Culture

Game Pass Is Still Missing Most Of The Final Fantasy Games Microsoft Promised

At the end of 2019, Microsoft announced 10 Final Fantasy games would come to Game Pass in the following year. At the start of 2021 most of them are still missing, though Microsoft says they’ll get there eventually. During the X019 livestream event in London near the tail end of 2019, Microsoft announced a bunch…

Neverwinter: Sharandar Revisits The Game’s Very First Adventure Module

The first adventure module added to Perfect World Entertainment’s Neverwinter, 2013’s Fury of the Feywild, introduced players to the ancient elven stronghold of Sharandar. The game’s latest three-part module, launching on PC February 9 and consoles a month later, heads back to those wild woods to see what’s happened over the past seven years and…

Duracell Official Suggests Xbox Controllers Use Of AA Batteries In Influenced By Deal With Battery Company

While every other console controller on the market uses internal rechargeable batteries, Xbox’s still let you use AA batteries to power them, and new remarks by a Duracell spokesperson possibly shed some light on why this is. “There’s always been this partnership with Duracell and Xbox…it’s a constant agreement that Duracell and Microsoft have in…

Yoshi Devolved From Babysitter to Baby

Yoshi, upon its debut, was a bright green agent of change in the Mario franchise. In its first appearance, it bursts from an egg, growing from newborn to adult in the blink of an eye. Yet for a character so tied to the concept of change and evolution, Yoshi has found itself creatively and conceptually…

Twitch Removes “PogChamp” Emote

Twitch has removed the extremely popular “Pogchamp” emote from its service after the man featured in it, streamer Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez, tweeted some Extremely Bad Shit about the events currently unfolding in Washington. Here’s the tweet in question, in which Gutierrez directly calls for “civil unrest” for a “#MAGAMartyr” following a shooting that took place…

Former Xbox Executives Say Nintendo ‘Laughed Their Asses Off’ When Microsoft Offered To Buy It

Microsoft once proposed buying Nintendo in order to lock in its first-party games for the Xbox. The Japanese video game company didn’t just decline to entertain the offer; it laughed the tech giant’s executives out of the room, according to a new report by Bloomberg. “Steve [Ballmer, Microsoft’s former CEO] made us go meet with…

The Sinking City Returns To Steam As Legal Battle Between Developer And Publisher Continues

Moody cosmic horror game The Sinking City is now back up on Steam and other digital storefronts following the latest developments in an ongoing legal fight between developer Frogwares and the game’s publishing partner, Nacon, taking place in the Paris Court of Appeal. The Sinking City, an excellent open world mystery game about exploring a…

Immortals Fenyx Rising’s Pinball Mini-Game Is The Best (And Worst) Puzzle In The Game

Last night, I stumbled upon a puzzle in Immortals Fenyx Rising that can only be described as “pinball, but Ancient Greek.” It’s cool as Hades, and I love it. I also hate it with the fire of the Phlegethon. You should definitely check it out. The pinball game in question is the crux of Aiolos’…

And Now For An Architectural Criticism Of Cyberpunk 2077

One of the darkest corners of my wheelhouse is the point where architecture and video games meet, so it’s great getting the chance—like I did today—to read some thoughts on the subject from someone who architecturally knows what they’re talking about. In a piece for The Architect’s Newspaper, Extra Office’s Ryan Scavnicky has written a…

Sonic Speedrunners Go Fast, Break World Records Back-To-Back During AGDQ

The Sonic block of games is mandatory watching in my house for every Games Done Quick event and this year’s block—that took place yesterday—has already claimed GOAT status when not one but two runners achieved world records back-to-back Flying Fox’s earned the first world record for her run of 2013’s Sonic The Hedgehog Android port.…

Fumito Ueda’s New Year Celebration Included Teasing His Studio’s Next Game

Fumito Ueda and his studio genDESIGN felt it was the perfect time to remind everyone they’re still working on a new game.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Gets New Abilities But Only If You Disconnect Your Console From The Internet

A few weeks back, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla players spotted a handful of new abilities in the game’s elaborate skill tree. Then, those abilities disappeared. Following Valhalla’s mid-December update, which precipitated the Yuletide Festival event, each of the game’s three skill trees (Bear, Raven, Wolf) appeared to expand by two nodes. The first on each tree…

Loads Of Graphics Cards Just Got More Expensive

Last week, a range of products that had been exempted from tariffs—thanks to the ongoing US v China trade war—lost that status, and so in 2021 will be more expensive. Among those products are graphics cards and motherboards. As the New York Times reported last week, “Mr. Trump began placing tariffs on more than $360…

Slay The Spire Is Being Turned Into A Board Game

The incredibly deep roguelike deck-building RPG Slay the Spire will get the tabletop treatment, board game makers Contention Games recently announced, letting people explore the game’s inventive card battles together in real life. According to Contention’s website, the Slay the Spire board game will allow for up to four players, with rounds taking about 45…

Destiny 2‘s final Season of the Hunt mission is now live. It dropped out of the blue, and it’s called Coup de Grace, sending you on one last hunt to take down the High Celebrant. I hear it’s good, though also quite buggy at the moment.

Various Persona Soundtracks Now Available On Spotify, Apple Music

The video game discographies of Spotify and Apple Music got significantly better outside of Japan today with the addition of soundtracks from the Persona series. These soundtracks include tunes from Persona 2, Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5, as well as music from spin-off games like Persona Q and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax. There…

Conspiracy Theories Drive Developer To Recreate Nancy Pelosi’s Vandalized Garage In VR

After a photo of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s vandalized San Francisco home started circulating online, it didn’t take long for people to call bullshit. Was the graffiti and seeming pig’s blood really the work of outraged leftists, or an elaborate psy-op perpetuated by some right-wing group to delegitimize progressives? Who the hell knows,…

Minecraft Earth Ends This Summer

Augmented reality mobile game Minecraft Earth is shutting down in June, developer Mojang Studios announced this morning “Minecraft Earth was designed around free movement and collaborative play–two things that have become near impossible in the current global situation,” the official announcement reads. “As a result, we have made the difficult decision to re-allocate our resources…

The Medium Finally Has The Hardware To Match Its Ambition

Upcoming horror game The Medium is about a psychic trying to solve a crime. Developers at Polish game studio Bloober Team tell me it’s also about breaking down player’s preconceived notions about the world. “The game is about points-of-view,” lead designer Wojciech Piejko explained during a recent interview with Kotaku. “Nothing is black and white,…

Nintendo Buys Canadian Studio Behind Luigi’s Mansion 3, Super Mario Strikers

Nintendo just announced that it has purchased Next Level Games, the developers behind titles like Luigi’s Mansion 3, Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon and the Super Mario Strikers series. Nintendo’s announcement says the deal is expected to be concluded in March, and “will serve to secure the availability of NLG development resources for Nintendo.” To me,…