Sea of Thieves – Season One Starts January 28th
Jumping on-board the battle pass trend, Rare's Sea of Thieves will see its first season launching on January 28th. Along with a free track to earn in-game currency, cosmetics and emotes, players can also purchase the Plunder Pass for more rewards. Seasonal content is free for all players though and won't require spending any money.
Seasons will last for three months and add new gameplay mechanics and live events (though monthly updates will continue to be released). The premium Plunder Pass will cost 999 Ancient Coins, which can either be purchased with real money, earned from the free track or obtained from Ancient Skeletons in-game. There are 100 levels in total to grind through and Rare states that there's $40 worth of rewards to earn from the premium pass.
It's worth noting that there won't be any Plunder Pass-only items – everything included can be purchased from the Pirate Emporium. While this doesn't completely eliminate the Fear of Missing Out or FOMO – since players may get a better deal out of the Plunder Pass than purchasing the item separately – it is a good gesture. For more details on how seasons work, check out the video below.
Haven Launches February 4th for PS4, Switch and Epic Games Store
The Game Bakers' RPG Haven has a release date for Nintendo Switch, PS4 and the Epic Games Store. It's out on February 4th, following its release on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5 and PC via GOG, Steam and the Microsoft Store. Unlike the developer's previous title Furi, Haven is more of an adventure title focusing on a couple, Yu and Kay.
Having escaped to an unknown planet, the two must live and survive together, foraging supplies for the Nest and exploring the environment. While one can glide about levels, combat is coordination-based as Yu and Kay are controlled simultaneously. Of course, another player can jump in and take control as well.
Along the way, Yu and Kay will have extensive conversations with different choices, furthering their bond. For more details on the gameplay, check out our review here. Haven is also available on Xbox Game Pass for both PC and console players. It also supports Xbox Play Anywhere, meaning you can purchase one version and receive a digital version on PC/Xbox consoles for free.
We are thrilled to announce that Haven is coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Epic Games Store February 4th. Just in time for Valentine's Day
https://t.co/mN3sUcAgPE pic.twitter.com/0xw4qzw85L
— The Game Bakers (@TheGameBakers) January 26, 2021
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Update Will Add Festivale Event, New Reactions and More
A new update is out this week for Nintendo's Animal Crossing: New Horizons which adds new reactions, new seasonal items and preps for the upcoming Festivale Event. The event sees Dancer Pave arriving at the plaza with players having to capture feathers (with rarer rainbow versions also out there). Trading them to Pave will result in a "passionate dance number."
In terms of new reactions, players can purchase the Viva Festival Reaction Set for Bells, which includes "Feelin' It", "Let's Go", "Viva" and "Confetti." February 1st will see new clothing available at the Able Sisters as well. Both of the above are on offer for a limited time so be sure to snag them up quick.
As for new seasonal items, one can purchase chocolate hearts and bouquets with heart shapes to celebrate the upcoming Valentine's Day. These will be available from February 1st to 14th though items from Groundhog Day and Big Game Celebration will also be available at certain points. Check out the trailer below to see all of the new content in action.
Project 007 Could Be The Start Of A Trilogy
Developer IO interactive has just released their latest game, Hitman 3, a pretty fantastic top off to the new reboot trilogy in the franchise. The studio has been married to the Hitman series for over 20 years now, but will be moving on to something different, although familiar, with their recently announced Project 007 title. It also seems they have trilogies on the brain.
Speaking to DR.dk, Studio Director Hakan Abrak spoke about the upcoming game. He reiterated that it will be a fully original story, something that the currently website says, and also that as of now their Bond will not have the digital likeness of any of the actors who have portrayed the role. The major takeaway, however, is that this is not something they are looking at for a short term deal and, much like the saga they just wrapped up, are thinking about multiple games. According to Abrak, IO Interactive "could easily imagine that a trilogy could come out of it." Thanks to VG24/7 for translation and transcribing.
Project 007 does not have an official name nor any officially announced platforms, so clearly it is a good ways off, so whether or not they will get their trilogy remains to be seen. It's been a long time since there's been an official licensed James Bond game, with the last being 2012's 007 Legends that was based on the Daniel Craig rendition of Bond but eventually included material that spanned multiple films in the franchise's history. Fans have noted that there's a lot of similarity between Bond and the Hitman games, especially the later entries in the recently concluded reboot trilogy, so it seems a match made in heaven. Hopefully, that is the case, and we'll get to see something in the relative near future about how this thing is shaping up.
Xbox Series X/S Will be Getting More Backward Compatibility Enhancements This Year
Backward compatibility has been a crucial part of Microsoft's strategy in the console space for a few years now, and like many other things, they've carried that forward into the new generation of consoles as well. The Xbox Series X and Series S are not only capable of playing games from across the Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One libraries (though not without exception), certain games also receive enhancements on the new consoles, from booster frame rates and resolutions to even natively added HDR.
There were a number of games that received those enhancements on the Xbox Series X and Series S when the new Xbox duo launched a couple of months ago, but can we expect more games to receive the same treatment this year as well? Xbox's director of program management was asked that question on Twitter, to which he simply responded "yes."
Given the admirable way Microsoft have handled backward compatibility on Xbox so far, one would assume that there's some good stuff to look forward to this year. Hopefully we'll be hearing more about that soon.
Yes.
— Jason Ronald (@jronald) January 26, 2021
Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny Shows Extensive Gameplay Footage in New Trailer
Disgaea fans always expect the series to deliver engaging and mechanically deep tactical role playing gameplay, and though Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny is going to make some changes of its own (especially as far as visuals are concerned), it sure seems like the combat and gameplay are still going to have a lot of the familiar strengths of the series.
Nippon Ichi Software have been releasing new trailers for the upcoming RPG at a pretty regular clip of late, and its newest trailer is a beefy one. At over seven minutes long, its primary focus is on showing off the gameplay, with particular focus on combat and various different characters. The trailer itself is in Japanese, but there's a lot of footage to look at here, which series fans will surely be interested in. Take a look below.
Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny will launch for PS4 and Nintendo Switch in Japan on January 28, a couple of days from now. Meanwhile, it will also be releasing in the West as a Switch exclusive this Summer.
The Medium Developer Explains Game's Hefty PC Requirements
The Medium is set to launch later this week and is one of the more interesting projects in recent memory. The game is a horror title, but done in the style of the early 2000s with fixed camera angles and a distinct focus on environment and storytelling. It is also the first major title to be a next gen only game for the Xbox Series consoles, though it will be coming to PC as well. While The Medium is the biggest game from developer Bloober Team, some were still quite shocked by how hefty the PC requirements actually were (you can see the full, updated list through here). The requirements don't even list any for 60 FPS, and the highest goes as far as recommending a RTX 3080. Well, the developer has detailed why this is.
In an interview with VG24/7, Lead Designer Wojciech Piejko spoke briefly about those requirements. The Medium has a gameplay mechanic where you are playing two worlds at the same time, something that happens frequently throughout the narrative. That's the main culprit as he says that the amount of process power to do that as well as add ray-tracing and other effects, such as HDR, needs a lot of processing power.
"You know, we are rendering two worlds at the same time, and if people want to render two worlds with HDR plus ray tracing, it requires really powerful hardware," he explained. "We don't want to put the specs on the internet and say "yeah, it'll run smooth on your card", and for it not to be true. Our game flows between worlds, sometimes you are only in one world, sometimes in two at the same time. If you launch the game and at the beginning you only have one world, and then you will get to a two-world situation when the game renders two, you know frames will drop and of course it's not good. We have to put the specs for the most power-demanding situation and that's why the requirements are high."
You can see some of that dual world gameplay through here, as the first 18 minutes of the game has been revealed. The Medium will also release on Xbox Series X/S on January 28th.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Will Feature Around 300 Playable Characters
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was at one point going to come in 2020, but was ultimately pushed back to sometime in Spring of this year. The game is the latest entry in the humorous adaptation of the sci-fi series and will span all nine mainline Star Wars films. There's a lot of characters in that span, too, as evident by the amount of little Legos you can control.
As detailed by Official PlayStation Magazine (February 2021) and transcribed by GamesRadar, Lead Hub Designer of the game, Dawn McDiarmid, said that the game would have roughly 300 playable characters from across the nine stories with a total of around 800 unique characters in total. This is actually even more than was predicted before as last year it was said it'd be around 500. They specifically shout out Babu Frik from the latest film, Rise of Skywalker, as a character that will be playable to show how off the wall some of the playable picks will be.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga will release across all major platforms sometime in the Spring. We actually sat down with the game's Director back in 2019, which you can read in full through here.
GTA 4 Destroys Cyberpunk 2077 in World Immersion
In recent weeks, we've compared Cyberpunk 2077 to open world megatons like GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2, and CDPR's own The Witcher 3, and it hasn't been a very good look for the new open world game. What's surprising, however, is that it gets shown up in many ways even by a much older title. GTA 4, which is almost 13 years old at this point, is full of tiny little details and flourishes that are missing in Cyberpunk 2077, which contributes significantly to the immersion factor in any open world title. Here, we're going to take a look at fifteen such details.
ROBBING STORES
Given the fact that Cyberpunk 2077 is set in a dystopian feature where crime and corruption are rampant, you'd think that actually being able to do major crimes in the open world would be a thing. Sadly, that's not the case. For instance, there's no way for you to rob a store. While GTA 4 had proper store robberies where you could hold up store owners on gunpoint and take them for everything they had, in Cyberpunk 2077, there is no such system in place.
NPCs REACTING TO CARJACKINGS
NPCs reacting to your actions is probably one of the most disappointing aspects of Cyberpunk's open world. Even the way they react to something as basic as you robbing their vehicles is disappointing. Most of the times, all they do is crouch down on the road beside their vehicle immediately after carjackings (while some occasionally run away as well). In GTA 4, things are far less predictable, and from NPCs running away to trying to violently take their vehicle right back to even hanging on to car doors while you drive away, they can react in any number of ways.
FALLING FROM HEIGHTS
There's a lot of high points in Night City to fling yourself off to the ground from, but the results are always disappointingly tame. V's reaction to falling from heights is almost non-existent, the falling animations may as well not even exist, and the impacts lack that oomph. In GTA 4, Niko will scream his lungs out and desperately wave his limbs in the air as he's falling through the air, and crash into the ground with crunching impact.
BUMPING INTO NPCs
Here's another example of how reactive NPCs are to even the simplest of things you do in GTA 4, and how that is definitely not the case in Cyberpunk 2077. Walk and run into them in the latter, and they will have no reaction to you whatsoever- they'll just stand there and blankly stare at you with dead eyes. In GTA 4, thanks to the game's physics engine, they'll stumble, fall over, roll down stairs, or even have some choice words to say about Niko.
SIDE ACTIVITIES AND MINIGAMES
GTA 4, like any other GTA game, is full of side activities and minigames to partake in, from throwing darts to, of course, going bowling. None of that is present in Cyberpunk 2077, though you might spot things like pool tables and what have you in certain locations, there's no way to actually interact with them.
SETTING YOURSELF ON FIRE
It's honestly surprising that in an open world game releasing in 2020, the main character doesn't even react properly to being set on fire. V doesn't take any damage from standing in flames, and has no reaction to the same whatsoever. By comparison, if Niko does the same, he'll start screaming and fall over to the ground while taking damage.
BUYING FOOD FROM VENDORS
The way Cyberpunk 2077 handles vendors is yet another one area where its open world disappoints. In GTA 4, you could head to bars, restaurants, and hot dog vendors to purchase food and drinks, and you'd see Niko physically consuming those items in the open world. In Cyberpunk 2077, you can, of course, interact with vendors, but all that does is take you to a menu where you can add consumables to your inventory.
FIRE HYDRANTS
This is a very small and specific thing, but it's a perfect example of how ahead of its time GTA 4's physics engine was, and how disappointing Cyberpunk's is. To be more specific, we're talking about how the main character reacts to the force of the streams of water shooting out of destroyed fire hydrants. In Cyberpunk 2077, the jets of water that shoot out of the ground are gone in a couple of seconds at most, and don't have any physical effect on… well, anything. Those same jets of water in GTA 4 stick around for much longer, have a physical impact on Niko, and can even partially lift cars off the ground.
DAMAGING VEHICLES WITH MELEE WEAPONS
This is one of the most basic ways a game can react to what you're going. Take your fists or a baseball bat and any other melee weapon you can get your hands on, and you'll see that attacking vehicles with it in GTA 4 will yield appropriate levels, with cars getting bashed up, dented, scratched, and what have you. In Cyberpunk 2077, it's like you're swinging at nothing, and vehicles barely even get a single scratch.
ANTAGONIZING DRIVERS
And what exactly do the drivers do when you're banging up their cars? Well, in GTA 4, they do what you'd expect them to do. They get out of their vehicles and engage Niko in fistfights to try and stop him. In Cyberpunk, they just stay inside their cars, and might occasionally raise their hands in fear.
DRIVING YOUR CAR INTO WATER
If you're playing an open world game with cars, chances are, you'll eventually wind up driving your vehicle into a body of water. If you do that in GTA 4, your car will float around in the water for a bit before it slowly starts sinking to the bottom. Meanwhile, in Cyberpunk 2077, where water isn't so much of an actual physical force as it is set dressing, your car will simply plop right in and drop right to the bottom with zero resistance.
MOTORCYCLE CRASHES
Getting into massive, bone-crunching accidents and car crashes in GTA 4 was never not fun, owing to the hilarious things that would ensue thanks to the game's excellent physics engine. Getting into crashes while driving bikes was particularly fun, because of the wildly different ways Niko would go flying through the air or crash into the ground upon impact. Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't have that kind of a physics engine going for it- or any physics engine, for that matter. Every single crash, regardless of speed or momentum, triggers the exact same animation, and it gets old very quickly.
DRIVING BIKES ON STAIRS
Here's another tiny little impressive detail in GTA 4 that's missing in Cyberpunk 2077. Try driving a bike up a set of stairs in GTA 4, and you'll see its wheels and suspension reacting appropriately to the bumpy surface. Meanwhile, in Cyberpunk, bikes drive up and down stairs like they're flat surfaces, and if you look closely, you can even see the edges of their tires clipping through the steps.
NPCs REACTING TO RAIN
The relative lack of dynamic weather systems in Night City is another one of Cyberpunk 2077's open world's disappointing elements. In fact, even the weather systems that are in the game are mostly just there for aesthetic reasons. For instance, when it rains, NPCs won't have any reactions to that whatsoever, and will simply keep going about their listless walks around the city as they normally would. In GTA 4, when it starts raining, NPCs will bring out their umbrellas, running across sidewalks to get to their destinations quickly, and even using things they have in their hands (like newspapers or briefcases) to cover their heads.
DRIVERS REACTING TO CAR CRASHES
Finally, let's end with yet another example of the disappointing reactions NPCs have to the things you do in Cyberpunk 2077. Crash into their vehicles while driving your own, and they'll do… nothing at all. They'll just keep sitting behind the wheel and wait for you to drive out of their way (since they don't know how to drive around you either). Hell, sometimes, they don't even spawn until after you've crashed into them. In GTA 4, NPCs will hurl curses at you if you crash into their cars, get out of their vehicles to inspect the damage, or might even die if you hit their cars hard enough.
The Last Of Us Part 2 Has Now Garnered The Most GOTY Awards Of All Time
Last year was quite a big one for gaming as it saw the release of several huge titles that many had been waiting on such as Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Cyberpunk 2077 and then some franchises that managed to be taken to an entirely different level such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons. One of those games was, of course, The Last of Us Part 2. The sequel to Naughty Dog's acclaimed action title hit hard when it released and was a massive undertaking. It was also rewarded with lots of acclaim.
As detailed by gameawards.net, a website dedicated to tracking GOTY awards, The Last of Us Part 2 has now garnered 261 Game of the Year awards. That's 169 media outlets and 92 readers' choice awards. It surpassed 2015's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for the honor. That game had 260 awards, and actually still has more media outlet awards at 172, but was edged out on the reader side where it only has 88. The 2020 count has also not been locked in just yet, so it's possible that The Last of Us Part 2 will get some late awards to even that part out, but overall, it's still on top.
The Last of Us Part 2 is available now on PlayStation 4. While Sony has not released official sale numbers for the game, we know that it sold 2.8 digital copies by June 2020 alone, so the game was also most likely a smash financial success. You can read our whole take on the game through here.