Polyphony’s Gran Turismo 4, released in December 2004, is a video game we have been playing for almost 20 years, and we have all been playing it, this entire time, without realising that it has cheat codes.
The catch is that 365 days need to have passed on the game’s internal calendar before they’re made active, which might explain why it’s taken so long for them to have been discovered (as speculated, that figure likely means the cheats were actually dev tools, which is…actually what most old cheats were).
Just so you know, using the cheat doesn’t seem to have any negative impact on your progression whatsoever, with Nenkai adding “I’m sure some are also wondering, prizes are also correctly given with the last cheat code; 24 hours races can effectively be skipped provided you’re past 365 game days.”
Developers of modern video games, I know why you don’t put codes in your games anymore (most have weird online stuff that relies on maintaining the sanctity of the experience), but it would be nice if you could find ways to put cheat codes in your games in the 21st century. Breaking games was fun. Unlimited currency is the best. Thank you.
Since its release in November 2022, Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 has undergone immense scrutiny from the community due to its rocky launch. Warzone 2.0 dropped with numerous missing features that undid a lot of the goodwill garnered during the first game’s lifecycle, and while it still has a long way to go, it’s headed in the right direction, thanks in part to the recently released Ashika Island map.
This small-scale Resurgence map doesn’t fix all of the game’s issues, but it certainly brought me—and many other lapsed fans—back to the battle royale, thanks to its more focused, faster-paced experience. There are many reasons the map works so well, but it mainly comes down to its design, along with the Resurgence mode featured on it, which makes the most of its smaller scale and tighter spaces by removing a lot of the downtime typically present on larger maps. This makes each match feel balanced and digestible, especially when compared to Al Mazrah, the main Warzone 2.0 battle royale map.
Al Mazrah is fine. It’s not horrible, but it has a litany of problems that are exacerbated by some of the flawed gameplay design choices—like lots of open spaces in between POIs that leave players wide open for attacks while rotating. Likewise, the map itself feels too big for the limited 150-player count, which leads to far too much downtime. When combined with the game’s slow movement, this practically guarantees you’ll go several minutes at a time without any enemy engagements.
Ashika Island, on the other hand, offers way more cover between POIs—whether in the form of small buildings, rocky terrain, or objects to hide behind. It encourages movement and pushes matches closer to the fast pacing the series is known for. There’s never a dull moment on Ashika Island since its player count is just right for the map size, which keeps engagements flowing at a consistent rate.
Ashika Island’s impeccable design
Image: Activision
Speaking of POIs, each main hub on Ashika Island is a blast, from the condensed Residential area, to the multistoried Tsuki Castle, and even the close-quarters Oganikku Farms. Activision and High Moon Studios did an incredible job of creating POIs that are all fun to explore and battle it out against enemies in, without feeling repetitive. Ashika Island has something for everyone, whether you’re someone who prefers to take it slowly, or an expert player who likes to finesse and use the environment to your advantage.
The underground area full of water is also a nice touch, giving players another way to rotate away from potential hot zones. Those who are less experienced can just hang out in the underground area, which is usually not well-trafficked. This gives newcomers a chance to get their bearings and survive, even against more experienced players.
Likewise, Ashika Island doesn’t have choke points or overly advantageous positions like other maps. One of the biggest issues with the original Warzone is that certain spots like Prison from Rebirth Island and Peak on Caldera were right in the middle of the map and gave players a distinct height advantage. So, other POIs felt less desirable to take over, especially since they were often on the outskirts of the map. That’s why Ashika Island works so well: there’s no obvious power position that works better than others. Sure, certain POIs are slightly more ideal depending on the zone movement and your play style, but overall, Ashika Island’s layout is well-balanced.
One of the best areas is the set of apartment buildings to the southeast of Oganikku Farms. There are two tall buildings here, each comprised of several floors, all of which can be reached from the opposite building across. This gives players multiple access points, rewarding those who like to outsmart their opponents. One of my favorite gameplay moments involved flying a helicopter toward a team, using it to distract the enemy players, and then jumping out before taking out multiple foes in one fluid motion. Outmaneuvering an opponent is Warzone at its best, and it’s all thanks to Ashika Island’s fantastic design.
Back in the action, soldier
Screenshot: Activision / Joseph Yaden
Beyond the map’s design itself, I cannot praise the Resurgence mode enough. By default, battle royales on traditional large maps can be tough to get into since it often takes upwards of 30 minutes to finish a match. You typically spend more time looting and preparing for battle than you do actually fighting against other players, which gets old after a while.
But Resurgence throws that out the window; instead taking place on a smaller map with a max of 52 players (as opposed to around 150 on Al Mazrah). More importantly, it allows players to continuously respawn as long as at least one teammate remains alive, offering plenty of chances to get back into the action.
What this means is that you’re not penalized as much for playing aggressively, resulting in hard-hitting and fun matches that are easy to pick up and play—even if you’re getting your ass kicked. It’s easy to get caught in the “one more match” loop when Resurgence games last between 12 and 15 minutes, and it’s less likely that you’ll give up in frustration when you know you can drop in, get in a firefight, and get back in faster than you can find a weapon in the traditional battle royale. While Warzone’s gameplay itself still needs a little work—like implementing a slower time to kill, and faster animations across the board—getting back into the action so quickly almost makes up for some of its fundamental gameplay flaws.
Ashika Island’s excellent design, along with the faster-paced, less punishing Resurgence gameplay, equates to an immensely fun experience that feels much more like Call of Duty than the traditional BR mode. It’s swift and intense, with plenty of variation that keeps me interested for lengthy game sessions broken up into short bursts. It gets to the point faster and is ideal for players who don’t have hours upon hours to devote, offering the same thrills as a typical battle royale but in a fraction of the time. Sure, Warzone 2.0 has plenty of room for improvement, but Ashika Island makes me confident the game will eventually reach the highs of its predecessor.
Microsoft’s long-running introductory offer for its Xbox Game Pass subscription platform, which let users try the service out for $1 for the first month before moving onto more expensive payments, has finally come to a close.
As The Verge report, the deal—which applied to both Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and the PC Game Pass—has recently been pulled, with a Microsoft spokesperson saying “We have stopped our previous introductory offer for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass and are evaluating different marketing promotions for new members in the future”.
Anyone signed up for Game Pass will see months from existing subscriptions converted into partial months on the sharing plan. If you’re currently signed up for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, every remaining month will turn into 18 days of Game Pass Friends and Family. Those signed up for the piecemeal tiers will see their subscriptions convert into 12 days of Game Pass Friends and Family.
There are some limitations, however. If you’re the account holder, you can only have four additional people on an account at any given time, and can only share with eight unique accounts over the course of a calendar year. And it’s region-locked: The primary account holder can only add members who live in the same country or region.
While that’s not a 1:1 replacement for the $1 offer, which was just a good deal for anyone, it does mean folks recommending Xbox Game Pass to friends or family would have a pretty easy way to get them onboard via their own account.
Destiny 2 has gotten a bunch of hotfixes since the Lightfall expansion launched several weeks ago, but none like yesterday’s update. A fix not mentioned in the patch notes secretly changed the game’s newest Warlock armband armor to make it look less like a vagina.
Bond of Detestation is a class item that drops from Destiny 2‘s new Root of Nightmares raid that went live on March 10 and focuses on Nezarec, an old disciple of the game’s arch antagonist, The Witness. Up until Thursday it could have been mistaken for an alien fleshlight, mostly because of a small horizontal slit across the front of it.
It sort of looks like an eyeball, maybe, not really. Its resemblance to a vulva was especially noticeable when certain shaders were applied. Players suggested all sorts of names for it–Witnussy, Nezussy, Nezzylight–but “Bondussy” was the one that stuck.
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As first reported by Forbes’ Paul Tassi, Bungie has now stepped in to take the horny down a notch. This week’s hotfix addressed a number of bugs. The biggest change from the patch notes was a fix for the infamous Thresher gunships that had been murdering players throughout the solar system. Completely unmentioned was the fact that the hotfix also removed the Bondussy’s slit to make it look much less suggestive. It’s sort of now just a giant space pearl.
Stealth content changes and visual adjustments like this are rare, in part because the Destiny 2 community is hyper sensitive to every little shift in its sci-fi universe. Bungie removed a piece of armor back in 2017 because it had an alt-right symbol on it with Nazi origins. Bondussy wasn’t hate speech, though it clearly must have run afoul of Bungie’s broader artistic intentions for the raid armor. Or maybe the studio just didn’t like the nickname “Bondussy.”
Most of the hilarity emanating from Like a Dragon and its spin-off series, Judgment, comes from the franchise’s snappy dialogue and the absurdist character and item descriptions of its English translations. For example, Like a Dragon’s stalwart protagonist, Kiryu Kazuma, can go from calling a new fighting technique he saw on the street “rad” to vehemently explaining that his propensity to brawl with thugs in public doesn’t make him a “fisting artist.”
Sega (EN) / Ryu Ga Gotoku
Don’t let the fact that developer Ryu Ga Gotoku’s samurai spin-off, Like a Dragon: Ishin!, is a historical period piece that takes place in 1867,make you think that it won’t contain the same levels of ludicrous sidequests and wacky dialogue as its predecessors. If anything, the fact that Kiryu’s feudal stand-in, Sakomoto Ryoma, partakes in similar madcap misadventures in the year of the Meiji restoration and the downfall of the Shogunate only adds to the game’s zaniness.
In that spirit, I spoke with Marilyn Lee, the senior localization producer for Like a Dragon: Ishin!, to get some insight into the work that was put into crafting Like a Dragon: Ishin’s English translation.
Localization in a nutshell
Much like how Like a Dragon’s bombastic heat system fighting moves ought to make you feel like an extreme beast of a man, a localizer must ensure that every bit of text in Like a Dragon emanates an authentic Yakuza experience.
“The translating team takes the raw Japanese and churns out a direct translation as true to the meaning of the Japanese as possible but ultimately clunky, dry, and not especially what we’d call natural,” Lee said. “The team of editors then takes that line and brings in the characterization, makes it sound like natural dialog, which becomes the final script.”
Sega (EN) / Ryu Ga Gotoku
‘Translation is not mathematics’
One way of providing context for players that’s often used in translated works of Japanese games is to swing south with dialogue translations of characters with Kansai accents and give them a southern Texan drawl. But while folks who consume Japanese media have become accustomed to Osakan characters having the vernacular of a person hailing from Alabama or the Bronx, Lee said the LaD localization team strives to “avoid making a direct analog between specific English and Japanese dialects.”
Lee credits the LaD localization team’s decision to examine vernacular characteristics and accents “on a deeper level” to Scott Strichart, a senior localization producer at Sega and “the former architect of Like a Dragon’s Western renaissance.” “While our philosophy on Kansai-ben involves many colloquialisms that might independently register as Southern, we’ve failed if players are categorically hearing all Kansai speakers with a twang,” Lee said.
“In the case of Ishin!, we would invite players to compare characters like Majima and Saejima (or Soji and Nagakura) to the game’s Gunman trainer, William Bradley, who was deliberately written to evoke the manner of a late 19th-century Southern cowboy. Likewise, this game also introduces the archaic Tosa-ben dialect, which we hope is difficult to attach to a given style of English and more so simply reads as rustic and insular,” Lee said.
When it comes to how much free reign the LaD localization team has in terms of cursing, Lee says games with the localization caliber of the Like a Dragon series “can’t simply mechanically swap out ‘kuso’ for ‘damn’ because “translation is not mathematics.”
“Cursing is a vital linguistic component in English, and therefore our editors generally have leave to employ it as freely as they would in any other M-rated title (within reason),” Lee said.
“Localization, as we view it, favors recreating the experience of the source language user rather than risking a sacrifice in writing quality to stay devoutly faithful to the source language itself. If a skillfully deployed curse is going to make a joke hit as well in an English line as it did in a curse-free Japanese line, then we’ll almost always use that curse.”
Localization funsies
You better sing, Ryoma.Screenshot: Sega / Ryu Ga Gotoku
My most hot-button question for Lee was which character in Ishin! was her favorite to localize. It should be noted that when I sent Lee this inquiry via email, I made sure to include the tagline “and why is it Majima?” To my delight, Lee replied saying Majima is “fun to watch, he’s fun to fight, and he’s absolutely fun to localize.”
“Majima is the cross-section of so many compelling character types: he can be hilarious, he can be frightening, he can oscillate between being oblivious and being the smartest man in the room and somehow it always feels authentic. Yakuza 0 players also know that deep down, there’s a real human there, projecting all these personality traits for reasons he may not even remember (in the main series’ continuity, anyway).”
Majima’s cult of personality notwithstanding, Lee said Ishin’s minor characters deserve their due just as much as the Mad Dog of Shimano (period piece edition).
“Working for days at a time on minor characters such as Tom the would-be samurai, or the cryptic, slang-weaving Mysterious Merchant gives our team the chance to craft a wide variety of voices. Truthfully, it demonstrates how tenacious the settings of RGG games are, that they support so many [people] of so many dispositions and still feel cohesive.”
Lost in translation
True.Screenshot: Sega / Ryu Ga Gotoku
Recently, Viz Media translator Kumar Sivasubramanian famously threw in the towel after having the unenviable task of translating Cipher Academy, a mystery series by the creator of the Monogatari series. Sivasubramanian called it quits with Cipher Academy because a bulk of the series’ dialogue was filled with cultural or phonetic puns that don’t make sense in English. Like Sivasubramanian, LaD’s localization team is also confronted with the herculean task of translating Japanese puns or jargon for English-speaking players.
Whenever there are nuances and phrases that don’t have a true 1:1 equivalent in either English or Japanese, Lee said the LaD localization team uses their “best judgment” to find “suitable methods to convey things as closely as possible to the essence of the source language.”
Although some LaD fans can be “diehard purists,” Lee says most have a generally subjective line on what sounds “‘true” to the source material.
Ryoma is a god among men. Screenshot: Sega / Ryu Ga Gotoku
With Like a Dragon, we believe that players can tell that the writing is meant to harmonize with every other aspect of the presentation. If a moment has an over-the-top zoom-in and we replace a simple ‘Nani!?’ with an English line that matches the absurdity of the cinematography, we haven’t betrayed the authorial intent there—we’ve done our best to execute on that intent across countless linguistic and cultural chasms.”
Much like colloquialisms in Cipher Academy, Lee said Japanese puns “never translate.” Whenever a pun is uttered in the LaD series, Lee said her team must “roll with them as they come and commiserate together for the real tricky ones.”
“Thankfully, that also means there are afternoons spent with the whole team shouting out funny chicken names, which is basically the entire reason we all got our college degrees,” Lee said.
Measure twice, cut once (Yakuza style)
He just like me fr.Screenshot: Sega / Ryu Ga Gotoku
In total, Lee said it took the localization team a little over a year to finish localizing Ishin! to have the game ready to launch on February 21 for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC. Meanwhile, the games that took the longest to finish localizing are Yakuza 3, 4, and 5 because they were a part of the Yakuza Remastered Collection, Lee said.
“Some projects took a long time from start to finish just due to the localization process was intertwined with the development of the game. Some took long because of the number of languages involved. Others took a long time because of the sheer volume of the project,” Lee said.
While localizing the drama and humor in Ishin! was par for the course with other games in the series, the trickiest part of localizing the spin-off was ensuring players weren’t lost with the historical context and geography in Ishin!
“Our updated glossary and new memoir feature can do some of that work, but ultimately it falls to astute translation and sharp editing to be successful. Creating context for the audience is critical,” Lee said.
Historical context for the Meiji Restoration period
Sega (EN) Ryu Ga Gotoku
For historical reasons, Ishin! has an unapologetically negative stance toward Americans and European pressure at the end of the Edo Period, which staff writer Sisi Jiang expanded upon in their review for Ishin! When it came to handling the localization of a game that criticizes the countries some players come from, Lee reiterated that it’s a localizer’s job to ensure the experiences designed in a game are brought to players from different countries, even if aspects of translated text offend people.
“Our job as localization professionals is to convey the meaning and sentiment of a piece of media as accurately as possible in another language. Sometimes this means tackling a challenging subject, especially in Ishin’s case where many characters are driven by different political ideologies that are linked to a historical time period,” Lee said. “We did our best to convey the text, and players have the freedom to come to their own conclusions.”
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.
“Back in 2013, my ex-husband and I played a game called TERA. He became obsessed with it, to the point where he brought my gaming laptop to the hospital so that he could play TERA while I recovered from giving birth (including during one of the first pictures he took with our son).
“A couple weeks after our son’s birth, he found a girl named Athena from Greece, and they started spending a lot of time together. At first, I encouraged it, but, eventually, I came to find out that he was buying her in-game stuff (using his real money). When they weren’t gaming, they were messaging constantly on Skype, even to the point that he altered his sleeping habits for her.
“I stopped playing this game because…well, I got into it for my ex-husband, and now the game was ruined. I was watching the destruction of my marriage.
“The day before Christmas Eve, he told me he was moving back to his mom’s house. On Christmas Eve, Athena sends him pictures, and he officially leaves for his mom’s house. On Christmas Day, he tells me he wants a divorce.
“Since then, I haven’t been able to play TERA. [I also now feel like Christmas is] a pointless holiday that I only celebrate and make special for my son.
“But unfortunately for me, I didn’t [immediately] learn my lesson, and it took another eight years before I was finally strong enough to leave him and never look back. I am thriving now and am being treated like I should be.
“But will never touch that fucking game again.” – Silfy, 31
Are there any games that you’ll never play because you associate them with an ex? Are there some games that are simply too good to give up? Can you ever truly recover from heartbreak? Give me all your answers in the comments.
Brandon Sanderson is a fantasy author who nets tens of millions of dollars in book sales every year, which puts him in the same book-selling league as George R.R. Martin. However, his financial success has not really translated into a similar mainstream visibility outside of his specific fanbase—until this week. The tech magazine Wiredpublished a cynical profile about Sanderson yesterday, and the author’s fans are pissed. Things got so heated that Sanderson had to take to Reddit to tell his community to back off.
Sanderson is best known as the writer of The Stormlight Archive,The Reckoners, and Mistborn series—all of which take place in his original fictional universe, called the Cosmere. His books have extensive magic systems in them, and he’s known as the inventor of the concepts of “hard” and “soft” magic. He has also written the final books of the fantasy epic series The Wheel of Time, picking up after Robert Jordan passed away in 2007.
The Wired profile
Despite extensive successes and credentials, Wired editor Jason Kehe did not seem impressed by Sanderson as an author or as an individual. His profile makes some attempts to explain Sanderson’s worldbuilding prowess using his Mormon background, but struggles to connect with Sanderson’s personal life experiences, even though Kehe went to Utah to learn more about the author and the people he surrounded himself with.
As a result, the article is not very flattering. “At the sentence level, [Sanderson] is no great gift to English prose,” Kehe writes. “He writes, by one metric, at a sixth-grade reading level.” It’s definitely not a description that fans are used to seeing from a multi-million dollar selling author who penned decades worth of books.
Neither is Kehe impressed by the personal life that the bestselling author lives, or the manner in which he holds himself. “To my mind, I still haven’t gotten anything real from Sanderson, anything true. I’m not the first person he has toured around his lair to politely gawk at his treasures and trophies and his hallway of custom stained-glass renditions of his favorite books,” he writes. “Sanderson has lived so much of his life and fame openly, self-promotionally. It’s a major reason for his success.”
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“I find Sanderson depressingly, story-killingly lame,” Kehe wrote, days before he met the author’s family or his fans. “He sits across from me in an empty restaurant, kind of lordly and sure of his insights, in a graphic T-shirt and ill-fitting blazer, which he says he wears because it makes him look professorial. It doesn’t. He isn’t. Unless the word means only: believing everything you say is worth saying. Sanderson talks a lot, but almost none of it is usable, quotable.”
At the end of the piece, Kehe describes Sanderson as a god. Not because of his literary prowess, but because the author had created worlds that had enthralled so many readers over the course of decades. “If Sanderson is a writer, that is all he is doing. He is living his fantasy of godhead on Earth,” he writes. Kehe seemed to struggle to see any humility in a man who had a literary empire within his grasp. Kehe was a visitor from a distant land (San Francisco), and he took the velvet gloves off when he had to leave a review of his travels.
The internet responded loudly. “[The article writer] is nasty, jealous, catty, and uncharitable to someone who delivers value to millions of fans, and never has a bad word to say about anyone,” tweeted one author named Travis Corcoran. “I imagine he’s pissed that Sanderson isn’t nearly as good at ’constructing sentences’ as he is … and yet makes $20M/yr while the Wired editor makes, I dunno, $60k?” Several other people cited Sanderson’s kind personality and financial success as reasons why the profile should never have been published.
Even Activision Blizzard’s poster-in-chief weighed in. “The sneering tone. The gratuitous meanness of insulting a man in front of his family after he has invited you into his home. The bullying cheap shots at people you consider nerds,” tweeted Lulu Cheng Meservey. “Fantasy writing is valuable, being prolific isn’t a bad thing, people can like different things from you, and nerds are the best.”
“My basic feeling has always been: We write stories, and then they belong to readers,” wrote Kehe in an email to Kotaku. “Readers get the last word.”
Brandon Sanderson’s response
Look, nobody is coming for the human rights of fantasy nerds. And a writer who makes several million dollars a year off his own IP isn’t going to be toppled by some mean article. Even Sanderson himself thinks so. He wrote a Reddit thread today pleading for his fans to keep calm. He agreed that his life wasn’t very exciting for a profile, and that his ordinary and trauma-free life “is kind of boring, from an outsider’s perspective.” While he appreciated that his fans were willing to defend him, he wanted them to let Kehe be. He felt that the profile was not an attack on the community, and that the Wired editor had been honest about his opinions. Kotaku reached out for a comment, but did not receive one by the time of publication.
“[Kehe] should not be attacked for sharing his feelings,” Sanderson wrote. “If we attack people for doing so, we make the world a worse place, because fewer people will be willing to be their authentic selves.”
Microsoft’s $69 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard inched closer in a big way on Friday. UK regulators announced a provisional finding that the acquisition wouldn’t harm competition, despite previously suggesting the Xbox maker might need to spin-off the Call of Duty business to get the sale approved.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority was initially skeptical of Microsoft’s promises to keepthe military shooteravailable on PlayStation consoles for many years to come, arguing it could have a financial incentive to pull the blockbuster series from the platform in the future. The CMA now says that after receiving more detailed information about Call of Duty player spending, it’s clear that making the series exclusive to Xbox would lose Microsoft a ton of money.
“The CMA inquiry group has updated its provisional findings and reached the provisional conclusion that, overall, the transaction will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in relation to console gaming in the UK,” it wrote in a press release. The CMA continued:
While the CMA’s original analysis indicated that this strategy would be profitable under most scenarios, new data (which provides better insight into the actual purchasing behaviour of CoD gamers) indicates that this strategy would be significantly loss-making under any plausible scenario. On this basis, the updated analysis now shows that it would not be commercially beneficial to Microsoft to make CoD exclusive to Xbox following the deal, but that Microsoft will instead still have the incentive to continue to make the game available on PlayStation.
The CMA is still reviewing Game Pass
The regulatory agency is still investigating the cloud gaming side of the deal, with its final verdict/decision still not due out until 26 April. Call of Duty seemed to be the biggest sticking point in the CMA’s skepticism of the deal, however, and Microsoft seems to have now tentatively assuaged those fears. It’s also been busy shoring up its defense on the cloud gaming front by striking deals with several smaller competitors to guarantee its first-party games will be available on other services if the deal goes through.
One big question that remains is what a final deal between Microsoft and Sony will look like. An Activision spokesperson had previously claimed that Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan was unwilling to negotiate, stating his only objective was to permanently kill the acquisition. As that outcome becomes increasingly unlikely, the PS5 manufacturer will seemingly have no alternative but to hammer out the details of Microsoft’s 10-year Call of Duty proposal.
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Determining the availability of Activision Blizzard games like Diablo IV and an upcoming Black Ops sequel on Game Pass competitor PS Plus will be a key part of that. In its latest argument to the CMA pushing back on Sony’s concerns, Microsoft went so far as to suggest that 10 years would be plenty of time for it to go make its own Call of Duty competitor if it was so concerned about losing it.
In the meantime, Microsoft still needs to get approval from European regulators and deal with an antitrust lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission. But investors seem more hyped for the deal than they’ve ever been. Activision Blizzard’s stock price shot up to $85 a share following the CMA’s latest announcement, more than at any point since the acquisition was announced.
Let’s all get on the same page before going any further: this is not canon. This is not hidden lore, endorsed by Nintendo, that you should arm yourself with and take with you on an official basis every time you play a Mario game from now on. OK?
OK good. So, here’s a panel from a 1996 manga (Super Mario 64 4Koma Gag Battle), which is suggesting that maybe 1-UP mushrooms grow out of the bodies of the Marios who have died before you.
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Fuck.
As the ever-wonderful Supper Mario Broth point out, this is from a manga that is “filled with jokes and eccentric theories”, and that it “should be taken more as an interesting thought experiment than anything that would actually be endorsed by Nintendo!”
Let’s do that, then. Let’s take this as a thought experiment. Imagine this is really how this all works. What it’s suggesting for the way the Mushroom Kingdom operates, and Mario’s relation to it, is fascinating. It’s some Returnal, Groundhog Day type shit. Mario isn’t just here to save the Princess. He’s trapped here, in a place outside of not just Brooklyn, but space and time.
Every 1-UP mushroom you see is a former, failed attempt, where a Mario—you, just like you, but also not you—has died, his heroic spirit extracted and preserved for the next Mario. Who is also you, until his demise, when the mushroom will be collected by…you.
I love the idea that in 2023 a lot of people’s first thoughts—mine included—weren’t about the timeline stuff but drawing fungus analogies with The Last Of Us. And that this would be such a Nintendo take on it. In Naughty Dog’s universe, the mushrooms growing out of dead people are a threat to all of humanity, and create ravenous zombies. In Nintendo’s, they’re just a cute little thing that helps the player by giving them special powers. Well, “cute” provided you don’t think about where they came from…
The Sims 4’s Growing Together Expansion Pack DLC is exactly what fans have been waiting for. If you’re a discerning Sims 4 fan wading through the massive amounts of Expansion Packs, Game Packs, Stuff Packs, and now the extra bite-sized Kits, searching for only the most crucial offerings, you’ll want to add Growing Together to the list. It’s an instant must-have, up there with Seasons and Cats & Dogs.
Unsurprisingly, the pack that delivers is also the pack that has exactly what the people have been asking for. Growing Together is a spiritual successor to The Sims 3’s Generations Expansion Pack, which also built on family relationships when it was released more than 10 years ago.
The new San Sequoia world is nice but nothing new
As is common for expansion packs in The Sims 4, Growing Together offers a new world in San Sequoia, which is based on San Francisco and the Bay Area. It’s nice enough, but it’s not the only world based on California, and it’s a bit small for my liking—though the size of worlds that come with expansion packs has been a gripe of mine for quite a while. I long for the days of earlier expansion packs like Get Together’s Windenburg, City Living’s San Myshuno, and Cats & Dogs’ Brindleton Bay. Windenburg has 14 residential lots and 13 community lots, Brindleton Bay offers 11 residential spots and five community ones, and San Myshuno has an incredible 30 total lots, split between a number 21 apartment units, one full residential spot, two residential penthouses, and six community lots. The number of lots in later expansions has slowly dwindled: San Sequoia has a paltry nine residential lots and just the two community lots, and Copperdale (the world from the last expansion, High School Years) has seven residential lots and five community ones.
My favorite part of San Sequoia, however, is its starter home availability. There are empty lots where you can, of course, make the affordable starter house of your dreams. But not all of us are builders or want to spend all that time designing a house from scratch instead of jumping right in. There are two pre-built and furnished homes you can get upon starting a new game, one with two bedrooms (built by Sims content creator dzidziak86) and another four-beds-two-bath family home (built by Sims streamer lilsimsie). The latter is sparsely decorated and the rooms are small to keep it cost-effective, but the exterior design is quite nice. And it’s also easy to decorate and customize as your Sim family establishes itself.
San Sequoia also features a recreation center and library, both of which are bright, family-friendly areas. But beyond those two spots and a splash pad area that isn’t a full lot, there’s only a vacation rental and movie theater, which is the typical rabbit hole event your Sim disappears into rather than a location you can visit. It would have been nice to walk around a lobby where Sims can meet and maybe have a couple arcade games nearby.
The Sims 4 Growing Together – Five Minutes of Gameplay
Milestones are the surprise star of Growing Together
I cannot stress how much I love Milestones, which is far more praise than I thought I would give when I first learned about the new feature. Milestones are crucial to the expanded baby mechanics, as it serves as a guide to helping your new infant grow. You can see which milestones they’ve yet to unlock, which makes it easy to build upon your baby’s progression as you guide the little one in the world. While that part is great for the new infant gameplay, milestones are for all Sims.
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Across all ages, Sims will experience milestones for a number of events. Many of them are no-brainers, like getting married, having a kid, or having your first kiss. That’s nice and all, but I quickly became fascinated with all the less obvious ones, especially those that work across DLC packs. You can unlock the “Crumplebottomed!” milestone after Agnes Crumplebottom, found in the Cottage Living Expansion Pack, hits you with her purse for the first time. Sure there’s a milestone for your first WooHoo, but you never forget your first Crumplebottoming. There are milestones for getting through living in a haunted house if you have the Paranormal Stuff Pack or from being possessed via the StrangerVille Game Pack. I love when the various packs work together rather than feeling like disparate elements. It’s not the first time The Sims 4 has done this, but I love it every time. And this detail is particularly delightful.
I wish there were even more milestones to discover, but I’ve already come to enjoy the satisfaction of achieving one after a big moment for my Sims.
Family Dynamics add drama and better autonomy
My biggest gripe when playing with families, especially ones with multiple siblings, is the juggling I inevitably have to do. I’ll have mom teach a toddler in one room, but wait, the infant has crawled off and CPS is about to be called because the dad is washing dishes in the bathroom sink again. To be clear, Growing Together doesn’t fix most of that. But it does give Sims a little more guidance on how to act with each other when I’m not watching them.
There’s an ease between a father and daughter who have the “Jokester” family dynamic, allowing me to focus on my mother Sim who is desperately trying to get her baby to learn how to move on his own. The Sims also tells you how this can impact relationships. For example, “Jokesters” can become close or distant, depending on how they move beyond those funny interactions—or don’t. A child interacting with a parent who’s strict with them will be more on their toes in automated interactions, as well.
The family dynamics options include close, distant, supportive, permissive, difficult, strict, and jokesters. These are also limited by family titles. So you can’t, for instance, have siblings who have a strict dynamic as that only works with parents and their children.
Relatedly, Sims can now set preferences for personalities and conversation topics, which further adds to better autonomy, though it still isn’t perfect, even when hanging out with non-familial Sims.
Screenshot: EA
The babies are free and now we must teach them
While a base game update added the infant life stage for all The Sims 4 players, Growing Together is where the babies really come to life. In the base game, they’re static. They can crawl around and play, but you won’t get to see them build up to crawling. And they won’t build up to much else, either. At least, not until they age up into toddlers. For some players, that’s likely fine, especially since the previous infant gameplay was nonexistent. But I found it a bit lackluster. In Growing Together, infants will have to be coaxed into lifting their heads on their own for the first time, learn to reach for things, roll over onto their tummies and backs alone, and eventually get to crawling.
The infant progression system works so well because it doesn’t feel like a chore. The next milestone is viewable, and the game tells you what to do to achieve it, either through parenting or self-exploration on the child’s part. The challenge isn’t figuring out what to do, but trying to make a literal baby do what you want. Sometimes your infant Sim will be more focused on when their next meal is coming or will be too tired to do whatever baby education they need to hit the next milestone. Other times, it just takes a couple sessions for your infant Sim to get the hang of things. De-mystifying progression and making the focus on actually doing the things you need to do to achieve these milestones makes the whole experience feel fun and like a normal part of how a virtual family would grow together.
Growing Together feels like a baby shopping simulator
As with all expansion packs, Growing Together comes with new Create-a-Sim items to dress, accessorize, or customize your Sim. There are also Build/Buy Mode items that bring new furniture, decoration, and structural items for homes. These are all…fine? Much of it is made up of mission design pieces, which to The Sims’ credit makes sense as the style’s origins come from San Francisco. Yet, nothing particularly wowed me. And while I didn’t expect a ton of new home things beyond baby and family items to really play around with in Build Mode, I would have liked some more fashionable pieces in the Create-a-Sim additions. It feels focused solely on adding infant and toddler items as well as their body details: We got lots of birthmarks and freckles (like, so many freckles), but the clothing items feel like they fit in too well with the options we already have, rather than offering a cohesive refresh.
In all, Growing Together already feels like an essential pack for anyone who enjoys the story-telling side of The Sims. Its biggest flaw may lie in being too essential as it feels like it gatekeeps key gameplay elements like infant progression and milestones behind a paywall rather than offering a taste of such details to base game players, which could then be expanded upon in the paid expansion pack.
Still, that’s not enough to dissuade me from recommending the Growing Together Expansion Pack, and it certainly doesn’t take away from its merits.
The Growing Together Expansion Pack is on sale now for $40.
Epic Games held a little showcase at the Game Developers Conference earlier today, called State of Unreal. Designed as a way to keep everyone who makes games up to date on what’s in store for the industry-dominating Unreal Engine, the highlights are also obviously interesting to anyone who plays games as well.
Both Epic and some external studios took the opportunity to show off some of the stuff they’ve been working on in Unreal Engine 5. The shortest video, and perhaps most impressive, is this clip from Ninja Theory’s Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, which highlights some incredible facial animation capabilities (using Metahuman, which we’ve written about previously):
State of Unreal – Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II | GDC 2023
It still doesn’t look real, there’s something about the exaggeration of the lips and her teeth that I can’t fully explain, but it still looks amazing.
Another subject of the technical showcase was action RPG Lords of the Fallen, with a more conventional look at how games are made using the engine:
Lords of the Fallen – State of Unreal Technical Showcase Trailer GDC | Wishlist: PC, PS5 & Xbox X/S
Next up is this gameplay demo from Infinitesimals, a backyard bugs game that I’m pretty sure was first announced years ago, but which is still in development. This clip is a little more developer-focused, but still gives you a look at how Unreal Engine 5 handles the scale of a large open world:
Infinitesimals – Unreal 5 Gameplay Demo | State of Unreal 2023
And finally we’ve got this driving video, which is not just an ad for Unreal Engine and Epic’s Quixel, but for EV company Rivian as well (their car’s dash screens run on the Unreal Engine). This one is showing off some lovely foliage, along with some impressive driving physics as well (it’s particularly neat how the car will hit small rocks that will then fly away):
Unreal Engine 5.2 – Next-Gen Graphics Tech Demo | State of Unreal 2023
While it’s expected to take everything shown at these presentations with a grain of salt, it’s encouraging that three of the four videos here were of actual games currently in development, meaning that the usual “well, your actual games aren’t going to look this good” caveats we normally need on these posts aren’t quite as needed here.
Roadhog is one of Overwatch 2’s quieter heroes. Where some characters like Tracer and Junkrat are real chatterboxes, the chain-slinging, shotgun-toting Tank is a man of few words. That changes with the game’s latest limited-time mode, which makes him the announcer. Not only is he the one to declare your team the victor, but he also has nicknames for several members of the cast at the hero select screen. They’re delicious roasts of nearly every character that also offer a deeper look at a character who doesn’t usually get a ton of spotlight in Overwatch’s grander story.
The PachiMarchi event includes several cosmetics based on the in-universe Pachimari mascot that Roadhog is a big fan of, a few of which originate from when a similar event ran in the first Overwatch back in 2021. However, the new 3v3 deathmatch mode Catch-A-Mari is the real treat because Roadhog voice actor Josh Petersdorf delivers a concise, pitch-perfect roast of most of your faves as you build your team before a match. Unfortunately, there isn’t one for every character. According to senior writer and narrative designer Justin Groot, the nicknames in the mode now were part of an hour-long brainstorming session before deadline, which means a few favorites didn’t get a nickname. But the ones that are here are delightful.
A few standouts include:
Cassidy – Cactus Bootbuckle
Doomfist – Largefist
Genji – 500 Edges
Mei Princess Icicle
Ramattra – Thunko, the Metal Man
Sigma – Gravity Frank
Zarya – Gravity Janice
Soldier: 76 – Legs of America
Widowmaker – Scopetta Baguette
Winston – Mister Nanners
All of these are very funny caricatures of each of these heroes, but my favorite one is Sojourn, who gets her full government name “Former Overwatch Acting Commander Vivian ‘Sojourn’ Chase.” It shows she is not to be fucked with and that Roadhog, despite roasting everyone else, respects her. 500 Edges is such a good name for Genji because he’s got a bunch of sharp weaponry at his disposal, but he’s also an edgelord, and it’s fun to see Overwatch poke fun at itself like this. Legs of America points to Soldier: 76 being from the US of A, but the character’s history has always made him feel like a Captain America analog for the series, so needling his patriotism is a good gag. They could have called him America’s Ass if they really wanted to lean into the comparison, but Soldier famously has no ass.
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It’s a small touch, but it feels like Overwatch 2’s writing has leaned harder into both fleshing out how characters relate to each other and into the fandom’s perception of them, as well. And it’s nice to get a sense of how Roadhog views other heroes, even if the relationships aren’t quite as overt. Hopefully the next time this mode rolls around, the team will add more nicknames for the whole cast.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, successor to 2017’s Breath of the Wild, is out soon. And while there’s a big fancy collector’s edition of the sequel available, which includes a book, Nintendo is this week taking the time to revisit the original, releasing for free a book called The Explorer’s Guide.
It used to be the whole point of the special Explorer’s Edition of the game, but with Breath of the Wild now six years old Nintendo figures we’ve all explored quite enough, thank you, and so instead of the book helping us find our way around a post-apocalyptic Hyrule for the first time, it can now help us remember the good times instead.
As Polygon report, Nintendo have released the book as a pdf on their company site, and you can read/download it here. It’s…OK? I mean it’s typical limited edition filler, in that it’s not useful enough to be a true guide, there’s not enough art for it to be an art book and it’s not specific enough to be the game’s manual.
It’s still a nice little thing to thumb through though, even after all these years, though weirdly not the whole book has been uploaded. For reasons known only to Nintendo, pages 73-84 are missing, an omission that’s not for plot reasons because there are spoiler warnings present on pages that did make the cut (If you’ve got this book at home from 2017 and can tell us what’s on the pages, that’d be great!).
If you want to check it out, note that most of the book is dedicated to explaining the broad concepts of Breath of the Wild’s open world design to newcomers, and so may not be the most interesting thing you’ll read today, but the intro section is still fun, if only because Nintendo had to try and wrangle the series’ convoluted timelines and history into a couple of concise pages!
When Overwatch 2 launched in October of last year, it was only natural that players stumbled into its new Push mode like ignorant babies in the dark. But y’all, we’ve had five months of pushing barricades across Toronto and Rome, and I need the rest of the Overwatch community to get off the goddamn robot when we’re winning and in overtime.
For the uninitiated or those who need a reminder of how the Push mode works in Overwatch 2, this is the Treadweather TS-1 Large Utility Robot [pic below], but his friends call him TS-1. Or, if you’re playing as a character less friendly to the series’ Omnic race, they probably just call him “the robot.” This fine gentleman is the centerpiece of the Push mode, as two competing teams escort him across a map as he pushes one of two barricades across it.
TS-1 moves in accordance with the players who are in his proximity, and if competing players are close to him and fighting, he’ll remain stationary and ask that players “resolve [their] issues” before he proceeds. The first to get their team’s barricade from the center of the map to the other end in front of the enemy team’s spawn wins. If time runs out, the team whose barricade is further into enemy territory is deemed the victor.
Image: Blizzard Entertainment
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Like most Overwatch modes, it sounds pretty simple on paper. The nuance of the game is in the heroes players choose and how they interact with their teammates and counter their enemies. But Push isn’t quite like other modes, where you need to move the payload or control an objective point. Where TS-1 is on the map at any given moment can factor into your team’s strategy if you’re coordinated. For example, say your team is in the lead. TS-1 has pushed your barricade well into enemy territory, but your opponents gained the upper hand and won a team fight. They’ve got TS-1 closer to your spawn than their own, and if you win the next fight and regain control of the bot, you have a strategic advantage. The enemy team will have to get back to TS-1 to reengage and try to gain the lead.
So while it might seem the reasonable thing to do to guide TS-1 back to the other side of the map to start pushing your barricade again, if you’re already ahead and there’s not a ton of time left in the match, it can sometimes be better to hold your position and let the opposing team come to you.
Of course, this comes with risks. If you lose that battle, TS-1 is much closer to the enemy’s barricade. That’s why it’s important to coordinate with your team, have a unified plan, and make the judgment call depending on factors like ultimate charge, how many people in your team are alive versus in spawn, and whether or not you think the team is sitting on a few ultimates of their own. While pushing a payload is pretty straightforward, the decision between pushing and holding your position in Push is a situational game sense that you learn the more you play the mode. However, there is a universal instance where you need to leave TS-1 alone and let him stand in place: when you’re winning and the game goes into overtime.
Get off the Overwatch robot, Shinji
Just like any Overwatch 2 mode, a Push game doesn’t just end when the clock runs out, it ends when no one is contesting the objective. This means that as long as a member of both teams is next to TS-1, the match will continue into overtime. This underlying design is one of Overwatch’s greatest strengths because it means that a match is truly never over until it’s over, and there’s no reason to give up if there’s any chance you can contest an objective to the very last second. With an Escort or Control point map, this means it’s paramount to stay on an objective until the announcer declares a victor, or at least make sure your opponent can’t get near it. With Push, putting some distance between yourself and TS-1 has a strategic advantage in Overtime.
The trouble is, most randos I play with don’t get this and will escort the big robot right into enemy hands. In fairness to everyone involved, this is learned behavior from every other Overwatch mode. To win an Escort match, you have to be on the payload, and despite the setup having some notable differences, escorting a payload and escorting TS-1 are identical in terms of how you interact with them. But after five months of walking the robot into enemy lines when you would have won the match otherwise, when will we all learn to get off the bot?
If I’m playing with strangers I will spam the “Fall Back” voice command to no avail as my teammates guide TS-1 on a blissful stroll right into our opponent’s filthy clutches. Kotaku Senior Editor Alyssa Mercante described it as similar to “ yelling at your dog when they pick up something bad,” and I know you, like the dog, want to hold onto things that aren’t good for you and hide them under the couch. But I’m telling you to leave it, Overwatch community. Yes, we made jokes about staying on the payload for years, and now I’m asking you to get off the robot so this match can end and I can play any other mode.
This is Life By You, an “upcoming, moddable life-sim” being made by Paradox Tectonic:
Life by You – Announce Trailer
That’s a Sims competitor all right! While it might look initially like it’s cutting very close to Maxis’ cloth, Paradox say the big draw here is that Life By You is going hard on creation and customisation suites (harder than The Sims goes, anyway), letting players shape not just their appearance and homes, but their careers and conversations as well.
Open up a new world of creative possibilities in Life by You. Be in total control of the humans that you create, the towns that you build, the stories that you tell. And oh yes – mods! We know life is always better with a heavy sprinkle of your imagination, so we’re empowering you with a wide variety of Creator Tools so you can design your lives the way you see fit – or break the rules of life itself. Designed to be one of the most moddable and open life-simulation games, we look forward to the humans, stories, and creations that you’ll make with Life by You.
Life By You is for the PC only, and will be entering Early Access (on both Steam and the Epic Games Store) on September 12.
It was always a little weird that The Sims has remained unchallenged for so long, considering both its age and immense popularity, but then making these kinds of games is hard work! We’re finally getting some serious competition in the space now though, between this and the promising Paralives, so it’ll be interesting to see what effect all that has on The Sims 5…whenever it releases.
Goku is misunderstood. Memes and misinterpretations have greatly contributed to some inaccurate conclusions about the Dragon Ball Z character — with perhaps the most common misconstrual being that Goku is a bad dad. This perception of Goku’s fatherly abilities have been perpetuated by jokes and memes that have, over the years, buried or caused people to ignore evidence that suggests otherwise, when in fact the opposite is true. Goku is a great dad.
When I dove into why I love Dragon Ball couples so much, I concluded that Toriyama excels at putting relationships on display by showing, not telling, how they feel about each other through their dynamics, reactions to perilous situations and subtext. I think the same applies to analyzing Goku as a father. Throughout the original manga, we see Goku being a good dad in both traditional and nontraditional ways.
Goku has confidence in Gohan
To analyze Goku as a dad, we have to look at Goku as a character. Goku is passionate about martial arts, but more specifically, his core character value is always wanting to get better. Goku values working hard to get stronger and seeing those results paying off and this ties to him as a father. Though he doesn’t force them to be martial artists like himself, Goku is incredibly proud of and confident in the strength, skills and results of hard work that his sons display, which is the quality of a great dad.
When Goku shows up to save Gohan from Nappa, he points out his son’s progress, “You’ve changed so much! You trained well!” Even though Gohan admits he couldn’t do anything against Nappa, it’s still important to Goku that his son knows he’s come a long way, and he does just that. A similar scene plays out in the Frieza Saga when Goku once again shows up to save Gohan and Krillin, he comments that Gohan has been through a lot, complimenting his perseverance — he’s less scared and a little stronger than before, and Goku makes sure he knows it.
The Cell Saga is perhaps the best source of moments like this. Throughout the entire arc, Goku shows immense confidence, belief and pride in Gohan’s potential, power, progress and perseverance, saying as much throughout. As the two train in the hyperbolic time chamber, Goku makes it clear that he believes Gohan is going to become stronger than him. He notes how quickly he progresses and compliments his growth, showing nothing but pride and belief in his son’s potential.
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In fact, Goku has the utmost confidence in Gohan’s abilities, so much so that he remains calm when learning that Cell’s power is still greater than his own. Why? Because he already recognized his son’s growth and power, he’s already confident that Cell’s defeat is at hand and that Gohan is going to be the one to do it. Goku approaches the Cell games with this matter-of-fact mindset that Gohan is going to save the world, it’s a sincere belief, not just a father trying to give his son confidence.
And Goku is right to have this confidence — Gohan believed his father to be holding back against Cell, since his dad’s best was far behind the level he had reached. Not only did Goku have great belief in his son — forfeiting his match because he knew he didn’t have to defeat Cell — he also showed great intuition in regards to Gohan’s power. Heck, he’s so confident and proud of Gohan’s strength, he straight up calls Cell an idiot for underestimating him, also quelling Piccolo’s doubts when Gohan appears defeated. These are the acts of a father who has confidence in his son, who is proud and recognizes his hard work and its results.
Illustration: Toei Animation
Of course, Goku does take this confidence a bit far, factoring into one of his weaker moments as a dad — giving Cell a Senzu bean and putting Gohan into the ring with him. This is often cited as one of the biggest examples of Goku being a bad dad and I can’t disagree. However, it comes from Goku’s sincere confidence and recognition of his son’s power, and more importantly, Goku realizes his mistake and was on his way to fix it, before Gohan proves that his dad was right to believe in him, unleashing the power of an ascended Super Saiyan. A mistake, certainly, but not a heartless one.
Later when Cell decides to self-destruct and take the whole planet with him, Goku teleports the sore loser away, but not before he tells Gohan he is proud of him. Then when Cell reforms, Goku urges his son from the afterlife to “show me the power that we made together,” to defeat the villain. Goku sees Gohan’s power as the result of their shared efforts, as something he is proud of and a reflection of their time spent together as father and son — it is a touching scene in the context of the power-centric world of Dragon Ball. In this world, power is everything, and they built this together. Finally, in the last moments of the Cell saga, Goku wishes to remain in the afterlife, giving Gohan one final vote of confidence by saying the Earth has him now, his power and his reliability are going to protect the planet.
The Buu Saga does have some key moments as well. While watching Goten fight Trunks in the kids’ division of the World Martial Arts Tournament, Goku shows great interest in observing Goten’s current level of skill and power. He notes that he can’t quite control energy blasts and is impressed that he can already turn Super Saiyan. It’s small, but worth noting Goku’s deep interest in Goten’s fight. Similarly, Goku stays to watch Gohan train in the land of the Kais, taking an interest in and noting his progress. Additionally, Goku is taken aback — literally, he is blown back — by Gohan’s ultimate form, and tells him as much, giving him one final vote of confidence with a thumbs up as he goes off to fight Buu.
Goku also put great faith in Goten and Trunks and their fusion during the Buu saga, literally saying that it’s their generation’s time to take over. This is a vote of confidence and pride from Goku to Goten (as well as Trunks) and though minimal, it’s worth noting.
Goku balances being a dad with being a teacher
Illustration: Toei Animation
Goku possesses what’s known as a positive flat character arc: he doesn’t change for the better over time, but rather his positive nature changes other characters and the world around him for the better. I think this especially applies to his sons and what he’s left them with as their father and mentor.
In the Cell Saga, Goku teaches Gohan how to turn Super Saiyan, how to perfect the form and how to maintain it. Here, we find that Goku is an excellent teacher, a difficult task especially when your student is also your son, and I think it speaks to Goku’s ability as a father that he can balance the two. Goku is patient, kind, encouraging and understanding — every time Gohan struggles or stumbles, Goku tells him that not even he or Vegeta were able to master the transformation in a day. Goku also reminds his son that he is much farther along strength-wise than he was as a kid, able to handle more time in the Hyperbolic time chamber and full of hidden potential that will outshine both himself and Vegeta. These are all qualities of a great teacher and a great dad.
Gohan reflects this when Videl asks him who taught him how to fight — he doesn’t say Piccolo, though that’s often who people joke is Gohan’s real father. Instead, Gohan says “My dad, mostly.” He reflects it further when he asks Kibito to give him a new gi, one based off of his dad’s, “I want to fight wearing my dad’s gi,” he says, and this is big. Previously, Gohan chose Piccolo’s clothes to wear in respect to his teachings, so it speaks volumes that he now wants to honor his father and wear the pride they have for each other in his gi. He wouldn’t do this if Goku wasn’t an excellent and impactful father and it’s an incredibly touching and important moment.
As for Goten, when Goku is teaching him and Trunks fusion, he swallows his pride in order for them to understand the importance of the technique. He tells them that he is weak, and that his weakness got Gohan and Vegeta killed, which Trunks and Goten blame him for. These kids barely know him and he understands that, he gets on their level to admit his weakness so they understand that fusion will help them surpass his own weakness. I see this as an excellent teacher move, one that finally gets them to listen. Additionally, Goten, who only just met his dad earlier this day, wishes for a final hug before he goes — only someone like Goku could get a son he just met to be that attached that quickly.
Goku as the selfless Saiyan
If you want more direct examples of Goku being a great dad, Dragon Ball is full of such moments.Throughout the Saiyan, Frieza and Cell Sagas, Goku shows immense concern for Gohan’s wellbeing.
Infamously known as a fight-loving freak, Goku pays little attention to Nappa or the Ginyu force when rescuing Gohan from them, ensuring he is safe, healed and away from the battle before even once looking at his future opponents. Also in the Frieza Saga, Goku makes sure that Gohan gets as far away as possible after he turns into a Super Saiyan for the first time — he knows he can’t control the rage-induced power yet and tells Gohan to get away before his control slips away entirely.
In the Cell Saga, Goku literally sacrifices his life for his son when he teleports a self-destructing Cell away — and this moment is important on two levels. First, Goku is being a good dad and giving his life to ensure his son lives, and second, Goku takes the brunt of Gohan’s mistake for him. Gohan got a bit cocky with his power, wanting to make Cell suffer before defeating him, which gives the villain the chance to self-destruct, something that Gohan (and the whole Earth) would have paid for if Goku didn’t step in. He takes the hit so Gohan can learn from his mistake without paying fatal consequences. That’s some grade-A dad s*** right there! He even keeps a positive attitude when telling him he’s going to remain dead! He doesn’t want his son to mourn and dwell on his death!
In the Buu saga, Goku shows a deep understanding and concern for Gohan’s rage, now knowing the full power, and urges him to calm down when Videl gets hurt in her tournament match. He also understands that Videl is important to Gohan and doesn’t hesitate to get her Senzu beans from Korrin. Later, when Goku finds out Gohan is alive and in the land of the Kais, he immediately teleports to him without hesitation, and is later sad that he can’t go back with him to Earth and see him grow up.
There are also two hugs in this saga, both between Goku and his sons. Signs of affection are very rare in Dragon Ball and I think it contributes a lot to the argument of Goku being a good dad that two of them are when Goku is saying goodbye to his sons. I dare you to tell me Goku is some kind of uncaring, distant father after all this!
Goku is a flawed character
Illustration: Toei Animation
To give a fair argument, we have to look at some of Goku’s flaws. In desperate situations, he can be a bit harsh and biting — Gohan experiences this in the Saiyan saga when Goku snaps at him for being too afraid to take over the fight against Vegeta, calling him a coward. This could have been delivered better, but I think it stems from Goku believing in his son, and trying to snap him out of the fear that makes him hesitate, something he takes a better approach with during the Cell games. Here, rather than calling Gohan a coward, he says, “Bring peace back to the world. You want to grow up and be a scientist don’t you?” to directly, but gently teach Gohan that you have to fight for the things that matter, even if you’re afraid. I think this not only makes up for how he yelled at Gohan in the Saiyan saga, but it also shows something that even the best dads struggle to do: grow, change and adapt how they teach and raise their kids.
Goku similarly yells at Goten later in the Buu saga, once again out of a desperate situation. When teaching Trunks and Goten about Fusion, he snaps that they don’t have time to cry and mourn Gohan and Vegeta, that they have to learn Fusion fast if they want revenge. It’s not gentle, that’s for sure, but it’s not out of malice, Goku has to cut through to make it clear that there is a ticking clock and they can save the world if they use time wisely. Again, it’s not a perfect dad moment, but Goku is, as established, a flawed character.
Perhaps the most cited reason for Goku being a “bad dad” in the eyes of some is that he’s absent twice from his son’s lives. But here’s the thing. Goku did not abandon his sons. Goku was gone after selfless acts of self-sacrifice done to protect his sons from current and future threats.
Well… of course, he does sort of abandon his family in the final pages of the series in order to train Uub to be the next protector of the Earth but Gohan is already a full-grown adult here. Goten is still a bit younger, but he’s training Uub to keep the Earth, and his sons, safe. Overall, the epilogue is not a great example of Goku as a dad, but it’s also never stated that he doesn’t visit them during Uub’s training, so I’m gonna choose to believe he does (just let me have this one!)
Super Saiyan, Super Dad
Illustration: Toei Animation
A lot of arguments of Goku being a bad dad come from Dragon Ball Super, which takes a more comedic tone that Flanderizes and pokes fun at Goku’s flaws as a dad. If you want to use those points to argue, go right ahead, but Toriyama’s original text, the original Dragon Ball manga does not, in my opinion, depict Goku as a bad father. Quite the opposite.
Goku being a dad is not the focus of Dragon Ball, and I think this is a big contributor to why people think he’s a bad dad. The series doesn’t put a spotlight on Goku having traditional father-son moments with his kids, but when you look closely, it’s not hard to find moments of Goku being a damn good dad — imparting wisdom, protecting his kids, caring deeply about them, showing affection for them and taking great pride in their hard work and progress. Is Goku a perfect dad? No, but what person, fictional or real is? Is Goku a good dad? Yes, y’all are just mean.
Sean is a writer/researcher who lives in LA and loves Sonic, Dragon Ball and his dog. You can follow him on Twitter and find his work on his website. He also co-hosts Sonic Podcast Adventure and streams frequently on Twitch.
With Resident Evil 4’s remake due out this week, Capcom’s marketing for the title is swinging into high gear, and while that would not normally move any of my needles, this little anime they had made for the game is just too good.
Its full name is “Resident Evil 4 Anime PV Resident Evil Masterpiece Theater – ‘Leon and the Mysterious Village’ EP 1″, which isn’t the catchiest, but it at least gets the point across. It only runs for 56 seconds (and that’s including title screens), but it is 56 seconds of pure joy for anyone who has ever played this game across its 117 previous releases.
“Story of my life” indeed, my guy:
Resident Evil 4 Anime PV Resident Evil Masterpiece Theater – “Leon and the Mysterious Village” EP 1
If you were thinking that animation style looked familiar, that’s because—as the credits at the end state—the clip was made by storied Japanese studio Nippon Animation, who among many other things are known for their old show Masterpiece Theater (hence the name in this case) which would showcase short anime episodes every week that were adaptations of existing works.
While the remake isn’t out until March 24, reviews for the game went live last week, and for the 188th time people are finding that, yes, Resident Evil 4 is a good video game:
Out March 24 on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, the Resident Evil 4 remake updates one of the best entries in Capcom’s long running survival horror series. Following in the footsteps of previous remakes for Resident Evil 2 and 3, the newest game still sees Special Agent Leon S. Kennedy sent to a Spanish village to rescue the President’s daughter from a weird cult. This time things are just much prettier, the controls and UI are more modern, and there’s some new content like additional side-quests.
A number of places like IGN have given the game perfect scores, and it currently sits at over 90 on Metacritic. At the same time, not everyone is under the remake’s spell. “Several smart changes; a few disappointing cuts,” tweetedEdge magazine’s deputy editor, Chris Schilling. “When it’s good it’s brilliant, but largely in the exact same ways as the original.”
The internet’s been buzzy of late for the freshly announced Persona 5 spin-off game, Phantom of the Night (P5X). Fans were intrigued by the new characters, but they were also excited to meet their old favorites again. But when I looked at the screenshots, I noticed one person missing: Goro Akechi. What gives, Atlus? You can’t just pretend that Persona 5 Royal’s main antagonist wasn’t also the series’ most compelling character. He was a true member of the Phantom Thieves group, and his haters can die mad about it.
Goro Akechi is a high school student who acts as a rival for the main protagonist of Persona 5. In the original game, he’s known for betraying the party after pretending to be their friend. He also does this in the enhanced Royal release, but this 2019 update of the game adds additional scenes for him. These social interactions make Akechi feel more like a deeply troubled friend, rather than a shithead cop who had a change of heart at the very last second.
Like most RPG antagonists, Akechi has a tragic backstory. His mother died when he was young, and he grew up as an orphan (who generally face considerable social stigma in Japan). Akechi wanted revenge against his neglectful and cruel father, so he cooperated with him in order to get close enough to assassinate him. Unfortunately, his father also planned to assassinate his son all along. Akechi eventually recognized that the protagonist is a similar person to him, and chose to sacrifice himself to ensure the escape of the heroic Phantom Thieves.
It also helped that in Royal, players got to spend more time with him in an entirely new arc. The post-game added a new semester in which reality has been completely changed. In this altered Tokyo, every character has their personal tragedy undone, and each person lives a happy life. This is the only scenario in which Akechi can be saved. However, he rejects the artificial world and the false happiness that comes with it. Since he’s implied to have died in the original plotline, defeating this world’s owner means he will cease to exist. He doesn’t care. For him, dying is preferable to living under the thumb of some higher power.
But I wanted him to live! When you pursue the ending in which the artificial world is destroyed, Royal teases the possibility that Akechi might have survived. And so I held my breath for the possibility of being able to see Akechi again in the sequel game Scramble. I never ended up finishing that musou game despite completing so many others. Akechi wasn’t in it, and that was definitely part of the reason. I wasn’t terribly invested in a P5 in which he didn’t exist.
I hoped that it was a fluke. Akechi is good, and he deserves to appear in other spinoff games. Now it seems like P5X might let me down too, and I’m starting to lose hope that Atlus remembers who he is. This is homophobia, and I won’t stand for it. Atlus, give us my feral bird son or give me death.
I spend a lot of time putzing around my PlayStation 5: deleting games here, downloading them there, looking for old saves, and trying to talk to friends. It’s made me appreciate every new firmware update, no matter how small or niche the improvements it makes are. And earlier this month, Sony delivered a bunch of satisfying tweaks.
Players got a preview of March’s big 7.0 firmware upgrade back in February, revealing Discord integration, new save data transfer options, and more. It recently went live, and it’s a far cry from the usual opaque “improves system performance” updates. It’s not as big a deal as the PS5 finally getting folders, and there are still plenty of other new features I’d love to see, but it’s another milestone in the platform’s continued improvement.
Use Discord to voice chat with Xbox friends
Screenshot: Discord
Cross-play has been great for bringing people across PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC together, but actually trying to communicate with them was still a drag. Discord integration fixes that, and lets you easily start up conversations with anyone and feed the audio through your console.
Plus, it doesn’t even have to be game-specific. Someone playing Rocket League? Another person watching Mandalorian? No problem! Discord is actually great for just chilling together while everyone does their own thing.
Capture gameplay using your voice
It sounds silly, but you can now use the microphone on the DualSense controller to ask the PS5 to record gameplay. Perfect for capturing gameplay in the thick of battle or a tense competition when you don’t want to lose control while toggling over manually. Now if only there was text-to-speech to type out the social media posts sharing my highlights.
Update your DualSense wirelessly
There’s nothing worse than trying to play a game and seeing that your controller needs to get a firmware update. Previously, this required plugging it into the PS5. Now, you can download and install it wirelessly. It was the smallest of inconveniences, and thankfully it’s now gone.
Get variable refresh rates on 1440p monitors
Variable Refresh Rate support came to PS5 last year. It helps the framerate flow more smoothly and makes the graphics look crisper. With the lastest patch, it’ll also work with 1440p monitors, a niche but practical halfway point between 1080p and 4K. I don’t play my PS5 on one of these displays, but I’d be pleasantly surprised if I did.
Receive notifications for save data in the cloud
Image: Sony
Like a lot of PS5 owners, I have a huge library of PS4 games, and save data from all of them backed up in the cloud. Unlike Xbox Series X/S, however, the PS5 doesn’t automatically pull that save data over. But now, it does something almost as good: send a notification prompt when you install a game that supports your existing PS4 data (like a PS5 game where you can transfer saves). Clicking on the prompt will automatically start the transfer, rather than having to go rummaging through a bunch menus.
Join games directly from the party chat
Another button-prompt shortcut, it’s now possible to meet up with friends in-game directly from the party chat menu. It’s a nice time saver considering how often you migh group up to play the same thing, and your friends or clan mates probably already got started before you.
See what your friends are playing more easily
This feature is still somewhat incomplete, but it’s still a step in the right direction. Like with Steam, it’s now easier to see which friends own a game you have or are actively playing it. A small section with that info sits under each game tile on the PS5 home screen. My only quibble is that you have to click through to see which friends own it, and it only tells you someone plays that game if they are online in the middle of an active session. Baby steps.
Request to watch a friend’s game directly from their profile
I rarely use the share screen feature, usually because if I’m online with friends we’re probably already playing something together. Still, it’s another nice shortcut to be able to quickly watch what someone’s playing directly from their profile, skipping another bit of the PS5’s tedious and often esoteric menu scrolling.
Filter games when adding them to a folder
Image: Sony
Alright, game folders are my favorite new feature the PS5 has gotten since launch, and they just got easier to make. When they first went live, you had to scroll through your entire library adding stuff as you went. Now you can filter it by various categories, making the whole organizational process much, much faster. Will I ever play 99 percent of games I stick in the PS5’s folders? Not a chance. But I like doing it all the same. It helps me relax and feel less guilty about my backlog.
It’s possible we’ll get another batch of PS5 tweaks later in the year. “We are always thinking about the features that our fans might want to see and ways to make their gaming experiences on PS5 more fun, social, and connected,” Sony Product Management VP Hiromi Wakai said in a recent interview. “We keep a very long list of features and think carefully about how we prioritize our time and resources to deliver the ones that will make the most meaningful impact on our players’ experience.”
Hopefully PS5 background themes aren’t too far away.
