In Hades, Poms of Power are used to level up your boons - hence the reason for choosing the fruit - and yesterday streamer Dylan “Rudeism” Beck uploaded a video showing himself beating the game’s final boss using a pomegranate controller. He created it by “chopping [the] pomegranate up and sticking a bunch of wires in it,” using 10 pieces of pomegranate flesh and hooking them up to specific inputs using a MakeyMakey circuit board....
Meet ‘Flann O’Brien’: inspiration for the greatest deconstructionist, science-fiction, comedy game no-one’s made yet. Brian Ó Nualláin [Brian O’Nolan] - alias ‘Flann O’Brien’, alias ‘Myles na gCopaleen’ [Myles of the little horses], alias ‘Brother Barnabas’, alias ‘Count O’Blather’, alias ‘George Knowall’, alias ‘Lir O’Connor’, alias ‘Velvet Texture’ (my personal favourite) - was born in 1911 to an Irish-speaking family in Strabane, County Tyrone, in what is now Northern Ireland. Educated at University College, Dublin, where he became a prominent (and provocative) member of the intellectual scene, he wrote prolifically in both Irish and English, evolving a form of post-modern meta-fiction in which gangsters and cowboys rub shoulders with Irish mythic heroes, good novels have not one beginning, but three, and characters rise up to put their author on trial for the many indignities to which he has subjected them....
“Imagine [Jedward] coming up against All the Things She Said - it’s like David vs. Goliath if David lost,” – Cian Maher In the third year of the pandemic, I hit upon, quite arguably, the greatest idea I’ve had in my life: a fantasy fighting league made up of your favorite 90s/00s pop bands. I’m not talking about a DDR-style or rhythm game that involves matching beats – I’m talking about a Blaseball-style league where you can draft t....
Which is a bit of a shame, given how Sonic Frontiers plays an awful lot better than it looks - faint praise, perhaps, seeing as in its unpolished, unfinished state it looks frankly horrendous, but praise nevertheless for what’s quite easily the boldest, bravest shift the series has seen since 1998’s Sonic Adventure. I think Sonic Frontiers has a fair chance of landing the transition to an all-new style as effectively as that game - faint praise once again seeing as Sonic Adventure had more than its fair share of flaws, but this is Sonic we’re talking about and things haven’t always been straightforward....
The game has been optimised for Xbox Series X/S to hit 60fps according to Microsoft, but on Series S it runs at 30fps with no performance mode option to change this. Sega did provide a solution to TheGamer, involving amending the main console settings. Watch on YouTube Sonic Frontiers - Showdown Trailer Sega suggests that if your TV allows for a 4K UHD display, this may be causing the lower frame rate....
Ryan discussed the June launch of Sony’s revised PS Plus subscription with GamesIndustry.biz, but believes live service games are more likely to become the dominant model. “That phenomenon of the live service game… that has, in a very large part, fuelled the enormous growth in the gaming industry that we’ve seen over the last ten years,” he said. “I think that trend towards live services will continue, and if you look for a model in our category of entertainment, which supports sustained engagement over a long period of time, live services games arguably fit that bill better than a subscription service....
In a press release today, developer 1047 Games detailed several major additions due at that point, including a custom map creator and a new 100-level battle pass. Two fresh game modes will also be added to the mix: Evolution, an offering that buffs losing team loadouts for the next round, and One Flag Capture-the-Flag, which is fairly self-explanatory. Meanwhile, Splitgate’s map editor will let you create, co-create and share maps with friends....
“After narrowing in on the concept of a survival story on a remote island,” explains Square Enix over on YouTube, “[Crystal Dynamics] began developing what was internally called Tomb Raider: Ascension.” The project is said to have “felt closer to a horror game than a Tomb Raider title” at one point, although this aspect would eventually fade into the background as the studio opted to focus in on survival elements....
It’s a spooky chocolate-making, monster-stabbing, small town-living role-playing game, with a visual and musical style similar to that of the hugely popular Stardew. Here’s a first look trailer showing gameplay: “After dedicating 10 years of my life to Stardew Valley (and counting), the time has finally come to announce my next game,” Barone wrote in a blog post detailing the project. “In Stardew Valley, the focus was more humble: living off the land, growing food, and connecting to the people and nature around you....
Valve says that should you “encounter an issue” with its new handheld system, you can send your Steam Deck for repair or replacement via one of its repair centres, where the team will “diagnose the device, repair if needed, then ship the fixed unit back to you”. Whilst in-warranty repairs will be carried out free of charge, Valve does remind players that “if your dog gnaws on your thumbstick and breaks it, this is not covered by warranty”, although repair centres will repair accidental damage “for a fee”....
Things are looking smooth for Steam Deck right now. Production is doing well, outperforming Valve’s estimates, and people are finally getting their hands on a unit. To round off August, Valve has revealed the 10 most played games on Steam Deck during the month. Coming out on top was Vampire Survivors, with new release Cult of the Lamb in second. Elden Ring, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, Stardew Valley, No Man’s Sky, Hades, MultiVersus, Skyrim, and Monster Hunter Rise finished off the list....
This will be the first time Cuphead has been released physically for PS4 and Switch. A physical release for Xbox One happened in 2017, but left fans disappointed when it turned out to be a code inside a box rather than a disc. Studio MDHR made the announcement earlier today to mark Cuphead’s 5th anniversary. A release date and price have not been announced yet, though the studio promises the physical edition will be “coming soon”....
Storm Point, a beautiful island paradise located on the planet Gaea, stretches from its tropical shoreline up to the peaks of its towering mountains, making for Apex Legends’ biggest map yet - said to be around 15% larger than previous record holder World’s Edge. Respawn’s trailer gives a pretty good look at both the new map and its various points of interest, but the latter are detailed more thoroughly in the developer’s latest news post - outlining the likes of Apex Legends’ new Gravity Cannons, which aid traversal by firing riders in a predetermined direction....
Talking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference this week and transcribed by our friends at VGC, Zelnick was asked to expand on why the publisher had decided to add $10 to the price of NBA 2K21. The first publisher to confirm a price hike for next-gen video games, Zelnick said the decision came because the game offered “an array of extraordinary experiences” and the last frontline price increase in the US was fifteen years ago....
In a fresh trailer we saw a previously-unrevealed six-player online and local multiplayer option. Casey Jones is playable, too. We also got a release date for the game - and it’s soon. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge launches for PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation and Xbox including via Game Pass on 16th June.
Let’s start with PC, where DF crew member Alex Battaglia has been testing the game for the past few days. Sadly, there’s no good news here - the game is a disastrous state as of launch. First up, this is yet another Unreal Engine 4 title that doesn’t precompile its shaders, meaning that the first appearance of new models and effects is accompanied by a hefty stutter that can bring even a high-end Core i9 12900K and RTX 4090 rig to its knees - with even longer hitches on weaker systems....
For some bizarre reason, we’ve collectively decided to disown the sequels to the original sci-fi classic. And to a greater extent (and more understandably), we’ve actively chosen to ignore the series’ spin-off games, particularly 2003’s Enter the Matrix. It was janky, repetitive, and filled with set pieces that didn’t pump the adrenaline like other action games at the time. Yet somehow, despite its flaws, Shiny had made one of the most addictive games I’d ever purchased that generation....
I’m reading Banham again because his generous and perceptive take on LA always feels like comfort reading. In March 2021, just opening the book seems to bring the warmed-concrete spaciousness of that city, with its standing freeway pillars and playful flow between urban and wilderness, into the saggy darkness of the lockdown home. And I’m looking through old mags because Banham sent me back to GTA 5 and then GTA 5 sent me back to a Wipeout Fusion print ad, a double-page spread, once seen and never forgotten, in which London has been chosen as a site for the development of a multi-gajillion pound anti-grav racing track, and the citizens are not happy about it....
First of all, I think it’s worth noting that the Forspoken demo isn’t like most other game demos. This is a pretty substantial taste of the full game, with several hours of content spread across a vast space. Narrative is kept to a minimum, but you get a good sense of how the game actually plays - and I generally liked what I saw. Combat is fast, fluid, and reminiscent of battle sequences in prerendered Final Fantasy media....
Probably in part because of that, I’ve thought about the inside of the GameCube much more than the inside of any other console. The unseen wonders! What’s in there, what manner of energy flocks and shivers over this secret landscape that we never generally get to witness, but which allows such beautiful, magical things to happen on the screen? I tend to think that the GameCube prompted these kinds of questions even if yours didn’t happen to make a sound like broken clockwork....
