Take-Two Plans to Launch a "New Gearbox Franchise" By April 2022
Take-Two announced plans to develop a new franchise from Borderlands' Gearbox Software in the company's earnings call today, according to VGChronicle. According to CEO Strauss Zelnick, the company plans to release 21 games during its current fiscal year, which ends on March 31st, 2022, including four "immersive core" games – two from "proven" franchises and two from "new" ones. Gearbox's game, whatever it is, would presumably be considered an "immersive core" title.
Take-Two president Karl Slatoff defined the category as games with highly engaging gameplay, citing Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and Borderlands, as well as the publisher's strategy and sports games, as examples. In the presentation, Take-Two revealed that Borderlands 3 was "2K's fastest selling title." The game has shipped more than 13 million copies since its release in 2019.
Gearbox merged with Embracer Group earlier this year, but 2K said that the merger would not change its relationship with Gearbox. "The merger does not change 2K's relationship with Gearbox nor our role as the publisher for the Borderlands IP or any other projects we are currently working on with the studio," 2K said at the time. "We look forward to continuing our long-term partnership with this incredibly talented team and delivering many more exciting entertainment experiences to gaming fans around the world."
Take-Two also announced that 2K's first game in its new "non-simulation" NFL series would be delayed during the earnings call.
2K Delays the First Game in Its New, "Non-simulation" NFL Series
Back in March, 2K and the NFL came to a deal that would allow the former to develop "non-simulation" games using the NFL license. The deal would span multiple games, with the first scheduled to release during 2K's 2022 fiscal year, which ends on March 31st, 2022.
That game, whatever it is, has been delayed. "While we are very excited to once again be working with the NFL and the NFLPA, our first title under new these partnerships is no longer expected to be released during fiscal year 2022," Take-Two president Karl Slatoff said Take-Two's earnings call on Tuesday, according to reporting by VGChronicle. "2K will have more to share their plans for their football plans going forward."
The game will be the first football title 2K has released since NFL 2K4, the last entry in the popular NFL 2K series. While EA still retains the exclusive rights to develop simulation-based football games based on the NFL license, it's nice to see 2K back in the game. We'll just have to wait a little longer to see what they're working on.
New Warzone Trailer Shows Off Rambo and John McClane
80s action heroes John Rambo and John McClane are coming to Call of Duty: Warzone, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and Call of Duty Mobile. Players will be able to purchase the characters in Call of Duty: Warzone and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War from May 19 at 9pm PT until June 18 at 9pm PT. The event comes to Call of Duty: Mobile on May 20 at 5 PM PT.
The Rambo and Die Hard bundles will include the operators and a combination of finishing moves, as well as legendary weapon blueprints, calling cards, emblems and more. In addition to the characters themselves and the content in their bundles, Activision has also detailed several other new pieces of content coming to Warzone and Call of Duty at large.
Die Hard's Nakatomi Plaza, Survival Camps and a CIA Outpost will all appear as points on interest in Warzone. The game is also getting a new Killstreak in Rambo's combat bow, which comes with explosive-tipped arrows, as well as the ballistic knife from past Black Ops titles. Warzone will also be getting a limited-time 100-player mode called Power Grab, while Black Ops Cold War will receive two new maps in Standoff and Duga.
You can watch a trailer for Season 3 below:
Space Shooter Green Phoenix Will No Longer Release on Switch Next Week Due to Technical Issues
Publisher Zerouno Games and developer Broken Simulation have announced that Green Phoenix, an on-rails space shooter that was initially planned to launch next week on Nintendo eShop, has been delayed "due to technical issues." The game was initially set to release on May 27th, but will now release on August 26th.
"Due to technical issues, the game does not represent the quality Zerouno Games believes it should reflect and, therefore, we are postponing the release of Green Phoenix for a calculated period of time in order to make this narrative experience as good as possible," Zerouno Games said.
According to the publisher, "Green Phoenix is an on-rails 3D space shooter mixed with a deep narrative experience that focuses on the concept of ego and the meaning of freedom." The game drops players into the role of spaceship AI Green Phoenix, "as it remembers its dead pilot, Dana, and embarks on a journey of revenge."
You can watch a trailer for the game below:
Harmonix Rhythm Game Fuser Gets Price Drop Across All Platforms
If you've been waiting for a price drop before jumping into Harmonix's Fuser, well, you're in luck. The game has had its price dropped permanently, at least in North America. The game's standard edition will now retail for $39.99, while the VIP edition will be available for $79.99. The price drop affects every version of the game.
It's not a bad price considering Fuser is regularly updated with DLC. Most recently, the "Flavor of Love" DLC introduced tracks from Billie Eilish, J. Cole, The Cure, and several others. Some Lover's "Days Head, Days Behind" was also added for free for all Fuser players.
The most recent major free release was the Faint Shadow Loop Pack 01, a free release that will be the first in a series of Promoter Packs. This first loop pack gives players access to a collection of mellow, meditative loops and sounds from Faint Shadow's personal collection, so folks who are looking for something a little more low key to mix into their tracks should find it helpful. In total, 92 songs have been added to Fuser as DLC.
Fuser is out now on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC.
Twitch is Finally Introducing Local Subscription Pricing
The price of a tier one subscription on Twitch has long been $4.99 no matter where you've lived. Twitch has roughly translated that cost to other currencies, but it's generally meant that folks in other countries have paid a lot more for a month's subscription, or that the price is abnormally high given the cost of living in that area.
Twitch is finally addressing the issue with local subscription pricing to try and level things out. "First up will be Mexico and Turkey on May 20, 2021, which are home to creators and viewers who have been passionate about this change for quite some time." In the new system, a tier one sub will be priced at 48 pesos (around $2.42) and 9.90 Turkish lira (around $1.19). Countries in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe will follow later this year.
The reason for the change is a huge discrepancy between subscribers in the US and everywhere else. Twitch believes the price of subscriptions are to blame. "The percentage of active users in Europe or Asia who support creators with a subscription is roughly 50% lower relative to North America. In Latin America, it's nearly 80% lower."
While it's good for subscribers, Twitch anticipates pushback from streamers who might see the change impact their bottom line. "Twitch will cover 100% of baseline channel and Prime sub revenue (if needed) for three calendar months, including the month of the price change. After that, we will slowly decrease incentive payments by 25% every three months over the following nine months, totaling a 12-month period of providing revenue adjustment incentives." It's not a perfect system by any means, but it good to see Twitch fixing an ongoing issue.
Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster Review – Dark Pokemon
Nocturne begins with the end of the world. Your character and some friends are summoned to a creepy hospital by a teacher, things get extremely weird and then go very sideways, the world ends in an event known as the Conception, and you're reborn as a demon. All in a day's work for a JRPG protagonist, sure, but the speed at which Nocturne accomplishes all of it is breathtaking, and the reason I feel comfortable talking about it. It's not a spoiler; it all happens within the first couple hours. Besides, Nocturne is nearly 20 years old. Spoiler territory this ain't.
Once demon-ified, your silent protagonist high schooler – who is known as the Demi-fiend – is tasked with remaking the world. Again, a pretty normal day for a JRPG protagonist, especially one in an Atlus RPG. Once the stakes are established and you've run into the other major players, several of whom have the same motivation as you and very different ideas about what a new world should be, you're kind of turned loose to do your own thing.
"Most of the time, Nocturne feels like a very dark Pokemon game. You travel the world, collect monsters, and use them to fight."
Shin Megami Tensei may be what spawned the Persona series, but Persona it is not. Instead of a grand adventure built around a party where the overarching plot is paramount, Shin Megami Tensei is more about individual scenes. Between them, the player is more or less free to do whatever they want.
Mostly, what they'll do is run around and get into combat, acquiring new demons to fit into their party as they do so. Unlike the Persona titles, there are no permanent party members in Nocturne who are not the Demi-fiend (with one notable exception), so recruiting demons to fight alongside you is crucial. Most can be recruited by talking to them in combat and handing over money and items, and then answering a couple questions correctly. Most of the time, Nocturne feels like a very dark Pokemon game. You travel the world, collect monsters, and use them to fight.
It's good that the combat is the star of the show, then. Nocturne's combat is turn-based, with each side assigned a number of Turns that generally corresponds to the turn of units on each side. Each action typically takes a single Turn. After exhausting every Turn, control switches to the other side. Hitting a monster with an attack they are weak against, landing a critical hit, or passing your Turn to another party member, however, only uses half a Turn, allowing you to chain together several more moves than normal if you play your cards right. Land enough of the right hits and you can prevent enemies from having a turn at all, but there is a catch. Using an ability an enemy can absorb or missing an attack will take two Turns from you, so the margin of error is pretty low.
"The remaster does help, adding a much-needed suspend feature that allows you to save and quit even if you're not at save point, as well as a Merciful mode that tones down the game's difficulty."
Naturally, learning weaknesses and exploiting status effects are important, so having a good group of demons with diverse skill sets at your command is paramount. Like Pokemon, some demons evolve, but most are more useful when they're fused together to make a stronger demon. Fused demons can even carry over some of their old skills. The Demi-fiend is no slouch, either, consuming items called Magatama to determine what skills to learn and boost specific stats. Magatama can be changed out at any time, allowing the player a great deal of freedom to build their Demi-fiend's skills and stats as they play.
It's all pretty complicated, though the game's easy enough at the outset. It's not until the player runs into the Matador, the game's first true boss fight, that they'll likely understand how little they understand the game's systems. Nocturne can be an unforgiving game, but it's rarely an unfair one. It does, however, expect you to learn how to play it, and will treat you accordingly if you don't.
The remaster does help, adding a much-needed suspend feature that allows you to save and quit even if you're not at save point, as well as a Merciful mode that tones down the game's difficulty. The rest of the remaster's additions are more standard fare: models and textures look better, and there are both English and Japanese voice over options, subtitles in German, Italian, and Spanish.
"The remaster is extremely faithful to the original PS2 release, for better or worse. While that means preserving the original's brilliant art, deep combat, and wonderful soundtrack, it also means that this feels very much like a PS2 game. "
The remaster is extremely faithful to the original PS2 release, for better or worse. While that means preserving the original's brilliant art, deep combat, and wonderful soundtrack, it also means that this feels very much like a PS2 game. The world often feels empty, even for a post-apocalyptic setting, and I can't count how many times I entered a small room to find a single NPC with one line of dialogue and nothing else. Doubtless much of this stems from its origins as a PS2 title, but it can be jarring for someone new to the game.
Still, the game holds up remarkably well if you can get over its difficulty and lack of plot. If I have one criticism of Nocturne, it's this: the game does a very poor job of teaching you how to play it. It's easy to breeze through everything before the Matador fight without using any of the game's interesting systems. While Nocturne does mention things like fusion and how the combat system works, it generally doesn't show you how to or require you how to use them until you get to the Matador fight, at which point the difficulty curve skyrockets. Matador is really where the game starts, but it's easy to imagine players getting bored before then or quitting when they get there because they don't understand what to do. I'll be honest: had I not had to play the game for review, I probably would have stopped a few hours in because of how dull the opening hours are. All of that changes once you get past Matador, but you have to get there first, and that will take most players several hours. And then you have to fight him. For most players, that will likely be extremely hard, and many will probably quit there, even with the option to lower the difficulty.
So the question remains: is the HD Remaster worth it? It's undoubtedly the best version of Nocturne, and the new additions are welcome touches. If you can get past the game's obvious PS2-era origins, barebones plot, rather boring tutorial, and extreme difficulty curve, you'll likely have a good time. The combat, art, music, and setting are that good. If not, Nocturne will remain little more than a curiosity, the most famous part of the series that spawned Persona, a remnant of a past world, much like the Demi-fiend himself.
This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.
Genshin Impact – Eula's Abilities and Elemental Burst Revealed in New Video
Eula is now available in Genshin Impact and can be pulled from her own dedicated character banner. To celebrate her release and provide more information on her abilities, miHoYo Games has a "Collected Miscellany" trailer available. Check it out below.
Dishing out a five hit combo and utilizing Cryo attacks, Eula's Elemental Skill is Icetide Vortex. Upon hitting an enemy, she gains a stack of Grimheart which increases her interrupt resistance and defense. Holding down the skill's button will consume all Grimheart stacks, decreasing the physical and Cryo resistance of opponents while dishing out damage in the form of Icewhirl Brands.
Eula's Elemental Burst is "Glacial Illumination" which sees her attacking foes with Cryo damage and creating a Lightfall Sword. Dealing damage will charge the latter which explodes after seven seconds. It also has the benefit of further increasing interrupt resistance. Overall, Eula's kit is well suited to dealing burst damage and should make her another top-tier character for end-game. For more details on her backstory, head here.
Solasta: Crown of the Magister, The Wild at Heart and More Coming to Xbox Game Pass in May
Microsoft has revealed the next wave of titles coming to Xbox Game Pass for May with SnowRunner being out today for consoles, PC and the cloud. May 20th sees Peggle 2, EA's colorful puzzle game, and Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville available for the cloud. Both titles require EA Play (available with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate) to play.
Secret Neighbor is out on the same but there's also The Wild at Heart, an action adventure which sees two kids venturing into the Deep Woods, gathering Spritelings, and taking on twisted foes. The latter will be available for console and PC subscribers. On May 21st, EA's Knockout City will be available on Xbox Game Pass for PC and EA Play.
May 25th sees the release of Maneater for console, cloud and PC subscribers while Conan Exiles arrives for consoles and the cloud on May 27th. Fuzion Frenzy, Joy Ride Turbo and MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries are all out for consoles on the same day. Meanwhile, PC subscribers get Slime Rancher and Solasta: Crown of the Magister, the latter being an RPG in the vein of old-school, tabletop titles. SpellForce 3: Soul Harvest rounds out the selection of titles for May.
The following titles will also be leaving Xbox Game Pass on May 31st:
- Assetto Corsa (Cloud and Console)
- Broforce (PC)
- Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5+2.5 Remix (Console)
- Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue (Console)
- Surviving Mars (Cloud, Console, and PC)
- Void Bastards (Cloud, Console, and PC)
Biomutant Trailer Explains Character Customization, Tribes and Much More
THQ Nordic and Experiment 101 have a new "Explanation" trailer available for Biomutant before its release, which sees creative director Stefan Ljungqvist discussing various aspects of the game. Along with providing an overview of the world, Ljungqvist also outlines the various RPG elements, different Biomutations and Psymutations, and much more. Check it out below.
From the outset, the player customizes their character based on different attributes – these also tie into one's appearance. After that, you choose one of six tribes to ally with though that alliance can be changed at any time. Three of the six tribes seek to save the Tree of Life, which has been corrupted, while the other three believe in leaving it be and starting afresh.
Clothing and weapon customization is briefly showcased with Ljungqvist confirming that there would be no weapon breakage like in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. A new Biomutation is also showcased which provides the ability to spawn a mushroom for jumping on, bouncing foes to combo in the air, and so on. Psymutations include lighting, levitation and fireballs among other unique abilities.
Biomutant launches on May 25th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. It will take roughly 12 to 15 hours to complete when rushing through but can offer more than 65 hours of gameplay.