Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is really, really good. You’ve probably heard this already. Our own review and other reviews of the game have praised it quite a bit. But this isn’t a review. Instead, this is just us reaffirming that, yeah, it really is as good as so many other people have claimed. In fact, some of us at Kotaku are already penciling it in for our Game of the Year list.
The Week In Games: Return To Hyrule
The Week In Games: Return To Hyrule
And don’t worry, no spoilers below.
For those just tuning in, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the follow-up to 2019’s Jedi: Fallen Order. And just like before, in this latest adventure from Respawn and EA, players take on the role of Cal Kestis, a Jedi who survived the purge as a young boy and who now hangs out with his ragtag found family of misfits as they try to free the galaxy from the Empire. Oh and also try not to get caught by all the people hunting them down. (And there are a lot of people after them.) To bring down the Empire, outrun their enemies, and save the day, Cal has to do a lot of jumping, sliding, climbing, fighting, and exploring. And in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor all of this—every jump, lightsaber swing, wall climb, and more—feels great.
Jedi Survivor is one of those games that just feels fantastic to play. Controlling Cal quickly becomes effortless while either platforming or fighting. You stop thinking about pressing buttons or whatever and instead Cal feels like a natural extension of your own body. And to be clear: The first game played really well. But Survivor just feels more honed in, with every part of the game seemingly built to be fun and satisfying to play.
EA / Lucasfilm
Whenever folks playing the game at Kotaku talk about Jedi: Survivor, it usually evolves into people just gushing about the latest sequence they experienced or just trying to describe how awesome combat or platforming felt during their last play session. A lot of the time people don’t even say full sentences, instead going “Ahhh, man… so good” or “Uhhh it’s sooo great” or making other noises that aren’t words but convey how much they are enjoying it.
I’ve heard some complaints about how animations look in the game, and I get that sometimes they might look janky, but this is just because Respawn has clearly prioritized input and feel over how it looks. So yes, watching someone play as Cal as he jumps around platforms might look odd, but playing it feels heavenly. I’m not sure about others, but I rarely fast-travel in this game because moving around the planets you visit is such a blast that fast traveling often feels like I’m missing out on one of the best parts of Jedi: Survivor. When simply moving and jumping in a game feels this good, you know you got something special.
Jedi: Survivor Is Way Better Than Just A Star Wars Game
It can be easy to assume that all the hype around this game is just because it’s Star Wars, but even some non-Star Wars fans around these parts are having a blast with the game. Again, when you start to drill down into why, it ends up coming back to how mechanically satisfying and fun Jedi: Survivor is to play. You don’t need to know or care about the Clone Wars or Jedi or the Force to enjoy Cal sliding down a cliff, leaping into the air, force-dashing further, and then grabbing onto a distant rope to swing over a group of enemies that you eviscerate in seconds with your laser sword. That’s just universally cool stuff.
And while I just said it’s great not just because it’s a Star Wars game, it’s still an awesome Star Wars game. I’ll have more to say about this in the near future, but something I appreciate about Survivor is just how Star Wars-y this game truly is. Crusty alien cantinas, weird but loveable characters, dangerous bounty hunters, cute droids, excellent music, genuinely charming friends, cool ships, and all the perfect sound effects.
EA / Lucasfilm
This is Star Wars at its finest (and weirdest), and an example of how AAA games can be big and yet still feel like each aspect was designed with care. In other words, they can still be incredible if done right. Other devs, take note of sequences like everything leading up to and directly following the moment you get the crossguard stance, or the amazing escape sequence on Jedha. More of this, please!
Sure, the game has some performance issues, but even those can’t stop us (and the rest of the internet) from playing and enjoying this latest and possibly greatest Star Wars video game. Good luck to everything else coming out in 2023!
SAN FRANCISCO—Emphasizing that it was only offering an opinion and any choice made would be acceptable, a little voice reportedly whispered, “…or you could just get takeout,” Tuesday despite already knowing it had won. “Just offering my two cents here, but it’s been a tough day at work, and there’s always pad Thai from the place around the corner,” said the soft-spoken interior monologue, admitting that it was ultimately your decision, even as it knew full-well that the battle was over before it began. “The place is just a block away, and it’s only three button presses before it’s basically in your hands. But, hey, you could always make lentil soup or something. What would that take? Just 90 minutes or so, right? Huh, and then you’d just fall asleep immediately and go right back to your office when you wake up tomorrow. Totally up to you, if that’s what you want.” At press time, sources confirmed the small voice had grown slightly larger as it suggested maybe on the way back from getting takeout you could stop at 7-Eleven and grab one of those caramel drumsticks.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 punctuated the ending to arguably one of Marvel’s best trilogy films (don’t @ me) with an emotionally gratifying final needle drop that had its titular characters, the fans, and even the musician behind the song ugly-crying with happiness. Minor spoilers ahead.
The Week In Games: Return To Hyrule
On Monday, Florence Welch, the lead singer of the popular indie rock band Florence and the Machine, uploaded a TikTok video of herself reacting to her song “Dog Days Are Over”, which served as the final song in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. If you’ve already seen the film, which came out over the weekend, listening to the song likely had you grinning with glee through tear-filled eyes just like Welch, because it served as a spectacular send-off to the comic book heroes’ nine-year cinematic journey.
“So I cried all the way through this movie but whenThe Guardians of the Galaxy started dancing to ‘Dog Days’ I really lost it,” Welch wrote in her TikTok caption. “Thank you so much for all the love for this moment. The superhero-obsessed little girl in me can’t believe it happened.”
Each of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy films packs an emotional gut-punch with its poignant plotlines and an undeniably feel-good bop in its Awesome Mixes. In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1, we saw how Star-Lord’s relationship with his late mother affected his devil-may-care outlook on the universe and his place in it. In Vol. 2, we got to see how Star-Lord’s estranged relationship with his all-powerful father Ego didn’t define the man he could become. The first two movies accentuated key emotional beats with The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” and Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son,” respectively.
In Guardians 3, the camera took its focus off of Star-Lord and instead sheds some much-needed light on the trash-talking Rocket Raccoon, revealing how he came to be the standoffish anti-hero he is today. We’ll spare you any spoilers, but be warned, the two-hour and 30-minute movie does depict gruesome scenes of violence against animals while revealing Rocket’s harrowing backstory. But if you can get past that, the happiness emanating from Guardians 3’s finale will hit you like a train on a track, as Welch’s song puts it.
The Little Mermaid live-action remake and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts—two of the biggest upcoming movies of 2023—don’t share much in common. However, an apparent film projector accident at a theater showing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 led to the trailers for the two films playing at the same time. The end result might just be the best movie of the year.
This Wacky Magical Girl Anime Is Studio Trigger-Coded To Perfection
I’ll say right now that while I’m excited to see the new Guardians film, I’ve got little interest in the live-action Mermaid remake and even less desire to see another Transformers movie that isn’t Bumblebee 2. So I wasn’t expecting to be dazzled when I saw a tweet claiming that a theater had screwed up and played the trailers for both upcoming blockbusters at the same time. I almost didn’t even click to watch the video. I’m so happy I did because what was created by mashing up these two teasers is fantastic.
In the video uploaded on Friday—which has already gone viral and been reshared all over Twitter—a theater in Tenesse appears to start playing trailers for both Transformers and The Little Mermaid at the same time, with audio of Ariel singing all that can be heard during the entire clip. The weirdest part about all of this is how well the two trailers sync up, which is probably a sign that movie trailers are following similar formulas and pacing guidelines and not some cosmic bit of content creation. But still, fun to watch!
Fans seem to like the Little Mermaid / Transformers mashup
At one point during the video, you can hear someone mention that “This looks like the best movie ever” and I’m inclined to agree. At the very least it would likely be more entertaining than Disney’s previous live-action misfires or most of the Transformers films. At the end of the video, you can even hear the audience start to applaud the odd concoction of Disney nostalgia and transforming animals.
The original poster of the video explained to Kotaku that this odd mashup happened during an evening showing of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 at an AMC theater in Franklin, Tennessee.
According to Blake Perry, the staff at the theater didn’t say anything afterward and the rest of the trailers were shown without issue. “It was just such a strange coincidence and everyone in my auditorium loved it!!”
Of course, the question now is if any studio or company involved in this weird bit of accidental crossover marketing will latch on to the viral moment and try to take advantage of it. I can see the Transformers-branded social media accounts posting some fan art of Ariel and Optimus Prime chilling and singing together. In a world where Fortnite brings characters like Batman and Luke Skywalker together with Ariana Grande and Master Chief, it’s not that wild to think the brands might come together to squeeze all the fun and joy out of this odd bit of accidental viral marketing.
Or wait, is this just a Fortnite teaser? Damn it.
Update 5/5/2023 4:55 p.m. ET: This story was updated to include more information from the original poster of the viral video.
Redfall, a vampire shooter out this week on Xbox and PC, was developed by Arkane Studios, the same team behind classics like Dishonored and Prey. It’s one of Microsoft’s first-party exclusives for 2023, a big release for the company’s Game Pass subscription service. And by most accounts, it sucks.
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We’re currently playing the game together for our own impressions, which will be published soon, but in the meantime—because I find the reception so extraordinary given the scale (and price) of the release—I thought I’d roundup some of the impressions and review pieces out there from outlets who managed to receive code ahead of Redfall’s release (we, obviously, did not), or have been updating a review-in-progress piece as they go along.
Ultimately, Redfall is a game that should not have been released yet. Its litany of bugs hampers the gameplay loop of exploring its world with friends, and that loop itself feels compromised by elements that are poorly executed and ill-suited to the team implementing them. I can’t pretend to know whether Arkane chose to make a loot-shooter or was assigned to make a loot-shooter, but I can tell you what it feels like: one of the best game studios in the world suddenly made toothless.
Redfall is ultimately not up to Arkane’s usual standards. It feels rushed, unfinished, and unsatisfying to play. Single-player is hampered by a squad-based open-world shooter structure, multiplayer held back by odd decisions, and decent gunplay is marred by uninspiring mission structures. It’s a confusing game, full of contradictions, and the result is unfulfilling.
With Redfall arriving at IGN just a couple of days ahead of its official release date we haven’t had enough time to complete a final review yet – certainly not without becoming a nocturnal monster myself and staying awake all weekend. However, after several sessions – solo, co-op with a friend, and also in a group of three – I must admit I’m thoroughly underwhelmed by Redfall’s vanilla missions and lifeless world, and very disappointed at its lengthy list of display issues and bugs.
Redfall fails to compel on nearly every level, not just in its uninteresting story, but also its all-too-familiar gameplay. Not only does Redfall feel like a game stuck in yesteryear, even its performance finds a way to disappoint.
Eurogamer’s early impressions are actually quite optimistic, writer Christian Donlan preferring to reserve final judgement until the game was done, but I thought his anecdote at the end here was a pretty good summary of the game’s visuals:
So how is it ugly? It’s technical stuff, I think, and while I’ll leave that to Digital Foundry I’ll say that the edges – technical term – are a little rough. Textures sometimes pop in late or not at all, so those beautiful trees are always bursting into fiery life a little too close by, and at one point the classic immersive sim storytelling graffiti on a wall was weirdly pixellated. Character models are still and oddly lit. I should add here, I’m trying to be objective, which is always a mistake. I think the patchy textures – yes, I’m really about to say this – gives the town a slightly impressionist feel. The waxy characters are wonderfully waxy, the kind of things you might meet on a trip through a haunted Hall of Presidents. Even so, there’s no ducking the fact that my wife came into the room when I was playing, looked at the screen in horror and said, “Jesus! What happened to Fortnite?”
I should note not all reviews and impressions pieces are so down! If you head over to Metacritic you’ll find some outlets—many of which I’ve literally never heard of, but still—have given the game positive scores, like We Got This Covered, who rated it 4.5 stars out of 5, saying:
With rich, beautiful open worlds, a multitude of weapons, and a wide variety of enemies to square off against, Redfall amazes. Players won’t regret staking their claim on Arkane’s latest masterpiece.
OK. Enough with the professional reviews. Let’s see what people who paid for the game—and if you bought this instead of playing on Game Pass it was a full-price $70 release, an important point to remember here—have to say. Here’s a selection of some of the top Steam reviews at time of posting:
Ignoring the performance issues, this game is bad. The AI is pathetic, even on the highest difficulty. The controls are clunky. The graphics are average. The world is empty. I don’t understand why these companies think they can start charging $70 for unfinished garbage. I couldn’t even stomach an hour of this game.
Extremely average and unfinished game. Poor performance on PC and riddled with bugs and glitches.
I’ve heard great things from Arkane, but this is not it. I played with two friends, who also refunded. Going to try and give it a go tonight on the $10 PC Game Pass instead. But that first hour was clear to me: this is not a $70 AAA release.
I’m going to wind up with that last one because, having played it for most of yesterday, it’s actually the closest to my own experiences with the game. This plays like a remaster of a PS3 shooter. It’s an unfinished concept piece, a pitch project that somehow made its way to retail.
It’s tough to explain how raw the whole thing feels without playing it yourself. Even the fonts look like placeholders. Arkane is a studio responsible for some of the most important first-person games of the last decade; to see their name attached to this just…really bums me out.
Anyway! Like I said, our own impressions will be coming soon, so check back to see if a few days of multiplayer madness will have our team (not me, I live on the far side of the moon) thinking any differently to these reviews.
I’m not a full-time comics guy, but I certainly have my favourites. And Hellboy might be my most favourite of all, so to have gone decades without knowing that its creator Mike Mignola worked on a Final Fantasy comic has blown my weekend wide open.
Oshi No Ko Is An Early Anime Of The Year Contender
Famed comics author Kurt Busiek, best known for his superhero work on stuff like Superman and The Avengers, told a story over the weekend on Twitter about a comic he and Mignola teamed up for in the early 90s. “Every time someone starts talking about the unreleased FINAL FANTASY comic I wrote years ago”, he says, “there’s a spate on online news articles and discussion, and they all seem to get the story wrong.”
I somehow didn’t even know this was a story, so definitely enjoyed Busiek’s recounting of it, which for some will be a correction to older stories that got it “wrong”, but for me is one of the coolest “what if” tales in video game adaptation history.
Busiek’s retelling was over a number of Tweets, so I’ve pasted the full text below (with a couple of capitalisation edits), but if you want to read them as the site intended you can start here:
Mike Mignola did great-looking covers for it, but he didn’t draw the interiors. Dell Barras did, and he finished about an issue and a half before the plug was pulled. I think I got three (of four) issues written.
It was not an adaptation of the game. The project started as an original adventure set in the world of FINAL FANTASY I, but after Disney Comics had approved my outline for it, Squaresoft decided they wanted to tie in to the forthcoming game, now known as FINAL FANTASY IV. I was kinda saddened by this, because…..I liked the story I’d come up with, and I liked that it was about low-level characters who were basically trying to survive, and the new game was about high-ranking people who were in charge of armies and countries and such, which was more confining, but so it goes.
So they paid me a kill fee for my first outline, and I did a new outline that used the characters from the upcoming game but told a new story in that world, rather than adapting the game. They liked that fine.
Some folks have said that clearly I hadn’t played FFIV or I wouldn’t have wanted to make changes they didn’t like. That’s true, but it’s because FFIV wasn’t done yet. This was before it had even been released in Japan. I worked off an overall bible and character design art.
I’ve seen it reported that I’ve said it was a bad comic and that it’s good that it didn’t come out. I’m pretty sure that I said it wasn’t my best work (I had to put it in a hurry for reasons mentioned above) but it was a solid story. And I’ve said FINAL FANTASY fans would…..not like it if it was published today, because they’d bring all their knowledge of the FF lore that’s been built up over the past 30 years to it, and it wouldn’t match that; it’d seem like heresy. But I would have been fine with it coming out back then.
I’ve seen people saying I wanted to change the character names, because I didn’t understand who they were. The stuff they say I didn’t understand wasn’t in the character descriptions I was given, and for all I know didn’t exist yet. Maybe yes, maybe no. But I asked…..SquareSoft about the names, and they encouraged me to change them, with an eye toward using the new names in the US release of the game. So you can be grateful the comic never happened, or Cid might have been called “Lord Blast” for the past 30+ years!
SquareSoft started talking with me about hiring me to be their in-house “Americanizer,” because they liked the stuff I was doing. But I’d just moved to a new area, and the job would have meant moving to the Seattle suburbs, and I was ambivalent about that. They may have…..been, too, because for whatever reason, we didn’t talk about that job for very long.
But if it had come up in 1991, it’d have been part of the whole thing; if it was finished today it’d be this weird out-of-continuity thing that got everything “wrong.”
A console staple Because the Xbox Series S is $30 off, you can put that $30 towards storage, an extra controller, or the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
The idea these three guys (Barras is perhaps better known for his animation work, on everything from the original Transformers to Spider-Man) could have worked on a Final Fantasy comic, of all things, is interesting enough. The fact we could have had Busiek serve as some kind of Localisation Guy, naming and renaming characters, is even wilder. Lord Blast!
If you want to see some of Mignola’s covers, issue #4 is here, while another shared by Busiek is below:
Respawn went on to develop Apex Legends, a game set in the Titanfall universe only—crucially—without the Titans, and which has been printing money for years. They’ve also made the new Star Wars Jedi games, which have been a successful return to form for a franchise long stuck in licensed adaptation hell.
They’ve been very busy with those, and given their success likely will be for the foreseeable future. You also need to know that, as critically successful as Titanfall 2 was, the game—released alongside a bunch of other blockbuster shooters, including EA’s own Battlefield 1—was seen by publisher Electronic Arts as an enormous commercial failure.
So the likelihood that we ever get a Titanfall 3, especially a Titanfall 3 in the same vein as Titanfall 2, are slim! Actually that’s being generous. The likelihood that Respawn, as busy as they are, will make a Titanfall 3 with backing from EA, a publisher who will throw an under-performing franchise in the trash without a second’s hesitation, is pretty much zero.
This week, we’re back in said ringer. Speaking with Barron’s(thanks, PC Gamer), mostly about their new Star Wars game, Respawn boss Vince Zampella was asked about the possibility of there ever being a Titanfall 3, to which he replied
I hate to say yes, then people latch onto that, and then skewer you when it doesn’t come.
But I would love to see it happen is the real answer.
My man, you are one of the handful of people on the planet with the power to make this happen! You don’t need to pine about it in a interview, go call some meetings!
I kid, of course, there are a multitude of planning, resource-related and financial reasons we haven’t seen a Titanfall 3, but refreshingly—and in the only piece of good news to be had here today—that’s partly down to the fact that were such a thing to ever happen, Respawn want to do right by the game, rather than just drop Titanfall Tour on iOS or something.
“It has to be the right thing”, Zampella says. “It’s such a beloved franchise for the fans and also for us. If it is not the right moment in time, the right idea, then it just doesn’t make sense.”
Maybe that time will be soon. Maybe it’ll be never! All I know is that until we reach that right moment in time”, every time I have to type “Titanfall 3″ and not follow it up with “Announced” is going to kill me.
Back in March, legendary Elden Ring player Let Me Solo Her took on a challenge of unthinkable proportions: finishing a run in which every single enemy was Malenia. We’ve seen him slay this fearsome boss countless times, but surely this would be too much Malenia to overcome, even for him. Oh, who am I kidding? Of course he conquered the challenge. Roughly 24 hours ago, on April 25, Let Me Solo Her wrapped his 10-hour playthrough of the “Everything is Malenia” run, having documented the whole journey on stream for the world to watch.
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Let Me Solo Her, as his name implies, made waves by appearing in other players’ games to take on one of the game’s most grueling bosses, Malenia, Blade of Miquella, on his own. His remarkable feats of Elden Ring mastery even earned him a sword from the game’s publisher, Bandai Namco. Having defeated Malenia so many times, Let Me Solo Her set his sights on beating the game using a mod that replaced every single enemy, from the easily dispatched Godrick Soldiers to the games toughest bosses, with Malenia. And of course he had to do so wearing nothing but the jar helmet and imposing other restrictions on his run, like a refusal to level up Vigor, which affects how much damage your character can take. Let Me Solo Her is now taking another victory lap and by god, he deserves it.
10 hours, many deaths, many crashes, and no vigor
“Took about 10 hours,” Let Me Solo Her says in his victory tweet, “and probably more deaths than I’d like to admit but I finally finished the Everything is Malenia Run!”
While he admits that he died more than he would’ve cared to, and that the whole no leveling vigor thing may have been a bit much, you could tell he had fun doing it from the five-part stream documenting the journey.
The challenge proved tough even for someone as skilled and experienced as Let Me Solo Her, but it was even harder on his PC, which crashed a few times trying to keep up with such a wild and demanding mod. Things got particularly rough in part three of the stream, where Let Me Solo Her said he had to configure the game at “the lowest setting possible” to keep it running. And mind you, as he said when the game first crashed in part one, he’s running an RTX 4080 in his computer—that’s a $1,200 graphics card.
’I’m not sadistic, I just like this one particular boss’
Watching the Malenia-only streams, it’s hard not to think that Let Me Solo Her enjoys being cruel to himself. I mean, you can hear the pain in his voice at the conclusion of stream two as he takes on Draconic Malenia, the mod’s replacement for the Draconic Tree Sentinel.
But Let Me Solo Her assured the chat in the following stream that this wasn’t an act of sadism. That said, he did say that the Malenia-only run was “hard, way harder than I thought it would be.” However, moments later he nonetheless told the chat, “You guys should try this by the way. It’s very, very fun.”
FromSoftware / Let me solo her
In the finale, Let Me Solo Her admitted that he had lost count of how many times he died. In the first stream alone, he said, “I think [I died] at least 20-something [times].”
Persisting through all those deaths, though, Let Me Solo Her finally took down Elden Malenia, the replacement for the game’s final boss: Elden Beast. Thanking all his viewers, he expressed excitement at the upcoming DLC…and we can’t wait to see what feats of stunning heroism he pulls off when that drops.
Gif: Nintendo / Studio Trigger / Odyssey Interactive / Kotaku
There are just so many games these days it’s hard to stand out from the crowd and get the world’s attention. So, here’s one good way: Get world-renowned anime house Studio Trigger to make the trailer for your upcoming Nintendo Switch sports-action game.
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Omega Strikers, developed by Odyssey Interactive, is a free-to-play online 3v3 soccer (football for readers across the pond) game in which anime-looking athletes compete in cross-platform online matches. Some of the dapper athletes are so anime AF in their designs that they’re not even human. By my count, there’s at least one slime girl, a gun-wielding lizard man, and a swole gerbil-looking bear dude. The soccer ball here is on fire half the time, so these characters being anime AF fits the bill.
Odyssey enlisted the help of animation powerhouse Studio Trigger (the studio behind Kill La Killand Cyberpunk: Edgerunners) to sell the hectic energy of its roster of footballers, what with their penchant to bend the rules of conventional soccer via unsanctioned weapons, with a cool opening cinematic music video. You can check it out below.
Nintendo / Studio Trigger / Odyssey Interactive
Studio Trigger anime tend to have themes of defiance against some sort of authoritative organization. For example, Kill La Kill and Brand New Animal saw its colorful casts openly defy the notion of socially acceptable clothing and racial prejudice against beast people, respectively. More recently, Trigger’s Netflix anime adaptation Cyberpunk: Edgerunners focused on a Latino boy named David Martinez’s journey to becoming a legend in a town that would turn a blind eye to his untimely demise.
Great for work or play This laptop boasts a 15.6-inch touchscreen, an Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, a webcam, and more. It also has a variety of ports for connectivity’s sake, making it versatile for use as a display or even a desktop replacement.
All that being said, Trigger animating an opening cinematic about a group of outcasts united by their passion to decimate their opponents just makes sense. I guess Omega Strikers players are defying conventional soccer regulations. Who are we to deny a pompadoured rockabilly his fun? Time will tell whether Omega Strikers will have an arena that lets its madcap group of soccer weirdos duke it out in space, as Trigger is wont to do. In the meantime, props for having such a stylish trailer.
Omega Strikers is slated to release on April 27 and is available for pre-order on the Nintendo Switch, Steam, the App Store, and Google Play.
I don’t collect Pokémon cards much myself. I have a select few cards I’ve kept over the years, mostly ones of my favorite monsters or sporting characters I like such as the Professor’s Research card featuring my husband Professor Turo. But I am always captivated by the art The Pokémon Company slaps on a piece of cardstock and throws into a pack with other pieces of cardstock for kids and also Logan Paul to spend untold amounts of money on. That captivation continues because The Pokémon Company is collaborating with Japanese artist Yu Nagaba on a new line of Eeveelution cards, and they’re really cool.
If you’re unfamiliar with Nagaba’s work, he’s known for his minimalistic style that kinda feels evocative of newspaper comics. He’s collaborated with Pokémon before on things like a 2021 Pikachu card and Ed Sheeran’s “Celestial” music video. This new collaboration is a box set featuring art of Eevee and all its evolutions. It will launch in Japan on May 24 and run 4800 yen (roughly $36 USD) . It includes a rubber playmat, sleeves for cards, and a deck box. Right now, the set is part of a lottery on the Japanese Pokémon Center site. On top of the box set, Nagaba’s art also appears on a portfolio and card display frame, which will run 1980 yen (about $15 USD) and 1490 yen (around $11 USD), respectively.
Once May 24 comes around, the Pokémon Center will include a promo card of the Eeveelutions for every 1000 yen spent on a TCG-related purchase. This announcement precedes another announcement that will take place on May 5, revealing more information about a collaboration between Nagaba, Pokémon, and the clothing brand BEAMS. Thanks to PokéBeach for the translations.
Now that I’m looking at all these Eeveelution pieces, I just want to see all my favorites in Nagaba’s style. This is prime minimalist tattoo fodder. Give me Raichu, Nagaba, I’ll get him inked into my arm forever.
Let’s take a look at all the cards and merch Nagaba drew up for the collection.
The long-awaited, blood-soaked Dead Island 2 released today, and after almost a decade of waiting, I’m sure you have some questions. The game shares a peacefully embarrassing sense of humor with the first game, 2011’s Dead Island, repeatedly referring to your threatening surroundings as “Hell-A” while being gory enough to actually justify the zombified dad joke, but it’s also changed in important ways. Skill cards make their first appearance, and playing on modern consoles comes with its own idiosyncrasies.
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The unknown is scary. But I’ll guide you through it, and tell you everything I wish someone told me before I started playing Dead Island 2.
How to unlock co-op
Dead Island 2, like the original, employs co-op, so that players can wield an array of unique playable characters—six, in this case—against a neverending onslaught of zombies with dislocated jaws.
To activate co-op in a new game, play through the first three missions of the main story. Co-op unlocks in the fourth, appropriately named “Call the Cavalry,” and you’ll be able to add, at most, two players to your game by choosing either “online options” or “social” when prompted.
Once co-op is enabled, as long as they’re at the same point in the game or earlier, you can accept a friend’s request to join their game, or you can select “Join” from the main menu for a random multiplayer pairing. Quest progress saves in co-op, so you’ll be able to play the entire game while alternating between single and multiplayer at your leisure.
Note that there’s no crossplay, though.
Even the apocalypse is better with friends.Image: Deep Silver Dambuster Studios
I know it’s annoying, but you should spam the “pick up” button
Like Amazon continues to turn our planet into a desolate Funko Pop landfill, Dead Island 2 environments are stuffed with stuff. You’ll find upgrade materials like adhesives, aerosols, and blades on top of tables, inside shut drawers, and raining down from felled like you burst a grisly piñata.
Forget your hand-wringing about storage management—in the zombie apocalypse, everyone’s a scavenger. Pick the stuff up. All of it. As long as you’re regularly upgrading weapons using the materials you’ve found, you’ll find that your Dead Island 2 inventory is impressively bottomless.
Keeping upgrade materials on hand saves you time when you’re at sporadic upgrade workbenches. Though these benches allow you to “track” materials you’re missing, they’re most helpful when you have your materials ready to go, and can repair broken weapons or make them even stronger immediately before your next fight.
To make space, scrap worthless weapons like wooden planks and sell real weapons to traders for lots of money. Upgrade materials let you create weapon mods, upgrades, and repairs, but money is necessary to actually buy them.
You’ll need to make trade offs between special mods and attack power
You’ll unlock and find motley weapon blueprints (often placed, conveniently, right on top of an undiscovered workbench) as you progress further into the game, allowing for wild mods that turn your weapon into two-punch electro-cutioners and cremators, as well as upgrades that bolster your weapon’s damage output.
While the constant influx of shiny toys is understandably tempting, you should be aware that extreme weapon modifications and upgrades aren’t always compatible. While some upgrades’ descriptions plainly indicate that they need certain mods to be equipped, general upgrades like Damaging, which increases a weapon’s damage dealt, will lose their overall potency when paired with a mod. Try to have a plan for the type of weapon you want to ultimately end up with before you irrevocably alter it at a workbench.
“Slaughter” is a perfect weapon upgrade
The game’s huge range of weapon customization options leaves a lot to consider, but I think you should especially prioritize the Slaughter upgrade.
It lets you hack limbs off with more efficiency, making it most compatible with gliding bladed weapons like katanas and hunting knives, but also lifts weapon durability.
Dead Island 2 weapons can break obnoxiously quickly, leaving you suddenly barefisted in the middle of an encounter.
Though you can keep track of weapon breakage by looking at the depleting meter in the bottom right corner of the screen, it’s best to avoid it by adding Slaughter. Don’t forget to repair your favorite weapons whenever you’re near a workbench, too.
You can’t bulldoze through combat—learn to dodge
Despite Dead Island 2’s quickly forming reputation as a brainless, mass bloodletting event, trying to aimlessly plow your way through fields of snarling zombies will get you killed quickly, and destroy your weapon stash even faster.
To protect both yourself and your arsenal, practice dodging, or tapping L1 in the split seconds before a zombie attacks—and I really do mean split seconds.
It took me a while to master the timing. I’d recommend you practice by singling out rogue zombies you come across while exploring environments, and not necessarily in the middle of a stressful main mission. When you nail a dodge (or, alternatively, block an incoming attack), you stun a zombie, opening them up for a health-melting counter attack.
Here come the fireworks.Image: Deep Silver Dambuster Studios
When a zombie mob is descending, use their own powers against them
Just as each playable slayer has their own innate advantages, every zombie you encounter will have its own violent quirk.
Most of them are thematic and obvious. Like, a frizzy zombie surrounded by blue sparks will eventually release a giant explosion of electricity, or a crispy zombie completely immersed in flames will, if it touches you, set you on fire.
Notice these quirks and use them to your advantage when you’re confronted by swarms of zombies that, at first glance, seem unmanageable. Throw a fuel can at a fire zombie to trigger a remote AoE eruption that will murder nearby zombies. Using an electric modded weapon to burst a hole into the water canisters some zombies carry on their backs, and turn the resulting puddle into a livewire trap.
And, once it becomes accessible to you in the game, don’t forget to use Fury Mode, which builds up as you slay zombies and imbues you with their destructive powers, for a brief period of time.
Make sure to level up, but it’s not necessarily as crucial as you might think
Once you hit a main story boss battle or reach a wild enemy with a skull over its head, meaning it’s higher level than you, you’ll feel the power disparity immediately.
To avoid getting overwhelmed by too-strong enemies, take a look at main story and side quests’ recommended levels and make sure your natural leveling up matches them before attempting them.
Though, you don’t have to be at a chapter or enemy’s recommended level to try it. Most of the time, especially in the rogue combat you’ll spend most of your time engaging with, leveling up makes a barely discernible difference in terms of damage output or defense. Most standard wild enemies also conform to your level, too, reflected by the number that appears next to the name over their heads.
If you get stuck on the main story, pivot to a side quest you can benefit from
In the case that you are not at the appropriate level to finish a main level chapter (without great difficulty, at least), don’t worry; you have 33 side quests to choose from.
You’ll unlock these without really trying—by exploring new environments, answering radio calls, or chatting with friendly NPCs.
But before you commit to a side quest, open up the Quests tab, glance at the rewards listed, and consider what your main story goals are. Do you want to level up ASAP? Pick a side quest with abundant XP gains. Do your weapons all suck, and you need something more excruciating? Take the side quest that gifts you a special weapon. Have fun while being practical. Slay responsibly.
Some NPCs are friendly. Others sort of look like Josh Groban.Image: Deep Silver Dambuster Studios
Don’t shy away from customizing your low-stakes skill deck
As you blaze through levels, the main story, and side quests, slots on your skill card deck will unlock. You acquire skill cards without truly trying, either grabbing them after you’ve spammed your “pick up” button, or by killing for them.
You can rearrange or cull your deck at any time, so try any skill card that intrigues you. Most skill benefits are nebulous enough—specializing the type of kick you do, or how you regenerate health—that choosing them never feels make-or-break. It’s more like deciding whether or not you want pickles on your burger.
Did you know there’s voice control?
Dead Island 2 has a unique voice-control system, which beguiled me at first as someone who knows how to use the computer, but just barely.
It lets you speak scripted commands to swap weapons, taunt zombies, and engage extra-powerful Fury Mode, among other things, by using a microphone and your Amazon account.
To activate it, plug your Amazon account information into the “Alexa Game Control” section of the Options menu, make sure Voice Commands is set to “enabled,” and select your preferred input audio device. Read through the available commands in the Voice Controls, found in the Tutorials section, and wonder, like me, if Jeff Bezos can hear you scream.
As a series dating back to the 1980s, you normally expect a new Street Fighter game to play it safe. Sure, every generation or two there might be a visual shift, but Street Fighter is Street Fighter, it began as a 1v1 fighting tournament and shall forever be one. Until, that is, Street Fighter 6 came along.
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I’ll note before we go any further that I’m nor a serious fan of this series. I played the shit out of the second, I admired the third’s graphics from afar and have had little to do with it since, since I’m both terrible at fighting games and not really that interested in them.
But I am very interested in Street Fighter 6, because it’s fancy new ‘World Tour’ mode looks like everything you could ever dream of when a developer decides its time to shake things up. While we’ve known the vague outline of what this new game mode would entail for a while, a new showcase released today goes into huge detail about what we can expect.
It’s basically an open world RPG mode. For, you know, Street Fighter. Don’t believe me? Look at this screenshot, which is for an upcoming game in the Street Fighter series:
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Incredible. You can also customise your appearance, which I think we already knew, but what I love about it here is that it’s not just cosmetic; because this is an RPG mode your choice of sneakers or boots will have an impact on your, uh, kick strength and, um, vitality:
Image: Capcom
Also incredible is the fact you get to fight a fridge, which I know I spoiled in the headline and top image, but I’m going to post the same gif here again because I like it so much:
I cannot stress how good this all is. I love this as much as I loved Yakuza’s pivot to turn-based combat, which while not proving a universal success, was at least a brave and fascinating attempt to breathe new life into a long-running series. Developers in charge of historic game franchises, please take note: it is greatly appreciated every time you try something new.
CHICAGO—Calling the terms of the agreement unfair and excessive, local woman Beth Lebold told reporters Thursday that her strict apartment lease only allowed her to have roommates under 95 pounds. “According to my landlord, I can’t have any roommates bigger than that, no matter how clean or well-behaved they are,” said Lebold, adding that if she were to follow the nonnegotiable regulation, she would have to give up her current roommate, Lucy, who was around 95 pounds when she first got her but had put on a lot of weight since. “The lease says it’s to prevent damage to the property, but that’s ridiculous. Lucy mostly just eats and sleeps all day, and she hardly sheds. I mean, I want to get my security deposit back, but maybe I can just hide her if the landlord ever comes over to fix the sink or anything.” At press time, Lebold was reportedly looking to rehome her roommate after she bit a neighbor.
Last week Capcom pushed an update out to the Steam versions of the remakes for Resident Evil 2 & 3. It was supposed to be a generic little update, but whatever Capcom did under the hood ended up breaking a couple of the game’s nicer features.
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Not long after the updates went live PC users began noticing that the option to enable ray-tracing within both game’s menu had disappeared. Also gone was the option to turn on 3D audio support. While some fans on Reddit initially believed this to have been intentional, Capcom later issued a statement confirming that the modes had been affected by the update, and that they “apologize for any inconvenience”.
To all Resident Evil 2 / Resident Evil 3 users on Steam
We’re aware of an ongoing issue with the raytracing option not appearing in the graphics menu and presets. We’ll have this addressed in a future update and apologize for any inconvenience!
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Sucks that it’ll take another update to fix stuff that had already been in the game, but that’s game development and support, baby.
Weirdly, this isn’t the first time those two specific options have been the focus of botched updates. Back in 2022 the Resident Evil 2 remake, Resident Evil 3 remake and Resident Evil 7 were all forcibly updated on PC to include ray-tracing and 3D audio, a move which massively upset users who were (rightly) concerned that this would blow the required specs for the games—which they had already bought and played—out of the window.
After the updates did exactly that, and fans protested, Capcom quickly reverted:
“Due to overwhelming community response, we’ve reactivated the previous version that does not include ray tracing and enhanced 3D audio,” Capcom’s Resident Evil team wrote on Steam. “Both enhanced and previous versions will be made available going forward.”
First too many people had ray-tracing, now nobody has ray-tracing.
Welcome to Exp. Share, Kotaku’s weekly Pokémon column in which we dive deep to explore notable characters, urban legends, communities, and just plain weird quirks from throughout the Pokémon franchise. This week, we’re looking at how Spinda, an unassuming critter from Generation III, went from a novelty to an apparent nuisance for The Pokémon Company to work with because of its multiple forms.
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27 years after Pokémon Red and Green, alternate forms and designs in Pokémon have become a mainstay in the series. From Shiny Pokémon to event ‘mons like the spiky-eared Pichu, most Pokémon can look a little bit different from their original versions. However, there is one Pokémon that has more forms than any other one else in the series, and that’s Spinda. Because of how its designed is determined, it can have somewhere around four billion different forms.
Spinda is a normal-type Pokémon introduced in Ruby and Sapphire for the Game Boy Advance. While the swirly-eyed little bear seems mostly unremarkable on the surface, it has a gimmick in its appearance that’s resulted in its own a cult following within the Pokémon community. The character has a spot pattern on its coat that, similar to shiny odds, is entirely determined by background math that can give it up to four billion possible variations. It’s a mainstay of its Pokédex entries across the games, with several saying that no two Spinda have the same spot patterns.
How does Spinda have so many forms?
Spinda’s appearance is determined by its individual personality value, or encryption constant in more recent entries, which is a 32-bit integer ranging from zero to 4,294,967,295. This number is assigned the first time you meet a Pokémon in a save file, and where it lands determines the placement of its spots, as well as other things like gender and nature. On top of this, each of these variations could be Shiny, doubling its variations. This is a neat idea that has helped Spinda stand out among its third-generation contemporaries and has made it a centerpiece in its own Pokémon community.
Because Spinda’s possible forms are so vast, communities such as the Spinda’s Cafe subreddit are dedicated to documenting every variation of its spot pattern. There’s even an in-browser app called Spinda Painter that lets you test different personality values and shiny possibilities to see the resulting spot patterns. While it’s a strictly cosmetic change, it’s the closest Pokémon has ever gotten to replicating how different real-world animal fur patterns can look from one another.
Image: The Pokémon Company / Kotaku
How has this affected Spinda in recent games?
But that variation is why Spinda has been an issue for Game Freak and The Pokémon Company in terms of transferring the character and all its variants to future games. Pokémon Home, the app players use to transfer and store Pokémon between games, can’t transfer Spinda to and from Pokémon Go or Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl remakes because they’re inconsistent with how other games determine the character’s spot pattern. Pokémon Go only has nine predetermined patterns rather than the several billion found in most games, and the Diamond and Pearl remakes have a glitch associated with how it reads the numbers that determine Spinda’s forms. This means that the value these games assign to Spinda could result in a completely different spot pattern being assigned to the same Pokémon. As a result, Spinda is the only Pokémon obtainable in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl that can’t be transferred to and from these games.
While it’s unclear if these billions of possible designs are responsible, Spinda has notably not been obtainable in a new game since Game Freak retired the National Dex that allows players to transfer any and all old Pokémon to new games. Spinda was conspicuously absent from Sword and Shield and Scarlet and Violet. Given that The Pokémon Company is running into compatibility issues with Spinda on several fronts, it will be interesting to see if Spinda appears in a mainline Pokémon game ever again. But even if the dizzy bear doesn’t show up in a new Pokémon game any time soon, at least there are corners of the Pokémon fandom that are taking steps to ensure what makes it special isn’t forgotten.
Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast was first released in 2002. It was, and remains to this day, one of the best Star Wars games ever made, a near-perfect blend of the original Dark Forces’ FPS combat with third-person lightsaber combat that even modern games could take notes from.
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If you went and played the game as nature intended in 2023, it would be great! But this standalone port/version, provided you’ve got the hardware, looks like a huge—and decidedly more modern—improvement. It takes the original Jedi Outcast and gives the player full VR support, along with the ability to wield your lightsaber via motion controls and use force powers via hand gestures.
I need to be clear when saying the original was a very good video game in every respect. But people’s lingering memories of it, especially in the wake of Fallen Order’s all-ages combat, was the way you could absolutely go to town on Stormtroopers with your lightsaber, something this trailer is very aware of:
JK-XR: Outcast – Jedi Knight II VR – Release Trailer
It’s called JK-XR, and was created by fans as a “standalone VR port” of the original, which means this is a complete reworking of Jedi Outcast’s engine with an all-new download (though you’ll still need a copy of the original for everything else). That explains why the team have been able to cater this so specifically to VR, down to the new weapon and force power menus.
Normally I wouldn’t get too excited about a Resident Evil film, as both the live-action and CG entries haven’t been great. But a new trailer for the upcomingDeath Island looks too damn campy and fun to ignore. I mean, all your favorite Resident Evil heroes—like RE4’s Leon and RE3’s Jill—are back together to take on zombie sharks. How can I not get excited about this?
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The CG-animated film Resident Evil: Death Island, first announced in February, takes place in 2015, putting it after the events of Resident Evil 6 but before those of Resident Evil 7 and Village. It’s a direct sequel to 2017’s CG movie Resident Evil: Vendetta. Check out the new trailer for the film, released on April 11 and featuring Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Rebecca Chambers, Claire Redfield, and Leon S. Kennedy:
Kadokawa / Capcom
Yes, this is basically Resident Evil’s spin on The Avengers, taking all the previous characters and events, tossing them into a blender, and then hitting the “Cool Shit” button. I’m not mad at all. The direct references to Resident Evil 5, Revelations 2, and other Resident Evil games had me smiling like a fanboy and the action looks silly and over-the-top. And I’ll admit it: Seeing that Avengers-like shot at the end with all of the heroes fighting one big foe made me pump my fist a bit.
What’s Death Island about, and when does it come out?
D.S.O. agent Leon S. Kennedy is on a mission to rescue Dr. Antonio Taylor from kidnappers, when a mysterious woman thwarts his pursuit. Meanwhile, B.S.A.A. agent Chris Redfield is investigating a zombie outbreak in San Francisco, where the cause of the infection cannot be identified. The only thing the victims have in common is that they all visited Alcatraz Island recently. Following that clue, Chris and his team head to the island, where a new horror awaits them.
As for when to expect the movie, so far Capcom’s only revealed a Japan release date: It will hit theaters over there on July 7, 2023. In the past, some of these CG Resident Evil movies have played in theaters in the UK and U.S. for a limited time before releasing digitally, so I expect something similar here. If Capcom follows a similar pattern as with past films, I’d expect a U.S. theatrical release around late July or early August, and a home release to follow shortly after.
Red, Green, and Blue are the bestsellingPokémon games of all time, and as the games that first launched the franchise on Game Boy in Japan way back in 1996, they’re old enough that I was convinced I’d seen every form of homage and fan media dedicated to Pokémon’s humble beginnings. I was wrong. I recently discovered War/Crimes, a fan comic that features the Kanto gym leaders Lt. Surge and Team Rocket boss Giovanni, whose relationship in the comic feels too nuanced to be easily summed up as “on-off boyfriends.” Despite the provocative cover and the characters being “sexy violent [and] gay” throughout, it’s the comic’s exploration of Kanto’s military-industrial complex that will stay in the back of my brain forever.
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Lieutenant Surge has always been a strange presence in the Pokémon games. Prior to 2010’s Black and White, the Fame Checker (an item which offers up descriptions of important people) called Surge “The Lightning American.” He likes electric Pokémon, we were told,because they “saved” him during “the war.” He flew an electrical plane as a pilot, which means that he likely fought in World War II. Or whatever the equivalent is in the Pokémon universe.
The developers could have just left Surge in as a quirky reference to a war that ended Japan’s imperial capabilities. But the lore goes deeper. He had a cautious nature in the army, set up his own electric traps, and uses double locks everywhere. It’s not the behavior of a man who left the army with his psyche entirely intact. Comic artist and animation director Kelly Turnbull took this premise and went wild with it.
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Image: Kelly Turnbull
As War/Crimes tells it, Surge and Giovanni were comrades-in-arms during the war, and they’ve both got their baggage about how disposable their lives were. Surge is now relatively poor, and he’s struggling to define himself beyond his post-traumatic stress disorder. Giovanni joined the army to fund his Pokémon League challenge,but after watching his Nidoking get ripped apart in front of him, he grew angry towards the war machine. War/Crimes doesn’t spend any time wondering whether or not the war was justified, or whether or not their losses were noble sacrifices. It’s more interested in how economic violence can cause even more suffering in the world.
See, it wasn’t just Giovanni’s ambition that created Team Rocket here. It was the money-hungry Pokémon League, which is more concerned about profit than helping children rise above their station. The comic explains that the Cerulean Gym secured the designation of being water specialists from the League by relying on “underage” girls to sway officials, all while the more deserving Vermillion City, which actually has a coastline, went overlooked. And Surge does not become a gym leader because of his leadership abilities or military strength; it was a new life, loaned to him by the boss of Team Rocket. War/Crimes isn’t just showing us a queer reading of the Game Boy games, but one viewed through an anti-capitalist lens.
Before you ask: Yes, the two veterans are unambiguously gay, good news for those who think subtext is for cowards. They have sexual contact with one another, though they call each other “friends” throughout the comic. I liked that a lot. Their relationship in the comic feels comfortable, intimate, and familiar even when they don’t directly address it or what it is. The army officer and the leader of Team Rocket don’t need to adhere to pageantry. But it could be self-protective masculinity too. These two men have been eviscerated by the war machine, and they think that they have no more blood to give, nothing left to be ashamed of. But the scary thing about the modern world is that it always finds a way.
There’s one line that sticks in my brain several days after reading. “What happened to us?” Surge asks after a nightmare causes him to punch Giovanni in his sleep. But the mob boss doesn’t get angry, doesn’t push him away. “Other people,” he replied. Even if these men have wonderful chemistry with each other, even if they work towards being vulnerable, the world can be a terrible place that makes love and loving hard, even as it remains the only thing that can save them. This is not the same Pokémon world that I know, but it compels me to imagine the implications of Kanto having a military-industrial complex that funnels poor men like Giovanni into institutions that try to kill them.
It’s never too late to start reading comics about old gay men. The comic is worth sampling if you’re interested in alternate interpretations of Pokémon history. Turnbull plans to post one page for free every day. If you can’t wait for the entire thing, you can also purchase it on itch.io for a dollar.
Most video game studios, or at least the bigger ones, will have experience with Foley, a long-standing craft that revolves around creating cinematic sound effects using everyday objects.
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It’s nothing new. Many of Star Wars’ most iconic sounds were made using stuff like TV tubes and vacuum cleaners, and there are loads of excellent features on the internet showing how everyone from Bungie to Naughty Dog have used Foley to bring their own games to life. Even Unpacking, a cute little pixel game about putting things on shelves, featured over 14,000 different sound effects.
Today it’s God of War Ragnarok’s turn, in this excellent video put together by Wired, and this is already one of my all-time favourites, mostly because of the sheer volume of effects it shows.
Meeting PlayStation Studios’ Joanna Fang, we get to see how loads of the game’s crunchiest, squelchiest sound effects were made. A galloping horse’s hooves are actually just a pair of toilet plungers. Kratos smashing an enemy’s skull in is actually Fang crushing a melon with a crowbar. One of the most interesting is that you can get a perfect replica of snow crunching underfoot by…walking on coal instead.
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I love that the sound of floorboards is made by just slapping a shipping pallet. That twisting some leather sounds like someone being strangled. And that to get the sound of someone punching a dude wearing armour they…OK, used a boxing glove to punch some armour.
Like I’ve said, there’s nothing particularly new or relevatory here, Foley is a relatively ancient craft in modern show business, but this video is a fantastic example of showing the depth and variety of sounds that can be produced in a single room, and how a Foley artist’s passion for the job can be one of the most important—if also unsung—parts of our experience with a game.
The Last Ronin comic is being adapted into an action-focused single-player video game that will play similarly to God of War. The popular and gritty 2020 comic, a spin-off of theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, stars the last remaining turtle in a war-ravaged wasteland.
While most people think of TMNT as a cartoonish, family-friendly kids’ brand, the actual franchise is much more varied than that, with comics that get darker than anything you’d find on Nickelodeon. This isn’t a weird offshoot or an occasional one-off, either. The original comics that started it all were gritty and violent, featuring sharp black-and-white art and turtles who were less radical and more dangerous. And The Last Ronin, a limited-run comic series from 2020 written by the original co-creator of the franchise, returned TMNT to its grittier, more adult roots. Now, that fan-favorite comic is being turned into a big action-adventure video game by a yet-to-be-announced studio.
In an interview with Polygon, Doug Rosen, senior vice president for games and emerging media at Paramount Global, revealed the new, still-unnamed game’s existence. Rosen told Polygon that the upcoming third-person action role-playing game will be comparable to the recent God of War entries. He also assured fans that the story of the game will be “authentic” to The Last Ronin comic series.
This means that, unlike most other TMNT games, this upcoming adventure will star the lone surviving turtle in the dark, far future of the Last Ronin universe. So don’t expect all your favorite turtles and Splinter to be hanging out, eating pizza, and partying in the sewers in this upcoming game. Because all but one of them is dead. (The identity of the lone survivor is actually a big mystery in the comic and I won’t spoil it here.)
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Rosen also told Polygon that just because TMNT is a brand popular with kids, doesn’t mean the devs will have to “dial back” the upcoming Last Ronin game to make it “something it shouldn’t be.” He further explained that he sees “opportunities for multiple TMNT games aimed at both young and more mature age groups” and that TMNT owner Paramount will take different approaches to create content for each group. For example, TMNT villain Shredder is showing up in Call of Duty.
As for when you can play this new TMNT game, well, it’s not coming anytime soon. Rosen said the game is still a “few years off.” Rosen was also seemingly tight-lipped about where this game might land when it finally does release in the future. For now, you can go play TMNT: Shedder’s Revenge which is fantastic and out now.
