasional shove.

Overcoming this early learning curve presents a pretty brutal difficulty spike. Rounds can be lost in the blink of an eye and the only way you can become a Griefhelm parry master is to have lightning fast reactions, learning the different attack animation wind-ups for the various weapons.

Compared to the zanier Nidhogg, Griefhelm is grittier and has more immediate depth to its combat. At the same time it's not as demanding to learn as traditional fighting games. Each weapon feels different enough for you to settle on a couple of favourites without requiring a radical shift in playstyle to wield.

Griefhelm can be played solo or in groups of up to four, whether sparring online or locally. There's a campaign mode too (which you can also tackle with friends) where most players are likely to spend the bulk of their time. At least initially.

Diving into a campaign will present you with a branching tree of combat encounters, each bookended by loose snippets of story. Battles can vary from simple head-on clashes to the very Nidhogg-esque Tug of War in which defeated opponents are pushed back towards their half of the screen until vanquished for a final time. There's also a Horde mode in there too as well as the more challenging leader battles against Griefhelm's bosses.

What makes the campaign dynamic is its replay value. These battles are strung together randomly in terms of the game mode, who you're fighting, where, and the rewards up for grabs. Each playthrough will see you amass different weapon and armour loadouts as well as consumable perks which can help give you an advantage, though the campaign will be reset if you run out of lives. The perks are particularly interesting – fights can get repetitive so having these introduce modifiers to a fight can help spice things up.

Griefhelm isn't exactly pushing for hyper-realism with its visuals. The game's character models and backdrops have a simple yet distinct art style that seem almost deliberately understated in order for players to focus purely on the arc of each sword swing and hammer fall.

Crysis Remastered releases for PC, Xbox One, and PS4 in September

Crytek has confirmed that Crysis Remastered will be available for PS4, Xbox One, and PC via Epic Games Store from September 14th. It will be a digital release that will cost £26.99 / $29.99 / EUR 29.99.  Crytek released a new trailer for Crysis Remastered that shows a side by side comparison of the original release and the remastered version with ray tracing in the PC, PS4 Pro, and Xbox One X versions of the game.

Crysis Remastered will focus on the game's single player campaign, so don't expect to see Crysis multiplayer return, and will feature remastered graphics and engine optimisations. The remaster is being co-developed by World War Z studio Saber Interactive, who've been in the limelight for excellent porting work on The Witcher 3 for Nintendo Switch. Together, they'll be updating the original game with "high-quality textures and improved art assets, an HD texture pack, temporal anti-aliasing, SSDO, SVOGI, state-of-the-art depth fields, new light settings, motion blur, and parallax occlusion mapping".

Crysis Remastered was delayed for PC, Xbox One, and PS4 after the original trailer leaked, and it was not received well. After seeing the feedback Crytek took the decision to take more time with development, though the Switch version of Crysis Remastered was released in July. A couple of weeks ago the PS4 trophy list for Crysis Remastered appeared online.

Source: Press Release

Ghost of Tsushima 1.07 update improves stick tolerance, fixes bugs

If you plan on firing up Ghost of Tsushima this weekend, you will notice that there's a new update available.

Sucker Punch have rolled out a post-launch patch for the open world samurai sim with Ghost of Tsushima version 1.07 now live and ready to download.

Compared to previous updates for the PlayStation exclusive, 1.07 doesn't make too many changes or introduce new content. In fact, if you're ready the patch notes via the Ghost of Tsushima icon on your PS4 home menu, you get a template message about general bug fixes.

Sucker Punch have explained that some changes have been made to the game. Most notably, the developers have added an option to "increase stick tolerance" to combat drift and deadzone issues. They also confirmed that other bug fixes have been rolled into 1.07.

Patch 1.05 added a new "lethal" difficulty option to Ghost of Tsushima, while 1.06 reworked the Traveler's Attire, helping players to better locate collectables using this armour set – pretty handy if you're looking to get that platinum trophy.

Source: Twitter

Ghost of Tsushima Guides & more from TheSixthAxis

Animal Crossing: New Horizons version 1.4.2 just fixes some bugs

Not every game update needs to be full of new content, nor do they always need to revise huge tracts of game code to fix thousands of bugs. Animal Crossing: New Horizons version 1.4.2 has been released today, and it fixes just a handful of things that were known issues from the last few update.

So, without much further ado, here they are:

Animal Crossing: New Horizons 1.4.2 Patch Notes:

General updates

The following issues have been addressed:

From Ver. 1.4.1:

  • Fixed issue where the "sumo ring" would not display properly.

From Ver. 1.4.0:

  • Fixed issue where the game would shut down under certain conditions when dreaming.
  • Fixed issue where shining soil would improperly appear behind buildings and other places.
  • Fixed issue where specific message cards sent from animal residents the player is close friends with would not arrive in the player's mailbox as intended.

From Ver. 1.3.0:

  • Changed the MTU when playing with others from 1364 to 1240 in order to investigate an issue where players cannot play with others in certain network environments.

It's been a busy couple of months for Nintendo, who've fed in a number of major features into the game through the two waves of summer updates. The first update added swimming, diving and sea creature collecting in July, but that almost pales in comparison to the addition of island backups, dreaming to visit other people's islands, and firework shows of the second update.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has raced past 20 million game sales in just a few months, the game chasing after the current best-selling Switch game, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Will it catch and pass Mario Kart by Christmas? It seems pretty likely!

Source: NIntendo

Animal Crossing Guides from TheSixthAxis

Inertial Drift's seven modes revealed along with an animated trailer

PQube and Level 91 have released details about Inertial Drift's seven modes that players will be able to experience as they drift around the tracks. Those seven modes are Practice, Ghost Battle, Race, Time Attack, Duel, Endurance, and Style. The details of each mode can be found below the brand new trailer released for Inertial Drift, with the footage being the animated intro for the game. Have a watch of that now.

As promised here are the mode details:

  • Practice – Practice makes… you know the rest. This mode keeps things simple – just you, your car and the road. It's the perfect way to get used to the handling of a brand new car for the first time, without having to compete for track-space with rivals.

  • Ghost Battle – Like practise mode, this is another great place to hone your craft, only this time you'll be racing against the ghosts of other players. Unlike in a full 1v1 race, Ghost Battles allow you a valuable insight into the way your opponents approach a track. Keep an eye out for their glowing skid-trails to help you study their lines and knock valuable seconds off your lap times.

  • Time Attack – Those who have already checked out the Inertial Drift: Sunset Prologue will be more than familiar with this mode. The objective is simple – record the fastest lap. Achieving it will be another matter…

  • Race – Intense, head-to-head racing in some of the most exciting cars you'll ever get behind the wheel of. All cars are fitted with the Phase Shift Impact Prevention System, so all you and your opponent need to do is focus on your lines. But don't make the mistake of thinking there won't be any crashes – the 20 tracks will demand total concentration and no shortage of skill to navigate safely.

  • Duel – As well as a traditional race, you can also take on drivers in Duel mode. Score points by putting distance between yourself and an opponent – and the first driver to fill up their bar wins! The race lead can swing frequently from one driver to another in Inertial Drift, so every second you can stay ahead is vital.

  • Endurance – In this mode you'll race solo, attempting to reach each checkpoint before the timer runs out. Sure, the first lap might be easy enough – but how long will you be able to keep it up?

  • Style – Every drifter knows that it's not always about speed. This mode rewards those who are willing to take a risk in the pursuit of style. Race on the very limits of the track and earn points for nose skims, dirt drops and more. You can chain up moves for a greater reward, but be warned: you will be penalized for crashing.

Inertial Drift will be released for PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Switch on September 11th.

Source: Press Release