The Mortal Kombat movie trailer has landed and it looks rather good

The first trailer for the rebooted Mortal Kombat film has been released and it looks pretty good with plenty of gore, special moves, and a surprising large cast of characters. We already knew Kano, Sonia, Raiden and others were in film but the trailer shows Goro, Reptile, Smoke and others.

The fight scenes look really well choreographed and as this is an R rated movie it is very bloody with spikes in heads, hearts being ripped and, glimpsed very briefly at the end the trailer, some extremely messy fatalities. However, the dialogue seems a little a cheesy but I guess it's hard to make a tournament where you fight mutants with four arms to save the world sound serious, it's not exactly a sensible idea. A movie where we send chief Brexit negotiator David Frost to set terms with Shan Tsung and Outworld might not do all that well at the box office.

The story follows a new character, MMA fighter Cole Young, who is completely oblivious to the world of Mortal Kombat but soon learns of his heritage when Sub Zero hunts him down. He teams up with Jax and Sonya and soon finds himself in the punchy kicky world of the game, meeting Raiden, Kano, Liu Kang and other familiar characters. Greg Russo recently tweeted about the movie and said "All I can say is the bar for opening scenes has been set…"

The cast includes Cole Young (Lewis Tan), Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), Sub-Zero (Joe Taslim), Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), Jax (Mehcad Brooks), Kano (Josh Lawson), Shang Tsung (Chin Han), Scorpion (Hiroyuki Sanada), Kung Lao (Max Huang), Mileena (Sisi Stringer), Nitara (Elissa Cadwell), and Kabal (Daniel Nelson).

The new Mortal Kombat movie is out this April 15th, in cinemas if they are open in your part of the world and also a day one release on HBO Max in the United States.

Source: YouTube

Rustler is a medieval GTA that evokes the series' top-down roots

While the ubiquity of open world adventures that owe a debt to GTA III continue to dominate the big budget AAA games market, smaller indie developers have begun to turn their eyes back towards the series' origins. Two of the stand-out examples of this approach are Glitchpunk and Rustler – each taking Rockstar's template in opposite temporal directions. Glitchpunk offers up a cyberpunk world with androids and technology whilst Rustler strips everything right back to medieval basics. Introducing itself as Grand Theft Horse, Rustler is exactly what it sets out to be. Whether that is enough to keep your attention may depend on your tolerance for recycled jokes and dated mission structures.

Despite the retro sensibilities and approach, Rustler doesn't go for the expected pixellated aesthetic; instead opting for an almost cel-shaded look that is pretty easy on the eyes. Everything is clear and easy to distinguish, even when you end up surrounded by enemies. The exception to this, though, is the lack of any transparency when you go behind buildings. This led to a number of frustrating moments when I found myself stuck behind obstacles or caught by guards without being able to see what was happening.

In terms of structure and gameplay, this is pure old-school GTA. Whilst working your way through the main quest narrative, you'll have the opportunity to carry out side missions for different characters, with occasional roadblocks requiring you to have earned enough money to continue. The beta build contains a complete narrative arc but more sidequests and missions are promised before the full release. On the whole these missions offered a nice mix of fetch quests, escort missions and combat but inevitably the dated mechanics began to feel a little repetitive during the 6 hours or so I played. There was also a lack of clarity in several missions where it took me a few tries to work out what the game wanted me to do.

Rustler's indebtedness to GTA is apparent from even a cursory glance, but perhaps more egregious is the wholesale lifting of humour and gags from Monty Python. The game opens up with a disclaimer that it cites popular culture in the name of parody and fair use but these references go way beyond Easter eggs. The infamous Spanish Inquisition make an appearance as a faction who give you quests, as do the Knights of the Holy Grail, and you also get a full retread of the Black Knight scene. This makes the game feel like it's lacking a character of its own, an impression exacerbated by protagonist Guy being the spitting image of the lead character from Rockstar's Bully.

Having said all of that, and having listed the issues I had with Rustler's beta build in terms of mission structure and self-indulgent lifting from its influences, the actual experience of playing is solid fun. Controls are tight, the map is large without being too unwieldy, and the combat system has the potential to offer decent depth. In this build I found the lengthy halberd was over powered and enabled me to survive even the highest warning level for quite some time.

While I wasn't blown away by Rustler during this initial hands-on, I enjoyed my time with it and will definitely keep an eye on the extra content to be added during Early Access. If it can move past its inspirations and develop more of a sense of its own identity then this is one old-school adventure that could have plenty to offer in the near future.

Azur Lane: Crosswave brings naval anime warfare to the Switch

The inevitable goal for any successful mobile game over the last few years is multi-media expansion, turning a simple game about collecting knights and gun-girls into television shows, arcade games, console adaptations, ramen flavors, and more. Azur Lane has been hitting all of these milestones, with the seriously popular free-to-play phone game about scantily clad anime-girl versions of your favourite naval warfare vessels now having all sorts of adaptations, promotional campaigns, and crossovers.

Last year, the series made the leap from mobile phones and browser windows to home consoles thanks to Compile Heart and Idea Factory launching Azur Lane: Crosswave. Initially, the game only dropped anchor on PC and PlayStation 4, but now ship-heads around the world can dive in for the first time or take a second dip with the new Nintendo Switch port.

Azur Lane: Crosswave marries an original story full of fan-pleasing interactions and appearances with a gameplay loop that plays out much like a 3D alternative to the combat and upgrade grind of the original mobile game. The story does a decent job of involving you in the experience even if you have very little knowledge of the overall lore – simply come into it with the fact that these over-designed gun-toting girls are meant to be personifications of actual warships and fighter planes and you'll be good to go.

There are a variety of different factions and groups in Azur Lane, but Azur Lane: Crosswave focuses heavily on the Sakura Empire, alongside newcomer ships Shimakaze and Sugura. While the laser-focused attention on the Sakura Empire helps make the story approachable for newcomers, longtime Azur Lane fans hoping for the spotlight to shine on other notable factions won't have as much to chew into here. Story scenes all play out through visual novel interactions, and moments between battles or narrative events will have you navigating a top-down hand-drawn map of each environment to get to your next conversation or battle. These are hardly resource-intensive scenes, so they all play out on the Nintendo Switch just as smoothly as they would on the other versions of the game.

When you end up in actual combat, you'll be bringing three controllable ship-girls, as well as up to three additional support units, into a watery arena to face off against hordes of generic battleships and fighter planes. In some instances, you'll also fight rival ship-girls in more hectic one-on-one battles. All of these engagements take place in a wide open ocean environment with invisible walls keeping you within a specific smaller section, so there isn't really anything too graphically intense going on here either. The resolution of the Nintendo Switch version seems a bit lower than the PC or PlayStation 4 counterparts, and the framerate can get a little funky when there are massive amounts of projectiles on-screen at once, but on the whole combat feels fast and fluid.

Unfortunately, as I explained in my review of the original release of Azur Lane: Crosswave, the gameplay isn't all too exciting. With a small variety of enemies to fight, regular battles quickly become a repetitive chore. It's a little more exciting when you get into battles with rival ship-girls, but the floaty nature of aiming and firing in this game means that these aren't the graceful one-on-one bouts I'd hope for from a typical action game. Additionally, as you progress through the game, your skill doesn't end up being nearly as important as how much experience and how many upgraded pieces of equipment your girls have, which can end up leading to some more mind-numbing grinding to get them properly equipped.

The full Azur Lane: Crosswave package looks and runs just about as well as it would on other systems, with minor exceptions. Still, no matter what system you play it on, you'll likely only truly connect with it if you're a diehard fan of the series who's able to forgive some big flaws. For newcomers, while the story offers plenty of exciting characters and fun dialogue, the combat might be too much of a chore to sit through for the long-run. Azur Lane: Crosswave can be a treat for fans, but even on Nintendo Switch, it's a hard sell for first-time ship-girl enthusiasts.

Fall Guys is coming to Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One this summer [Updated]

Update: Mediatonic has now, by way of the Fall Guys Twitter account, confirmed that Fall Guys will also be coming to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One this summer, as well as Nintendo Switch.

The original article follows.

The hit multiplayer game of last summer, Fall Guys is coming to Nintendo Switch! It's going to be a little while away from now though, with the Nintendo Direct stating that the game will only arrive on Switch this summer. In other words, the end of a timed exclusivity period is coming to an end.

The announcement follows on from comments stating that Fall Guys will be coming to every major platform at some point in the future. CEO and co-founder Dave Bailey told GI.Biz "We want it to come to every major platform, and we're working hard to achieve that." He also hints that cross-platform play will be enabled, "We want to come to all the different platforms, and hopefully connect those platforms so people can play together."

Nintendo Direct catch up – Skyward Sword HD, Splatoon 3 and all the other announcements

It's not long since the official Xbox Instagram account stated that smash hit multiplayer scramble Fall Guys was coming to Xbox Game Pass as well but Devolver Digital have quickly refuted this claim. A mobile version of Fall Guys is also in development for the Chinese market and Mediatonic will be closely monitoring how that performs.

The success of the game has meant Mediatonic have been expanding quickly, bringing on new staff to work on the game to satiate the hungry players who demand regular content, "It's unbelievable how insatiable people's appetite for content is," comments Bailey.

There's clearly more afoot than just the regular season and mid-season drops, and Nintendo Switch is likely just the first announcement of several to come through the first half of this year. For now though, the game remains off in the distance and developer Mediatonic are likely still focussing on producing more levels, game modes, gameplay quirks and cosmetics for the upcoming Season 4 update. We don't know when that will kick off exactly, but they recently released a Fall Guys mid-season 3.5 update to keep things fresh for players.

EA has completed their Codemasters acquisition

Electronic Arts have completed their acquisition of UK racing game specialist Codemasters, folding the Formula 1, DIRT, WRC, GRID and Project CARS racing game series into EA's portfolio alongside the likes of Need for Speed, Real Racing and (if we're lucky) Burnout. The deal saw EA pay $1.2 billion to buy Codemasters, outbidding Take Two in the process.

Speaking of the deal, Andrew Wilson, CEO of Electronic Arts said, "This is the beginning of an exciting new era for racing games and content as we bring together the talented teams at Electronic Arts and Codemasters. […] Our teams will be a global powerhouse in racing entertainment, with amazing games for players on every platform, and we can't wait to get started."

Codemasters CEO Frank Sagnier called it "a landmark in Codemasters' history, and an exciting day for our employees and players."

I'm not entirely sure Frank's got his finger on the pulse with that one. Sure, he is expected to scoop up £20.5 million personally and other execs will share around £10 million in pay outs, EA are now in charge of the company's future. They previously stated that they will conduct a year-long review of the company to see how they and Codemasters "can work most effectively and efficiently together." They say this won't lead to a "material" number of redundancies, but make no guarantees. Given the number of studios and overlapping racing game brands that Codemasters own, there's a real fear that some parts of the company will suffer.

And there's also concerns for fans of Codemasters' racing games that they will have to shift focus to meet EA's particular goals and ambitions with regard to monetisation. With the F1 and upcoming WRC license, we could see some kind of Ultimate Team mode adapted for these real world motorsports and the addition of microtransactions in a more pervasive fashion. Gamers will certainly view such changes with trepidation, though the real impact is unlikely to be felt for a few years.

This is just one of a few big money moves that EA are making as they look to broaden their portfolio and reach. EA also announced the acquisition of Glu Mobile, the developer behind such mobile game hits as Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, for $2.4 billion – two Codemasters, in other words.

Source: press release

Worms Rumble update – New map, Double XP, free play weekend, PS5 trophy fixes and more

Team17 have dropped a hot new update for Worms Rumble across PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 and PC, adding the new Battlegrounds Bank map and kicking off the game's first community event in the process. PlayStation fans will also be overjoyed to learn the update fixes some trophy glitches as well.

The free new map caters to Last Worm Standing, Last Squad Standing and Deathmatch modes in the real time shooter, the Battlegrounds Bank map featuring multiple areas that include a cash-filled bank and a money vault. Time to make a withdrawal, eh?

To celebrate the update there's a Double XP and Currency event in the game running from 6PM GMT today, 18th February until 6PM GMT Monday, 22nd Febraury. Coincidentally, those are the exact same times that the game is having a free play weekend on Steam, letting people play the entire game for the next few days.

Following the free weekend, Team17 will be kicking off the game's first community event: Bazooka Bowl. As you can probably guess, it will be pretty Bazooka heavy, but how do bowls come into the equation? We'll find out on 25th February when the event starts.

Those who like to dress up fancy can snag some new Premium DLC cosmetic packs. 'Cats & Dogs' and 'Honor & Death'  are available at £3.99 / $4.99 each.

But that's not all this update does, because it also fixes one of the biggest problems with the game: broken trophies! The update fixes the following bugged trophies on PS5:

  • On a Roll (by rolling again in-game, if criteria is met, it will unlock)
  • Challenger (If another challenge is complete, it will unlock)
  • Last Worm Standing (If player wins another LWS match, it will unlock)
  • Better Than Most (finishing in the top 50% of players, it will unlock)

There are still two trophies that aren't working – Geared Up (Purchase all customisations) and Tooled Up (Reach level 10 with all weapons) – but Team17 aim to have those fixed in the next few weeks.

Here's the full patch notes for the update:

  • Fixed an issue where the player could crash when using the grapple gun on an escalator.
  • Fixed an issue where the player could crash on respawning in the Lab.
  • Fixed an issue where the player was unable to move when the game starts.
  • Fixed an issue where the reload animation did not play correctly for each weapons reload time
  • Fixes for unlocking the following trophies: On a Roll, Challenger, Last Worm Standing, Better than Most.
  • Fixed an issue where some error messages were automatically dismissed.
  • Fixed an issue where the player lost focus of the main menu when dismissing an error message.
  • Fixed an issue where the player's worm was displayed incorrectly after taking explosive damage.
  • Fixed an issue where an error message was displayed on accepting an invite to a party with Crossplay disabled.
  • Fixed an issue that caused the player to lose their progression data.
  • Fixed an issue where friendly fire damage was incorrectly counting towards Challenge progression.

The game launched at the end of 2020 as a PlayStation and PC exclusive – in fact, it was a freebie for PlayStation Plus subscribers. In our review of Worms Rumble, Gareth scored the manic multiplayer title a solid 7 out of 10. Here's what he had to say:

Although purists may balk at Worms Rumble, I found Team17's reinvention to be a welcome change in direction for the series. Real-time action wrapped around the battle royale genre works a treat here when combined with the zany, explosive world of Worms, but in order to become a multiple mainstay it needs more depth both in terms of strategy and player progression.

Shortly after launch the studio revealed that Worms Rumble had racked up close to 1.5 million players in launch week. Other statistics include 38.4 million worms killed, 384,577 worms revived, and a whopping 5.17 billion points worth of damage dealt.

Source: Team17

MotoGP 21 is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and all the usual platforms in April

Exactly as expected, Milestone have announced MotoGP 21 and confirmed that the game will be coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, in addition to the usual PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC versions, MotoGP 21 will launch on 22nd April 2021.

As with the previously released and updated games MXGP 20 and Ride 4, MotoGP 21 will run with a dynamic resolution up to 4K and a 60fps frame rate. The game visuals have also been improved with enhanced lighting, there's faster loading time, online races now have up to 22 races, and the game takes advantage of the DualSense haptic feedback and adaptive triggers.

MotoGP 21 also promises to make the racing more realistic than before. If you crash or fall you will no longer automatically respawn, but will have to run over to your bike and get back on, just like in real life. Brake temperature will now be a factor, the bike suspension system has been revised, and the game now features long lap penalties as a way of punishing transgressions. Introduced in the 2019 season, the game has caught up to the real sport in that regard.

The game will build on the existing features of the series, with the latest iteration of ANNA, the neural network AI for drivers and an overhauled Managerial Career. Amongst the staff hires, you now have a personal manager to lead the staff, chief engineer to increase research points earned, and a data analyst to try and balance bike development – R&D and customisation are as important as ever. If you wish you can start your career with a junior team in lower Moto categories.

MotoGP 21 will feature the 2021 season, which is not expected to be anywhere near as heavily impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic as the 2020 season was, though Dorna has made provisions that could affect the game. They chose to postpone the Argentine and American Grand Prix until the situation is deemed safe in those countries, the season will start with a double-header in Qatar before heading to Portugal for the third round, and there is a single Reserve Grand Prix event in Indonesia, after the Russian Grand Prix was removed from the reserve list. It's not clear what tracks will appear in MotoGP 2021 or if Milestone will adapt the game before April.

Looking back at the 2020 game, Tom said in our MotoGP 20 review:

MotoGP 20 tries to build upon the promise of recent developments with a raft of new features, but it's those very inclusions that don't quite feel fully formed yet. The presentation is more polished, there's a real attempt to try something new, and I enjoy the more serious focus of the riding, but I can't help but think that this game needed a little more time in development to iron out the quirks.

MotoGP 21 is coming to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PC, Steam and Epic Games Store, on 22nd April 2021.

Source: press release

Nintendo Direct catch up – Skyward Sword HD, Splatoon 3 and all the other announcements from last night's stream

Nintendo's first full Nintendo Direct of 2021 was a doozy, bringing a wide range of game announcements from third parties, dropping the details of some DLC expansions for existing games (including the next Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Fighter), and a bunch of first party games that will excite long-term fans of Big N.

You want more Zelda? New Mario Golf? More Splatoon? There's a lot that was stuffed into that 50 minute presentation, so scroll on down to get the skinny. Alternatively, you can watch the full Direct here:

We'll get to the big stuff first (instead of following the order that Nintendo went by.

Splatoon 3 is happening!

A sequel to the hit multiplayer action shooter from Nintendo, it seems that Chaos winning in the final Splatfest has transformed the world. Splatoon 3 takes players to the "City of Chaos", introducing a bunch of new customisation options, new weapons like the bow, and more, while still retaining the familiar 4v4 Turf War format.

The game will be out in 2022, with plenty more details to come.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD

With no further update on the Breath of the Wild sequel, Nintendo are hoping to appease fans with a HD remaster of the previous mainline Zelda game, Skyward Sword. First released in 2011 for Wii, it took full advantage of the console's improved MotionPlus Wiimote, and that has been translated to full Joy-Con motion controls on Switch. Alternatively, the game now features full button controls for Pro Controller, handheld mode and the Switch Lite.

Skyward Sword HD is out on 16th July.

Mario Golf: Super Rush

The first home console Mario Golf game since the Gamecube, Mario Golf: Super Rush will have all the golfing action you could want, starring a host of familiar Mario characters and pick up and play golfing. There's new motion controls as an option, just be sure to wear a wrist strap so you don't launch your Joy-Con into something expensive!

The game also has new modes, including Speed Golf, where everyone plays at the same time and races through the course, and a Story Mdoe, starring your Mii character with levelling up and skill progression.

Mario Golf: Super Rush is out on 25th June.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity Expansion Pass

The musou Breath of the Wild prequel is getting even bigger through 2021 thanks to a DLC season pass. The Expansion Pass is now available for £17.99, promising two waves of DLC additional content that adds new characters, stages and more. The first wave arrives in June and the second in November, but those who buy before early will get a new weapon and costume for Link on 28th May.

Project Triangle Strategy (working title)

Building on the same HD-2D game engine as Octopath Traveller, Project Triangle Strategy leans on a different side to Square Enix's long RPG tradition. Triangle Strategy is a tactical RPG (think Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics), but with meaningful choices to be made that affect how the story unfolds.

The game will launch exclusively for Nintendo Switch in 2022, but there's a free demo available now on the Nintendo eShop

No More Heroes III release date

The third game in the cult classic No More Heroes series has a release date on 27th August!

The next Super Smash Bros. fighter is…

Pyra/Mythra from Xenoblade Chronicles 2! Coming out in March.

Star Wars: Hunters

Set between the events of Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, Star Wars: Hunters is a free-to-play multiplayer shooter with a cast of Bounty Hunters, heroes of the Rebellion and Imperial stormtroopers all duking it out in arenas across the Star Wars universe. The game launches in 2021.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

The hit multiplayer game of 2020 is coming to Nintendo Switch this summer!

Animal Crossing X Super Mario 35th Anniversary

The Super Mario themed items and accessories will be coming to Animal Crossing: New Horizons in March after the 25th February update.

Miitopia

The Mii-based RPG has been revived from the Nintendo 3DS for the Nintendo Switch generation, letting you take your Mii and those of friends and family on an adventure to battle the face-stealing Dark Lord. A smattering of new features are being added to the game, giving you more customisation options than ever.

Miitopia arrive on Nintendo Switch on 21st May.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir / Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind

A pair of classic visual novels are making their way from Japan to the West for the first time, localised with English text and modernised for the Nintendo Switch. Coming as a dual-pack, Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir and Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind will be out on 14th May.

Ninja Gaiden Master Collection is set to slice up consoles and PC this June

The three action-packed entries in the Ninja Gaiden sereis are coming to the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on 10th June.

Monster Hunter Rise

Check out the new trailer for Monster Hunter Rise:

Knockout City

Velan Studios have cooked up a brand new take on dodgeball for Knockout City, with high-paced ball-throwing battles with a bunch of video game twists. Check out our hands on preview here. The game will be out for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One and PC on 21st May.

DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power

Based on the Cartoon Network show, you'll step into the boots of a bunch of classic DC superheroines including Batgirl, Supergirl and Wonder Woman as they have to get through high school, all while saving the city of Metropolis. The game is out on 4th June.

Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville Complete Edition

The third game in the Plants vs. Zombies shooter spin-off will be coming to Nintendo Switch on 19th March.

Legend of Mana

The classic JRPG from Square Enix will be bringing its remastered HD graphics, rearranged music and added features to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PC on 24th June.

Outer Wilds

The acclaimed indie time-loop game Outer Wilds will be playable on Nintendo Switch when it launches this summer.

Samurai Warriors 5

Diving deep in the Sengoku period, Samurai Warriors 5 will be slicing and dicing it up on Switch this summer.

World's End Club

Coming from the creators of Danganronpa and Zero Escape, you and 11 other characters in the Go-Getters Club have to set off across Japan in a mixture of side-scrolling action and narrative as you try to make your way back to Tokyo. World's End Club is out for Nintendo Switch on 28th May.

Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse

The Xbox exclusive zombie 'em up is being remastered for modern consoles, including the Nintendo Switch, on 16th March.

Ghosts 'n Goblin Resurrection

Getting local co-op is coming to the series for the first time, with arthur getting help from three supporting characters: Barry for defence, Kerry for transportation or Archie for bridges. Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection is coming out on 25th February.

Capcom Arcade Stadium

Tons and tons of Capcom's arcade classics are now available on Nintendo Switch as part of Capcom Arcade Stadium with features like gameplay rewind, game speed adjustments and more adding into the emulation. You can get 1943 – The Battle of Midway for free and then add to your collection with game packs or the standalone Ghosts 'n Goblins add-on (which will be free up until 25th February).

Neon White

A new first-person action game about exterminating demons in Heaven, Neon White is the next game fromt he creator of Donut County… coming to Switch and PC in winter 2021.

 

SaGa Frontier Remastered

The remaster of the 90s RPG is coming to PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android and PC on 15th April.

PHEW! What a stream that was! Were there any highlights for you?

Samurai Warriors 5 is a reboot, coming to PC and consoles this summer

This week's Nintendo Direct was chock full of surprises, one of them being the unexpected announcement of Samurai Warriors 5. Koei Tecmo will be bringing their hack n' slash sequel to the Nintendo Switch this summer, as well as PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC (via Steam). Of course, the game will be available on newer systems with both the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S offering backwards compatibility.

From that very first glimpse of Samurai Warriors 5, it's clear to see that Omega Force and Koei Tecmo are trying something new with their long-running series. As with past entries, it will offer a high octane retelling of the Sengoku "Warring States" period in Japan. It's no surprise that generals Nobunaga Oda and Mitsuhide Akechi will take leading roles in Samurai Warriors 5 though their appearances have been dramatically altered since we last saw the pair.

Samurai Warriors 5 is essentially a reboot, and one that dons a slightly altered cell-shaded art style. Fans who have enjoyed the series since its debut will already have a good idea of the game's playable roster of characters though their designs have been redone in this newest chapter. Perhaps Omega Force are taking inspiration from Samurai Warriors: Spirit of Sanada? The spin-off is solely focused on poster boy Yukimura Sanada who ages through the years. Giving us younger/older variants of other lead characters in Samurai Warriors 5 seems sensible given how long the main conflict lasts.

Of course, what we really want to know is how the developers have evolved the series combat. Koei have confirmed that Samurai Warriors 5 will lean on the same "one versus one thousand" formula Warriors is known for, and that's certainly echoed in the small snippets of gameplay we see in the debut trailer. However, it's fair to say that the combat system has given way to fatigue over the years. Hopefully Omega Force will not only reboot the Samurai Warriors story but also shelve its over-reliance on mindless button-bashing.

Thankfully we won't have to wait long before seeing more of the game in action. Koei will be hosting monthly livestreams, the first of which is planned for next Thursday, February 25th.

Source: Press Release

Ninja Gaiden Master Collection is set to slice up consoles and PC this June

Koei Tecmo have some of the most iconic franchises of all time under their banner, but few stand up to the legacy of Ninja Gaiden. Before the Souls franchise came along to make gamers cry into their controllers, Ninja Gaiden was the top dog, offering supremely challenging Ninja-based swordplay, and now the most recent games are coming to modern platforms, releasing for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC on the 10th of June.

The Ninja Gaiden Master Collection comprises the three mainline 3D games, made up of Ninja Gaiden Sigma, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 and Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge, with most of the previously released game modes and DLC costumes arriving in one thrilling collection.

The Ninja Gaidne: Master Collection allows fans and newcomers alike to experience the tale of "super ninja" Ryu Hayabusa as he battles deadly fiends causing chaos around the world. Ninja Gaiden Sigma, originally released in 2007, set the standard of high-speed action for the series – introducing dual-wielding weapons, and a Mission Mode alongside its gripping Story Mode.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, originally released in 2009, continued Hayabusa's journey alongside characters Ayane, Rachel, and Momiji, with four difficulty levels testing players' battle techniques with every heart-stopping fight.

The latest entry, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge, originally released in 2012, upped the challenge with powerful new enemies and fiercely violent depictions, as well as bringing Kasumi into the action, making it the series' most alluring white-knuckle experience to date.

It's possible that many players might have come into contact with Ryu Hayabusa and his ninja pals in Koei Tecmo's Dead or Alive series, with the most recent entry, Dead or Alive 6, launching in 2019. We handed it a 7/10, with the action remaining as good as ever, but the continuing question mark about the series' objectification of women hanging heavily in the background.

We absolutely can't wait to return to the world of Ninja Gaiden, and Ryu Hayabusa's tale, in June.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is coming to Switch in July

In lieu of any more details about the highly anticipated Breath of the Wild sequel, Nintendo today announce The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD. The game will be coming to the Nintendo Switch on 16th July, and is now available for pre-order.

Originally released for the Nintendo Wii in 2011, the game took the console's core motion controls to heart using the enhanced Wii MotionPlus controller for more accurate 1:1 motion tracking. That is brought to the Nintendo Switch through the use of Joy-Con, though it has been enhanced for the remaster.

You can play through the game using a pair of Joy-Con controllers similar to the original game, but there's also new button-only controls that have been created so that those wishing to use a Pro Controller, to play handheld, and owners of the Nintendo Switch Lite can enjoy the game. In this form, the motion controlled sword swings will be mapped to the right analogue stick and directional inputs allowing for vertical, horizontal and diagonal directional slices.

Of course, the game has also been enhanced with improved graphics and a smoother 60fps frame rate.

Nintendo Direct catch up – Skyward Sword HD, Splatoon 3 and all the other announcements

Series director Eiji Aonuma looks back on the game quite favourably, not only as the last home console game to be released before Breath of the Wild, but also as a source of inspiration where you can see the series' evolution. You had much more flexible traversal, a stamina gauge, the concept of upgrading gear and more, much of which would evolve and grow for Breath of the Wild.

Alongside the game's release, Nintendo will also ship some special themed Joy-Con, the right one themed after the Master Sword and the left with the Hylian Shield motif. Great for collectors, and those that think they might be imbued with game-enhancing properties – they aren't though.

Revisiting our original The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword review, Dan said:

For 90% of the time Skyward Sword is an absolute revelation, with perfect puzzles and well-designed locations. It also provides characters you can care about, and genuinely want to help. The motion controls also hold up well for the most part, although it will still be a sticking point for many gamers.

Unfortunately it's that final 10% that really does disappoint. After sampling some of Nintendo's finest work, to suddenly find yourself taking part in some extremely uninteresting, generic quests is a bitter pill to swallow.

With button controls and modern improvements, lets hope it's an all-round improvement.

Source; Nintendo Direct

Splatoon 3 is coming to Nintendo Switch in 2022

Nintendo closed out the first Nintendo Direct of the year with a hugely exciting announcement: Splatoon 3 is coming to Nintendo Switch in 2022! With a whole new region, new options and enhanced gameplay, we simply cannot wait to see more.

The game trailer starts off with an Inkling out in the wasteland, an upended Eiffel Tower in the background. You've left Inkopolis behind in Splatoon 3 and ventured off to the Splatlands, at the heart of which a new city to splatter your way through resides: Splatsville, AKA the "City of Chaos". If the dystopian transformation wasn't clue enough, it seems that the result of the Final Splatfest had a real and lasting impact on the series' story going forward!

Splatoon 3 introduces a few new features for the paint-based shooter, including new weapons like bows, more options to customise your character (there's more hairstyles including both Inkling and Octoling styles, and they're no longer gender specific) and your own Small Fry little buddy, and new movement abilities.

Turf War is back as the main mode, of course, but now with an unusual twist of having you launch into the map from up high.

Nintendo Direct catch up – Skyward Sword HD, Mario Golf: Super Rush and all the other announcements

There's sure to be plenty more of the game yet to be revealed between now and launch, and the game is likely more than a year away. Still, for fans of Splatoon on the Wii U and the sequel that launched in the first few months of the Nintendo Switch's life, this is some of the best news they could get.

In our Splatoon 2 review, I wrote:

A fairly straightforward sequel to one of the Wii U's best games, Splatoon 2's unique take on the online multiplayer shooter is as fresh as ever on Switch. Nintendo still have one foot in the past with online functionality, stubbornly sticking to their (paint) guns when they should be learning from others, but these flaws are easily covered up once you get into a game. At its heart, Splatoon 2 is a second helping of one of the most inventive shooters of the last decade.

Here's looking forward to Splatoon 3 taking the series to new heights in 2022.

 

Plants vs. Zombies: Battle For Neighborville Complete Edition comes to Switch in March

EA has announced that it will be releasing Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville Complete Edition on Nintendo Switch, and it will be available from March 19th on the console. This edition will contain all the content released for the game on PS4, Xbox One, and PC with all those items being unlockable in game through playing. The price has been set at $39.99.

Melvin Teo, Producer at PopCap Vancouver, said

"We are excited to bring everyone's favorite Plants vs. Zombies™ characters to Nintendo Switch for the first time, giving players the ability to play in their homes or on the go, however they choose. The Switch's motion controls allow us to try a fresh new take on Neighborville, and with its docked and portable play, we have the ability to bring the game and its characters to life in ways that weren't possible before."

Plants vs. Zombies Battle for Neighborville will be the first game that uses the Frostbite engine to be released on the Switch. The game will have both offline and online multiplayer. In offline multiplayer matches will allow four players to play together, while online there will be 8v8 multiplayer. Players will have the option to use the Switch's motion controls for aiming, though that can be customised in the settings for the game.

How Did We Rate Plants vs Zombies Battle for Neighborville?

In terms of how entertaining Plants vs Zombies Battle for Neighborville turned out to be we turn to Stefan. While we did not review the game when it fully released, Stefan did play the game when it first hit early access before becoming a full release. At the time of early access, Stefan wrote:

This is where I'm not terribly chuffed with Battle for Neighborville. It shouldn't be necessary for the third game in a series, not to mention from a publisher the size of EA, to go through a foreshortened Early Access period like this, with a six week drip feed of additional modes and features throughout. PopCap say they want to tune the game with their most ardent fans, and perhaps that's a good thing, considering the high profile struggles of Star Wars Battlefront II, Battlefield V and Anthem, but it shouldn't be necessary. A good old fashioned open beta would do the job of testing and feedback just as well… but that doesn't make you money, I suppose.

Still, I've been a fan of these Plants vs. Zombies spin offs since their inception, with PopCap having this magical way of twisting what was once a humble computer and mobile puzzle game into a great online shooter. Not only that, but each time they've managed to take some of the latest trends in the broad shooter genre and pull them off with aplomb.

You can read his full thoughts here.

Source: Press Release

Knockout City puts the brawl into dodgeball

There's few games as simple as dodgeball. You have a ball, and you try to throw and hit your opponent with it to knock them out of the game, except they can try to catch it and flip the script on you. It's a game that, outside of American schools, is probably best known from the 2004 Ben Stiller sports film spoof, but Knockout City takes that simplistic concept and puts an edgy new twists on the rules of engagement, cooking up a surprisingly compelling multiplayer game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4EfMIv-eGo

At its most fundamental, Knockout City is still dodgeball. All you have to do is hit other players with a thrown ball and avoid getting hit yourself, but even within that there's a delicate dance of mind games, team strategy and timing. Any thrown ball can be caught by your opponent with a properly timed catch, disarming you and leaving you vulnerable to attack in turn. Fake throws to draw out a grab animation, positioning to hit an unsuspecting opponent, ganging up on someone with a teammate and more all feed into the moment-to-moment gameplay, and that's before we get to the myriad changes that have developer Velan Studios dubbing this 'Dodgebrawl'.

Everything is souped up, taking advantage of the fact that you're playing a video game and not actually throwing balls at other people. Your basic movements are augmented with a double jump to get to slightly higher vantage points, or you can whip out a hang glider like a Hyrulian Warrior and glide down to ground, and while you're running around you can shoulder charge nearby opponents to stun them and knock any ball they're carrying out of their hands.Throwing a ball can be charged up to fly faster through the sky (and holding it can be a part of waiting for the perfect moment to strike), but spinning through a double jump lets you throw a sweeping curve ball.

OK, that's all fairly video gamey so far, but nothing too outlandish, right? Well, just wait till you figure out how to roll up into a ball and be thrown by your teammate, or powered up to become an explosive bomb that arcs through the sky, landing with a bang that can wipe out the whole other team if you're lucky. There's also a smattering of special balls you can find, such as the Moon Ball that affects the gravity of the holder and any victim, cage balls that bundle up their target in a ball, letting you grab and throw them off the map for a quick win.

There's a lot of common ground through all of this with fighting games and the need to have low latency tracking of player inputs and actions. There's no use trying to catch a ball with precise timing if it's going to hit you through laggy nonsense. To that end, Velan have built the bespoke Viper game engine, doing so with a new coding language called V-Script that can be run both backwards and forwards as needed by the game, letting it rewind, fix the simulation around any lag and packet loss, wind the game forward and carry on. It's based off similar ideas and principles as fighting games with rollback netcode, but accounting for the throwing ball physics and half a dozen players at once, all of which can become physics objects in their own right at any time.

It's all quite barmy, and quite a lot of fun to play in the handful of game modes we got to sample. Team KO is as you'd expect, with two teams of three duking it out to be the first to reach 10 KOs and win the round. Diamond Dash is then equivalent to Call of Duty's Kill Confirmed, while Ballup Brawl drops you into a map with no balls spawning, forcing you to throw one another as weapons. The last is a fun diversion, but seems to devolve into aerial bomb spam.

It's all wrapped up in a thoroughly familiar graphical style evoking the likes of Fortnite, and fellow EA Originals title Rocket Arena, with its smooth toon-ish characters and environments. It's fair to say there's a bit more edge and grunge to it though. You have hundreds of cosmetics to earn, letting you customise the look of your character, pick unifying themes for icons for your Crew to fight under, and so on. It's, without wishing to diminish the hard word of Velan put into the game to craft all of this, relatively standard and unremarkable in that respect. Visually, Knockout Brawl feels like it's merely part of the crowd, meaning the game has to really let its gameplay do the talking. Oh, and the pumped-up electro-jazz soundtrack.

Thankfully Velan have done their damnedest to ensure there's as few barriers to play as feasible. The game is coming to all major platforms – PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC, with certain enhancements for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S – and there's full cross-play and cross-progression. The one thing missing seems to be cross-buy, with Knockout City coming with an upfront $19.99 price tag. This… well, we'll simply have to see how it pans out, but the upside is that there's no loot boxes and the planned seasons of content and rewards are all free.

To try and convince you to part with your cash, Knockout City will launch on 21st May with a free game trial to get as many people playing as possible at the start. Before then, even, Velan will be holding a PC beta test with a limited set of content this weekend from 20th-21st February.

Stubbs The Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse releases March for PC and consoles

A couple of weeks ago the Microsoft store leaked the fact that a Stubbs The Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse remaster was on the way, with game listed for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. Now, Aspyr Media has confirmed that the remaster for Stubbs The Zombie in Rebel Without A Pulse is real, and it is not just limited to the Xbox family of consoles. The game will also be available to play on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PS5 via backward compatibility.

According to Aspyr, the controls have been reworked to suit more modern styles of play, and achievements/trophies have been added giving some extra challenges to accomplish.

What is Stubbs The Zombie?

The game is a comedic twist on the zombie apocalypse, set in 1959 with the eponymous Stubbs rising from the dead and leading growing ranks of undead to topple the city of Punchbowl in the name of love. Stubbs has a number of undead abilities including zombie sputum, gut grenades and flatulence, using them to kill and convert humans to your cause.

First released in 2005, the game was developed by Wideload and was the first original title published by long-time Mac porting house Aspyr – a company that has just now been snapped up by Embracer Group. Of note, Wideload Games was founded by Alex Seropian, one of the co-founder of Bungie, who used his ties to the Xbox first party company to license the Halo engine for Stubbs the Zombie. You can really see that tie in the game's sticky grenades and physics. Stubbs the Zombie was fairly late to the party when it released on the original Xbox in 2005, just a month before the launch of the Xbox 360, but with a complimentary release on PC and Mac, it was a moderate success.

Stubbs The Zombie in Rebel Without a Cause will be available on March 16th, and is available to pre-order now.

Source: Press Release

New Monster Hunter Rise trailer showcases the Rampage and unseen monsters

Monster Hunter Rise is set to arrive next month, and as we creep ever closer to what is (hopefully) set to be one of the top Nintendo Switch releases of the year, Capcom have drip-fed some more information during tonight's Nintendo Direct, with a brand new trailer showcasing a bunch of new and returning monsters that will be making an appearance all too soon, as well as some idea about the way that Monster Hunter Rise's Rampage events will play.

First up, new Monster Rakna Kadaki is going to cause a lot of problems for people with arachnophobia, as it's a horrendous giant spider type affair, wrapping itself, and presumably you, up in webs that will slow you down while it attempts to chow down on you (or at least send you back to camp with your Palamute's tale between your legs). They were swiftly followed by returning monsters Basarios and Volvidon, both of whom look great in their Monster Hunter Rise guise.

The second, all-new monster we got to have a glimpse of was Almudron, a mud dragon that looked like a version of Mizutsune that you're going to have to have a good scrub of your armour after fighting.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the trailer though is a look at the game's Rampage feature. We've been told about The Rampage, a rushing host of monsters, and Magnamalo before, but here we got to see how it's going to play out in action. It looks as though you'll be defending the walls of town against a ridiculous number of monsters at the same time, trying to repel them before they break through. There's the classic inclusion of various wall-based weaponry to help you on your way, and it looks as though the twins we've seen in previous trailers might be hunters that help you out along the way. Then again they might just be lending you a skin or armour set instead.

The trailer closes out with a look at Apex Arzuros. It might be that the apex monster leads the attack, and that you need to take them out to stop the Rampage, or perhaps it's just another variant that we're going to see later on in the game.

Monster Hunter Rise releases exclusively for Nintendo Switch on March 26, 2021.

Project Triangle Strategy is an Octopath Traveler tactical RPG successor for Nintendo Switch – Demo out now!

Nintendo and Square Enix have announced Project Triangle Strategy, a new game for Nintendo Switch making use of Octopath Traveler's HD-2D visual styling. The game will be out in 2022, but you can try it out now with a Debut Demo available to download for free from the Nintendo eShop.

Download the demo from the following links:

The game is clearly a successor in many ways to the excellent RPG Octopath Traveler, but the actual gameplay has much more in common with the tactical RPG battling of the Fire Emblem series, right down to the titular triangle of strenght and weaknesses alluded to in the game's title.

Of course, Square Enix have their own rich legacy to honour in the tactical RPG genre, with the iconic Final Fantasy Tactics games, the first of which came to the PS1, with sequels and successors for Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and iOS. After paying homage to some of their classic turn-based RPG in Octopath Traveller, it seems as though Project Triangle Strategy will make good use of their almost unique graphics engine and visual style while evoking the spirit of another fan favourite game and genre. As alluded to by the working title, there's elemental strengths and weaknesses to factor into, using fire to melt ice and then lightning to electrocute it and catch enemies in your trap, as one example.

Project Triangle Strategy promises to have deep and meaningful RPG story that's full of choices and shifting consequences through a branching narrative. You play as Serenoa, heir of House Wolffort, and command a group of warriors through a tangled plot, leaning on your convictions of Utility, Morality and Liberty. It's not just you that shapes the story at key points, but other characters as well who will cast votes on the Scales of Conviction, determining the fate of the continent of Norzelia.

Nintendo Direct catch up – Skyward Sword HD, Splatoon 3 and all the other announcements

Octopath Traveler was a fascinating RPG experiment when it launched for Nintendo Switch in 2018, and enough of a success at the time that Square Enix told us to expect similar games to follow. In our Octopath Traveller review, I wrote:

Octopath Traveler is a wonderful collection of adventures and stories, but the quirk of storytelling that lends it its name is both its greatest strength and weakness. While the turn-based combat and 'breaking' enemies makes practically every battle engaging, the eight tales this game tells don't really feel like they need to be told together. It's a little unbalanced because of this, but this remains a charming, beguiling JRPG.

Miitopia is coming to Nintendo Switch in May

Nintendo have dusted off the quirky RPG Mii battler Miitopia for the Nintendo Switch, upgrading the old 3DS game for the newer console and releasing it on Switch on 21st May.

New features include being able to customise your Mii with make up and popping fancy pants wigs on their noggins. However, the fundamental adventuring will remain the same, a light RPG in which Miis battle and go on little adventures.

Nintendo Direct catch up – Skyward Sword HD, Splatoon 3 and all the other announcements

Back in 2017, Dave reviewed the 3DS Miitopia, saying:

I wasn't expecting to like Miitopia as much as I did, but it certainly had me hooked until the end. It's deceptively long despite its rather basic premise and while the first two thirds are somewhat restrictive, the final third is when the game really comes into its own and shows off its true potential with compelling mechanics that are surprisingly deep. Miitopia is an odd duck for sure, but one that is very hard to put down once the hooks are in.

Mario Golf: Super Rush tees off on Nintendo Switch this June

Mario Golf is coming back on Nintendo Switch with Mario Golf: Super Rush, coming out for Nintendo's hybrid console on 25th June, bringing with it lush new graphics and a bunch of new game modes to swing through.

Mario Golf: Super Rush will feature a broad cast of Mario characters as you'd expect, from Mario and Yoshi to Daisy and Bowser, and it builds on the classic Mario Golf gameplay, with plenty of accessibility options to let you preview your shot and view the terrain.

In addition to playing with buttons as usual, you can also use the Joy-Con with motion controls, bringing back all the joys of swinging the Wiimote on the Nintendo Wii and occasionally getting a bit too close to smashing your TV screen. Of course, there never was a Mario Golf game for the Wii or Wii U; this will be the first time that Mario Golf has featured on a Nintendo home console since all the way back in 2003!

Nintendo Direct catch up – Skyward Sword HD, Splatoon 3 and all the other announcements

What's nice to see is that there's also some new game modes for Mario Golf: Super Rush. Speed Golf sees everyone tees off at the same time and then sprint after the ball to get your next hit in as quickly as possible. There's dashes and special shots to speed you along, and you can grab coins and super stars to get the edge over your rivals.

Then there's Story Mode, which will bring out your Mii, dust them off and send themstarting you off as a rookie and letting you level up and grow your character. You'll be able to take your Mii into the multiplayer modes as well.

The last Mario Golf game arrived on Nintendo 3DS all the way back in 2014. In our Mario Golf: World Tour review, Dan wrote:

I've really enjoyed my time with Mario Golf: World Tour. Despite feeling a little light on main courses, there's more than enough content on offer, coupled with a great online mode and the usual Nintendo visual flair. This is a game that will keep you busy for quite some time.

Mario Golf: Super Rush will be out for Nintendo Switch on 25th June.

Xenoblade 2 star Pyra joins Super Smash Bros Ultimate!

It's that time once again when we get a new character for Super Smash Bros Ultimate, and this time it's Pyra, star of Xenoblade 2. It looks as though she's able to transform into alter-ego Mythra as well, giving you a dual bevy of sword-wielding superstars to take into battle. There's a host of other Xenoblade 2 characters who look to be hanging around too, including Rex and Nia, who are presumably going to appear as Assist Trophies as well, meaning that Xenoblade fans are in for a treat.

Pyra brings living-house-dragon Gramps with her as her stage, with the flying elderly dragon travelling through the clouds of Alrest, the perfect place to send all of those unwanted foes to the bottom of the sea. Kirby can get right in there for a start. Xenoblade fans are hugely served now by Super Smash Bros Ultimate, with Shulk one of the core characters from when the game launched.

Nintendo Direct catch up – Skyward Sword HD, Splatoon 3 and all the other announcements

I loved Xenoblade 2 when it launched in 2017, where it earned a coveted 9/10 rating – "Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a phenomenal RPG. It's a truly incredible piece of work that builds and expands on the series' staples, while turning into a unique and heartfelt adventure all of its own."

Chronicles 2, a pseudo-sequel to the beloved original, is set in the world of Alrest, a place populated by huge creatures known as Titans who serve as floating islands upon and within which the citizens of Alrest live. It's a wonderfully imaginative setting, and the symbiotic nature of the relationship between the living Titans, humanoids and other creatures is at times surprisingly thoughtful. You join main protagonist Rex – a salvager clad throughout in Steampunk diving chaps – as he seeks to return Pyra – a living weapon – to Elysium, while nefarious forces are set against you.

Pyra joins the battle this March, so Smash Bros fans don't have too much longer to wait.

Chicory: A Colorful Tale announced for PS4 and PS5, out later this year

FINJI has announced that it will be publishing Chicory: A Colorful Tale, which has been developed by Wandersong's Greg Lobanov. Chicory: A Colorful Tale will be coming to PS4, PS5 this year as well as PC and Mac. The game casts players as a dog who has a paintbrush. The aim is to use art as a way to solve puzzles to help other animals in the game, and bring colour back to the world of Chicory: A Colorful Tale.

Chicory: A Colorful Tale's features include:

  • Explore the Picnic Province, and draw on anything!
  • Manipulate the environment with your paint and solve puzzles!
  • Unlock new paint abilities and use them to reach new places!
  • Local co-op! Play with your friends and paint together!

The game's soundtrack has been composed by Lena Raine who has worked on both Celeste and Guild Wars 2. Across the world players will be able to collect new brush styles, clothes, and furniture. This will allow players to customise the world of Chicory: A Colorful Tale in different ways.

Source: Press Release

First five Xbox Series X|S 'FPS Boost' backward compatibility games announced

Microsoft have revealed the first five Xbox One games that will take advantage of the Xbox Series X|S backward compatibility 'FPS Boost' mode. The boost is able to take select games running through backward compatibility and effectively double, or even quadruple the frame rate, jumping from 30fps to 60fps, and potentially beyond to 120fps. This occurs without developers needing to release a patch for the game.

The first five FPS Boost compatible games are:

In all cases, the games work at the expected graphical level, but with the frame rate dramatically enhanced. All of the games originally ran at 30fps on Xbox One S, and all of them now run at 60fps on Xbox Series S, except for New Super Lucky's Tale, which runs at 1080p120!

On Xbox Series X, games can take advantage of Xbox One X enhancements, if they had any, so New Super Lucky's Tale originally ran at 4K60 and now managed 4K120, and UFC4 now runs at 1800p60 (there was previously a performance mode choice). However, the others did not have resolution boosting modes for One X, and so run at Xbox One S levels. That means Far Cry 4 at 1440×1080 at 60fps, Sniper Elite 4 at 1080p60, and Watch Dogs 2 at 900p60.

Though there are no game patches to download, Microsoft have worked closely with the original developers in each case to ensure that the game's are working as intended at the higher frame rates – games can sometimes throw a bit of a wobbly when they encounter something they weren't designed for, like animations linked to a 30fps rate suddenly being twice as fast. It's for this reason that Microsoft are being selective in their roll out of the new feature. The approach will have broader results than on PlayStation 5, where games such as God of War and Ghost of Tsushima, and Xbox games like Sea of Thieves and Halo: The Master Chief Collection have to be aware of the hardware they're running on to take advantage of the new console power.

The lack of resolution boost in some games might be a bit disappointing, but it's also something that Microsoft could feasibly tackle in future. Xbox and Xbox 360 backward compatibility is able to run games at higher resolutions, multiplying each axis two or three times in the process. For now, however, that's not on the cards, and many would choose frame rate over resolution any day of the week.

FPS Boost in action.

More games will be coming in the near future, with FPS Boost announced back in October using Fallout 4 as an example. This spring will also see updates for Xbox Series' system software to add more flexibility for several system features. A new "Compatibility Options" button will appear on game entries to let you toggle FPS Boost as well as Auto HDR on or off on a game-by-game basis. You will also be notified when FPS Boost is being applied to a game via the Xbox Guide.

Source: Xbox

Ys IX: Monstrum Nox Review

One of the strengths of Nihon Falcom's long-running Ys series is that, despite 30+ years of entries, any Ys game can be your first Ys game. With every sequel being another standalone adventure in the life of red-haired explorer Adol Christin, I've jumped around through the series in a pretty random order and still gotten a full and fulfilling experience out of each game. While Ys IX: Monstrum Nox, the latest entry in the series, is yet another self-contained experience, it's also a very different experience compared to previous entries. Some of these differences come from gameplay and combat improvements that make this one of the strongest entries in the series, but Ys IX also plays with story development and world-building like the Ys games have never done before, crafting a narrative experience purposefully at odds with what a Ys game would typically deliver.

For one, the much heavier focus on story and narrative in Ys IX means that Adol's previous adventures matter more than they ever have before. The game opens with our red-haired adventurer trying to enter the city of Balduq before he's informed that, due to his curious involvement in a number of catastrophic or unexplained events from prior games, there is a warrant out for his arrest.

Adol is quickly shipped off to Balduq prison, and while one mysterious inmate helps him escape the labyrinth-like facility, another mysterious figure named Aprillis ends up shooting Adol with a mysterious bullet – granting him unexplained Monstrum abilities that help him escape the catacombs of Balduq prison. These wild powers come at a cost, though – while he's no longer stuck in jail, Adol and the five other Monstrums that Aprillis has created are trapped within Balduq by a mysterious barrier and forced to help her vanquish the shadowy creatures stalking the city.

All of this is established within the first chapter of the game, and it's way more than you would ever get out of a typical Ys game. Even prior entry Ys VIII, which had an impressive story and a focus on character writing, had far fewer cutscenes and cinematic scenes of exposition. I think this is a great change, though. While the first few hours of the game can drag on and the Monstrum wrinkle kind of came out of nowhere, a head-scratching twist at the end of chapter 2 made my eyes go wide and kept me hooked to the story for the rest of the game.

For the first time, Adol isn't on a grand adventure in gorgeous colourful islands and forests – he's trapped, imprisoned in the drab and dull walls of Balduq. The way the story plays with your expectations of a typical Ys adventure, and the way in which it calls back to prior adventures, adds a lot for veteran Ys fans. While newcomers can still get a good time out of this game and follow the core narrative, this is the only game in the franchise that I would say is improved by playing it after experiencing some of the other games first.

Something that you can appreciate and love the hell out of without playing any other games in the franchise, though, is the gameplay. The Ys series is known for fast and flashy real-time action combat, and Ys IX only sets that bar higher. Adol has crisp sword attacks and abilities like time-slowing Flash Dodge manoeuvres and Flash Guard parries that never stop being cool. He's got a handful of special attacks that are unlocked as you level up, too.

You aren't just fighting shadowy beasts and giant bosses as him, though. As you progress in the story, you'll recruit each Monstrum to fight alongside you, allowing you to swap between characters in a three-man squad with the tap of a button mid-combat. You'll have to do this a lot in order to use the weapons that each enemy is weak too, but swapping between characters just to get stylish and chain cool attacks together is just as rewarding.

Each Monstrum you recruit also grants you new Monstrum abilities that are just as useful in combat as they are out of combat. As the Monstrum named "Crimson King" (thank you for being King Crimson Fans, Nihon Falcom) Adol gets access to the Crimson Line ability that lets him grapple across rooftops and perches smoothly. Later on, you'll get access to the gliding ability Hunter's Descent or the ability to run up walls with Heaven's Run. While each Monstrum gift comes from their respective characters, Adol can use all of them at will, allowing you to chain movement abilities together and explore the world with ease. You can use them in battle to swiftly manoeuvre around enemies, pull yourself towards them for extended combos, and more.

As flashy as these abilities are, though, the game regularly struggles to keep up with them. Being able to explore every nook and cranny of the world is both a blessing and a curse, as it only makes it easier to see just how clunky some of the environment models are, and how muddy almost all of the textures are. Plus, while the gameplay and story are consistently satisfying, the framerate of Ys IX couldn't be further from consistent. Battles, cutscenes, and even simply walking around certain areas would cause awkward framerate dips and pacing issues. I would hope that this is something that could be remedied by playing on a PlayStation 5, but on PlayStation 4 it's a frequent annoyance.

Destruction AllStars 1.2.4 patch adds Australian servers after maintenance

A fresh update has arrived for PS5 exclusive Destruction AllStars, with version 1.2.4 being pushed live alongside a short period of server maintenance this afternoon.. The update is geared toward stamping out a handful of game crashes and glitches, as well as catering to players down under with new servers.

Servers are down at the time of writing, but should be back up shortly. The planned downtime is for an estimated 10 minutes, followed by background maintenance for a further hour, as Lucid Games spin up a new server region to cater to PlayStation 5 owners in Australia, New Zealand and other nearby countries. In order to support this, you'll now be able to change your multiplayer region from the main menu.

Elsewhere, this is a relatively minor update, fixing some server crashes related to matchmaking (which is never good for a multiplayer game!), and preventing crashes from players with incomplete game installs by blocking them from joining parties until the game download is complete.

The update follows quality of life patches shortly after the game's release at the start of February. At the time, the main bone of contention for fans was the incessant voice chat and potential abuse, which Lucid were quick to cut off the issue with a small hotfix, and the following 1.2.3 update focussed on making quality of life changes throughout Destruction AllStars' progression system.

Destruction AllStars 1.2.4 Patch Notes

 

  • Added a server region in Australia.
  • Players can change their multiplayer server via the options menu.
  • Fixed several server crashes relating to matchmaking.
  • Players now need to wait for the game to fully download before joining a party.
  • This prevents a crash whereby players could enter matchmaking before finishing their download.

Destruction AllStars Guide – 11 essential tips & tricks

While we judged that Destruction AllStars isn't quite up there as a PS5 exclusive essential, scoring a 6 out of 10 in our review at launch, it's still a blast to play and a great freebie for PlayStation Plus subscribers to dive into. Here's what we had to say:

The car combat genre has long been out of fashion and still has a way to go if it wants to take us back to its glory days of the 1990s. Destruction AllStars is a mostly satisfying modernisation that has some neat ideas and looks fantastic, though ultimately spins its tyres on repetitive rival-wrecking gameplay and a lack of truly worthwhile content at launch.

The manic multiplayer exclusive was originally meant to launch alongside the PS5 in November 2020 alongside Demon's Souls, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Godfall, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, and other day one titles. However, Sony and Lucid Games made the decision to delay Destruction AllStars to February 2021, opting to bring the game to the widest possible audience by bundling it in for those with an active PlayStation Plus subscription.

Source: Twitter (@LucidGamesLtd)

No Man's Sky Companions update lets you adopt alien pets!

Have you ever landed on a planet in No Man's Sky and thought "Gee, I wish I could keep that barmy procedurally generated alien creature as a pet."? Well, if you have, then the Companions update will be music to your ears. Out today, it lets you adopt pets, breed them, trade them, take them with you on your journeys and (perhaps best of all) ride giant creatures!

As with all No Man's Sky updates, this is a completely free update and expansion to the game. The game is available and enhanced for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, with support for PlayStation VR and PC VR systems.

What does No Man's Sky Companions Update do?

The update lets you tame and adopt animals to be your companions on your intergalactic adventure, but don't worry about having to make space for them in your space ship, as you can simply summon them wherever you land (even on the Space Anomaly).

Feeding them, playing with them and giving them attention like alien Tamagochi will bring practical benefits, as they will start to highlight resources and hazards for you, provide a source of light, hunt hostiles, locate buildings, dig up treasures, and can be equipped with their own mining lasers. Giant creatures can be harnessed as rideable beasts. Good space doggos/horsies/kitty cats, the lot of them.

You can now have up to six space pets in No Man's Sky.

Each create will become a one-of-a-kind being, starting from their heredity, where they will inherit looks and traits from their parents – you can look after them well enough to lay tradeable eggs and spawn a new generation – gaining a personality that affects how they behave. If you ever want to know what they're thinking, the new neural link will translate their thoughts and wishes.

You'll be able to adopt up to six companions, who will be stored in the Companions Register until you want to summon them… or abandon them to make room…

The update also brings a smattering of UI tweaks, improvements to loading times on PlayStation 4 and more.

Here's the full patch notes:

No Man's Sky Companions Update – Version 3.2

ANIMAL COMPANIONS

  • Creatures that have been fed can now be interacted with to access options for milking, riding and adoption.
  • Players may adopt up to six creatures at any one time. New companion slots are available to be purchased with nanites.
  • Your companions can be renamed, and then customised with a new range of accessories and decals.
  • Some accessories, such as the torch or mining lasers, will be used by your companion as they explore the planet.
  • Each companion has their own personality, which will influence how they behave and think. Some species are more likely to have certain traits than others, but each creature is unique.
  • The creature harness has a neural link with the Exosuit, enabling rudimentary translation of your new companion's thoughts and wishes.
  • Companions will assist their owners during planetary exploration, but have needs of their own. They will periodically require food or attention if they are to thrive.
  • Companions will need to be cared for over a long period of time in order to win their trust.
  • While exploring, companions will assist their owners in a number of ways, including: scouting for resources and buildings; digging up minerals and special items; hunting other creatures; and marking hazards.
  • As well as acting on their own initiative, companions may be given specific instructions via gestures from the Quick Menu.
  • VR players can point directly to send their companion to a destination.

COMPANION EGGS

  • Creatures that have been well-cared for will lay eggs.
  • After a short time, creature eggs will hatch into a brand new creature, related to but distinct from the parent creature.
  • Baby creatures have different proportions from adult creatures and will grow to maturity over time.
  • Players may trade eggs from their prized companions with other players.
  • Creature eggs can be taken to the Egg Sequencer aboard the Space Anomaly.
  • The Egg Sequencer allows players to remix the genetic material of their growing eggs to produce unique, never-before-seen creatures.
  • Overdosing eggs in the Sequencer may cause dramatic creature reconfigurations…

CREATURE IMPROVEMENTS

  • New creature and companion-related titles have been added to the Appearance Modifier.
  • The construction cost of Creature Pellets has been increased.
  • The stack size of Creature Pellets has been increased.
  • Creatures no longer require advanced bait to unlock harvesting functions – any creature that has been fed may now be milked.
  • Giant creatures can now be ridden.
  • Creature locomotion animations have been improved.
  • The particle effects emanating from creature dung have been improved.
  • Discovered creatures now have a different shaped icon in the Analysis Visor, to better distinguish them from undiscovered creatures.
  • Creature icons in the Analysis visor have been offset to improve their appearance.

UI IMPROVEMENTS

  • Players using a mouse and keyboard can now use hotkeys to directly select options in dialogue menus and interactions.
  • Players using a gamepad can now use the analogue sticks rather than the cursor to move between options in dialogue menus and interactions.

OPTIMISATIONS

  • Warp and loading times on PS4 have been significantly improved.

BUG FIXES

  • Fixed an issue that caused freighter 'wings' to be hidden.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause an invalid system/base to appear in the teleport destinations list.
  • Fixed an issue that caused the gloves to be out of focus in the Appearance Modifier.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause players using Windows 10 to incorrectly report a network disconnect.
  • Autowalk is now cancelled automatically when the player manually moves forwards or backwards.
  • The creature feeding Nexus mission has been rebalanced to account for changes to the taming process.
  • Concrete base parts now require Silicate Powder rather than Carbon to build.
  • Fixed an issue in the Galaxy Map that caused the Distance To Core text to be vertically clipped, resulting in a comma that looked like a period.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause players to upload/download an excessive number of creative discoveries.
  • Fixed an issue that caused Cronus' food to have an extremely bright glow.
  • Fixed an issue that caused the Orbital Exocraft Materialiser to have an overly bright glow.
  • Fixed an issue that caused base specialist terminals to snap incorrectly in specific large rooms.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause an increase in load times while attempting to download base data from other players.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause incorrect text to appear when harvesting food substances from some unusual creatures.
  • Fixed a VR issue that caused the Exosuit backpack to be invisible in the inventory if the player's body was turned off.
  • Fixed an animation issue with the player weapons in VR.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause incorrect UI scaling in VR.
  • Fixed a VR issue that could cause UI screens to move while the UI was closing.
  • Fixed a rare hang that could occur when taking a screenshot in Photo Mode on PC.
  • Fixed a networking crash on Xbox platforms.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause very large save files to crash during loading on PS4.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when the leader of a herd died.
  • Fixed a number of memory related crashes on PS5.
  • Fixed an audio related crash on PS5.
  • Fixed a rendering crash on PS5.
  • Fixed a crash related to the preview of summoned objects (eg starships).

Source: No Man's Sky

Spider-Man Remastered PS5 update fixes trophy unlocks and more

Insomniac games have released a new update for their Spider-Man Remastered on PS5. Patch 1.003 is now available to download, making various improvements, including a fix for one of the game's trophies not popping.

Previously, some players had reported that Spider-Man Remastered's "Power and Responsibility" trophy wouldn't unlock even if they had managed to beat the game on Ultimate difficulty. Both the Ultimate difficulty and this accompanying trophy were added to the original Spider-Man on PS4 shortly after the game's original release in 2018.

You can read more about the trophy fix and other changes in the Spider-Man Remastered update 1.003 patch notes:

Fixes & Updates

  1. Addressed an issue where the "Power and Responsibility" Trophy would not unlock under certain conditions during a New Game+ playthrough
  2. Addressed various animation issues during gameplay and while using Photo Mode
  3. Addressed various issues related to suit selection while using Photo Mode
  4. Addressed various progression stoppers
  5. Addressed various audio issues
  6. Improved stability

We gave Spider-Man: Miles Morales 8/10 in our review. "Spider-Man: Miles Morales feels like more of a sequel than it is a stopgap, entangling players within its web of cleverly refined mechanics while delivering some familiar web-slinging thrills," said Jim. "A heroic technical showcase for PS5 owners picking up their consoles on day one, this meaty side story in the Spider-Man saga has us even more excited than before to see what Insomniac Games have planned next."

You can read the full review here.

So far we don't have solid confirmation of when Spider-Man 2 will be coming but at least we have some clues as to the direction of the sequel's story (watch out for spoilers). Right now, Insomniac Games are no doubt going flat out on the development of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. It claimed seventh place in our list of top 50 most wanted games of 2021.

Spider-Man: Miles Morales Guides & more from TheSixthAxis

Tags:  , 

Xbox Game Pass is getting Dirt 5, Wreckfest, Elite: Dangerous and more through the rest of February

Microsoft have announced another bunch of games coming to Xbox Game Pass library through the second half of February, ranging from the Xbox Series X|S enhanced Dirt 5, to galaxy-sized space sim Elite: Dangerous, and the crash-tastic arcade action of Wreckfest.

With Microsoft now juggling three libraries of Xbox Game Pass games, across Xbox consoles, PC and Cloud Gaming for Android, there's some games that are platform specific.

Here's what's new, what it's coming to and when:

  • Code Vein (PC) – February 18
  • Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire – Ultimate Edition (Cloud and Console) ID@Xbox – February 18
  • Wreckfest (Cloud, Console and PC) – February 18
  • Killer Queen Black (Cloud and Console) ID@Xbox – February 23
  • Dirt 5 (Cloud, Console and PC) – February 25
  • Elite Dangerous (Console) – February 25
  • Superhot: Mind Control Delete (PC) ID@Xbox – February 25

Dirt 5 the biggest surprise here, as one of the biggest games launched around the dawn of the new game generation. It was regularly featured by Microsoft to show off the virtues to their new console hardware, whether it was the shortened loading times, the full 4K graphics, the performance possible on the Xbox Series S, or the 120fps modes available for those with high refresh rate TVs and monitors.

In our Dirt 5 review, Tom wrote:

DIRT 5 strips away the more serious elements of the franchise and puts all its eggs in one, arcade cabinet shaped, basket. At times a riot, in other areas a little repetitive and lacking in finesse, it nevertheless delivers on the concept of an adrenaline-fueled off-road racer. It's a game that makes you sit forward in your seat and savour the joys of jumping a Dakar Rally Peugeot 3008 over a ravine.

Come 25th February, the game will be available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC and on Android via Cloud Gaming streaming. Everything, in other words.

Similar in its broad availability will be Wreckfest, the smash-tastic arcade racer that will be joining Game Pass tomorrow, 18th February – if you're of a PlayStation persuasion, Wreckfest is also on PS Now. In our Wreckfest review, Tom said:

Wreckfest is a surprising triumph in blending the best that sim and arcade racers have to offer in an explosive and visually gratifying package. A few visual issues and overly aggressive AI do little to spoil one of the best driving games of 2019.

And the last biggie is Elite Dangerous, which will be available for consoles from 25th February, giving you a starship of your own and sending you out into a vast recreation of the Milky Way. The game has been heavily expanded over the years since its release, with Frontier building up to the major Elite Dangerous: Odyssey release in 2021. Unfortunately, pandemic related impacts have meant that the early 2021 release has been split up, with PC gamers going first in late spring, and PS4 and Xbox gamers expecting the DLC to arrive this autumn.

Source: Xbox

Rainbow Six Siege Year 6 teased with Operation: Crimson Heist

With Rainbow Six Siege Year 6 rapidly approaching, Ubisoft have teased fans of the tactical Tom Clancy shooter with a glimpse of the game's next season.

Rainbow Six Siege Year 6 Season 1 (Y6S1) is officially titled Crimson Heist and we're due to learn more as we head into the Six Invitational play-offs this weekend which are being hosted in Paris.

Admittedly, the teaser doesn't give away much about the new Rainbow Six Siege Operator, nor which map Ubisoft plan on reworking for Crimson Heist. The name of the operation itself has led to speculation that the developers will be giving Bank a full refurb.

However, according to one dataminer, the next upcoming map rework will be Border and not Bank. The source of the reported leak, benjaminstrike, accurately revealed the operation name of Y6S1 as Crimson Heist back in December 2020 which adds some veracity to this claim.

In addition, they've shared some details on the next Rainbow Six Siege Operator. According to benjaminstrike, this newcomer is an Argentinian agent named Flores who doesn't belong to an CTU. Although we don't know his weapon loadout, the leak suggests that Flores is an attacker who wields a gadget known as the RCE-Ratero, "ratero" being Spanish for pickpocket. This drone can be deployed and then subsequently detonated with an additional press of the gadget button. This explosion is said to mimic the damage radius of a C4 charge but isn't instant, requiring a 5-second timer.

Although these leaks certainly sound plausible, we won't know for sure until the Rainbow Six Siege Year 6 panel being hosted during the Six Invitational. It is due to take place before the final match on Sunday evening, February 21st 2021.

In other Rainbow Six news, images of key artwork for Rainbow Six Parasite (formerly Rainbow Six Quarantine) have been discovered online.

Saudi Arabia buys more than $3.3 billion shares in EA, Activision, and Take-Two

Some interesting news from the world of finance, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia has just bought a chunk of Activision, EA, and Take Two. They snapped up 15 million Activision shares, around 3.5% of the company, 7.42 million Electronic Arts shares (2.6%), and 3.97 million Take-Two shares (3.5%).

In comparison, the top individual shareholder for Activision is our old pal Bobby Kotick, who owns just 0.56% of the company, and the largest group is Vanguard who own 7.8% of Activision, so the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabi have a fairly sizeable chunk of the games maker.

If you're thinking that Saudi Arabia has rather awful record on human rights including executions, discrimination against women, torture, religious discrimination, and the fact that being gay can get your stoned to death, you'd be right. Knowing that government owned PIF will benefit from next purchase of FIFA Ultimate Team may raise some moral questions.

However, before anyone jumps on their moral high horse I should point out that PIF already own a large amount of shares in Facebook, Disney, Uber, and Boeing, so you have almost certainly generated a dollar or two for Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

Of course, video games are not political so none of this matters.

EA recently announced that they would buy buying iconic British publishers Codemasters which means, albeit very indirectly, that the super cute egg-faced character Dizzy could be linked to giving an unfaithful wife 100 lashes. EA have also splashed out on the acquisition of Glu Mobile, the developer behind such mobile game hits as Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and a litany of other celebrity games. Glu Mobile is set to cost EA $2.4 billion in an all-cash deal – or to put it another way, it will cost EA two Codemasters  – and is expected to close during the quarter ending on June 30th.

Source: Investopedia / Arabnews

Six Days in Fallujah – War games are all political and ignoring that is a dereliction of duty

Having been effectively cancelled under a cloud of controversy and public pushback in 2010, the recent re-announcement of Six Days in Fallujah has revived the various talking points that surrounded the real-world military shooter. Yet, despite being set in the midsts of the Second Iraq War, and the ripples of America and Britain's decision to invade and depose Saddam Hussain still being felt throughout the Middle East to this day, Peter Tamte, the CEO of publisher Victura, asserts through interviews with Polygon and GamesIndustry.biz that the game is "not trying to make a political commentary."

It's a quite staggering statement to make, more baffling than pretty much every other act of political denial that we've seen in the video games industry and a clear abandonment of a moral obligation when dealing with real world events. It might be true that the game narrows its focus to "the complexity of urban combat" and that viewpoint alone, but it leaves the game in a conflicted, contradictory position that is sanitised of the broader impact that the battle and the war had.

Let's not forget that this war is not actually truly in the past for us. The Second Gulf War was a major factor in destabilising the Middle East over the last two decades, one of the triggers for much broader extremism through the region that led to the rise of ISIL in 2013, and the conduct of US troops was thrown back into the spotlight just last month when outgoing President Trump pardoned the Blackwater PMC contractors who had just been convicted for killing 14 civilians in Baghdad in 2007.

It was the deaths of four Blackwater contractors that triggered the First Battle of Fallujah in early 2004, after which insurgents strengthened their hold on the city leading to the Second Battle of Fallujah at the end of the year. US, British and Iraqi government forces waged a costly battle going house-to-house to try and secure the city, and it's this that Six Days in Fallujah seeks to represent. However, the US also resorted to the use of white phosphorous as a weapon against entrenched insurgents. Doing so in a populated area is a war crime per the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, (which the US conveniently hasn't signed) banning the use of air-delivered incendiary weapons against military targets in civilian areas. There's no ifs or buts here, it just is.

Of course, Tamte doesn't think that needs to be in the game. "There are things that divide us, and including those really divisive things, I think, distracts people from the human stories that we can all identify with," he said in an interview with Polygon. "I have two concerns with including phosphorus as a weapon. Number one is that it's not a part of the stories that these guys told us, so I don't have an authentic, factual basis on which to tell that. That's most important. Number two is, I don't want sensational types of things to distract from the parts of that experience."

He continues, "I don't think players are going to be confused about the cost [of war]. I just don't think that they're going to walk away from this experience going, 'We need more war.' I don't think that's something that the Marines and soldiers want as a message. I don't think that's something that the Iraqi civilians want as a message. I think people do need to understand the human cost of war."

Picking a specific perspective such as this might not distract from the story that Tamte wants to tell, and the game will focus on "tactical challenges, not moral challenges", but it inevitably detracts from the truthfulness of a game that aims to recreate the battle. Worse, it seems to wilfully narrow the definition of what the "human cost of war" is to being that of US troops, the aggressors in this conflict.

The Red Cross estimate that there were 800 civilian casualties lost by inhumane means, but that's nothing to say of the specific tactics that the US employed to bottle up the city in advance of the assault. While women and children were allowed to flee in advance of the assault, boys and men between the ages of 15 and 55 were refused and sent back to the city, putting them back in the firing line. Even then, not all civilians were able to escape, meaning that large scale artillery fire likely killed hundreds, as admitted to by a US Congressman, and could easily be mistaken for combatants in high tension room-to-room clearing – will that element be in the game? It's not clear. Oh, and what of the fact that the rates of infant mortality, cancer and birth defects have increased in Fallujah since 2004? All of this can be linked to the use of enriched Uranium munitions by the US in the war. And again, what of the use of white phosphorous as an incendiary weapon that cannot be put out with water and burns its victims to death?

Six Days in Fallujah is simply the zenith of such denials that have plagued the games industry for decades. It's come to the fore much more heavily in recent times, whether it's The Division 2's fight to reclaim Washington DC supposedly not being an increasingly apt political metaphor, and Far Cry 5's satire of midwestern America being similarly apolitical (which denies the very point of satire). There was even the CEO of Activision (who publish Call of Duty) clutching his pearls at the very idea that games could dare to try and say something about politics. Of course, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare then went and referred to the infamous Highway of Death, but twists the real world US bombing of retreating Iraqi soldiers in the First Gulf War into an act committed by Russians.

Every single denial rings hollow; every denial is mocked and criticised; every denial is a simple attempt to avoid controversy and lost sales with certain demographics in the US.

There's always been a tendency to whitewash the less than valorous aspects of history in the name of entertainment, and it's a trait that's shared with TV and cinema, highlighting the heroic stories of those who were undeniably fighting on the right side of history in WW2 through D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, but averting their gaze to mass bombing campaigns that devastated cities on the other side. Pick the right viewpoints and moments, and you can easily avoid having to include such historical context, but that inevitably shapes the wider perception of war itself.

It's through Hollywood that the US became the universal good guys of World War 2, just as it was through Hollywood directors engaging with the anti-war sentiment spread through wider cultural movements that much of the popular view of the Vietnam War was defined. We're at a similar place now for the Second Gulf War and the wider 'War on Terror' through films like American Sniper, The Hurt Locker, and Zero Dark Thirty. Instead of meaningful critiques, one tells a morally simplistic view of the war and its protagonist, in which Americans are universally good and all of their targets are unambiguously bad, another is filled with unrealistic inaccuracies for the sake of drama, and the last was widely criticised for glorifying torture and validating its use in the hunt for Osama bin Laden – apparently, this was "very hurtful" for director Kathryn Bigelow and the film does not take a viewpoint on the issue, which sounds rather familiar.

Tamte asserts that people could play Six Days in Fallujah and then go to seek the wider context for themselves, and that could be true for some, but ask yourself this: how many people take the film Black Hawk Down entirely at face value, not recognising that it paints a caricature of the Somali militia fighting back (none of whom were portrayed by Somali actors) and that the role of the UN's Malaysian and Pakistani forces were diminished to nothingness?

While there are numerous video games set in World War 2 itself, modern war games typically concoct a fictional battle, abstracting themselves from context and scrutiny. They're accepted by society as a guilty pleasure, yet they perpetuate the same narratives that always paint the US as the good guys. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare featured a plot in which the US invaded a fictional Middle Eastern country that does in fact have a weapon of mass destruction, and while Killzone 2 might have had the trappings of science fiction, its story was a thinly veiled allegory to the invasion of Iraq.

The one real opportunity that Six Days in Fallujah will seemingly take to look up at the wider picture will be in the 10% of the game that depicts an Iraqi civilian trying to get his family out of the city during the battle. Surely this would be the opportunity to give people a view of the devastating atrocities committed, but instead, Tamte merely stresses that you won't be given the opportunity to join the insurgents during this point. There's seemingly no concern in how this side-story will depict the US soldiers from an outside perspective. Will they be glorious saviours? Will they be understandably twitchy and on-edge aggressors? Will this male Iraqi civilian, as mentioned above, be sent back into the war-torn city?

You'd have to expect the former, with no statements to the contrary. Tamte recalled numerous interviews with soldiers and families of soldiers who died in battle, saying "they don't want their child or friend's sacrifice to be forgotten. Even the ones who were very opposed [to the war in Iraq]. And I had conversations with many of them, as well as other members of our team – especially former military who are on our team [that] had conversations with many of these families in 2009 – and we heard one after the other, 'We don't want you to make a game about this, but we don't want our son's sacrifice to be forgotten.' It's a mixture of that. The reality is that most people are not aware of the battle for Fallujah."

In choosing not to depict the less palatable aspects of the Battle of Fallujah, Six Days in Fallujah will be tantamount to another example of pro-US, pro-military propaganda. Not every game needs to make a political statement, but this game's stated basis in reality and grounding in one of the most controversial times of recent history means it has a moral obligation to do more, and failing to speak to the truth and facts of the conflict will make it just as distorted a depiction of war as Call of Duty.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)