We here at Kotaku get plenty of tips via email. Some are spam, others are error-filled hate messages, and a few are serious allegations that require serious investigation. So it’s refreshing when something comes in that just points us toward something breezy and cool, as was the case with a recent tip regarding the slay-the-house-down-boots fashion of the Like A Dragon: Ishin! developers, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio.
A development subdivision of Sega whose roots trace back to 1998, Ryu Ga Gotoku (“RGG”) is a Japanese studio responsible for the 2012 third-person shooter Binary Domain. However, you’re probably more familiar with RGG’s most prominent work, the Yakuza series. Since 2012, RGG has been in charge of the action-adventure franchise, developing new mainline entries and remastering old ones while putting together spin-offs such as the Judgment series and the latest remake, Like A Dragon: Ishin!
It’s that latter game, which was originally a 2014 Japan-only release before making its worldwide debut earlier this week, that was the topic of the tips email we got this week. Enamored with senior editor Alyssa Mercante’s “fashion callout” of The Game Awards’ bland drip, the reader (whose name we’ve decided to keep hidden) said we should check out this making-of Like A Dragon video to see some “cool suits.”
“I loved The Game Awards fashion callout and follow-up article and 40 seconds into this video about Ryu Ga Gotoku making the next Like A Dragon game there is an amazing staff promo photo,” the reader said in an email to Kotaku. “I guess if you’re in charge of the Yakuza/Like A Dragon series, you’re basically obligated to wear a cool suit.” And they ain’t lying! RGG is literally stunting over the entire industry in one shot.
SEGA Asia(EN)
In the first episode of a multi-part series on Sega Asia’s English YouTube channel, we get a quick glance at RGG’s fashion sense. Japanese fashion is pretty captivating if you follow it. Filled with flowy silhouettes, wild colors and patterns, and an interesting blend of casual and smart aesthetics, folks in the Land of the Rising Sun know how to dress. RGG is no exception. Sure, the suits the developers wear about 40 seconds into the above video are all black, but the nuance is in the details. Two staffers have jackets with interesting markings: one with a variety of white dots and another with copious small crosses. A different staffer has a coat with tastefully accenting white lines. Three other staffers have all-over patterns, with two of the staffers’ suits having a nice sheen. If you told me this was an alternative J-Rock band and not a bunch of video game developers, I’d believe you.
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Even the developers’ boots, while nondescript on the surface, really add to the developers’ collective drip. Most in the photo have round pointed-toe, glossy-looking boots with no laces like they all just stepped off the set of The Matrix or something. Two others mix things up a little bit, with one staffer having what appears to be round lace-up boots a la Dr. Martens (though maybe not that exact brand) and another seemingly wearing some very dark, perhaps suede-looking boots. Either way, RGG’s fits are on point! I may not be the fashionista that Kotaku’s Alyssa Mercante is, but I, too, am gagging over the confident simplicity RGG exudes in their almost-matching looks. It’s dope to see, especially in an industry known for some of the most predictable (graphic-tee-and-blazer) outfit combos ever.
Anyway, shout out to RGG for slaying the entire industry in a matter of seconds with both their killer fashion and their even more-killer samurai game, Like A Dragon: Ishin! In fact, staff writer Sisi Jiang called it “the best samurai game that you can play right now.” You should check it out.
Nintendo’s new Metroid Prime Remastered—physical copies of the Switch game released on February 22, if you could get your hands on one—has a lot of stuff in it. While you guide unshakeable bounty hunter Samus Aran around the winding planet Tallon IV, you’ll pick some of it up, valuable upgrades and alterations to her powerful space suit. The Boost Ball will help you curl Samus into a speedy, silver sphere, for example, the flamethrower melts through opponents and dense slabs of ice, the x-ray visor lets you see every bone in an enemy’s body, and so on. The Gravity Suit, which grants Samus uninhibited exploration of underwater areas, is one of the most significant and important members of this stuff, but it can be a little tricky to find on your own. That’s where I come in.
Here’s everything you need to know about getting the Gravity Suit.
Can you get the Gravity Suit in Metroid Prime Remastered early?
Not really, unfortunately. Getting the Gravity Suit requires the Ice Beam, which requires the Spider Ball upgrade, which requires you to beat boulder boss Thardus, which reminds me…
Requirements before you get the Gravity Suit
Before you attempt to find the Gravity Suit, you need to make sure you’ve cleared most of the snow-coated Phendrana Drifts, including its Sheegoth mini-boss and true boss Thardus. Proceed once you’ve acquired the…
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Wave Beam
Super Missile
Thermal Visor
Spider Ball
and Ice Beam
…the Gravity Suit is the next chronological upgrade.
Looks welcoming.Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku
Now head to Phendrana Drifts (again)
At this stage in the game, you’re likely accustomed to running to and from the Drifts for upgrades, but you might still feel unsure about the right pathway for you. It’s not your fault, Google Maps never made it to Tallon IV.
So, OK, you got the Ice Beam from the stony Chozo Ruins antechamber and saved your game at the nearest station. Excellent. Now get your ass up and start another journey back to Phendrana Drifts.
From the antechamber, head left through the doors until you’re able to scan and enter the Tallon Overworld South elevator. Or, instead of this, if you’d like, there’s an energy tank and artifact you can pick up—go back to the Hall of Elders to solve a Morph Ball puzzle for the tank, then go to the Suntower, scan four runic symbols, then receive the Artifact of Wild from the Sunchamber.
Whether you’re now navigating from the Tallon Overworld or taking the Magmoor Caverns North elevator near the Sunchamber, your next goal is to make it to the Caverns’ Monitor Station. When you’re there, cross the bridge to reach the Phendrana Drifts North elevator; use it, reach the Phendrana Shorelines, and save your game.
You have options from here. You can move through Ice Ruins West until you make it all the way back to the Research Core to grab a missile expansion along the way, in Research Lab Hydra. Use your fresh Ice Beam to open the frosty door in this room, then go through the Pike Access hallway to reach Frozen Pike. Or, instead, you can return to Thardus’ boss room, Quarantine Cave, ignore the Magmoor elevator near it, and complete a Spider Ball maze to get to Frozen Pike.
Either way, once you’re in Frozen Pike, you need to open the purple door with your Wave Beam. It leads to Frost Cave Access, which leads to Frost Cave, another save point. Save there, then curve left to the Upper Edge Tunnel and Phendrana’s Edge.
You’re so close now! Get into the water and pass through doors until you’re in the Gravity Chamber—the Gravity Suit, marked by the S-shaped Metroid symbol, is spinning like a coin on the far side of the Chamber, on the left. Your Thermal Visor should help you identify it, making it appear yellow in the muck.
Yay!Screenshot: Nintendo / Kotaku
Where to go after you get the Gravity Suit
The Gravity Suit lets you move and see more effortlessly underwater, and with it equipped, you’ll be able to reach the Wave Beam door that leads back to Hunter Cave, Frozen Pike and, ultimately, the Magmoor Caverns South elevator. Push your way back to the Landing Site in the Tallon Overworld. Go to the Frigate Crash Site and start swimming—there’s an underwater area you can now easily explore. I know this is basically where you started from, but you have to spend money to make money.
Metroid Prime Remasteredis a hi-fi return to the home planet for anyone who played Nintendo’s iconic action-adventure game when it first came out back in 2002. But Remastered is also a fresh opportunity for those of us who were sleeping or busy being literal children back then—a first chance to be Prime’s version of intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran, this time in vibrant color and with modern controls. I learned a lot from my first trip around oozing Tallon IV, and I’m ready to impart it onto you. Here are some things I wish someone told me before I started playing Metroid Prime Remastered.
Try reverting your controls to “classic” or “hybrid” if you’re prone to FPS motion sickness
Remastered has extensive accessibility and controller options, both of which are worth a look.
From “display,” you can customize a few heads-up display features, including whether or not it moves with Samus’ first-person movements, and turn on a “color assist” feature if you can’t distinguish between certain colors.
From “sound,” aside from typical special effects and music adjustment, you can also choose to turn on “full” or “partial” narration and subtitles, which were added to the game for their original Japanese and European releases, respectively. The narration is sparse, only really occurring at the start and very end of the game, but it could be intriguing for U.S. fans of the series curious about international versions.
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And from the “controls” option, you can choose to play using the default dual stick option, “pointer,” which “enables motion controls for camera movement and aiming” and is modeled after the Metroid Prime: Trilogy’s Wii settings; “classic,” which reverts you to GameCube controls; or “hybrid,” which blends GameCube with “motion controls for aiming.” I played mostly with modern standard dual stick controls, but noticed that hybrid’s gummier up-and-down motions were useful for keeping my motion sickness in check. They all deserve a test drive, though, either for fun or for nostalgia.
Lock on to enemies
Remastered uses ZL as an enemy lock-on button, but it wasn’t the kind of combat lock-on I’m used to—it more or less imbues you with perfect aim. For me, using it at first felt like cheating, but it ultimately pushed me off of thinking about Remastered as a first-person shooter. It’s a meandering adventure game where kills aren’t nearly as important as exploring every lit corridor, so you might as well shoot as well as you can with the tools the game gives you.
Lock on!Image: Nintendo
Press B and strafe
Locking on to enemies also allows you to strafe, or jump seamlessly around them, by pressing B and pushing your right stick to either side. The effective dodge isn’t possible without locking on, and it’s the best way to avoid health-melting enemy attacks while keeping a battle fast-paced.
Make sure you’re using every type of dodge you can, though, especially during Space Pirate fights when you need to defend your front, back, and head from obnoxious flying goons. Even if you’re not locked on to any particular enemy, keep pressing B to jump over attacks. You’re not above hiding behind crates either.
Smash every crate
When you’re not hiding behind crates, you should be cracking them open. They often contain health and ammo—something to keep in mind if you’re running low during a fight. Be cautious around crates with glowing orange innards, though. Though they also contain items, they can explode and kill you. Harvest them from a safe distance.
Though, throughout your travels, you’ll grab up to 14 Energy Tanks to expand your health bar by 100 points a pop. Ultimately, that’s a lot of health, and you don’t really need to stress about preserving it the way another game might force you to. But it can get cut down quick, especially by magma pools or other environmental hazards, so guard it a bit. Checking out your health bar also lets you know how urgently you need to pick up the loose orbs of health and ammo enemies tend to drop.
Hold A during battle
Holding A down not only charges Samus’ Power Beam, but also activates its magnet-like ability to suck fallen enemies’ dropped items toward you. Need more missiles but the only item drop is suspended in the air, just out of reach? That’s fine. Vacuum that shit up. Combining this habit while getting used to kicking crates will make sure that health and ammo are never too much of a concern during huge skirmishes.
Target sentry drones for more missiles
Sometimes getting stuck is inevitable. While Samus’ default Power Beam and many of its variations—plasma, ice, purple waves of sizzling electricity—fire infinitely, missiles are limited and require your discretion. They’re the only weapon able to open certain types of doors and, in the early game, are one of the most effective ways to eliminate bosses and thick-skinned enemies like sentry drones, so you can, naturally, run out rather fast. Then, you might, naturally, get upset. You don’t need to be, though. Sentry drones tend to drop missiles more than other enemies. When you’re in a bind, simply head to the Monitor Station in Magmoor Caverns and kill them all.
Don’t forget to scan
Samus receives a few useful helmet visors throughout the game, including the thermal visor, which will help you find enemies in the dark; x-ray visor, which similarly lets you detect invisible enemies; and the scan visor you start out with.
The scan visor, which adds environmental observations and analysis to Samus’ logbook, might be nerdy, but it’s by far the most important visor in her arsenal. Using it reveals useful information about enemies and new areas, unlocks doors, and elevators.
And don’t be lazy when you use it—take a few seconds to actually read the information it provides you. Not only will it provide a deeper understanding of the game’s story, but it also tells you crucial next steps. It’ll point out crumbling blocks of stone, for example, so you can figure out the best place to use Samus’ Morph Ball bombs when she’s in her transformed, metal roly-poly form. It explains enemies’ weak points—even bosses’ weak points. It’s essential for navigating Tallon IV.
Don’t waste your time on enemies you can’t kill
Scanning also keeps things moving. Don’t be like me and wonder why the ice-capped beetles keep stabbing and poking and just won’t die when the scan visor could have told you 10 minutes ago that you don’t have the right weapon to kill them. Read what you scan, and let what you learn inform your approach to combat.
Make sure hints are on
Scanning isn’t a cure-all, though. As a first time Metroid Prime player, I was often confused about where to go next. Hints, which you can flip on in settings, make sure I didn’t spin in circles for too long. If you spend too long idling, a question mark hint will appear on your map and gently guide you in the right direction.
Image: Nintendo
When it doubt, go back to where you came from
Even without hints, take the age-old advice and retrace your footsteps. Metroid Prime requires you to scavenge the same places over and over again but, each time, you come back changed. Phendrana Drifts will look different once you get your springy space boots, and you’ll form a unique relationship with gravity once you secure a Morph Ball alteration that lets you sail up walls and railings like a scrawny spider.
I’m impatient, so I often sighed when Remastered made it clear that I was supposed to double back…which was most of the time. But checking out old corners with new gear makes them exciting again, and, as a treat, you’ll also get beneficial power-ups and expansions you weren’t ready for before.
Get extreme Boost Ball height by letting go at the last second
One of, I thought, the most annoying parts of turning back was realizing I had to turn back, curl Samus into a ball, and knock her around a steep ramp until she gained enough momentum to make a huge jump. These sections are aggravating. They might make you feel like the game is fundamentally broken and that you should flush your Switch down the toilet with your childhood goldfish. But it’s not that big of a deal; it takes a little finesse.
Hit boost while you’re only starting to move up a curve, then let go when you’re near the top. That’s the most reliable method to get in the air, but if you do it enough times, you’ll start to feel a rhythm for it.
Learn what an upgrade sounds like
Remastered is filled with hidden mazes and rooms, and it’s possible that you’ll miss an upgrade while standing right in front of it (I did!). But expansions and suit upgrades give off a (very) faint whirring sound when you’re near them. Turn down the music and crank up the SFX in settings to help you identify it.
Circle back to save points
Once you’ve found something important, try to hurry to your closest save point. Like the original, Remastered doesn’t allow you to save whenever or wherever, so respect your progress and save your game when the map lets you.
What are some of your most helpful Metroid Prime Remastered tips?
I know this isn’t the most pressing issue facing the video game community, but I just think it’s funny: someone at Ubisoft has finally got around to fixing a bug that has impacted one particular version of Assassin’s Creed on one specific platform that has been bugging people (or maybe just one person?) for years.
You might experience unexpected game behavior while playing this PS4 game on your PS5 console.
Still, like I said, not a huge issue. But still an issue, one that would have been logged somewhere at Ubisoft, far enough down the list of priorities that it didn’t get fixed at the time, but on the list nonetheless, waiting to be tackled by somebody, anybody, whenever they had the time.
That time is this week. The series’ Twitter account posted this earlier today, saying that an update be released tomorrow specifically targeting this very bug:
We’re happy to announce that Assassin’s Creed Syndicate will receive an update tomorrow, February 23, on PlayStation 4. This update will provide a fix for flickering issues when playing on PlayStation 5.
Sweet, sweet Delta-8 Baked Bags’ Coned are the ice cream inspired edibles that are packed with rich chocolate infused with smooth, chill, Delta-8 THC.
Thank you for reminding me to dig this out and replay it. Not because I want to enjoy it flicker-free—I never had it on PS4, I have it on PC!—but because this is a deeply underappreciated entry in the series, and one I’d love to revisit in the wake of the more recent games being just a bit too much.
Best: New Toys: It’s hard to choose one thing that I’d call the best part of Vice City, the GTA game that brought the series to Florida and the 80s, but if I have to (Editor’s note: You do.) then I’d pick the introduction of more vehicles to the sandbox. In Vice City, you could fly in planes and helicopters, drive scooters, golf carts, dirt bikes, various boats, and even pilot remote-controlled helicopters, too. All of this made Vice City a more fun playground to tinker with between missions.
Worst: Crappy Combat: The annoying, crappy combat. While it’s mostly unchanged from GTA III, it stands out in Vice City more because everything else—like the improved visuals, larger map and better cutscenes—is so much better this time around. And Vice City has a ton of combat in it, making it even harder to ignore just how clunky and bad it is.
Microsoft President Brad SmithPhoto: Valeria Mongelli / Bloomberg (Getty Images)
Earlier today, Microsoft President Brad Smith and Xbox boss Phil Spencer talked briefly to the media about its ongoing attempt to consume Activision Blizzard King, continuing once again to act like the larger spat is mostly about Call of Duty. At one point, Smith said he was carrying a contract with him that would keepCall of Duty on PlayStation after the sale goes through, claiming that it all came down to Sony actually signing the thing. Conveniently, he was ignoring that the hold-up on the contract was happening because, y’know, the deal itself–which could potentially have an industry-wide impact that far outstrips Call of Duty.
For those of you just tuning in, Microsoft has spent the last 12 months trying to buy Activision Blizzard for the astoundingly large amount of $69 billion. However, almost since the moment the deal was announced, regulators and governments around the world, as well as rival companies like Sony, have voiced opposition to the deal. These entities don’t want the deal to go through because it could give Xbox too much power over the industry by owning many of the biggest brands in gaming, such as Starfield and Minecraft (among other issues). And Microsoft has spent the last year jumping from courtroom to courtroom and country to country, trying to convince everyone that one massive corporation buying up another massive corporation is totally good for the industry and not horrible at all. It also keeps trying to get Sony to sign a deal on Call of Duty as a part of these efforts.
So today—as part of this ongoing worldwide tour of courtrooms and regulatory councils—Microsoft execs were in Brussels, Belgium as part of a behind-closed-doors hearing with the European Commission, which (like many other groups) has concerns about the Activision deal. After that hearing, Smith and Spencer held a brief media…briefing (heh) and mostly went over the same things they’ve said before about how Sony is already dominating the game industry and how Microsoft needs Activision Blizzard to compete. All of these arguments were trotted out while also pointing out that Nintendo had just signed a 10-year deal with the company to bring Call of Duty to Switch, a deal that’s come across as Microsoft trying to prove it won’t keep some of its biggest franchises to itself should the deal go through. And if it’s willing to put forth a decade-long deal on Call of Duty, the thinking goes, Microsoft is clearly not trying to build a monopoly through this deal.
It was during this part of the briefing, as reported by GameIndustry.biz, that Smith revealed that he was actually carrying the contract for a similar deal that would keep Call of Duty on PlayStation consoles. It was in an envelope in his pocket.
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“We haven’t agreed on a deal with Sony, but I hope we will,” Smith said, “I hope today is a day that will advance our industry and regulation in a responsible way. Sony can spend all its energy trying to block this deal, which will reduce competition and slow the evolution of the market. Or they can sit down with us, and hammer out a deal.”
Of course, bringing the actual contract with you on your trip to Europe is clearly just a way to dramatically remind people that Sony isn’t playing ball and is pushing back against the proposed Activision deal over concerns that it could lose access to Call of Duty, a series Sony in the past has called “essential.” And to be clear: Even after signing that deal, Sony could still lose Call of Duty after the initial decade if Xbox doesn’t offer up another, similar contract in 2033. ( It’s also just weird to bring it with you, beyond using it as a prop, unless Smith thought Sony was going to rush the stage at that moment and sign…) And it’s also another example of Microsoft acting like everyone is concerned about Call of Duty just because Sony seems to be focused mostly on that part of the deal.
In fact, at one point during the briefing, Smith literally said that the “number one concern that people have expressed about this acquisition is that Call of Duty will be less available to people.”
That’s a wild thing to say! And it just ignores all the other valid issues people and governments have with this deal, like how it could make the industry smaller and more susceptible to collapse, how it could position Game Pass as a more powerful force that could begin to hurt studios that don’t make deals with Xbox, or just the basic reality that—historically speaking— corporate mergers are awful for consumers.
In other news involving this seemingly-never ending saga, Microsoft also confirmed it had signed a 10-year deal with NVIDIA to allow GeForce NOW players to stream Xbox PC games and Activision PC games, including the all-important CoD, if the deal is approved and happens. This, along with the Nintendo deal, is clearly being promoted heavily by Microsoft, right before today’s hearing, as evidence that the company is not going to lockdown Call of Duty or other Activision Blizzard games to one platform or service.
Spencer even tweeted about the deal, adding that the company is “committed to bringing more games to more people – however they chose to play.” Well, unless you want to play Bethesda’s next big RPG, Starfield, on a PS5. Then uh…tough luck!
It was almost a year ago that Square Enix released Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, a “remastered” version of the 1999 classic on the PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Switch that, as good as the original game was, was also a very bad port.
Elaborate, pre-rendered backgrounds now look blurry and smeared
3D character models, rendered in higher res, stick out like a sore thumb in the new environments
Combat often stutters and feels unresponsive
There aren’t save states (but there is auto-saving in the overworld)
There’s no option to swap graphical styles on the fly
FMVs haven’t always been upscaled cleanly
The HD fonts are clear but look out of place
See what I mean? A bad port! The game, and fans, deserved better. And better is what they’re about to get, with Square Enix promising an update coming later this month that will try and fix some of the version’s problems. How many of them they’ll fix, and how well they’ll fix them is anyone’s guess, but addressing them is at least a start.
Hello, everyone.
This is the CHRONO CROSS: THE RADICAL DREAMERS EDITION development team.
Following the launch of the game last year, we’re planning to release an update this month.
The update includes a wide range of changes, such as framerate improvements, changes to the growth system for Pip, and fixes for other bugs.
Thank you so much to all of you for your thoughts and feedback on CHRONO CROSS: THE RADICAL DREAMERS EDITION. Have you discovered the secrets that original director Masato Kato added to this remaster?
We hope that you download the update, and that you continue to enjoy playing the game into the future.
Thank you for continuing to support CHRONO CROSS: THE RADICAL DREAMERS EDITION.
Much of the science fiction genre would have you believe that artificial intelligence would bring about humanity’s downfall by rising up and slaughtering its creators, but the recent boom in AI tech has instead amounted to labor crimes like journalistic malpractice and robbing artists of their commissions. So while AI is mostly being used to make creatives obsolete, Microsoft is apparently doing internal testing on a demo that makes AI essentially play Minecraft for you.
According to a report from Semafor, the demo recently showcased technology that allowed the user to simply tell Minecraft what to do, and it would move your character, collect materials, and more based on your directions.. Minecraft’s open-ended nature has apparently presented somewhat of a challenge for the tech, however, as there are multiple ways to accomplish a task in Mojang’s game. The example given in the report is building a car in Minecraft, which can be done in myriad ways depending on what supplies you have on-hand. So saying something broad like “build a car” would likely not get you as precise an in-game action as “build a car out of stone blocks.”
While the tech could be interesting, and maybe make Minecraft more accessible to people who have trouble playing with traditional controllers or mouse and keyboard, Semafor’s sources say Microsoft has no plans to implement the AI tech into a public version of Minecraft. These kinds of tech demos happen internally at big companies all the time with no real-world application. But applying something like AI tech to a mainstream video game like Minecraft in a way that could make it more easily playable to some people is at least a more comprehensible use for the tech rather than “we want to replace the human element of an industry so we don’t have to pay people.”
At the moment, this sounds similar to voice command tech Microsoft has tried to implement in peripherals like the Kinect motion sensor, which added voice options to games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Mass Effect 3. But given how poorly that turned out, it remains to be seen if this is something the company plans to pursue in the future or if it’s just trying something out.
After seeing Honkai: Star Rail for a few minutes during a live media preview, I mostly liked what I saw. HoYoverse’s “space fantasy” RPG doesn’t reinvent turn-based combat, but the performance was smooth. The fighting animations were among some of the best I’ve seen out of anime games in recent years. The combat’s turn tracker, team combos, type matchups, and battle animations were reminiscent of games like Shin Megami Tensei and Persona 5. But HoYoverse absolutely does not want you to think of it as either of those games. Besides the seeming identity confusion, my conversation with the developer left me without much optimism about racial inclusion in Star Rail’s space fantasy.
Here’s how Star Rail works: Although you start off with a protagonist character, most of your roster will come out of rolling for wives and husbands through the gacha system. You use them to explore maps filled with enemy encounters (rather than real-time combat like in HoYoverse’s current mainstay Genshin Impact).
Once you run into an enemy, you’ll start a turn-based battle. Each of your four party members will have two skills. Some will be offensive, while others will be support or healing based. Each attack corresponds with an element, and using elemental type matchups effectively will allow you to break shield bars. Once an enemy is vulnerable, you can use team combination attacks to kick them while they’re down.
Screenshot: HoYoverse / Kotaku
Despite the relatively simple combat, the game will feature an auto-battle mechanic. This should make it easier to grind daily battles for resources, which is an essential feature some modern gacha use to keep the games alive.
Star Rail will have a main story campaign and regular sidequests. While it shares similar characters from Honkai Impact 3rd, Fish Ling, a representative from HoYoverse, assured me that there wouldn’t be any story crossover with their incredibly lore-heavy real time action game.
Driving Honkai: Star Rail’s development was HoYoverse’s desire to diversify its portfolio from the usual action games it’s released, according to Michalel Lin, another representative for the developer. Secondly, HoYoverse felt turn-based combat was conducive to “the story that we want to tell.” Its design philosophy was driven by the desire to make turn-based combat approachable for newcomers.
Things got murkier, however, when I tried to ask who the target audience is. The Star Rail presentation mentioned that the game would feature different cultures. Remembering how badly Genshin Impactflubbed depicting darker skinned people and Southwest Asians in the Sumeru update, I asked how the developers intended to improve representation in Star Rail. What lessons did they learn from the overseas community?
“The game is set in a fictional world,” Lin said. “What we do is dependent on how the IP grows. As a combination of cultures in our world, there’s not a specific culture we target. We will continue listening to fans’ feedback, but how the world will be built, we can’t say for certain.”
Screenshot: HoYoverse
It’s 2023, and Asian RPGs keep dropping the ball on diversity. This immensely disappointing answer reminded me of Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida’s response as to whether or not that game would include people of color. Their answer was that their world was fantasy, so it couldn’t be held to any diversity standards at all. Star Rail includes characters who are culturally Chinese, so it feels really shitty that its launch characters seem to be even more light-skinned than those in Genshin Impact. Once again, we have to start holding Asian RPGs to higher standards.
I got similarly vague answers when I asked where Star Rail took its inspiration from. “We think turn based RPGs are very engaging and have an active audience in the market,” Lin said. It took me a couple of minutes to remember that the Persona series has sold 16.8 million units globally and was probably at least one of the games alluded to. When I pressed about the studio’s creative inspiration, Lin told me Star Rail’s team consists of 500 individual developers. Therefore, it would be impossible to narrow down specific influences.
I can guess why HoYoverse is being so coy about its Persona 5 game set in space. It’s likely because the internet tore into Genshin Impact at launch for its similarities to Breath of the Wild, to the point where the developer had to reassure players that the game was more than a clone. But Star Rail will likely release sometime this year, and people will be able to see the Persona DNA embedded in how the game plays.
So here’s the honest summary of Star Rail: It’s a space fantasy game that you’ll probably enjoy if you’re a fan of the Persona or Shin Megami Tensei series. Be careful of the gacha system, and don’t hold your breath over improved diversity from what we’ve seen so far.
Activision Blizzard, the developers behind video games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, will demand workers return to the office at least part of the time, joining other tech companies in imposing mandates on in-person work.
Employees at Activision Publishing will be expected to return by April 10, while developers at Blizzard Entertainment will return by July 10. Workers at both divisions will be expected to work in-person three days a week.
“We look forward to the increased real-time, in-person collaboration and opportunities this change will foster,” the company told several video game outlets on Tuesday.
Activision Blizzard, like other tech companies, is a forceful adopter of remote work that is now trying to impose a return to office mandate.
Several tech companies, like Apple and Google, announced their own return-to-office plans last year. Last November, Snap said it would ask employees to work in-person at least 80% of the time, starting in February. Other companies, like Disney, Starbucks and Walmart, are also trying to bring workers back to the office for part of the week.
Activision Blizzard did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Tweet thread
Activision’s announcement came a day after a Twitter user identifying as a Blizzard Entertainment employee shared the return-to-office plans and warned they would cause “an exodus of talent” at the gaming company.
On Monday, Twitter user @LeastMyHairIsOk, who said they worked in Blizzard Entertainment’s customer service department, alleged that Activision Blizzard employees had “no interest in returning to office either full or part time,” due to cost-of-living and health concerns. “This isn’t to say that nobody sees the value in an office environment, but we’ve overall decided the risks do not [outweigh] those benefits.”
“Leadership isn’t prepared for what is likely to happen—an exodus of talent as we find work elsewhere,” they tweeted.
Fortune has attempted to contact @LeastMyHairIsOk for comment.
Leadership isn’t prepared for what is likely to happen – an exodus of talent as we find work elsewhere. Other jobs in the tech sector pay better and offer WFH, and it is clear our thoughts on the matter are irrelevant. What incentive do our employees have to remain at ABK? 9/14
— Non Biners, Drive Ins, and Dives💙 (@LeastMyHairIsOk) February 14, 2023
Activision Blizzard is currently trying to convince regulators to allow Microsoft to acquire the game publisher for $69 billion. Regulators are concerned that the deal would be anti-competitive, as Microsoft may deny popular games like Call of Duty to competitors like Sony’s PlayStation.
The game developer reported $2.3 billion in net revenue in the most recent quarter, a 7% increase year-on-year. The company declined to give a forecast, due to the pending acquisition by Microsoft.
Yet the video game industry is preparing for a slump in demand. Gaming sales boomed as consumers stayed at home during the pandemic, but a return to office work and concerns about inflation are headwinds for video game publishers.
Work-from-home in the video game industry
Employees in the video game industry, who often work long hours with poor job security, embraced work-from-home during the pandemic. Around half of video game workers believed that companies would keep work-from-home options into the future, according to a 2021 survey from the Independent Games Developers Association.
Yet companies also blamed the rapid shift to remote work for disrupting game development, as employees struggled to get access to systems and resources from their homes, forcing game delays throughout the pandemic.
Research from Harvard Business Reviewin 2021 found that public game companies that shifted to remote work reported 4.4 times more delays than before the pandemic, while companies that did not shift to remote work reported fewer delays than before COVID-19.
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So many online games have shut down so far in 2023 that we’ve already had to do a roundup, and it’s only February. Which means loads more are going to meet similar fates over the next 10 months, and the next two to meet their demise are Natural Selection 2 and Spellbreak.
The developers of Natural Selection 2, which has been running for 10 years, announced earlier today they would be ceasing “active development” on the game, but not fully shutting down. Instead, while they move onto other projects they’ll be leaving the lights on (emphasis mine):
10 years since its official release and over 117 updates later, active development of Natural Selection 2 has ended.
Our team and this community have provided many years of passion and support for this game. Over the years we had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with so many of you whether at an expo, live tournament, Discord or playing on a server. We thank you for your support and commitment to NS2 and know that this game would not have been the same without you. Now it’s time to look to the future and continue on to other projects within the company.
While we won’t be actively working on NS2, we will still continue to host matched play servers so that community members will be able to play games on-demand with other players or bots.
Although this isn’t goodbye, we still would like to say a very heartfelt thank you to you, our community and to all of those that worked with us on Natural Selection 2 over the years.
Much love and appreciation,
The UWE NS2 Team
While it’s always sad for fans when a game winds up like this, a lot of them just want to be able to still play the thing, so it’s nice to see developers Unknown Worlds leaving some servers up for people to enjoy.
That’s great! That’s even better than leaving some servers up, because as John Carmack said last week, it’s the absolute best case scenario for when official support for an online game winds up. By releasing the game into the winds, and freeing it from the constraints of shopfronts and online platforms, fans can keep playing it for as long as there are fans, and even when there aren’t anymore, the game can still be preserved for future generations.
Do you ever wish you could reacquire the games you once had? And not just copies of the same ones, but the very discs or cartridges you used? Well, the Named Cassette Museum in Tokyo is making that very thing a reality for many gamers: reuniting those who once wrote their names, addresses, or other personal identifying information on Famicom cassettes (and those from other consoles) with their old games.
For Junji Seki, the director of the Named Cassette Museum, collecting Famicom cassettes started out as a hobby. But whereas many collectors might not be too thrilled about discovering a potentially valuable game with someone’s name scrawled on it, Seki saw a different kind of value: Reuniting folks with the very cartridges that they once lost and learning the story behind them. Seki started the museum in 2015, all to document the history of these individual Famicom cassettes and to bring some happiness into the lives of gamers who had long lost (and likely given up hope of finding) their old games.
The museum has a few requirements if you spot a cassette you think was once yours: You must let the director deliver the game by hand, you must buy it (for a price of your choice), and you must let the museum document the story on its website to learn a bit about the history, how the cassette might’ve been lost, and any particular memories of the game.
It’s not just personal stories. In a translated interview with Mirai-idea.jp, Seki says that , personally marked-up games tell a story about the time they were acquired and used. “If you look at [a] cassette“that says ‘110 yen,’ it’s probably when the 3 percent consumption tax was introduced” in 1989. Seki is also interested in deciphering what certain handwriting might mean, why certain letters are capitalized and others aren’t.
Seki doesn’t just collect games either. As the president of game studio Happymeal, he’s also a developer. And the experience of the Named Cassette Museum directly inspires the games he makes. One such game, Ise-Shima Mystery Guide: Fake Black Pearl (which received a Japan-only release on the Nintendo Switch) is “a reproduction of the atmosphere of the Famicom era,” according to a translation from Seki.
As someone who once had many physical games that are now long lost to time, the idea of once again getting to see or hold such relics of days gone is pretty exciting; collecting old games can become a pricey endeavor, but when it tells the story of the gamer who once enjoyed the worlds contained inside the plastic and the tech, well it’s hard to put a price on that. And when you consider the wide expanse of streaming and on-demand gaming services like Game Pass and PlayStation Plus, efforts to save our physical connections with games we love and grew up with are even more important.
Back in 1999, around the time of the release of the original Super Smash Bros. on the N64, Nintendo had a big idea. To help promote the game they would go to Vegas, set up a wrestling ring, get a bunch of actors to wear Nintendo character costumes and have them go at it.
So they did just that. The event, known as Slamfest ‘99, wasn’t just performed in front of a live crowd, it was also streamed online—in 1999!—and then available to watch for a few months afterwards as well. You would think that would mean that some footage of the stunt has survived, but somehow no, it hasn’t, and so for a few years now a group of “fans and archivists” from the Lost Media Wiki have been scouring the internet looking for some.
Here’s how one of that team, bozo_ssb, describes their efforts:
Despite the live broadcast, and despite it being available to be rewatched in RealPlayer for several months afterward, no video footage of Slamfest ‘99 is known to survive anywhere on the modern-day internet – it’s completely lost. With little evidence of the event even occurring, it has languished in extreme obscurity for over two decades, even among hardcore Nintendo fans. Since May 2020, a group of fans and archivists from the Lost Media Wiki have been actively searching for the lost broadcast footage (of which I’m a member).
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The bad news is they still haven’t found any. The good news is that they have now found something. The LMW team managed to track down Ed Espinoza, who was the producer for Slamfest ‘99, and Ed was kind enough to share a bunch of photos he took on the day so that the world could get a fresh look at Mario punching Donkey Kong in the tit.
Mario and Donkey would start the match. Donkey Kong, being much larger than our favorite plumber, quickly took Mario out. Yoshi came in and got his revenge on the gorilla. Pikachu would come in for the monkey only to be knocked down by Yoshi’s lethal tail. Then, before anyone knew it, Mario went crazy. He wiped out Donkey Kong, Pikachu, and his own teammate, Yoshi. Ultimately, the match would end in a crash which knocked out everyone resulting in a draw. “Everyone’s a winner!” the announcer yelled – Zelda64
Mario and Yoshi were on one team, Donkey Kong and Pikachu were on the other. It was quite funny to see the life-size mascots bouncing around a wrestling ring. Mario went on a crazed rampage hitting everyone in sight, and instead of Yoshi, Donkey Kong accidentally hit himself with his ‘mallet of doom.’ And in the most heated moment, all four mascot smashed into each other in the center of the ring, and all fell to the mat. That’s right, in true Nintendo fashion, it was a draw…and everyone is a winner! – Nintendorks
Even the ref got in on the act, biting Pikachu’s ear and declaring that it tasted ‘like chicken’. Mario shocked us with his low blow antics and Kong knocked himself out with his own magic hammer, but they all wound up best of friends at the end, the match being declared an honourable draw – N64 Magazine
We’ve shared a few of the images here, but here’s a link to the whole gallery, which is fascinating not just for the images from the bout itself, but also for the shots of the wrestlers warming up out of costume. And fun fact: there’s a good chance this whole stunt was just a chance for Nintendo to get their money’s worth out of those costumes, since they’re the same ones featured in the classic “Happy Together” Smash commercial:
Both Portal games are always a joy to rediscover, even if you’ve already played them countless times. Portal 2’s co-op campaign, Cooperative Testing Initiative, is no different. It’s a fantastic series of puzzles along five official testing courses, each with its own number of testing chambers, that lose none of the mainline Portal puzzles’ charms. Instead, the sequel’s co-op campaign deftly weaves in two-player gameplay mechanics in increasingly complex ways. Each course focuses on a specific testing mechanic, all seen in Portal 2, but reimagined with co-op play in mind.
Portal is also an excellent choice because it’s so approachable. It doesn’t take too long to get the hang of the movement and physics, so even if your partner (or you!) isn’t a “Gamer,” they can still have a ton of fun with this pickup.
You can play local or online co-op, as well. It’s available on PC and Nintendo Switch (and PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, if you’ve still got those plugged in).
Like Destiny, a game that, thanks to its huge and devoted playerbase, regularly shouts out the creators among that crowd by highlighting their movies and artwork. Sadly last week one of those artworks turned out to be an AI-generated image:
Upon being showcased and instantly called out as an AI-generated image by fans, the person uploading it (“hebb”) is quoted as saying “Woah, I just thought the picture was really neat so I posted on the creations page. I’ll take the post down”. At time of posting the image has not been taken down, and can still be viewed here.
It’s not the most alarming example of this, I know, but Bungie’s response is interesting because it highlights the struggles that people involved in curating and using artwork are currently facing the world over, whether they work for a video games studio or in an international newsroom. In a blog post called “There’s Nothing Artificial About This Week’s Picks”, Bungie say:
Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) Art
Last week, an A.I. art submission was mistakenly featured in our blog. The process of choosing these involves a team effort and with this technology being so new, we don’t have a foolproof way of knowing what submissions are A.I. art.
We want to keep this celebration of our community for those that work hard to bring their creative selves to the forefront when creating works that the Traveler would find joy in. Because of this, we will not knowingly ever feature A.I. art submissions as a potential #Destiny2AOTW or #Destiny2MOTW winner. That being said, this is still new. We ask for grace if we mistakenly feature a submission generated by A.I., and a respectful heads up should it ever happen again in the future. Appreciate the assist!
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While there’s no definitive guide—especially in cases where the vast majority of a piece is conjured by AI then touched by in PhotoShop—there are already plenty of tips out there for spotting AI-generated imagery that go beyond the obvious, like (as in this image’s case) “counting fingers”. As this Wired guide points out, some other key tells—for now, at least!—are dead, lifeless eyes, misshaped ears, a lack of composition and general acts of weirdness, like someone’s hair extending out of their collarbone, or jewellery/accessories that smoosh into each other.
It seems I was too quick to judge HBO’s The Last of Us. While the first four episodes certainly kept my attention as well-written and delightfully-shot prestige television, I had been a little let down as the adaptive process of turning the game into a show has, so far, left out the recreation of specific, memorable action sequences from the game. Well, with “Endure and Survive,” the fifth episode of the first (but not the last) season of The Last of Us, the show has revealed that it’s more than capable of adapting the action of the video game, and in some cases, just might be doing a better job with it.
Adapted from the hit PlayStation 3 title of the same name, The Last of Us’ gripping, character-driven plot exists alongside tense, deadly, moment-by-moment combat encounters. The player, as Joel, must overcome both hostile humans and infected with a combination of stealth, firearms, and crudely improvised weapons. For its first four episodes, HBO’s adaptation has, mostly, prioritized the story elements, choosing in some cases not to recreate memorable action sequences or feature unique, crafted props of the kind we’ve seen in the game. It makes sense for television to focus on the actors and the story, but until now I’ve found the show to be missing that key action ingredient I’ve loved so well, not just from seeing the game, but from playing it.
There’s a reason The Last of Us appears on our list of the best action games you can play this year. With a slower cadence than what you find in something like Naughty Dog’s other recent series, Uncharted, and an emphasis on survival, The Last of Us as a game injects tight, intense, action sequences throughout the narrative, reminding you that, however much things might feel under your control during the narrative downtime, you’re never actually safe in its deadly world.. The action sequences are when the rug has been pulled out from under you and you must deal with a situation in the here and the now. Mess up, and someone’s dying.
Our action game list highlighted the sequel, Part II, as being a bit more flexible, with more options for how you approach and respond to various situations. But the sequel follows what the first game already did so well: Moments where, forgive the cliche, all hell breaks loose and you must respond. Immediately. It’s stress-inducing action for sure, but damn, is it a thrill.
While I would’ve certainly traded the first game’s “upside-down” shootout sequence in the “Bill’s Town” level for the beautiful story of Bill and Frank we got in episode three of the show, I was beginning to worry that HBO’s TV adaptation would continue to leave out other, more explosive sequences rather than attempt to translate the immediacy of the game’s action to the screen. But here we are with episode five’s suburban sniper sequence. This gripping scene not only translates the game’s action particularly well, but does so with a narrative revision that makes the carnage even more intense.
Just like in the game, Joel and Ellie have teamed up with Henry and Sam. But this time, Henry and Sam’s situation is a bit more urgent. Kathleen, the leader of a revolutionary force, obsessively wants to see Henry die for his role in her brother’s death. Like the game, Joel, Ellie, Henry, and Sam must travel down an abandoned suburban street, moving from car to car to avoid getting shot by a sniper overlooking the area.
The TV show does depart a touch from this scenario as it exists in the game. To start, Joel isn’t faced with additional hostile forces on his approach to the sniper’s nest. And it becomes clear once Joel deals with the sniper that this individual belongs to the revolutionaries in Kansas City (the game’s parallel version of these events takes place in Pittsburgh and doesn’t feature Kathleen or any of the revolutionaries introduced in episode four). This is one of the improvements the show makes over the original game, something its sequel also worked harder to achieve: lending faces, complicated motivations, and identities to the antagonists.
But we need to talk about the sound design in the sniper sequence first. Though the show has caught my ear before (a particularly unnerving-yet-satisfying ambient music swell as Joel, Ellie, and Tess ascend the stairs in episode two’s museum is one such example), I am unhealthily obsessed with the gunshots in this scene. The exacting and penetrating strike of the sniper rifle’s shot is chased by a split second of silence that could swallow the universe, followed up with a timeless whisper of air and sensually percussive hits on the bodies and windows of cars. Satisfying bangs funneled into powerful clangs, sharp shatters of glass…heavy metal bands will spend their entire careers trying to deliver something so sonically beautiful and destructive at the same time. This is bliss.
The sounds are loveable as special effects and creations on their own, but the effect really drew me in with an intimacy of the kind I’ve felt in video games—and in particular, the one this show is based on. The scene that mirrors this one in the video game is one example, but the latter half of The Last of Us Part II also has a similar sniper scenario. Cover-to-cover movement with the threat of violence pressing you back is successfully brought to life on screen. But we’re not done yet.
Screenshot: HBO
Like in the game, Joel eventually gets to the top of the sniper’s nest, eliminates the shooter and must then get behind the scope as hostile human forces march forward. In the show, the personality-less mob of foes is replaced by new-character Kathleen on her quest for revenge, with her forces in tow. Joel must make several needle-threading shots, one of which is recreated from the game: Hitting the driver of a hostile vehicle, with the camera going behind the scope of the rifle itself. And yes, like the game, that car crashes into a house…a house which has a surprise in store.
The TV show’s vehicle veers off and crashes to the right side. It crashes on the left in the game; this mirror image of recreated scenes seems to be a common element of the show. Joel and Sarah are flipped in their position on the couch in the opening episode; Joel’s “I am sure you will figure that out” line of dialogue to Ellie asking what the hell she’s supposed to do while he naps in the first episode sees the couch he lays on flipped to the other side of the room.
And while a cluster of infected does ultimately flood the street in the game as well, it’s quite different in the show. Here, the emergence of a horde of infected from underground serves as the payoff to some wonderful foreshadowing in the previous episode and earlier scenes in this one, where we learn that FEDRA had previously chased all the infected underground as a way to “fix” the problem. It’s clear that this is something that will resurface to cause a problem. And in this scene, once you see that truck fall into the house…you know what’s coming, and that the hubris that led Kathleen to go to such extremes will soon claim its price.
Screenshot: HBO
Shattering the calm insanity of Kathleen’s myopic quest for vengeance, the fallen truck and the chorus of screams and roars from the mob of infected it unleashes is a powerful release, snapping us out of the daze of trying to follow Kathleen’s justification for cruelty. We’re barely given time to digest the contours of her bloodlust as the infected’s long-buried rage drowns out all, the great equalizer that considers no one safe and needs no justification for its wrath and violence. At the end of this scene, I felt the instinctual urge to put down the controller and take a breath. Except there was no controller.
Episode five’s sniper scenario doesn’t just adapt a key action sequence of the game, it makes it better. The pacing is tighter, more intense. The narrative wrapping pulls you into what’s at stake in a far more satisfying way, and it earns its zombie mob scene. This is the kind of game sequence adaptation I’ve been waiting for in HBO’s show, and it did not disappoint. Until next time, I’m gonna go see if Whole Foods has crow on sale.
If you just finished watching episode five of HBO’s The Last of Us, you might be wondering just what that giant infected was that the show made a big deal about but didn’t actually bother to explain. Well friends, what you saw is colloquially called a bloater by characters like Joel and Ellie, and it’s a focal point of certain enemy encounters in The Last of Us games. But you wouldn’t know that based on what the show’s actually portrayed so far. So let’s talk about why these big baddies are so impactful to game fans.
What is a bloater?
A bloater is considered to be one of the end stages of infection for victims of the cordyceps fungus ravaging the world of The Last of Us. Unlike the more common clickers, people who have reached bloater stage are pretty much entirely encased in the fungus that grows from out of an infected’s head. This happens when the victim’s been infected for years and has somehow managed to “survive” that long. As Joel mentions in episode two, most infected only live around a month or so, but clickers and bloaters have been infected so long that the fungus has desecrated their eyes and they have to use echolocation to navigate. Clickers are more abundant, but if an infected lives long enough to become a bloater, its hulking frame and exploding pus sacks—oh yes, it has exploding pus sacks that it throws at Joel and Ellie—make it far more dangerous.
How do bloaters work in The Last of Us games?
Bloaters appear as mini-bosses at multiple points throughout both The Last of Us and its sequel. Originally, the enemy made its debut in Bill’s fortified town, but because the show took a very different approach to that story in episode three, the bloater didn’t debut until the Kansas City episodes. A bloater is an especially powerful enemy that, if it grabs you, will take you out in one hit. Perry’s death, in which the bloater tears his head from his body, is an homage to a death animation in the games in which a bloater can grab Joel or Ellie and do exactly that. The games do a hard cut to black before showing the extent of the damage, but still show enough to give a sense of just how gruesome the death will be. Shoutout to HBO for shooting that scene from a distance so we didn’t have to see Perry’s execution in excruciating detail.
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Unlike clickers, bloaters aren’t susceptible to a stealth kill with a shiv or Ellie’s switchblade, so you have to take them out the old-fashioned way with bullets and molotov cocktails. Both games have a few bloaters you can stealth past, though, allowing you to avoid fighting them entirely. But if you can’t manage that, you’ll inevitably use up quite a bit of your supplies taking them out.
In theory, a standard infected will either survive long enough to become a bloater, or they’ll die and the cordyceps fungus will continue to grow out of their bodies and into the environment around them. In episode one, Tess and Joel stumble upon a dead infected which was pretty much grown into the wall in the Boston quarantine zone. However, as The Last of Us Part II illustrates, environmental factors can influence how the cordyceps evolves at different stages of infection.
The Last of Us Part II takes place primarily in Seattle, and while there, Ellie faces a different variation of late-stage infection called shamblers. Similar to bloaters, these infected are covered head to toe in the cordyceps fungus, but rather than slinging fungal explosives at the player, Shamblers spray acid from their bodies and explode when killed. Though the reason for this divergence in infection is never confirmed, the player can find notes around Seattle that theorize it was due to the rain and moisture in the city. This seems reasonable enough, but shamblers also appear in Part II’s late-game Santa Barbara sections. This might just be an example of gameplay getting in the way of worldbuilding, but whatever the case, there are other possible fates for an infected beyond turning into a bloater…though we might not see them in the show until the upcoming second season.
The most advanced form of infection The Last of Us has shown was in an infamous boss fight in Part II with an entity called the Rat King. This was the culmination of multiple infected growing into each other to create one giant, vicious beast in the lower floors of a Seattle hospital, which was the city’s infection ground zero. This phenomenon has only been seen once in the series so far, and occurred in such specific circumstances that it seems incredibly rare in the world of The Last of Us.
While the bloater is a rarity in The Last of Us’ universe, every time they appear in the games it’s an impactful moment. The bloater’s first appearance in HBO’s show was pretty major, but we’ll have to wait and see if anyone actually bothers to explain why it was significant in a future episode.
When most of us experience a glitch, we can soothe our woes by simply reloading our game, or perhaps looking up a solution online. But PaschalisG16 has already tried that, and much more. No matter what this Witcher 3: Wild Hunt player does, though, their Geralt is walking around with a floating hammer stuck between his legs.
It goes everywhere Geralt goes. Cutscene? Hammer. Tearing down a monster? Hammer. And so PaschalisG16 ended up making a Reddit thread asking what the hell was going on and more importantly, could anyone lend a helping hand? You can probably guess what happened next: an endless array of dick jokes. Oh no. Perhaps the funniest thing about it is that, buried under dozens and dozens of replies like “Tis the most mighty of all the man-mallets” and “Giggity” is the OP once more, to zero effect, pleading for people to stay on topic.
“Does anyone wanna actually help? It’s not THAT funny,” PaschalisG16 wrote, if you scrolled down far enough to see it.
Speaking to Kotaku, PaschalisG16 admits that the oddly persistent hammer is not that big of a deal but that “my OCD makes me hate it a little bit,” so they want to get rid of it even though it doesn’t affect gameplay at all. In fact, PaschalisG16 has gone ahead and done things like saving Dandelion from the soldiers in Novigrad with the hammer in tow. What makes this entire ordeal so amusing is just how pervasive the damn hammer has ended up being. They’ve started a new game. They’ve reloaded a new save. The hammer won’t go away. Worse, replies reveal that other players are suffering the same fate as well.
The issue isn’t new, based on various internet threads over the years from baffled players who, much like the top picture suggests, always end up stripping Geralt naked in an effort to delete the hammer. Reading the troubleshooting is kind of hilarious: Yes, Geralt has tried meditating the hammer away. No, your suggestion isn’t going to work.
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“Unfortunately, I could not play with him when I realized that [the hammer] was with me now forever,” reads one thread from almost four years ago. “This destroyed the atmosphere of the game, constantly following me, I could not take my eyes off [the hammer] almost all the time. I could not forget this, I began to go crazy with this hammer,” they recounted, clearly traumatized by the whole thing.
While in-game meditating didn’t get rid of the pesky hammer, embodying its teachings did, in a roundabout way.
“However, the time has come, and I calmed down,” the 2019 hammer sufferer went on to say, before sharing a picture of the hammer, Geralt, and Ciri sitting around a campfire like a happy family. They’d accepted their fate and were now sharing what was the equivalent of a photo album dedicated to the hammer. “I was able to complete the game, one of the DLCS. Now this is my new bro, companion, like Roach. I realized that there was no point in paying attention to him and continuing to play as if nothing had happened. And it’s good that I was able to come to this, because the game deserves passing.”
But, uh, seriously, if anyone knows how to fix this, can you hit PaschalisG16 up?
I know it is still available and being played, but Team Fortress 2 can at times feel like a game from a different age. Partly because it is, but also because it’s so old—and has gone so long without a major update—that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was on its last legs. But no!
The game’s website—which charmingly hasn’t appeared to have been updated since the game’s launch—hummed into life today, posting a news blog called “Attention, Steam Workshop Creators!”. It says that not only will the game be getting a “a full-on update-sized update” later this year, with “with items, maps, taunts, unusual effects, war paints and who knows what else?!”, but that the update will also include some contributions from the game’s community as well.
Steam Workshop Creators, can we have your attention please. The following message is so urgent, so time-sensitive, we made the executive decision to skip TikTok and Twitter entirely and break the glass on the most bleeding-edge communication technology available.
Welcome to the future. Welcome… to a “blog-post”.
“Wow!” you’re probably thinking. “I forgot how hard reading is!” Yeah, it’s scary how fast you lose that. Don’t worry, we’ll be brief:
The last few Team Fortress summer events have only been item updates. But this year, we’re planning on shipping a full-on update-sized update — with items, maps, taunts, unusual effects, war paints and who knows what else?! Which means we need Steam Workshop content! YOUR Steam Workshop content!
So get to work! (Or back to work, if you were already working but got distracted when the entire internet simultaneously found out about this state-of-the-art blog-post.) Make sure to get your submissions into the Steam Workshop by May 1st, so they can be considered for this as-yet-unnamed, un-themed, but still very exciting summer-situated (but not summer-themed) (unless you wanted to develop summer-themed stuff) update.
So maybe it’s little surprise that while no mention was made of this game on the Western Nintendo Direct whatsover, the Japanese show had a trailer for Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Vacation, a brand new game written and designed by Boku no Natsuyasumi series creator Kaz Ayabe, and developed by his studio Millennium Kitchen.
Seemingly going back to the series’ roots, it takes us back to a time that looks like the 80s or early 90s, and has us playing as a 10-year-old, on holidays, doing all the stuff I said above: climbing trees, chatting with locals, spotting bugs, doing some dancing.
なつもん！ ２０世紀の夏休み [Nintendo Direct 2023.2.9]
Will this come to the West? Who knows! I said at the end of my Shin-Chan blog that “I can only hope this one sells enough, or at least attracts enough attention, to convince someone to release some of the older games in English as well”, but that applies just as much to new games as well!
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Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Vacation will be out on the Switch this Summer.
