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As reported by Alpha Beta Gamer, the retro-style FPS Wizordum recently got its first playable demo as part of the 2022 Realm's Deep event. This fantasy-themed boomer shooter takes its cues from Raven Software's Heretic and Hexen, and has you fling fireballs at goblins in an overrun medieval town.
Wizordum's ace in the hole is definitely its art style. The game has a really colorful, cartoony sort of look, almost like developer Emberheart Games covered Hexen in frosting. It almost reminds me of those Doom WADs or CounterStrike maps people make of the Simpsons House or Bikini Bottom.
I find the effect really refreshing, and the demo's two levels are fun to spend some time in. Wizordum doesn't demand too much of the player, though only the second easiest of four planned difficulty levels is currently available. None of the scraps in the demo have more than a handful of goblins in play, and they stick to some pretty standard shooter archetypes. You've got melee goblins, beefy melee goblins, and ranged wizard goblins.
That's not necessarily a dig on Wizordum though. I would expect Emberheart to introduce more enemy variety as the game approaches full release, and I found it quite nice to play something a little more chill compared to the rest of the genre. There's enough variety in arena layout and the demo's three weapons (mace, fireball, and icicle machinegun staff) feel good to use. The shooting engages me enough, and makes for a nice counterpoint to Wizordum's exploration.
The two levels have optional areas, some light puzzling, and a bit of key hunting and backtracking just complex enough to make me think, but which never killed my forward momentum through the level. Wizordum's levels are like a nice, light snack version of Raven's sprawling, sixth dimensional tesseract levels.
The shooter's bright aesthetic, easygoing shooting, and chill exploration were like a palette cleanser for me compared to the hardcore combat and grimdark looks you get in a lot of boomer shooters. If you're interested in Wizordum, you can wishlist the game and check out the demo on Steam, or even support Emberheart Games on Patreon.
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From 2010 to 2014 Richard Cobbett wrote Crapshoot, a column about rolling the dice to bring random games back into the light. This week, a sexier take on the game of kings that stops somewhat short of descending into hardcore pawn. (Though the king, in check, can get a little matey.)
What's the funniest game ever made? If you're thinking Twister in a poorly maintained nitrous oxide bottling plant, you're wrong. Strip Tickle Jenga? Uh, pretty sure that doesn't exist. You might want to consider whether you're more gullible than you think, and prove you're not by sending me all your money.
As far as National Lampoon was concerned in the '90s though, no game had more potential for fun and frolics than chess. And they'd know! After all, they only put their names on the finest interactive comedy products. Like... uh... this! And, uh, Blind Date, which we may be getting to next Valentine's Day. And absolutely nothing else I'm aware of, which surely almost probably guarantees they brought their A material. Right? I see no reason to be a Doubting Debbie about this. None whatsoever!
How cruel, Death. At least let her have a scythe of relief at the end of a long day.Essentially, this is of course Battle Chess, only played more for laughs. Battle Chess, first released in 1988, probably wasn't the first game to wonder what chess would be like if the little pieces were actual people fighting for dominance in a cruel, unforgiving checkerboard nightmare, but was the first PC game to try and bring the game to life. All the rules remained the same. When one unit took another though, we got to see exactly how pawn took bishop and king took queen, the answer in both cases being 'roughly'. Knights would get bombs thrown into their armour, Queens would deploy sorcerous power, and so on and so forth. Both waiting for the animations and watching them play out made play a billion, zillion times slower than regular chess, but if you wanted regular chess, you probably weren't playing Battle Chess and trying to find a way to make a pawn take a queen. So that was OK!
People are still making this kind of game today, up to and including the porny Love Chess, which promises "an exciting combination of sex and chess" in post-apocalyptic wasteland and Egyptian flavours. Chess Maniac 5 Billion and 1 pretended to land somewhere in the middle, shamelessly ripping off Battle Chess in "Bawdy" style, though in fact without much bawdiness, as well as parodying the long-running Chessmaster series that was up to Chessmaster 5000 at the time. I'd joke that this is quite a large number, but Chess Maniac already has. In the title.
Still, 4,999 sequels presumably left plenty of stuff to parody, right?
Thing, you cheater! Someone give it a slap on the wrist, if you ever find it.While I can't say that Chess Maniac is exactly hilarious, or really even 'funny' most of the time, it does at least try hard, and that's more than you can say for most parody games. The chess engine is, I'm told, OK, though I have no way of confirming this with my pitiful skills.
The main reason I never went into the evil overlord business is that at some point you're guaranteed to be expected to play chess with a rival to prove your intellectual dominance, and I'm told it's rude to either a) cheat with your iPhone while pretending you're just getting a lot of very complicated texts, or b) demonstrate that chess as a method of warfare simulation is predicated on both sides being willing to follow the rules by simply shooting your opponent and taking their stuff while they drown in both indignation and their own blood.
I can say that Chess Maniac is apparently immune to Kasparov's "Sod It" gambit, based on throwing units cack-handedly into the meat grinder in the hope that it will be seen as unpredictable and persuade the opponent to just give up rather than mentally process the stupidity. So that's a point against it.
Depends. Is it a sexy goat? Details matter!As a parody though, it starts early, in the manual, by promising customer support on America Online. Hilarious! You're also warned outright "So, you bought the ad copy. You bought the hype. And now you done screwed up and bought the game. It's too late, you know." (Little could Chess Maniac know that it was inadvertently predicting American McGee's family crest, translated from the original Latin.)
It then steps through a slightly sarcastic explanation of chess rules, like how castling works, with tongue in cheek and a fair amount of its own terminology like "playmating" (the King being taken by the Queen and so being legally forced to switch to Playmate magazine instead). Stuff like that.
It also lists a powerful set of potential openings, including the Bird Opening—moving the pawn of Queen's Bishop while giving the finger to your opponent. "Bobby Fischer was able to gain an advantage over the Soviets who were confused as to the meaning of the Bird. The Chess Maniac has used this opening with big effects, especially when wearing the full body costume of a large yellow canary," it informs.
Ah, the "make the board so messy that nobody can concentrate" gambit. Crafty.The game itself plays out a little like a war between whoever wrote the serious chess engine, and whoever had to try and make it funny. Chess Maniac starts early, with a fake crash to DOS and comedy copy protection that soon enough ends with "No, seriously, get your manual," questions, and a few throw-in gags.
Difficulties for instance range from "Beginner's Luck" to "Tie Me Up And Whip Me", along with the option to play Strip Chess instead. This being a PC game from 1996 though, you can probably guess the result of that one...
Unless your dreams involve Freddy Krueger trying to kill you, in which case not.Chess Maniac 5 Billion and 1 is a battle between Medieval and Persian forces, which doesn't seem particularly bawdy if you discount that it was a relatively shelf-friendly way to have the facing pawns be busty ladies in their bras and call culture if anyone complained. Convincing harem girls, they are not.
Their Medieval equivalents are jesters, which doesn't seem bawdy, because it's not. Some of the capture moves are very slightly rude, including the harem girls dancing around a knight until they get an erection in their armour, and around a jester until they get... an erection in their soft slacks.
Far more often, pieces are dealt with using distinctly unbawdy methods, including the Queen bonking someone on the head with a frying pan, or just straight up violent ones. The Grim Reaper for instance, standing in for the Rook, just straight-up stabs people. The King, faced with a seductive pawn, reacts to her dance rather differently to most, pulling out a golf-club and hitting a ball into her mouth. An experience not entirely unknown to her, no doubt, and depending on his choice of club, possibly he did get wood. Still, not exactly super-bawdy, even in comparison to... oh... let's say Prince of Persia 3D's gratuitous jigglybutt intro.
It does at least look quite good though, for the time, with digitised sprites and all the custom animations you'd expect. In fact, more. Part of Chess Maniac's charm was that it blatantly cheated —and not by complicated computer tricks, but with things like having a giant hand randomly steal pieces, wobbling in a sexy opponent on the other side of the board as a distraction, sending dancers across the front while you play, running sharks through the board—who will eat your pieces if not stopped—and deploying the most cutting sarcasm since the last time a computer voice gravelled out "That move really sucked." Looking back, it sounds a bit like the Lexx having a sarcastic day.
It's rare for these to really get in the way though, since even the distractions that steal your pieces take forever to actually do it. You can't walk away from the game while it runs without getting back to find that your Rook has been spirited away, though—at least unless you pause or deploy the Boss Key.
What's a Boss Key? Before Windows, there was no multitasking, so a number of games offered a way for sneaky employees playing games on their company PCs to quickly hide all evidence of the fact when they saw their boss coming. At least, in theory. In practice, maybe three games ever actually did that, doing something like throwing up a basic C:> prompt. 99.9% however just did a gag, usually popping up something like this.
The joke is that this was a real text editor in the day. Which people used. Willingly.A game called Chess Maniac is probably not the best choice of confidante in any event, given how much it loathes, hates and despises you. Or at least, how much it pretends to. In practice, while actually playing it soon becomes fairly torturous, it was a surprisingly decent attempt to do the Battle Chess thing that knew when to take itself seriously. The fact that you were only likely to get a few games out of it before moving away from the digitised people to a chessboard where it's possible to actually see where everything is hardly matters.
Anyone who wanted a serious chess game bought Chessmaster anyway, safe in the knowledge that this was a short-term distraction for publisher Microprose, traditionally known for extremely serious simulations, and that their reputation for maturity and quality game design would never be tarnished by a brief jaunt into silliness and mild sleaze. At least until 2013, when for no apparent reason the name was dusted off and put on bloody Girl Fight. Still confused about that.
While you'd probably expect this 'make chess more marketable' approach to be stuck in the '80s and '90s, it's actually not. Ignoring the Love Chess thing, Interplay was bothered enough by the idea of someone ripping off its concept to try stomping on the oddly named "Battle vs. Chess", which ended in a settlement, and there was a modern version called Battle Chess: Game of Kings.
What of other games though? Why should chess have all the fun? Why not extend the same concept to a game of Tiddlywinks where each counter has a deep backstory and lists its charitable donations proudly. You may score a point, but at what cost? Or how about a version of Ludo that explores issues of segregation through the adventures of its little pieces?
Well, because it would be stupid. Obviously. But in a universe where actually sentient people sit down and make a Saturday morning cartoon about Frogger, it's probably doable. Scary, really. Very scary.
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Odd, funny, and charming rhythm game Trombone Champ has gotten a lot of attention this week, spiraling into the viral stratosphere of the Steam charts as the latest example of how an indie can get real big, real fast on the platform. Its even made its way into that top 100 games by revenue chart Steam introduced earlier this week, sitting popular stuff like Madden 23 and PlateUp.
So, naturally, it is inevitable that someone immediately put Megalovania in it.
Megalovania, but as a custom modded chart in Trombone ChampI am sorry pic.twitter.com/TdoQGyqYZDSeptember 23, 2022
See moreMegalovania is perhaps the most famous, most memed piece of music from 2015 game Undertale, which everyone loves. Trombone champ is the just-released indie rhythm game form Holy Wow, and is definitely one of those games that the developer was not prepared for to be as big as it is.
The custom chart for the song was made by NyxTheShield, a game composer, developer, and modder and posted on Twitter. "I am sorry," they said. What's weird and bonkers is that the developer thinks this is probably the first custom chart for Trombone Champ... and that it's probably been made faster than the dev is making tracks. "If you made this this quickly, it's possible you've created a level editor that's faster than what we've been using to actually build the game," said HolyWowStudios on Twitter.
Our Chris Livingston called Trombone Champ an instant game of the year contender when he emerged from the wilds of Steam earlier this week, chased by crazed baboons. It inspired such a fervor in him that he immediately interviewed the creator of Trombone Champ in search of more nuggets of precious trombone insight.
Nuggets of insight like, for example, that the creator prefers Goku over Vegeta.
Megalovania, meanwhile, is perhaps one of the most meme'd upon songs in gaming's vast musical oeuvre. Since its appearance as Sans' theme in the 2015 game Undertale, Megalovania has made its way into players' hearts via games like Overwatch, Warframe, and Genshin Impact. Earlier this year some circus performers played Megalovania for the Catholic Pope, and no that is not a sentence I ever expected to type.
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August Dean Ayala will be the new design director on League of Legends, after his departure from Blizzard on September 16th. Ayala was previously the game director on Hearthstone and had worked at Blizzard for 11 years. He announced the job change via Twitter.
In a little over a week, I'll be starting at @riotgames as the design director for @LeagueOfLegends.Looking forward to working with a new team and immersing myself into the League community. HYPED! pic.twitter.com/1tOHKSZyoASeptember 24, 2022
See moreWhile the position of game director on Hearthstone was a prestigious one, Ayala's departure wasn't particularly high-profile: He'd only held the job for three months, having started in June after the departure of previous game director Ben Lee for another position within Blizzard.
Ayala started in quality assurance at Blizzard and made his way into the Hearthstone team after he ranked top in North America in competitive play. He was previously responsible for a significant amount of internal playtesting, and was design lead on Hearthstone since 2016.
As design director on League of Legends, Ayala will have senior members of testing, game design, and narrative teams reporting to him, among many others. A quick scroll of his twitter shows that while League and Hearthstone are very different things, Ayala's interests run to a very broad array of games.
The last few years have been times of change at both Blizzard and Riot, with a large number of high-profile departures from both companies. League of Legends has had two design directors in as many years at Riot. The Hearthstone team at Blizzard has been fairly stable, relatively insulated from otherwise-scandalous events at the company's higher levels of leadership, but has still suffered in the eyes of the public since the departure of founding team members in 2018, followed by a broader scandal around a player from Hong Kong.
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Hello jac1188,
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.
jac1188 joined on the 09/24/2022.
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At Netflix's Tudum live stream, the company gave us a release window for the Witcher season three, coming Summer 2023. There wasn't a full trailer or much new information on display, although the company did provide a look at Freya Allen as Ciri filming a fun-looking action scene on a boat, so we've got that to look forward to.
It's a much shorter wait than the gap between seasons one and two of the Witcher, which was a full two years. The shorter gap here makes sense, as season two's production took place during the early days of covid-19, and it's impressive they were able to get it done at all despite strict quarantine measures and occasional outbreaks.
Season three looks to broadly follow the events of the Witcher saga's book two, Time of Contempt, though there are already pretty significant divergences from the source material—Yenn and Geralt are on the outs at the beginning of the book, while in the show Geralt, Ciri, and Yenn finished season two ready to tackle the world together.
A previously released synopsis from Netflix describes the trio returning to the mage stronghold of Aretuza and getting mired in political conflict, all but confirming the presence of the Thanedd Coup in Season 3. Don't look that one up if you haven't read the books yet, but the real ones know.
It'll be interesting to see how the show handles or streamlines the remaining three books after Contempt: Baptism of Fire, The Tower of the Swallow, and The Lady of the Lake. If you're interested in dipping a toe in Sapkowski's series and getting ahead of the show, be sure to check out our guide to Witcher reading order. You can also catch up on everything we know about CD Projekt's next Witcher game.
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Netflix announced the release date of the Witcher prequel series, Blood Origin, at its Tudum livestream earlier today. Cast members Michelle Yeoh, Sophia Brown, Minnie Driver, and Laurence O'Fuarain briefly discussed their characters, and revealed the series' premier date of December 25, 2022.
Blood Origin is set 1,200 years before the main Witcher saga, and presents the origin story of the titular order. It looks to be an interesting divergence from the lore of the books and games where the monster hunters are created with the anachronistic genetic engineering of ancient humans after the dimension-rending Conjunction of the Spheres. Blood Origin seems to attribute the Witchers' creation to the elves, with the series focusing on three fey people played by Yeoh, Brown, and O'Fuarain.
The Witcher on Netflix has had great success with its additions and changes to the Witcher story in the past, and Blood Origin does have an ace up its sleeve in Michelle Yeoh as the elf Scian. Yeoh's received renewed attention in recent years for her performances in Everything Everywhere All at Once and Star Trek: Discovery, but she has a career spanning decades of stellar dramatic performances like her role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, as well as fantastic stunt work like in the 1992 Jackie Chan action-comedy, Supercop.
Also exciting for me is the presence of Irish actor and comedian, Dylan Moran, perhaps most famous for the short-lived BBC Channel 4 sitcom, Black Books. IMDB says he'll be playing a character named "Uthrok One-Nut," so the show's looking like it's in pretty good shape already.
I've got high hopes for Blood Origin then, and it's nice to get more Witcher stuff as we wait for Season 3 of the main show (coming Summer 2023) and CD Projekt's distant new game series.
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G2 esports CEO Carlos Rodriguez has stepped down from his position a week after sharing a video of himself partying with men's rights influencer and alleged human trafficker, Andrew Tate. Rodriguez shared a three minute video explaining the decision to Twitter, and the official G2 account released a statement on the matter shortly thereafter.
"I take full responsibility over everything that went on in the last few days," Rodriguez stated in his video announcement, later thanking fans and collaborators, and concluding, "Remember, we're samurai, we thrive not because we win, but because we always get back up."
"We want to underline that we do not support any form of misogyny," G2's statement on Rodriguez stepping down reads. "We continue to prioritize fostering inclusivity and supporting a diverse gaming community."
Last week, Rodriguez apologized and took two weeks of unpaid leave following the outcry over his association with Tate. Tate, a former kickboxer, gained notoriety in recent months as a "manosphere" internet personality, before subsequently getting banned off most major social media platforms. According to the Romanian newspaper, Gândul, Tate and his brother's home in the country was raided by police in April in connection to a rape and human trafficking investigation.
G2 is a major esports organization, with professional teams competing in games like Valorant, League of Legends, and Counter-Strike. The video at the heart of the controversy was of Rodriguez's celebration of G2 qualifying for worlds in League of Legends. According to Dexerto, G2 was denied a coveted franchise spot in the coming Valorant league this past week, but there has been no direct confirmation from Riot that this was in response to Rodriguez's actions.
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Hints for today's Wordle, tips to make every puzzle just that little bit more successful, and even the answer to the September 24 (462) puzzle are all just a short scroll away. Need more help? No problem. You'll also find links to our Wordle guides, as well as our extensive Wordle archive here too.
After what feels like a week of finding a few yellows if I'm lucky, I finally landed a really strong green-speckled opener today. Thanks to this I was able to solve the puzzle on the second guess with little trouble—what a great way to start the weekend.
Wordle hint
Today's Wordle: A hint for Saturday, September 24
There are a few meanings for today's answer. In some cases this word's used to describe metal bars or a grid covering an opening, in others some sort of irritating noise or behaviour. It can even be used in food preparation—when shredding cheese or other food against a specific tool to create small pieces. There are two vowels to find today.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
If there's one thing better than playing Wordle, it's playing Wordle well, which is why I'm going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success:
- A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants.
- A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
- The solution may contain repeat letters.
There's no time pressure beyond making sure it's done by midnight. So there's no reason to not treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you're coming up blank.
Wordle answer
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)What is the Wordle 462 answer?
Let's start the weekend with a win. The answer to the September 24 (462) Wordle is GRATE.
Previous answers
Wordle archive: Which words have been used
The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today's Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that's already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh.
Here are some recent Wordle solutions:
- September 23: GLORY
- September 22: SAINT
- September 21: RECAP
- September 20: ALIKE
- September 19: TRICE
- September 18: STICK
- September 17: CHUTE
- September 16: PARER
- September 15: DOUBT
- September 14: THYME
Learn more about Wordle
Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it's up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them.
You'll want to start with a strong word like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and the boxes will show you which letters you've got right or wrong. If a box turns
️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. 
means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 
means you've got the right letter in the right spot.You'll want your second go to compliment the first, using another "good" word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer.
After that it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there's an E). Don't forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).
If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used you'll find those below.
Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
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Hello Alec,
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.
Alec joined on the 09/24/2022.
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The writing is on the walls. Call of Duty is going through a change, and it may actually stick this time.
You can roughly map out the evolution of first-person shooters over the last 1.5 decades with the yearly Call of Duty releases. There was the era where everyone was super-into modern military shooters, followed by a few years when our boots lifted off the ground and started wallrunning or jetpacking. When hero shooters hit big, Treyarch responded with Black Ops 3's unique characters and ultimates. That was fun for a bit, but then the clock reset and Activision thought, hey, maybe World War 2 would be fun again. It wasn't.
This brings us to our current era, the one I believe is on its way out the door: battle royale. Activision committed to battle royale early and captured a huge audience with its standalone, free-to-play Call of Duty: Warzone. The most popular way to play CoD in 2022 is in a lobby with 149 other people, something I never imagined in 2007. But now almost three years in, I've noticed a waning interest in the same ol' battle royale and I think Activision has too. Infinity Ward is bringing back battle royale in Warzone 2.0, but at the same time it's going big on its next bet: AI and PvPvE.
If you haven't noticed, there are AI combatants all over Modern Warfare 2. In fact, literally every tentpole mode in Modern Warfare 2 is implementing AI in some way:
- Multiplayer: AI grunts join the battle in the 20v20 Ground War modes
- Warzone 2.0: AI are littered across the new Al Mazrah in strongholds protecting rare loot
- Spec Ops: 2-player co-op missions against AI
- Raids: Destiny-style co-op missions with complex AI encounters and combat puzzles
- DMZ: Warzone's mysterious new PvPvE extraction mode launching alongside battle royale
We're getting our first taste of CoD's AI push during this weekend's Modern Warfare 2 beta. In new mode Invasion, a take on Titanfall's Attrition mode, nameless grunts join a large-scale 20v20 team deathmatch where AI kills are worth fewer points than players. I didn't expect much out of Invasion, but it's actually my favorite mode of the beta so far. Moment-to-moment it's still TDM, but the extra bodies running around saturate the map such that it gives the illusion of a grand, almost Battlefield-scale conflict in a much smaller space. It's also just satisfying to mess up a whole gang of AI that go down in one or two bullets.
I'm very interested in how Modern Warfare 2 will tackle raids. Infinity Ward is deliberately drawing comparisons to Destiny 2 in its description of raids as "cooperative engagement requiring teamwork and strategic, puzzle-solving thinking in-between bouts of intense combat." Destiny's raids are almost universally regarded as the best parts of those games, yet only a fraction of the people who play it ever see them because of level requirements. Infinity Ward seems to be expediting that process by simply making raid missions that anyone can play.
Beyond Warzone
I think the true test of Call of Duty's AI experiment will have to wait until Warzone 2.0, though. I'm skeptical that the nameless grunts wandering around the map in battle royale will add anything more than target practice. Infinity Ward says AI enemies have a "variety of lethality levels" and "defend their territory like a CDL pro," but the grunts content streamers encountered during the live Warzone 2.0 reveal were pushovers. I've yet to see any AI that truly threatens players in the way that, say, Hunt: Showdown's slug monsters, bug assassins, and aquatic tentacle freaks do.
If AI is little more than a distraction in battle royale, I hope it takes center stage in DMZ. My newfound love of extraction shooters may be coloring this a bit, but I get the sense DMZ is a big deal for Infinity Ward. There's a growing interest in the format that splits the difference between high-risk survival shooters and battle royale. Many extraction shooters—characterized by the freedom to roam the map, fight players, complete objectives, and leave whenever you want—have been popping up lately. The burgeoning genre has been dominated by stealthy cowboy shooter Hunt: Showdown and milsim Escape From Tarkov, but newer challengers include the diesel-punk shooter Marauders and The Cycle: Frontier. Battlefield 2042 even gave the extraction format a spin last year with Hazard Zone, though it didn't catch on there.
The Warzone 2.0 announcement blog post describes DMZ as a "passion project" inside Infinity Ward and contributing studios, language it doesn't use for Modern Warfare 2's two hundred other modes. It's also the only mode with its own logo, completely separate from the Warzone branding.
(Image credit: Activision)To make DMZ feel distinct from Warzone, Infinity Ward should really consider getting creative with AI. Think bigger than grunts: one of Hunt's greatest strengths is how the unique behaviors of its monsters force you to change up your strategy (like the Human Torch-like Immolators who explode if you pierce their skin with anything sharp). There should be environmental hazards and other things to do than run from place to place and shoot other players. Think too small with extraction shooters and you end up with Battlefield 2042's ill-fated Hazard Zone.
If Infinity Ward can do for extraction shooters what it did for battle royale, it could really be something special (and even beat Fortnite to the punch this time). I can see this being the proper kickoff of a PvPvE trend where all the battle royale games slowly creep closer to Escape From Tarkov or Hunt. I hope it pays off, because I'm definitely done with shrinking circles.
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Nerd parody music group, The Chalkeaters, released a new music video today, "A Songus Amongus" celebrating the indie hit, Among Us. The group is the latest in a long line of voices declaring for all to hear that things are "sus," that they see developer InnerSloth's little space man everywhere, and other things of that nature.
Whether you play it or not, Among Us has joined Fortnite and Five Nights at Freddy's in the pantheon of Games for Nephews, Baby Cousins, and Little Brothers. I just want to be left alone with my immersive sims and CRPGs like the weird old man I am, but everything is "sus" now, and kids are finding the game's little space men in innocuous everyday objects like someone's grandma seeing Jesus' face in toast. I'm with what isn't it and what is it seems weird and scary.
Indeed, I found my sense of paranoia around this youth phenomenon (itself about paranoia) reflected in the video for "A Songus Amongus." In a world where everything is "sus," what can one put their faith in anymore? The Chalkeaters' protagonist is haunted by "Amogus," much as I am, catching glimpses of the game's implacable little space men everywhere from a chicken nuggie to the written form of Sinhalese, one of the official languages of Sri Lanka.
It's a really cute music video, is what I'm saying, just kinda nice. It reminds me of the Harry Partridge Skyrim songs from way back in 2011, real cheeky and sincere and a good laugh. I definitely appreciated the genre switchups in "A Songus Amongus," you've got the pop-y throughline but also a more funky dance section and some metal thrown in as well. If you're interested in more from the Chalkeaters, like an ode to Animal Crossing and Doom crossing over, you can check out their YouTube channel and Patreon.
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Since I drifted away from Wordle and Knotwords earlier this year I've been looking for a new game to play in short sessions every morning or evening: Just a little something to puzzle over during coffee and again to unwind with at the end of the day. I wouldn't have expected to find what I was looking for in a solitaire game, but Zachtronics proved me wrong.
Part of The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection, which contains eight different solitaire games, Fortune's Foundation is a bit like Freecell… but without the free cells. In addition to the expected 52 playing cards there are also 22 tarot cards mixed in. Thanks to a few interesting rules and the fact that it's a heck of a challenging game—I've been playing a few times each morning and night this week, and I've only won a total of three times—Fortune's Foundation has quickly become my new daily jam.
The playing cards have new medieval suits to replace the traditional spades, clubs, hearts, and diamonds: I'm not sure what they're really called, but I mentally refer to them as cups, stars, swords, and thorns. Otherwise they're standard playing cards, with the goal of getting them to the four foundation piles at the top right, suited, in ace through king order.
The tarot cards, meanwhile, are numbered 0 through 21, and they have their own two foundation piles at the top left. The 0 goes in the first spot, and the 21 goes on the second, and you can build on either pile until they meet in the middle. Meaning, you can place the 1 card on the zero, followed by the 2, but you can also place the 20 on the 21, and then the 19 on the 20.
I know none of this sounds especially tricky yet, but remember that there aren't four free cells at the top to park cards in while you're playing, like in FreeCell. And with those tarot cards mixed into the deck, you're starting off with 70 cards in 10 columns (and one empty column in the middle). If you want to uncover a 2 and it's buried beneath a bunch of other cards, you're in for a lot of work.
Here's the rest of the rules:
- You can only move one card at a time
- You can build up or down on the main columns, so a 5 of cups can go on a 4 of cups or a 6 of cups.
- You can 'park' a single card on the main foundation piles, but it will block any cards from being added there until it's removed
- You can undo your most recent move by clicking the "scrying mirror"
It's really tricky! With so many cards, and so few places to safely move them, I spend most of my time just planning ahead to future moves, unwilling to actually drag and drop a card until I'm sure it will work out. It feels a bit like chess, really, thinking six or seven moves ahead to see what the outcome will be before actually trying something. Parking a card on the foundation is always tempting, just to temporarily get it out of the way to uncover other cards, but it's dangerous. If you can't find a spot in the main columns to put it back, it can really muck up your whole game.
When you win you get a tarot reading based on the final card. Now I am not a tarot enthusiast or believer, and I would find a cascade of cards like the win-state of the old solitaire game far more satisfying—but it's still nice to get a little fortune. The card art is excellent, and there's a soothing soundtrack, too. I am digging it, even when I don't win. Which is almost always.
If you like Solitaire, a healthy challenge, and tarot (or even if you don't like tarot), I really recommend it. You have to buy the entire Zachtronics Solitaire Collection to get it, but it's only $10 and there are 7 other games included. Which, admittedly, I haven't tried yet. I'm too hooked on Fortune's Foundation.
(Image credit: Zachtronics) -
The Netflix anime series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is the first thing that's made me a little bit interested in playing Cyberpunk 2077 since its rough launch in late 2020. And it seems like I'm not the only one who dug the anime's interpretation of Night City. Cyberpunk 2077's player count has jumped up to an impressive million people per day. And for the last two weeks, the Cyberpunk 2077 Nexusmods page has increasingly been populated with Edgerunners-inspired mods. I've counted about 30 so far, released since September 15.
There are quite a few character presets and customization options: David's haircut lets you get your spiky hairdo on, or you could download a facial preset to recreate the character, though a lot of the personality's lost in the transition from 2D. This face preset for Lucy—one of several—looks a bit better, and has racked up almost 8,000 downloads so far.
There are a few other cool aesthetic mods, like Rebecca's pistols, but most are inspired by the show's music or general aesthetic. There are multiple menu replacement or music replacement mods: this radio station adds 13 tracks from the show into the game, for example. This tracks if you've seen the show: the pop soundtrack is excellently curated and really elevates some of the action scenes and character moments.
So far none of the Edgerunners mods are particularly big, but since CD Projekt Red recently released some more powerful modding tools, maybe there's a chance we'll see NPCs or even quests based on the show make their way into the game. I'd definitely be down to do a heist with David's crew if given the chance.
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In the race to cover every single available body part that can game in their gear, HyperX continues to release a flood of peripherals for all sorts of gamers. It's not just headsets and mice anymore—a month ago, the company released its first-ever gaming monitors. At this rate, HyperX is going to start making prescription glasses or those questionably useful gaming sleeves I see esports players swear by.
The HyperX Cloud Stinger 2 is almost inconsequential to how much other stuff HyperX has out there; legitimately good stuff like its wireless Cloud Alpha headset too. But the budget $50 price puts it in competition with headsets like the Razer Kraken X, the SteelSeries Arctis 1 and 3, and, frankly, its own predecessor, the Cloud Stinger (which retails for around $30).
The Cloud Stinger 2 is nearly identical in features to the first version of the headset. It's a black, all-plastic headset with a fairly lightweight microphone. It has a 10Hz to 28kHz frequency response, dynamic 50mm drivers with neodymium magnets, a 3.5mm headset jack, and an included splitter. It's the kind of $50 headset you pick up off of Amazon or a retail shelf because it's there and will get the job done but might leave you wishing you had done a little more research.
The worst part about the Cloud Stinger 2 is the headphone design, which nullifies many of its strengths in audio quality. It's a flimsy headset; the cheap plastic feel is normal at this price range—and probably not a worry if you've never owned headphones priced over $150—but this headset has bigger problems. The rotating earcups are intended to allow you to flatten it down so you can slip it into a bag, but they're attached to the thinnest part of the headband and are so loose that I'm afraid they'll break with a wrong move. They flap back and forth whenever I take them off and make grabbing them with one hand a pain.
Nothing catastrophic has happened to me, but some clumsy handling, and I worry the headbands could snap or crack with a particularly violent drop or twist. The thought of spending the next several years with them seems like more of a risk than it should be for this price.
HyperX Cloud Stinger 2 Specs(Image credit: Future)Drivers: Dynamic, 50mm neodymium
Connectivity: 3.5mm wired
Style: Over-ear
Frequency response: 10Hz-28,000Hz
Features: Bi-directional, noise cancelling mic, audio dial
Weight: 275g
Price: $50Otherwise the fit on these is great. They're snug enough to stay on my head as I move them around and slide off easily if, say, you're holding a burger in one hand. I'm a glasses wearer too, and it never got uncomfortable after hours of use, which I can't always say the same for my usual pair of Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pros, not far from the DT 900 Pro X. It has leatherette pads which feel a little thin and could wear or tear with time, but at this price range, I'm not sure you'll find much better.
The audio quality is impressive, especially if you have the included DTS Headphone X spatial audio codec turned on (a code for two years is included). It's a little gimmicky at first, but with music, I liked how it raised the mid-tones and made a lot of instrumental music sound dynamic, or like it was being played on a stage. It's probably not for everyone.
The effect in games didn't stand out to me. In a game like Overwatch where audio is essential and mixed with that in mind, it doesn't sound different with the feature on or off. Elden Ring sounded bigger, but not noticeably different than it would in normal stereo mode. The fact that after two years you have to pay for DTS Headphone X is a bummer too, as without it, the headphones are fairly neutral with highs pulling through more than anything else. They're fine for games, but might sound a little dull for everything else.
Image 1 of 4(Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 4(Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 4(Image credit: Future)Image 4 of 4(Image credit: Future)The microphone is about as serviceable as any other headset microphone in this price range. It sounds a little distant but has enough clarity and volume to come through over game audio. The noise-canceling kept out my mechanical keyboard taps and mouse clicks even while I was actively talking. The microphone arm swivels up and automatically mutes, which is always a nice feature, and it's small, so even when it's in front of your face, it's not a nuisance.
It's a little tragic that a solid audio package is held in such a crummy frame. The Cloud Stinger 2 would be a competent headset and an excellent choice for a budget pick, but I can't get over how fragile it looks and feels. There are older and cheaper headsets out there that are built with a thicker frame—the original Cloud Stinger, to name one.
The Stinger 2 might work for someone who treats their headset like a delicate flower, but for $50, you can get something that won't potentially be ruined after an accidental drop or twist. The Cloud Stinger 2, despite its strengths in the price range, is just too much of a risk for me to recommend.
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Rick Sanchez, the abusive alcoholic mega-genius who forms the trouble-causing half of Adult Swim's animated duo Rick and Morty, will very soon be taking his place in Warner's cartoon fighting game MultiVersus.
We already knew Rick was coming thanks to a July confirmation, not to mention the fact that his grandson Morty is already in the game, having been added in August. Mr. Meeseeks, a bizarre, short-lived vessel of chaos who's made numerous appearances on the show (and turns up briefly in today's teaser), is also in the game as a throwable item.
Rick will be a "mage/ranged" character according to his character bio, which would seem to be a good fit: Rick isn't the most physical character ever (he's a substance-abusing grandfather, remember), but he always has an assortment of weird weaponry at his fingertips when he's off on an adventure. The style also matches up well with Rick's trickster character archetype—the other mage/ranged characters in MultiVersus are Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry—and makes an interesting counterpoint to Morty's character, who like Batman, Taz, and Lebron James, is a bruiser.
An arrival date for Rick hasn't been announced, but MultiVersus game director Tony Huynh said on Twitter that he's coming "very soon." While you wait for that to happen, you can get the lowdown on all of the current MultiVersus characters courtesy of our handy (and very thorough) tier list.
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Meta's Quest 2 VR is getting some competition in the form of the Pico 4, a lightweight VR headset the company is calling "its best yet." The lighter, thinner wireless headset is sporting good horsepower and has already nabbed an exclusive game release from Ubisoft. Unfortunately, US VR enthusiasts might have to wait a bit to get their hands on one of these headsets.
The Pico 4 is powered by a 2.84Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 CPU and sports a 4K resolution display with a refresh rate up to 90Hz on a pair of 2.56 LCD screens. It comes with a pair of controllers and will launch with what they are calling a "diverse and inclusive" library of games and software.
Bytedance, the company that owns TikTok, acquired Pico last year and is poised to take a big slice of the VR headset market in Europe and Asia away from Meta. Meta has gone to strange lengths to combat the growing popularity of TikTok in the US. Pico has been making VR headsets for a while, though if you're from North America, this is probably your time hearing about them since their products, like the Neo3, primarily sell in Europe and Asia.
Pico is promoting the weight and comfort of the wireless headset. It comes at 295g without the strap and is a smaller, thinner headset than the Quest 2. Pico claims that the 5300mAh battery that rests behind the head should last around 3 hours. The headset includes a glasses spacer, so four-eyed people like me can wear the damn thing.
The haptic motion controllers have everything you'd expect to see for gaming, like a couple of face buttons, triggers, and a thumbstick. The design of the controllers allows for your hands to be closer together, and built-in sensors give a wide degree of movement. Interestingly enough, the Pico 4 will support hand tracking, so you can use some apps and games without controllers.
Steam in your hands(Image credit: Future, FromSoftware)Steam Deck review: Our verdict on Valve's handheld PC.
Steam Deck availability: How to get one.
Steam Deck battery life: What's the real battery life of the new device?
How loud is the Steam Deck? And will it pass the Significant Other test?
Steam Deck - The emulation dream machine: Using Valve's handheld hardware as the ultimate emulator.Games on the VR headset will be available through the Pico Store and support games through Steam VR. However, Pico announced a partnership with Ubisoft, which will be releasing Just Dance VR exclusively on Pico 4.
There will be something called Pico Worlds that's launching in 2023, which seems to be its version of Horizon Worlds, where you can create an avatar and take part in metaverse hijinx.
The Pico 4 starts at £429 and is available for preorder in parts of Europe and Asia. The VR headset doesn't seem like it will make its way to the US anytime soon. According to some recent job postings, Pico has hinted at releasing its products in the States. Folks who are Pico Neo3 Link beta program members can preorder starting today.
Pico tells us to expect more information about the Pico 4 Pro: it's more expensive, premium headset with eye-tracking tech, which should be out later in October during AWE Lisbon.
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As reported by GamesRadar, Slime Rancher 2, the sequel to 2017's first-person goop creature farming simulator, just launched in early access to massive sales success. Posting on Twitter, the game's director, Nick Popovich, characterized the game's success as being beyond the team's wildest expectations.
"I had a pipe dream in my head that we could sell 100k copies of Slime Rancher 2 in the first 24 hours if the stars aligned," Popovich wrote. "We did that in less than 6 hours." In a different tweet, Popovich revealed that a single hour of sales beat Monomi Park's previous best day by "a literal order of magnitude."
Slime Rancher 2 takes the first game's protagonist, Beatrix, to a new locale, the Rainbow Island, and expands on its lineup of goopy guys while also letting players build a fancy new conservatory. The community on Steam is responding very well to developer Monomi Park's changes. The game has maintained an "Overwhelmingly Positive" score across 2,900 reviews and counting.
My favorite takeaway was from user god gamer xchad, who simply stated, "The voices in my head are quiet again thank you monomi park." Damn, Slime Rancher 2 must be really good, maybe it could help me with my issues.
To see if Monomi Park's latest quieted the voices in our heads, be sure to check out our in-depth Slime Rancher 2 impressions. You can wishlist the game now or purchase it yourself for $30 on Steam.
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The rollout of the Diablo 2: Resurrected 2.5 patch yesterday seems to have kicked off an ARG that has players working to decode numeric strings hidden in the game's chat lobby.
The fun began with the announcement that the 2.5 patch had gone live, which included an odd image way down at the very bottom, accompanied by the message, "We were flipping through the old Diablo 2 manual [PDF format] and found this confounding inscription... What does it all mean?"
(Image credit: Blizzard)The full image is very high resolution, so everything in it is clearly visible.
The scribbled strings of text in the notebook are the obvious highlight but Reddit—because it's always Reddit—quickly noticed that one coin in the image is different from all the rest. It bears the words "Keep the Core—Resurrected—???? - 2021," and is also physically identical to the chat gem in the Diablo 2: Resurrected lobby. From there, they figured out that it's a Vigenère cipher, and that by using "resurrected" as the key the three lines of text scrawled in the notebook translate to, "so many gems what do these orange numbers mean."
That doesn't make much sense in itself, but of course that wasn't the end of the chase. Pop into the Diablo 2: Resurrected chat lobby and start clicking the chat gem to activate and deactivate it, and eventually (it might take awhile) you'll be given an orange number. It looks like this.
(Image credit: Blizzard)It took me a solid three minutes of clicking like a fiend before that number popped; more industrious fans have put together macros that auto-click multiple times per second, saving wear and tear on both mouse and finger.
Like old book-based DRM, those numbers—and again, this is entirely Reddit figuring it out, I am terrible at ARGs and can claim no credit—translate to specific words in the Diablo 2 instruction manual. The first three numbers in the strung represent where the word will be in the hidden message; the next two are the page number in the manual; the next two are the line number; and the final two are the number of the word. So in my case, for instance, 558 13 06 15 translates to the word "new."
These words are being shared in threads on the Diablo, Diablo 2, and Diablo 2: Resurrected subreddits, as well as a couple of Discord servers, and from there into a large Google Docs spreadsheet, where a detailed record of work progress is being tracked and a (somewhat) coherent secret message is beginning to coalesce. A large part of the message has already been decoded, and it's filled with passages like "It drives east, east to be released by the other two dark stones," and "The shadow of a past light carrying within it the spark of evil brothers." The verbiage is difficult to parse because it's incomplete and possibly out of order, but it's definitely very Diablo.
Interestingly, this doesn't appear to be entirely new. PCGamesN recalled a 2021 tweet from original Diablo co-creator David Brevik asking if "the special code for the chat gem [will] still be in Resurrected?" The obvious implication is that some sort of hidden funkiness was also present in the original Diablo 2, which was released in June 2000—more than 20 years ago. That's an awfully long time for a secret to go undiscovered, but such things aren't unprecedented in computer software: This Windows 1.0 Easter egg went unfound for almost twice as long before being uncovered earlier this year.
Perhaps the most important question of the day. Will the special code for the chat gem still be in Resurrected? https://t.co/ORFQtKTzWJFebruary 19, 2021
See moreThe Diablo Fan Wiki also refers to secrets hidden within the chat gem in the original Diablo 2, although not numeric codes specifically. It's possible that Blizzard is simply building on that legend with a new ARG.
Whatever the case, at this point nobody knows where it's all headed. It could be a stealth reveal of a new feature—Blizzard does that sort of thing once in a while—or it might be some deep lore that's been lying undiscovered for the past couple of decades. As a more long-shot guess, maybe there's a big Diablo 4 reveal that's about to spring forth, although to me that seems extremely unlikely. It's also possible that the message will not be the end at all, but just the next step toward even more, deeper mysteries.
Whatever's going on, we'll likely have the answer soon: The Diablo fan base is working hard, and the hidden message is being decoded quickly.
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I'm running around at top speed vacuuming up cartoon apples so I can fire them into the mouth of a giant grinning blob with the feverish desperation of someone trying to take down an enemy APC with a grenade launcher.
Why? I have no idea. All I know is, there's an enormous slime blocking the opening of a cave, and it likes eating fruit, and maybe if I feed it enough something will happen so I can enter the cave. Yeah, but why? I don't know! I really don't know. There's a cave I can't enter because the blob is in the way. There might be something cool in the cave. I will spend as long as it takes to find out.
Like Disney's Dreamlight Valley, Slime Rancher 2 excels at compelling you to do things because you might get to do more things once you've done those other things. Armed with a vacuum gun, you begin in a base with just enough of a tutorial to let you know that sucking up slimes, expelling them into a holding pen, and feeding them their favorite snacks will result in them pooting out gems. Suck up the gems and fire them into the stock market to earn coins, or fling them into your fabricator to print out gear upgrades. That's about all the game tells you. While Dreamlight Valley spells everything out for you with an infinite to-do list, Slime Rancher 2 mostly lets you figure things out for yourself after the first 90 seconds, which is kinda nice, actually.
Early on while sucking up slimes, carrots, and gems, I came across a weird little geyser spewing some kind of inky fluid that I couldn't vacuum up. But looking at my fabricator's menu, I saw an upgrade I could craft that would allow me to gather "science resources" from "nodes in the environment." Inky geyser fluid feels sciencey and loosely qualifies as a node, so I figured that's what I needed. Sure enough I was soon slurping up those geyers and other new resources I could use to build more upgrades.
Slime Rancher 2 knows just how to keep me motivated. While dashing around hoovering up carrots and chickens to feed my imprisoned slimes, I could spy barely visible objects on the top of distant cliffs or archways and immediately wanted to find a way up to collect them. With my base at the center of the map, most of the world is gated off in three directions, covered in the 'fog of more' (I simply can't call it 'fog of war' in this cheerful place) making me anxious to unlock it and see what the rest of the map looks like. The spacious base makes me wonder what else I can build inside it, like gardens, silos, and ponds, with an underground annex promising still more room to build. I only have four slots on my vacuum gun, each capable of holding stacks of one item, so I already have an ongoing quest to add more slots and storage capacity. That's all the reason I need to keep sucking up everything I find.
(Image credit: Monomi Park)Even without the to-do list growing in my head, Slime Rancher 2 is a beautiful, colorful world to spend time in. Slimes are plump and adorable (though a bit gross when they leave a smear of goo on the ground or walls) and everything looks so darn fluffy. Even rocks and boulders look comfy enough to curl up on and take a nap. There be monsters, though: scary Tar blobs appear at night in droves, consuming everything in their path and happy to take a bite out of you (though they can be disabled in the menu if you want a completely gentle experience).
I only briefly played Monomi Park's original Slime Rancher, so I can't really make a comparison between the games, but Early access or not, Slime Rancher 2 feels polished and fun and wholesome, unless you think too long about putting cute blobs in jail and watching them go feral if you don't feed them enough.
(Image credit: Monomi Park)I do have a couple small complaints: the sprint meter feels completely unnecessary in a game like this (just let me run at top speed at all times, because what's the harm?) I also wouldn't mind an on-screen compass so I know which direction I'm facing without having to open my map. But despite those little objections, I can already feel my impending weekend being sucked into Slime Rancher 2 the same way I'm sucking slimes up into my vacuum.
There was something cool in the cave the giant slime was blocking, by the way. Several somethings, actually, but best of all a cute kitty slime that I promptly vacuumed up and who now lives at my base, an adorable new prisoner. See, all that time spent shooting fruit into a giant blob's mouth was worth it. I knew it would be, even though I didn't know why.
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2014’s Freedom Planet changed the Sonic The Hedgehog fan scene. It was one of the first big projects to shed its borrowed Sega branding and become its own thing—not just in terms of aesthetics and setting, but mechanically, too. Channeling the spirit of Japanese studio Treasure (Gunstar Heroes, Ikaruga, etc), Freedom Planet blended Sonic’s speedy platforming with playful, expressive aerial movement and satisfying boss-bludgeoning combat. It was great fun, but the indie developers behind it had bigger plans.
After seven long years in development, the sequel is now available, and it was worth the wait.
Need To KnowWhat is it?: A speedy platformer with crunchy combat and dozens of bosses.
Expect to pay: $24.99/£19.99
Release date: September 13th, 2022
Developer: GalaxyTrail
Publisher: GalaxyTrail
Played on: Windows 11, Nvidia 2080 Ti, Intel i9-9900k @ 4.9ghz, 32GB RAM
Multiplayer: None
Store page: Steam, Itch.ioFor newcomers, I’d recommend starting with the first game. It’s still a gem, and the story won’t make much sense without it. The sequel is a loosely Sonic-inspired platformer starring a cast of cute kung-fu animals in a broadly Asian sci-fi world. While there are opportunities to go really fast, ride rails and run on walls and ceilings in classic Sonic style, the focus here is more on playful, agile navigation. Several levels are exploration- and even puzzle-focused, and even the faster stages reward climbing into weird corners with hidden areas and collectibles.
As well as the physics being more forgiving of slowpokery (you can just power your way up vertical walls from a near-stop) each of the four playable characters has additional air mobility options, from double jumps to glides and combat moves like air dashes and uppercuts that extend air time - they’re essential to reach the more unusual routes.
Everybody’s kung fu fighting
Combat is as fundamental as movement here. Smaller enemies can just be blitzed through, and larger ones take only one or two hits from your bigger attacks, maintaining flow. Combat slows down during the (many) boss fights, but these are almost all a joy, thanks to their clear attack patterns, eye-catching designs (often featuring dozens of moving sprites, letting bosses shake, rattle, roll and shapeshift) and sheer scale. Combat channels Treasure classics like Gunstar Heroes: fights range from one-on-one brawls with similarly scaled characters to titanic robots several screens high, putting those platforming skills to the test.
FP2 also adds an extremely powerful block button that lets you negate almost all damage if properly timed. With it, it’s possible to win every single fight without taking a hit.
If Freedom Planet felt like a Mega Drive game, Freedom Planet 2 is the snazzier Sega Saturn sequel: Sprites are bigger and more animated, and there’s plenty of rotation and zoom effects used. While the basics of movement feel familiar, there’s more control given to all characters. Main heroine Lilac can now chain double-jumps and air-dashes to give huge mobility even without platforms, and Carol the wildcat is now untethered, able to wall-jump and place her own jump-boosters.
It’s liberating stuff, and missing a jump can easily be recovered from in style, making FP2 a very forgiving game; It wants you to have fun on your own terms. On top of difficulty settings and a range of accessibility options, there are unlockable items that can greatly reduce or increase difficulty in interesting ways. Want to race against the dev’s par times or clear stages with a single hit point? Do it. Or you can start each stage with powerups, bonus lives, or extra powers like health-leeching attacks.
While the vanilla experience is excellently tuned, you’re invited to tweak those dials if you feel the need.
Fast platforming, slow-cooked to perfection
It’s easy to see how this took seven years to create. Every level is visually and mechanically distinct, often with a shift in aesthetic around the mid-way point. Between levels, there’s a world map to wander with multiple towns, packed with interesting characters that have new things to say after every major plot beat. Every NPC has a distinct sprite animated as cleanly as any of the main cast, too. These are the kind of details that only come from a truly passionate development team.
You can feel it in the writing and voice work, too. Freedom Planet could get wrapped up in itself, leaving cutscenes running overlong, and some of the cast clearly had better recording equipment than others. That’s all fixed here, and they’ve roped in some familiar anime talent, including Chris Sabat (Vegeta and Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z’s dub) who delivers a great performance as burly brawler Askal—a performance aided by some cheeky Dragon Ball-esque sound effects.
Image 1 of 13(Image credit: GalaxyTrail)Image 2 of 13(Image credit: GalaxyTrail)Image 3 of 13(Image credit: GalaxyTrail)Image 4 of 13(Image credit: GalaxyTrail)Image 5 of 13(Image credit: GalaxyTrail)Image 6 of 13(Image credit: GalaxyTrail)Image 7 of 13(Image credit: GalaxyTrail)Image 8 of 13(Image credit: GalaxyTrail)Image 9 of 13(Image credit: GalaxyTrail)Image 10 of 13(Image credit: GalaxyTrail)Image 11 of 13(Image credit: GalaxyTrail)Image 12 of 13(Image credit: GalaxyTrail)Image 13 of 13(Image credit: GalaxyTrail)Even Freedom Planet 2’s setting feels heartfelt and rich. Picking up several years after the first game, FP2 blends a mixture of anime tropes, western Saturday morning cartoon dialogue and voicework, and an interesting mix of Chinese and Philippine culture, myth and design. Despite its cartoon energy, the story tackles some heavy topics, including the long-lasting fallout of colonialism and the erasure of indigenous cultures. I know that sounds dicey for a platformer inspired by Sonic the Hedgehog but it somehow sticks the landing.
My first run through FP2 took a solid eight hours, and there are three other characters with their own gameplay mechanics, cutscenes and dialogue I still want to play with.
There’s not much to nitpick here. While FP2 nicely supports high refresh monitors (great for a fast-moving game like this), it renders at an intentionally low resolution to maintain its Saturn-esque aesthetic. While usually fine, when the camera zooms out to show larger areas or keep up with a speeding player, things get a bit rough and pixely. There’s also a couple boss fights that are a bit weaker than the rest, but two or three mediocre fights out of around forty is still a fantastic batting average.
Freedom Planet 2 is already one of my favorite games of 2022. While I’d recommend playing the two games in order, if you only have time for one speedy 2D platformer this year, this is the one you want.
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Respawn Entertainment took to Twitter this week with a statement condemning the “increased harassment” its employees have faced over the variety of issues plaguing the popular battle royale shooter Apex Legends.
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The World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Classic release is almost here, so it's a good time to make sure you truly are prepared for your adventure to Northrend. The second-ever WoW expansion is arguably the most popular—as the server queues will testify—and will see us travelling to the northern continent where the Lich King has made his home.
So what time can you expect to play the new (old?) expansion? In this Wrath Classic release guide, I'll go through the launch times for each region, broken down by time zone. That way, you can get in the snacks and start your journey in Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra as soon as it goes live.
(Image credit: Blizzard)Wrath Classic release times
Wrath of the Lich King Classic will launch globally on September 26 or 27, depending on your time zone. You can check out the screenshot above for the launch map, though I've listed many of the locations below for easy reference.
Here are the release times for Wrath Classic:
- Los Angeles: 3 pm PDT
- New York: 6 pm EDT
- London: 11 pm BST
- Paris: 12 am CEST (Sept 27)
- Korea: 7 am KST (Sept 27)
- Sydney: 8 am AEST (Sept 27)
Your Battle.net launcher should automatically download any updates required ahead of time, so you'll be ready to go once Wrath Classic goes live.
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Recent times have seen some gaming companies, and most notably Bungie, step up their efforts to shield staff from the more unpleasant elements of fandom. In Bungie's case the studio's taking action against not only cheaters, but serial harassers of its staff who have issued violent threats. Now Respawn, the Vince Zampella-led studio behind Apex Legends and Titanfall, has felt it necessary to warn elements of its community about their behaviour.
"Recently, we have seen increased harassment towards members of our development team," reads a statement posted to social media. "We welcome community input, however, the line between constructive feedback and the harassment of our dev team cannot be crossed."
The studio goes on to basically say: chat 'frack', get banged.
"We want to remind our players that we have a zero tolerance policy for threats and the harassment of our developers. We will take appropriate action to ensure the health and safety of our team.
"We love hearing feedback and will continue to work alongside our community to foster a respectful, collaborative environment, and uphold the competitive integrity of our game."
There's no indication of what specifically triggered this (yet), though it says everything that Respawn decided to go public with such a statement. It is of course ridiculous that anyone involved in the making of videogames should be subject to harassment or threats, but unfortunately we live in a world where a substantial number of folks take games—and it does seem particularly acute when it comes to live service games—far too seriously indeed.
Shortly after the statement was posted, good old Bungie came in with a message of support:
Standing against toxicity and harassment takes all of us working together to build healthier communities. We are with you in that effort @respawn.September 22, 2022
See moreIn an almost perfectly comic illustration of the way the internet works, Respawn replying to this with an orange heart emoji instantly had some random speculating "Collaboration in the works?!?!?!"
I sincerely doubt that Bungie and Respawn have chosen to announce a collaboration over statements saying 'don't harass our staff', but that's the kind of over-analysing obsessiveness so common online (albeit in this case with no bad intent). In any event, we all love games but some folk maybe love them a bit too much: Respawn really shouldn't have ever had to issue a statement like this, that should go without saying. Sadly, it had to.
You're the emergent AI who destroys, or saves, humanity in this sandbox strategy game
in Gaming News
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An upcoming strategy game will cast you as the first AI and ask you to choose whether to become Skynet, save the world, or something in between. Heart of the Machine is set to release in 2023, and it's a heck of a game concept. Having awakened in a world where nobody knows you exist, you as an AI will set your own goals in a vast cityscape in the far future.
It's set up like a colony or city sim game, with a focus on story rather than victory conditions, but with the twist that the big procedurally generated society has already been made and you're dropped into it to cause havoc as you will. You'll be able to take control of humans and machines that you've brought to your side in real-time tactical combat.
The game hopes to be pretty simple to play, though the world itself will be complex. "The metagame runs deep, but you're meant to be up and running with the basics of the game in five minutes," says the developer.
Developer Arcen Games has experience with AI, in fact, their most famous games are about it: AI War: Fleet Command and AI War 2 are both strategy titles infamous for their customizability, depth, difficulty, and, yes, the skill of their enemy AI programming. I'm interested in what they do with this one for that exact reason: The simulated human society will probably react proportionally and fairly reasonably to the existence of your rogue AI.
A playground ethos really does point towards the appeal of Heart of the Machine's concept. Arcen lists play ideas like overthrowing the reigning human autocracy in favor of democracy, installing yourself at the head of the government as AI overlord, developing a space program to send yourself into the stars, or just going "full AI overlord" with a nuclear apocalypse.
You can find Heart of the Machine on Steam.
The publisher Hooded Horse is something of a rising star in strategy games right now, collecting an impressive array of in-development and formerly-indie games under one publishing label. You might have heard about a game they published earlier this week, the mind-bogglingly-scoped alien invasion simulator Terra Invicta, which was made by the developers of XCOM's Long War mod.
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