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Artificial intelligence might be on the verge of changing pretty much everything we know about everything. It can create (or at least remix) art, music, and speech and seems poised to disrupt entire industries. Flat Eye, a sim from the indie studio behind Night Call, seeks to explore some of the same issues. What happens if we can clone ourselves, or alter our own memories? What happens if we can perfectly select the genetics of our own offspring?
What starts off as an unassuming gas station simulator quickly turns into a fascinating look at the ways current and speculative technology could impact our lives. A short demo is out now, with the full release on Steam in mid-November.
A mix between resource management sim and narrative story, Flat Eye puts you in charge of a remote fueling station in Iceland. You start with the basics—restocking shelves, ringing up customers, fixing the bathroom. Soon, though, your AI boss gives you access to a range of new technology. A station that spontaneously generates food to users’ specifications, kind of like a replicator from Star Trek (tea, Earl Grey, hot). A teleporter that can send your customers wherever they want (mind the warning, though! It’s a one way trip and Flat Eye™ is not liable for unforeseen outcomes). A cloning booth. These technological marvels bring in premium customers, each with a story to tell. Your decisions in conversations with them and on how to implement the modules determine the outcomes for them, and possibly for all of humanity.
A content warning before Flat Eye begins sets the tone: it deals in heavy topics. As much as artificial intelligence and machine learning have the capacity to truly improve human life, there’s a lot of trepidation that comes with them. One of the most famous thought experiments in the ethics of AI asks us to imagine one whose sole purpose is to maximize the production of paper clips. A useful task, to be sure, until it gets to the point where the AI decides all matter in the universe, including humans, must be converted into paper clips. They even made a game about it.
We don’t learn much about Flat Eye's AI overlords in the demo. At first they seem very much like an automated version of the kinds of things you might expect from corporate leadership today—prioritize efficiency, retain customers, maintain brand standards. Soon, though, things take a turn for the weird that I won’t spoil.
(Image credit: Monkey Moon)
The studio’s previous game, Night Call, was an homage to film noir and the city of Paris that featured a similar narrative device (it also reminded me a bit of Jim Jarmusch’s film Night on Earth, which if you haven’t seen: go do that). In Night Call you drive around town meeting people, having interactions, and ultimately trying to solve a murder. Its strong writing and willingness to meet tough topics with deftness leaves me intrigued to see what kinds of scenarios Flat Eye will explore as it questions how AI will intersect with capitalism and our day-to-day lives.
I enjoyed the demo’s management sim aspects, as well. I got to decide the layout of my shelves, checkout, and bathrooms. Ringing up customers and stocking shelves felt like a cozy warmup for the more serious events to come. Flat Eye has a grid system to connect all your technology to a power source and to one another so that the data you get from the Smart Toilets can inform the DoctorBooth, presumably for… health… reasons. There’s always a small feeling of satisfaction with happy customers—most are just kinda grey blobs that give you a smile icon after their purchase, but interacting with the more fleshed-out premium customers was fascinating.
(Image credit: Monkey Moon)Once I got the MicroResto custom food module connected, Hal came in. Hal wanted a lembas wafer, which felt timely, with Rings of Power on TV. But also strange. It was here where I first got introduced to the AI’s intentions, which seemed not at all sinister.
I mean, who doesn’t love an experiment? It’s always a good thing when an AI tells you to trust them, right?
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Minecraft 1.20 beta builds have started arriving just days after Mojang showed the first features for the next major update over the weekend.
Technically, anyway.
Mojang has released a snapshot build for Minecraft Java and a beta for Minecraft Preview, which are both actually incremental test builds for a minor update to the current version 1.19. They both include a toggle setting to turn on experimental features, though, which include the new camel mob, bamboo wood, hanging signs, and pretty much all the other Minecraft 1.20 features that were announced so far.
According to the patch notes, camels will spawn naturally in desert villages, can be ridden with a saddle, dash across the ground, and seat a second rider too. In Java Edition's patch notes, there's an extra surprise experimental feature available: bundles. The small backpack-like carrying items were initially announced in 2020 and then faded in and out of different experimental builds for a while. They've returned once again, so maybe they'll finally make it into an official game update next year.
I personally made a beeline for the camels and found a desert village with one already wandering about. Naturally, they're as dorky as any Minecraft mob and the one I found first had decided to take a bath in the village well. Nicely done, pal.
As Mojang explained during Minecraft Live last weekend, it's chosen to only reveal a few of the features planned for the 1.20 update so far. What we've been told about are the features that are already closest to completion, which is why we're getting to toy with them in beta builds already.
It seems likely that we'll see new features follow a similar pattern throughout the winter and spring, with Mojang announcing a new bit of the 1.20 update and then pretty quickly allowing us to play with it thereafter. Mojang hasn't given a launch date for 1.20 yet, but it's planned for sometime in 2023.
How to enable Minecraft 1.20 features
If you open up your Minecraft launcher and go to the Preview tab of Minecraft for Windows or use the Installations tab of Minecraft Java to add Latest snapshot 22w42a, you'll start downloading the beta version of the game.
With that done, you'll need to enable the experimental features. In Java, this is done while creating a new world in the "Data Packs" menu. For Minecraft Preview, you'll find the experimental features toggles under the "Experiments" section when creating a new world.
With the new features turned on, you can reference our list of Minecraft commands to locate and teleport to the nearest desert village or bamboo forest. Be kind to your camels out there, kids.
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Today's big Silent Hill Transmission livestream wrapped up with something unexpected: A tease for a brand-new project called Silent Hill F.
The teaser was introduced with absolutely no fanfare at the very end of the presentation, described only as a "completely new video." It begins with a slow pan over desolate, fog-enshrouded fields and streets, before focusing on a young woman looking at a small patch of flowers at the base of a dead tree. She walks through the streets, which are being rapidly overtaken by a strange, red weed; soon the bizarre plant life begins to overtake her as well. She flees, but the outcome—surprise!—is not good.
The brief credits that run at the end reveals that the story for Silent Hill F (which sounds like it's not a permanent title) is being written by Ryukishi07, the pen-name of a Japanese writer who leads the 07th Expansion writing group, best known as the creator of the When They Cry visual novels. Creature and character design is credited to "kera," while overall development is being handled by Taiwan-based studio Neobards, the developer of the Resident Evil spinoff Re:Verse.
Konami revealed a tiny bit more about the game on Twitter, specifically that it's "a completely new story set in 1960s Japan."
(Image credit: Konami)Silent Hill F joins the Silent Hill 2 remake and Silent Hill Townfall projects that were announced today, and the upcoming movie based on Silent Hill 2. That's a lot of Silent Hill, but it fits with a recent rumor stating that there are currently multiple Silent Hill games in the works at different studios.
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One of the most exciting Fallout 4 mods in the semi-near future is Fallout: London, which is due out in 2023 and will take us across the Atlantic to see how jolly old England coped with a bunch of nukes being dropped on it. We've seen a lot of the mod already, both in this lengthy gameplay video and another that gave us a tantalizing glimpse of ridable bicycles and weaponized elephants.
Something we won't be seeing in Fallout: London, however, is Queen Elizabeth. Original plans for the mod included a ghoul-ified version of the United Kingdom's longest reigning monarch, complete with blue dress, fancy hat, and two little ravenous corgis ghouls by her side.
But the real Queen's death in September has led to the mod creators' decision to remove the zombie version of Elizabeth from the full-conversion project. (Note: ghouls, particularly feral ghouls, are occasionally referred to as zombies in the Fallout universe, though it's usually considered a derogatory term.)
The development team of Fallout: London first tweeted news of the removal of Queen Elizabeth from the mod last month, reminding fans that this was the plan all along: "In the event of Her Majesty's death, our feature for her within the mod will be removed," the modders had said previously in a statement I can't be bothered to find or verify. A new Fallout: London progress video posted yesterday officially confirms this decision. The Ghoul Queen is out.
Project lead Dean Carter also reveals in the video that there were plans for a Prince Charles ghoul in the works for Fallout: London. The video shows some concept art of the monstrous prince (as well as the Ghoul Queen), but also confirms that Prince Charles (now King Charles in reality) has also been removed from the mod.
"There's no point moaning. This is the official stance of the mod."
Fallout: London project lead"Do not expect them in there," Carter says. "There's no point asking in the comments, there's no point moaning. This is the official stance of the mod, it will not change." Carter says there are plans to replace the missing monarchs with something else but we'll "have to wait and see" what it is.
As an American I admit being a bit baffled over the more extreme reactions to the death of Queen Elizabeth, but I respect the modders' decision to remove the monarchs from their mod out of respect. It's their mod, after all, and it should satisfy their vision, not anyone else's.
I will say I really loved the concept art and character design of both ghoulified royals, especially the wonderful little touch of a Q on the Queen's hat. It's very Mario. I definitely would have enjoyed defeating the ghoul Queen and wearing that hat myself. But hey, knowing the internet, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if someone modded the Queen's ghoul back into the mod at some point (or at least the hat), so maybe I'll still get a chance.
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Silent Hill 2 isn't the only big news to come out of today's Transmission livestream. Konami also revealed that an all-new game called Silent Hill Townfall is being developed by Annapurna Interactive and No Code, the studio behind Stories Untold and Observation.
Silent Hill Townfall "respects the source material," creative director Jon McKellan said during the presentation, "but also does something a little bit different with it."
Rumors of an Annapurna-made Silent Hill surfaced earlier this month, following reports that the publisher had been in talks with Konami to do something. This is the first I've heard of No Code's involvement, though, and after my time with Stories Untold, I'm very eager to see what it does with the Silent Hill setting.
"I was a big fan of Annapurna and No Code, so I am determined to make this great opportunity a success," Konami producer Motoi Okamoto said during the presentation. "We couldn't have asked for a better partner to work on a new Silent Hill."
Unfortunately, while McKellan said Silent Hill has been an inspiration to No Code, there are no further details on what Townfall is all about, although he did hint that there might be a few details to be gleaned from the teaser. He also said that the team will have more to share in the new year, which fortunately isn't too far away.
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Silent Hill 2, series breakout and one of the best horror games ever made, is getting a remake, Konami announced today, accidentally uploading its 35-minute Silent Hill Transmission ahead of time. It'll be handled by Bloober Team, the Polish studio responsible for The Medium, Blair Witch, and the Layers of Fear series, with original series monster designer Masahiro Ito and audio designer/composer Akira Yamaoka returning.
Bloober Team previously worked with Yamaoka on The Medium, which had a very Silent Hill vibe, what with its dual realities and haunted resort. Though divisive, it had plenty of fans, with Leana Hafer calling it "one of the best third-person horror games I've ever played" in her review.
Silent Hill 2 was originally released in 2001, and came to PC a year later. There was an HD remaster in 2012, but only on consoles and it wasn't well-received. (For starters, rolling back the fog to show off an increased draw distance meant that if you were quick you'd see monsters being dropped into place as if falling from the sky and the misty Toluca Lake you row across became an untextured white floor.)
Silent Hill 2 Remake will be console-exclusive to PlayStation for its first year, but the trailer notes it will be "Also available on PC", presumably at launch. No release date was announced.
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Need for Speed Unbound attracted immediate attention to itself with its "street art" visual styling, which includes anime-style characters and hand-drawn visual effects like sparks, wings, and lightning bolts that react to your car's actions and performance. Now, thanks to the release of the first gameplay trailer, we can see what it looks like in action.
I'm actually a little surprised by how much it looks like a conventional Need for Speed, with tuners and sports cars bashing around nighttime city streets, evading and outrunning the police as they challenge one another for the street racing crown. The visual effects give it a certain flair, but they're less intrusive than I expected. Electronic Arts has previously confirmed that they can be switched off, which is good news for NFS purists, but this video makes me think that most players won't find it necessary.
What I do find distracting in the video—and not in a good way—is the racing itself. The cars look (and appear to handle) like toys, and show no signs of weight or momentum; a little Nissan rams a SWAT truck barricade and suffers no ill effects—it barely slows down at all. I know, Need for Speed is an arcade racer and not a high-fidelity driving sim, and how it looks in a trailer isn't necessarily a reflection of how it will play. But even for an arcade racer, those cars look awfully stiff and non-reactive.
But even if Unbound ends up driving more like Dinky Cars than supercars, that might only be an issue for me: Multiple comments on YouTube also praise the move away from realism, which is a perfectly fair position to take too.
Need for Speed Unbound is set to launch on December 2 and will be available on PC on Steam, Epic, and the EA app.
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Hello El,
Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
El joined on the 10/19/2022.
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Call of Duty: Warzone is bidding us adieu after two and a half years of being in various states of on fire. The modern warfare-flavored successor to Black Ops 4’s Blackout mode, Warzone quickly ascended to superpower status in the battle royale arms race. Built on the adamantine skeleton of 2019’s Modern Warfare reboot, Warzone has since been augmented with a slew of updates, each one grafting on additional guns, map changes, skins, live events, and more.
Despite Warzone’s immense popularity, its successes were often in spite of itself. After some extended solo queue time in Warzone’s new farewell event, it’s clear that Warzone 2.0 requires a more focused creative and technical vision if Activision wants to avoid the original’s pitfalls.
Thankfully, Infinity Ward has years worth of balancing blunders and game-breaking bugs to learn from in its second crack at battle royale. Let's reflect on Warzone's biggest shortcomings and consider it a blueprint for a better Warzone 2.0.
Decrease the file size
Warzone is beyond bloated, hastily bolted onto three different Call of Dutys (all set decades apart) with a brutal 98 gigabytes as a standalone install. If you decide that you want to play the campaign and multiplayer modes of the respective CoD games you purchased, you could easily fill up an entire SSD. By contrast, Fortnite is one-fifth that size. Byte bloat doesn’t even just affect the player—as anyone who has tried to convince their friends to play Warzone knows, the most common response is “Let me see if I have enough space."
Warzone’s install size is a barrier to play that needs to be addressed to keep people around.
(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)Fix the user experience and squash the bugs
Years on, Warzone’s menus are sluggish, crashes occur at random, and the netcode is unstable. It’s a uniquely hostile piece of software to navigate, littered with bugs and issues absent in most early access games. After any one of its gargantuan seasonal updates, Warzone will frequently forget your audio settings, and god help you if you have headphones on because you’re going to have to sit through an unskippable cutscene of white guys zipping up vests at deafening volume.
The worst bugs aren't limited to the front-end: Veteran players will remember the infinite-stim glitch that saw players exploiting a healing tool to survive indefinitely outside the circle and passively win matches. Playing Warzone requires a level of patience well beyond what’s typically required of a BR game.
And don't get me started on the shaders. It’s unacceptable how often we have to wait to party up with friends because the game needs to load individual shaders while we sit staring at a menu.
The horrendous MechaGodzilla skin from the Godzilla vs. Kong event. (Image credit: Activision)Overhaul cosmetics
Skins are the big driver of Warzone’s revenue, and while there are some genuinely cool skins and unique weapons buried in the CoD store, the vast majority look like they’re pulling double duty for rave gear. While I would never describe Call of Duty as "minimalist," Warzone 2.0 already looks like it'll be refreshing, briefly free of the baggage of two and a half years of a monetization model run amok.
It’s a hard reset that’s desperately needed, but all for naught if Activision opts for more Attack on Titan-style brand crossovers that bulldoze over any attempt at cohesion. Even Fortnite, the crowned monarch of random crossover events, manages to unify its multiverse under a single style. And hey, if Warzone is dead set on being as tasteless as the single player modes that stir and linger in its shadow, go all the way and sell me an Oliver North skin.
Give the game an art style (and stick to it)
Warzone has always been a bit of a visual mess, but never more so than now, a Disneyland built on a graveyard of imperial conflicts. The decision to integrate the assets of WW2 and Black Ops into Warzone has resulted in a game with no visual identity, an awkward merge of three different games with three totally distinct art directions and design languages. While no map is free from artistic sin, Caldera is the chief offender here.
Beginning with a beachhead landing from a plane so old it predates the air force, the map grabs at disparate visual motifs (the Spanish-Columbian architecture of Havana, Japanese-occupied Burma, the late Cold War) and clumsily smashes them together. There are immensely talented artists and designers who work in the visual framework of near-future war (Yoji Shinkawa of Metal Gear fame and Shoji Kawamori’s work on Ace Combat 7, for example), and it’s a shame that a series this big is so unimaginative.
Warzone 2.0 would benefit from a map design team that can bring to life a focused, creative vision of contemporary conflict. What we’ve seen of Warzone 2.0’s launch map Al Mazrah looks promising: a jewel of the Islamic golden age laid low by centuries of foreign invasion. The emphasis placed on the region’s historical locations (crusader castles, mosques & monasteries) gives the map a stylistic edge over Verdansk’s dull post-Soviet business parks.
It’ll take both creativity and restraint to see that this theme isn’t undercut by iterative map updates.
(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)Keep Warzone’s arsenal independent
Activision made a bold call when it decided to unite Warzone and its annual $70 Call of Duty games under one shared umbrella of battle passes, progressions, and weapons. Warzone’s seasonal model was integrated with the releases of both the Black Ops–Cold War in 2020 and Vanguard in 2021.
While it was cool to see unlocks in one CoD experience reflect in another, introducing weapons from games produced by entirely different studios that were designed for different modes resulted in dramatic meta shake-ups, almost always for the worst. The Black Ops arsenal is an eclectic assortment of high fire rate death machines that left the Modern Warfare arsenal in the dust when they arrived in one big bundle in late 2020, while Vanguard’s interwar-period rifles and rudimentary machineguns struggle to match pace at any range.
The ambitious plan to spread one Call of Duty vision across four games has resulted in a crowded arsenal of samey guns where everything feels cheapened and so-called Legendary blueprints are common mid-match finds. Attachments feel meaningless, too, with the only meaningful distinction being what type of scope you grab. Warzone’s arsenal demands a firmer hold on its meta, and a willingness to remove unbalanced gear instead of letting it linger until another DMR 14 incident occurs.
(Image credit: Activision)Bolster the anti-cheat
A simple one everyone can agree on. Cheaters have risen, fallen, and risen again multiple times throughout Warzone’s life cycle. Activision made strides in the war on cheaters when it released its proprietary anti-cheat tool Ricochet last year, but there are still gaps to fill. Ricochet can hand out bans, but these can be circumvented by creating a new account, a pretty meaningless punishment considering most cheats are single-purchase executables that hook into Warzone’s executable.
If Warzone 2.0 implemented more thorough hardware and IP bans, it stands to reason that the prevalence of aimbots and wallhacks would decrease significantly. Warzone 2.0’s mandatory phone number login could potentially slow down cheaters, at the risk of compromising user privacy and exposure via data breach.
Warzone’s bones were and are solid, and despite the long, long list of issues I’ve encountered over its lifetime, I always came back around—even if it meant coming dangerously close to hitting my data cap downloading an update. When it’s working, Warzone is a fluid and forgiving BR with tons of flexibility and explosive gunplay.
If Warzone 2.0 can resist the temptation to go hog wild on cosmetics, emphasize optimization, bug fixes, and netcode, and not be afraid of injecting a little personality, Warzone 2.0 could be the lasting sequel that Activision is banking on.
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An awful lot of hero-types have passed through the roster of Midnight Sons, the original spelling of the super-team that's now known as Midnight Suns, and which will soon be brought to the world of videogames as Marvel's Midnight Suns. Most of them are C-listers at best, like Iron Fist, Man-Thing, Morbius, Werewolf By Night, and Wong, but there are a few names that have been brought to popular acclaim by the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Wolverine, Doctor Strange, maybe Blade if you're into that sort of thing. One name that is definitely not on the Midnight Sons list, however, is Deadpool.
That may be changing at some point in the relatively near future. The Midnight Suns Twitter account has been 'taken over' by Deadpool, who has renamed the channel to #DeadpoolSuns and says he won't relinquish control "until these nerds put me in their Midnight Suns game." Naturally, there is also a very Deadpool-esque video.
that's right, POOL-heads! make your voices heard! I, the great Deadpool, must be in Midnight Suns! this LEGENDARY injustice will not stand!
#DeadpoolSuns pic.twitter.com/VAwSXrO0YTOctober 19, 2022See moreIt's quite possible that Firaxis and 2K are simply leaning into the popularity of Deadpool as the launch of Marvel's Midnight Suns grows nearer. But there is a chance that the merc with a mouth is in the game.
YouTuber TonyBingGaming saw a hint at Deadpool back in July in the form of Bob Dobalina, aka Hydra Bob, who joined Hydra because he thought it had a good dental plan (he confused it with AIM) and ultimately became Deadpool's friend and sidekick. Bob also appeared in the first Deadpool film, although as one of Ajax's hired guns rather than a member of Hydra.
Anyway, Hydra Bob is an enemy character in Midnight Suns, and he's such a niche character—and so closely associated with Deadpool—that it would be kind of odd to have one without the other.
This is a bit more of a stretch—and, much like the Deadpool tweet itself, might just be 2K having some fun with the fans—but Deadpool's crack about Moon Knight could be meaningful too. A reference to Khonshu, the Egyptian god of the moon, can be seen in a Midnight Suns teaser, leading some fans to suspect that Moon Knight may also be added to the game at some point.
2K Games has not commented on the video, but it did retweet it, asking, "How did Deadpool get in here?"
It wouldn't be too difficult to squeeze one or two (or more) additional heroes into the game—the confirmed roster of Marvel's Midnight Suns is already pretty beefy, after all:
- Captain America
- Blade
- Magik
- Iron Man
- Wolverine (voiced, as always, by Steve Blum)
- Doctor Strange
- Captain Marvel
- Nico Minoru
- Ghost Rider (the Robbie Reyes incarnation—he has a car)
- Spider-Man
- Scarlet Witch
It also seems awfully unlikely to me that 2K would use a very high-profile character like Deadpool to promote Midnight Suns with a faux-demand for inclusion if it wasn't actually going to use the character in the game—that's just a fast way to annoy people who'd like to see him in it.
We'll find out what's going on soon enough: Marvel's Midnight Suns is slated to launch on December 2.
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The Fallout series recently celebrated its 25th birthday, meaning that in another decade it'll be old enough to run for president of the irradiated United States. The original 2D isometric turn-based RPG, developed by Black Isle Studios and Interplay Productions, was released in 1997, and was followed by Fallout 2 the very next year.
But it would take another decade for Fallout 3 to arrive, this time made by Bethesda Game Studios after buying the Fallout license from the bankrupt Interplay and changing the game into a real-time, open world, first- and third-person shooter. The rest is Fallout history.
In a video published by Bethesda this week (embedded below), members of the Fallout 3 team shared their memories of taking over the development of the series—including Todd Howard, who served as Fallout 3's game director. Turns out Howard received the earth-shaking news that Bethesda had acquired the license for Fallout the same way I remind myself to take vitamins: with a Post-It note.
"I can remember this," Howard says in the video. "Coming back to my desk, and Todd Vaughn, our VP of development here at Bethesda, had left a yellow sticky note on my keyboard, and it said 'Fallout's yours.' That's all it said. I'll never forget that."
Howard's reaction wasn't quite as restrained. "I think I screamed and ran around the studio," he says. "Because everyone at the team had heard this might be a possibility."
Fallout 3 was first shown at E3 in Santa Monica in 2008. Pete Hines, senior VP of global marketing and communications, says it was important to Howard that Tim Cain, producer of the original Fallout, approved of the new direction Bethesda was taking with Fallout 3.
"We need to make sure the Fallout guy likes the Fallout that we're making," says Hines.
Cain had his reservations, though. "I kinda felt like my baby had been adopted by another family," Cain says. "It wasn't so much that I didn't like the family. It's just my baby was going to be raised differently than I would raise this baby."
While Hines sweated over Cain's reaction, he needn't have worried. "It was mesmerizing. It was immersive. It was incredible," Cain says of seeing Fallout in first-person for the first time. "I especially loved when you actually got to leave the Vault and the light came up and you saw the Wasteland."
"That was a big watershed moment in some ways," says Hines. "Wanting to do right by Fallout meant you go back to the folks who came up with this stuff and said, 'Hey, here's what we're doing.'"
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Event
Broom Race on Mirage Isle
Event PeriodOct. 20, 2022 (Thurs) after maintenance–Nov. 10, 2022 (Thurs) before maintenance
Event DetailsOutline- The Broom Race on Mirage Isle event takes place on Mirage Isle.
- Daily Quests reset at CEST 23:00 (PDT 21:00).
About Event Quests and Rewards- Hallowtide Broom Race
- Talk to the Little Witch on Mirage Isle.
- Accept the daily quest [Hallowtide Broom Race] and get the Mirage Broom.
- Ride the broom and fly through the first–fourth gate.
- Complete the quest from the Little Witch.
- Quest Reward: Broom Race Coin x8
- Broom Pro! (when finishing the race in 3 min)
- Use Witch Token Rank 4 to accept the quest.
- Talk to the Little Witch to complete the quest.
- Quest Reward: Broom Race Coin x12
- Amazing Skill (when finishing the race in 3 min 30 sec)
- Use Witch Token Rank 3 to accept the quest.
- Talk to the Little Witch to complete the quest.
- Quest Reward: Broom Race Coin x10
- Well Done! (when finishing the race in 5 min)
- Use Witch Token Rank 2 to accept the quest.
- Talk to the Little Witch to complete the quest.
- Quest Reward: Broom Race Coin x8
- You Finished! (when finishing the race in 5+ min)
- Use Witch Token Rank 1 to accept the quest.
- Talk to the Little Witch to complete the quest.
- Quest Reward: Broom Race Coin x6
About Mirage Broom SkillsImageDescriptionMirage Broom (Binds on Pickup)
- Can only be used on Mirage Isle.
- Use the arrows keys to ride the breeze freely.
- Can't bump against another player while equipping it.
- Below skills are available.Dismount Broom
- Fold up your broom. Doing this while still in the air might prove...problematic.Broom Nitro (Cooldown: 30 sec)
- Triggers a speedy tumble.Slow Down (Cooldown: 5 sec)
- Slows down the broom by summoning dirt around you.
- Decreases Glide Speed by 30% for 5 sec, allowing a more precise control.Go Away! (Cooldown: 1 sec)
- Immune to Mirage Ghost's attacks for 5 sec.Broom Smokescreen (Cooldown: 10 sec)
- Creates Broom Smokescreen for 10 sec.- You won't be able to fly the broom if you fold up your glider or are attacked by a Mirage Ghost and returned to the starting point.
- Abandon the Hallowtide Broom Race quest and restart it to enable Broom Flight.
Event Process
- You can obtain rank rewards based on finishing time only when you fly through the first–fourth gates in order.
- Fly through the gates to gain 1 stack of 8% flight speed increase buff for 600 sec. (Can stack up to 3 times)
- If you fall during the flight, abandon the quest and restart it so that you can obtain the rank rewards based on finishing time.
- Ride the Mirage Broom and fly through the Flaming Pumpkin to gain a 2% flight speed increase buff for 3 sec. (Can stack up to 30 times)
- A warning message will be displayed when a ghost appears, and your glider's flying direction may change or you may be returned to the starting point due to debuff.
Event Rewards- You can exchange the event reward for the below items (bound on pickup) at the Gift Exchanger on Mirage Isle.
Item NameQtyRequired Broom Race CoinsSpooky Cauldron Mailbox1180Bound Serendipity Stone160Bound Resplendent Tempering Crate150Auroran Synthesis Stone Crate130Decrystallization Scroll115Bound Labor Recharger112Adventurer's Winged Elixir110Manastorm Crystal37Brilliant Hiram Awakening Scroll45Radiant Hiram Awakening Scroll55Hiram Awakening Scroll105Honorforged Medal15Luna Charm Rank 115Disclaimer- You must be Lv30+ to participate in the event quests.
- All event quests are daily quests and reset daily at CEST 23:00 (PDT 21:00).
- If you fail to fly through all 4 gates in one flight, you won't be able to obtain Witch Token Rank 1–4.
- You can only accept and complete one of the quests that can be started using Witch Token Rank 1–4. Please make sure to use the token on the day you receive it.
- Event NPCs and event quest items including Witch Token Rank 1–4 will disappear after the maintenance when the event ends.
- Broom Race Coins and Hallowtide Gift Exchanger will disappear a week after the event ends.
- The Mirage Broom can only be used on Mirage Isle.
- Summoning pets or mounts in some areas of the event region will destroy them.
- All event items can't be restored.
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Patch NotesContent Updates
- Reinforced the penalty for blocked characters to combat issues that interrupt game progression.
- We have added below penalties for blocked characters to combat issues that interrupt players' game progression, such as repeatedly entering/exiting parties/raids or creating portals.
- You can't teleport using portals created by a blocked target.
- A blocked target can't participate in parties or raids you created.
- Your raid recruit/search list is invisible to the blocked target.
- A blocked target can't receive personal/radius invite messages.
- For co-raids, controlling invitations is only available for your own raid.
- We have added below penalties for blocked characters to combat issues that interrupt players' game progression, such as repeatedly entering/exiting parties/raids or creating portals.
- Added a share button to Folio.
Events- The Broom Race on Mirage Isle event has started.
- The free weekend growth support item event has started.
- You can purchase the below items for free at the Marketplace for a certain period of time.
ItemQtyEvent DatePurchase LimitBound Serendipity Stone1Oct. 21, 2022Once per accountDemigod Essence5Oct. 22, 2022Once per accountManastorm Crystal20Oct. 23, 2022Once per accountKyrios Badge10Oct. 23, 2022Once per accountBug Fixes- Added a caution message stating that "Bound Superior Red Regrade Charm" can't be used as a crafting material when converting Duun's Blessing to Silver Regrade Charm.
- Fixed the issue where Memory Hearth couldn't be turned off for an extended period of time.
- Improved Ember items' cooldown sharing tooltip.
- Fixed the issue where your ranking points were not successfully reflected on the ranking list when updated to 4,000 points or lower.
- Fixed the issue where you could purchase the discontinued Rainbow Chum item.
- Reinforced the penalty for blocked characters to combat issues that interrupt game progression.
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A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.
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A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.
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Greetings Inheritors!
We will be conducting scheduled maintenance at the following times:
Maintenance Start Time:
UTC: Oct 13 at 08:00 am
CEST: Oct 13 at 10:00 am
EDT: Oct 13 at 04:00 am
PDT: Oct 13 at 01:00 am
Maintenance End Time:
UTC: Oct 13 at 02:30 pm
CEST: Oct 13 at 04:30 pm
EDT: Oct 13 at 10:30 am
PDT: Oct 13 at 07:30 am
* Please note that the game will shut down before maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause.
Thank you for your understanding!
The ArcheAge Team
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A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.
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Netflix anime series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners showed up to give Cyberpunk 2077 quite a stim in the arm last month, but it was a one-time boost: CD Projekt has made it clear there's no second season of the show in the works; Edgerunners was conceived from the beginning as a one-off.
That may be a surprise if you've witnessed the effect Edgerunners has had on CD Projekt's RPG. The energetic series by Studio Trigger made me consider giving the game another try, and I was hardly alone. Edgerunners was a big hit, spawning tons of mods, and an accompanying game update helped propel the RPG back up into the most-played games on Steam where it's held strong for over a month now. Wouldn't CD Projekt want to keep that gravy train rolling?
It's possible CD Projekt is now regretting the single-season plan, but that was the plan. In a Famitsu interview translated by VGC, CD Projekt Red‘s Satoru Honma said that he "would like to continue to work with Japanese studios to produce more anime in the future, partly because we have received very good feedback." But then he drove the point home: "Just to be clear, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was planned as a standalone work."
If you've watched the series or followed the history of Studio Trigger, this news should have you nodding along. Edgerunners tells a complete story, and Studio Trigger director and co-founder Hiroyuki Imaishi (who headed up Edgerunners) doesn't tend to work on sequels.
All that said, I'd also bet that CD Projekt and Netflix both underestimated how popular Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was going to be, or what a boon it would end up being to Cyberpunk 2077. Given Honma's comment above and a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel on the way, we probably haven't seen the last of Cyberpunk anime on Netflix.
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Cheers love, the Maccies is here. Blizzard is offering a skin to McDonalds customers in Australia and New Zealand at the moment. I can't say it's a pairing that I would have instantly thought of, especially as a region-exclusive item but hey, I'm sure Tracer loves a Chicken Select as much as I do at 2 am on the way home. We're basically soul sisters.
The offer is currently only available in Australia in the McDonald's app. The MyMacca's app now has a promotion where if you buy a Big Mac, McChicken, or 10-piece Chicken McNuggets combo, you can get an epic rarity level skin for Tracer in Overwatch 2. IGN's report confirms my memory isn't failing me either, this is an old Overwatch skin being reused for this promotion. It's still available in-game if you want to purchase it but the only way you can get it free, now loot boxes are gone, is through this promotion.
(Image credit: McDonalds)From the website it looks like the offer is being made in Australia and New Zealand specifically because of a long-time partnership with Overwatch esports in that region. To earn the Tracer skin, after purchasing one of the combos listed above, customers will be sent a unique code within 48 hours which they can then redeem in the Battle.net account management page. If you already own this skin, tough luck! You can't redeem the code for currency or anything else.
This looks to be the beginning of a longer collaboration between Overwatch and McDonalds. As TheGamer reports, there are an increasing number of people taking pictures of McDonalds bags in Australia with the Overwatch 2 logo on it. These bags also feature heroes such as Lucio, Reinhardt, and Tracer on them. So will Australia be getting Overwatch toys in happy meals? Probably, but I also want one so someone down under send me one in the post please?
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We take simulators for granted these days. As I write this, I am no more than two clicks away from a meticulous recreation of trucking, flight, powerwashing, PC building, and so much more besides. But that wasn't always the case. Back in the day, if you wanted a risk-free way to experience something, you had to build an enormous and costly contraption to imitate it, like the 1970s tank simulator at the Military Museum in Full, Switzerland.
The simulator is the last of its kind in the world, and Tom Scott, who I think of as a kind of science elf that lives in the YouTube algorithm, got a chance to try it out. Using the thing is an involved process: you need to equip a throat mic, a headset, and lower yourself into a giant metal container, at which point you come face-to-face with a load of wheels and whirligigs that represent the innards of a tank.
The tank's tiny portholes are linked up with a camera affixed to what is, in essence, a toy tank on a toy map. It's moved around by a robotic arm that pushes the tiny model around based on the inputs the user makes in their big metal coffin.
It works well, which you'd expect from a device that was actually used to train tank drivers. When Scott drives over a bunch of logs, the hydraulics of the simulator kick in to throw him around, when he shifts gear, there's a jolt in the machine and the arm starts pushing the tank faster. It's both incredibly impressive while at the same time making me very glad for my PC.
Back in the day, the simulator was governed by a bulky 1970s computer, but the museum wasn't able to scrounge together the parts to rebuild that bit when they reconstructed the device. So now the entire thing runs off of a Raspberry Pi instead.
It's an incredibly cool machine, and if I ever inexplicably find myself in Full, Switzerland, I'll make it a priority to go and see it. For now, though, I think I'm content to just download Euro Truck Simulator on Steam and recline on the sofa. Maybe I'm spoiled.
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Warhammer 40,000: Regicide is a bolters-and-chainswords take on chess that was good enough to land square in the middle of our grand ranking of every WH40K game ever. Sadly, its days of glory are over: After seven years of operation, the servers have been closed and the Regicide has been delisted from Steam and mobile storefronts.
"Thank you for an incredible seven years of Warhammer 40,000 Regicide 2015-2022!" the studio announced last week. "Congratulations to all our ranked match tournament participants with over 300,000 active players and over 600,000 matches in each mode.
"Unfortunately, we regretfully announce the immediate closure of the servers and will be unlisting the Steam Release, Google Play Store, and the iOS App Store from Today, the 14th of October, 2022."
The good news for anyone who owns the game is that Regicide will continue to operate offline. The bad news is that the campaign is "the weakest part of Regicide," we said in our 70% review. Fortunately, the skirmish mode—which is where Regicide really shines—is also playable offline, and higher-level AIs make for a pretty good challenge.
Hammerfall didn't say why Regicide was taken offline, although it's not all that unusual for the plug to be pulled on older games. What is a bit strange in this instance is how suddenly it all seemed to happen. The announcement of the closure and delisting on Steam, which went up earlier today—a full week after the game was delisted—is the first update since July 2017, and several people have complained that it happened without advance warning.
"Nice, they are shutting down the servers," TheBlasterMaster wrote in one particularly succinct reaction. "Bought this not long ago. BS."
I've reached out to Hammerfall for more information on the shutdown and will update if I receive a reply.
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Disney Dreamlight Valley's Nature and Nurture quest begins after you've met up with Scar for the first time. This quest has you explore a new area of the Sunlight Plateau called the Vitalis Mines, which has new Vitalis crystals to collect with your pickaxe. Scar remains endlessly sarcastic throughout the quest, which is a pleasant change from Donald Duck's endless rages.
There are a few steps to this quest which are fairly straightforward, so I'll talk you through what you need to do, like making extra fizzy root beer and finding rich soil.
Disney Dreamlight Valley: Nature and Nurture quest
This quest begins automatically after you meet Scar and the mines can be found just to the right of Goofy's stall in the Sunlit Plateau, to the right of the nearby bridge. You can approach the mine in two ways: Go straight ahead, cross the river using the rocks in the water, and go up the ramp to find the exact spot you're looking for from the entrance, or explore the cave and smash up the Vitalis rocks. I recommend doing the latter, as you'll need to collect at least 10 Vitalis Crystals for the next step.
You're looking for a barrel next to a blocked-up wall. It will tell you that you need root beer, which you can find the recipe for in the cave. Head back to Merlin and he'll tell you to make the extra fizzy root beer to dissolve some night thorns in the cave, which you'll combine with crackling candies to give it an extra kick.
Image 1 of 5(Image credit: Gameloft)Image 2 of 5(Image credit: Gameloft)Image 3 of 5(Image credit: Gameloft)Image 4 of 5(Image credit: Gameloft)Image 5 of 5(Image credit: Gameloft)To make the extra fizzy root beer, you'll need:
- Ginger
- Sugar cane
- Vanilla
Once you've made an extra fizzy root beer, put it and the candies into the barrel and the river will flow freely.
How to get Rich Soil and plant the Orb of Nurturing
Once you return outside, you'll see the Forgotten—your spooky alter ego—and you'll be able to get the Orb of Nurturing by following them into the portal that appears near the elephant's graveyard. Once again, have a chat with Merlin and he'll explain that, to reactivate the orb, you'll need to make the Miracle Growth Elixir. You need to gather:
- 10 Vitalis crystals
- 10 Rich soil
- 1000 Dreamlight
Image 1 of 4(Image credit: Gameloft)Image 2 of 4(Image credit: Gameloft)Image 3 of 4(Image credit: Gameloft)Image 4 of 4(Image credit: Gameloft)To get rich soil, you'll need to harvest crops. I had to harvest 37 pumpkins to get one bit of rich soil, so your best bet is to buy lots of cheap, fast-growing crops like lettuce or wheat and plant a few dozen so you can grind through this next step. Harvesting 50 wheat netted me three rich soils, so it's much faster and cheaper this way.
Once you've got everything you need, craft the elixir to upgrade your watering can. Have another chat with Merlin and he'll tell you to plant the Orb of Nurturing in the ground before the pillar in the Sunlit Plateau. Easy stuff, right? There's a little hole already in front of the pillar, so go ahead and bury the orb and water it.
While while you work in Disney Dreamlight ValleyIt will take some time—a few days, it seems—for the orb to be ready, after which I assume you'll stick it into the pillar. Maybe then we'll get a way to smash up the bones around the plateau, eh?
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You're not alone if you're wondering how you can save the herbalist in A Plague Tale: Requiem. The sequel to Innocence hasn't been out long and if you've returned to the rat-infested world of medieval France, you might wonder what to do when you find the herbalist in Chapter 3.
It's not exactly easy to figure out how—or if—you can keep this NPC alive but I'm here to tell you that you can, and I'll explain what you need to do in this guide. That said, you don't get anything for saving them, so don't worry if you're already past this point. If you're ready to get started, here's how to save the herbalist in A Plague Tale: Requiem.
A Plague Tale: Requiem: How to save the Herbalist
You're going to need to craft a specific item if you want to save the herbalist when you see two guards lead him from a house in Chapter 3. Basically, you need to figure out a way to take care of the guards and luckily, there are rats aplenty to do the job for you. They will need a bit of coaxing though.
You should have at least two pots of Extinguis to take out the guards—or, at least, their torches. Hide in the bushes near the gate where the herbalist and two guards emerge and wait until the guard on the left moves away and starts using his torch to scatter the rats. Once he's far enough away, use the Extinguis with a sling to put out the guard's torch, and the rats will do the rest.
If you've done this correctly, the second guard will immediately move in and try to save his friend with his own torch. Use the other Extinguis on the second guard's torch and you should watch him meet a similar fate.
Don't worry if you mess it up the first time. You can start over from the last checkpoint if you run into problems or mistime one of the throws.
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A new season begins today in Disney Dreamlight Valley and Scar is joining the character roster. Alongside a new Star Path—Dreamlight Valley's version of a battle pass—you'll be able to unlock Scar as a new pal and he's got some new quests for you that delve deeper into your past as the former leader of the valley.
In this guide, I'll talk you through how to unlock Scar as well as how to begin his first quest, Nature and Nurture.
How to unlock Scar in Disney Dreamlight Valley
Unless you're hoarding all that Dreamlight for something else, chances are you'll have gathered enough to unlock the Sunlit Plateau, which is just up to the left of the Plaza. Until now, we could only see that there was a character home in the elephant's graveyard on the map, but it was inaccessible. Now that the new update is here, the rocks that were blocking the home are removed.
To meet Scar, unlock the Sunlight Plateau, which costs 7000 Dreamlight. After that, head up the path and to the right to the elephant's graveyard and go into the home in the skull. He'll be lurking there, so go ahead and speak to him, which unlocks the ability to give him gifts and have daily discussions. There's also a great circle of life joke in there you can make if you fancy being Team Mufasa.
Image 1 of 3(Image credit: Gameloft)Image 2 of 3(Image credit: Gameloft)Image 3 of 3(Image credit: Gameloft)While while you work in Disney Dreamlight ValleyOnce he's unlocked, you'll be able to start the Nature and Nurture quest and explore a new area of the Sunlit Plateau, the Vitalis Mines, which has some new resources and minerals for you to mine. To get through Scar's friendship levels quickly, I'd recommend making him a mining companion as there's a lot of pickaxe action in this mission.
Silent Hill Ascension is a horror story shaped by the hivemind
in Gaming News
Posted
It's taken them a while, but Konami finally revealed its plans for Silent Hill today. Three videogames and a film are on the way, and alongside them a project called Silent Hill Ascension was announced. In Konami's words it's a "massively interactive live event", with art and sound design provided by J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Games studio.
According to what I can glean from the announcement, it's basically a Silent Hill story where the events are decided by the audience. Think Until Dawn or The Quarry, except the narrative is shaped by the hive mind. In the press material's words, Ascension will "immerse participants around the globe in the psychological horror at the heart of Silent Hill in an unparalleled way – by putting an all-new Silent Hill story and characters into the hands of the audience as the narrative unfolds, live on multiple platforms."
Words like "wild", "epic" and "innovative" are bandied around in the announcement (by J.J. himself), but it does sound fascinating. The tech at the heart of Ascension comes from Genvid Technologies, who apparently coined the phrase "massively interactive live event" (or MILE). The most notable example of Genvid's work is The Walking Dead: Last Mile, which is a Facebook affair. That project sounds like a phone game: according to Genvid you can "view and interact with the characters and play mini-games to build up Influence Points, then bid those points on decisions large and small, impacting the story as it happens". Busywork to earn power over plot beats, basically.
What we saw of Ascension today was minimal: a small text message exchange between some panicked companions is intercut with a shadowy baddie wielding some kind of violent stick. The execution is what will matter: a Twitch Plays style approach to a Silent Hill narrative could be really interesting.
It's coming in 2023, but no word yet on what platforms. You can watch the presentation below (it starts at 37 minute mark). Konami also announced a remake of Silent Hill 2, a new Silent Hill set in "1960s Japan", and yet another Silent Hill game developed by the studio behind Stories Untold.
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