Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 on Switch was a mess from the start. Like the original game’s buggy and incomplete release back in 2004, last year’s port to Nintendo’s handheld hybrid launched with a bug that made the game impossible to beat for some players. Subsequent patches added other issues. And now players will no longer be getting the free Restoration Content DLC they were previously promised.
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The studio behind the port, Aspyr, delivered the bad news late Friday night, telling Switch owners of the game that the update to add support for a series of fan-made mods that fix certain bugs and round out KOTOR 2‘s characters and rough ending had unfortunately been canceled. It’s basically the unofficial “final cut” of Obsidian Entertainment’s excellent RPG, and Switch players will now essentially miss out on it, despite the fact it was previously marketed alongside the port’s 2022 release.
“Sadly, today we are announcing that the Restoration Content DLC for the Nintendo Switch version of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords will not be moving forward for release,” the studio tweeted on June 2. “We’d like to thank everyone for their continued support by providing a complimentary video game key to players that purchased Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords on Nintendo Switch before this announcement.”
The games impacted players can choose from include the following list of other Star Wars ports Aspyr has worked on:
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords (PC)
The first game on the list is the PC version of KOTOR 2 which does include the Restoration Content DLC, though if you only own a Switch that’s not going to help you much. And as some players have pointed out, it’s not clear how the studio will make it up to those who might already own all of these games already, which when it comes to Star Wars fans isn’t an entirely unlikely scenario.
Things just aren’t going Aspyr’s way at the moment, it seems. The Austin-based studio behind a bunch of otherwise decent Star Wars ports and remasters was purchased by Embracer for $450 million in 2021. That same year it announced a remake of the first Knights of the Old Republic at a PS5 showcase that immediately generated tons of excitement. A year later Bloomberg reported that the project was already running into trouble and would be moved to a completely new studio under the Embracer umbrella.
Asked about the status of the game at the parent company’s recent earnings presentation, CEO Lars Wingefors responded with an exasperated “no comment.”
Beware, Diablo IVadventurers, for dark whispers speak of a horrific beast of great power that can spawn ungodly numbers of clones and totally fuck you up. It’s not a lie! I’ve seen it happen to many folks, and not all have returned to tell the tale.
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Diablo IV’s launch has been pretty damn uneventful and smooth, which in 2023 is actually impressive and newsworthy. But no game, especially not a game as fresh out of the oven and massive as Diablo IV, can launch in a perfect state. So of course there are some bugs and other issues in Blizzard’s latest action-RPG. And perhaps the funniest involves an enemy named Darcel who can—and seems to often—spawn dozens and dozens of himself.
In Diablo IV there’s a fairly simple, not-too-exciting side-quest called “Stolen Artifice” in the region of Scosglen. The short side-quest asks you to hunt down a big baddie, kill him, take his runic charm, and bring it back to someone. This is your bog-standard video game fetch quest, of the sort you’ve likely done variations of more times than you can remember at this point. However, there’s currently a bug with “Stolen Artifice” that leads to clones of the quest’s boss—Darcel—spawning almost endlessly, causing problems.
Some players are reporting that Darcel will just spawn forever, causing crashes or making it impossible to finish the quest. Some have had luck defeating Darcel, the neverending monster, by killing the original Darcel before he can spawn far too many copies of himself.
While this bug is pretty damn funny to watch, I can imagine someone playing a hardcore-mode character (which has only one chance at life, and is gone forever upon death) finding this bugged quest and screaming in terror as they realize, far too late, that they are about to get wrecked by a clone army of Darcels. RIP to those poor souls.
Grand Theft Auto Online might be close to a decade old, but it’s still popular and getting big updates from developer Rockstar. In fact, its next big, free expansion is out later this month with a focus on aerial warfare and smuggling. But it’s also adding some nice quality-of-life changes that’ll make it easier to run around Los Santos.
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Since its initial launch in October 2013, GTA Online has continued to be updated, expanded, and ported as millions of players keep returning to the game’s large open world to commit more crimes alongside (or against) other players and NPCs. At this point, GTA Online has been around so long it has had to leap across three different console generations to keep up with players and the ever-changing video game industry. It also keeps receiving updates every year, like the just announced June 13 update: San Andreas Mercenaries.
On Friday, Rockstar shared the first details about GTA Online’s next big expansion on the company’s official website. This time around players will be teaming up with vets and military pilots to take on Merryweather Security, a large PMC that has been in the game for years, but is now apparently expanding its operations and interfering with criminal operations. To combat the evil private security force, players will join a new mercs group known only as the Los Santos Angels and take on new jobs, including stealing data from server farms, launching raids against the PMC, and dropping bombs on valuable targets spread across the state.
According to Rockstar, this new update will expand the functionality of the aircraft hangar added in the Smuggler’s update back in 2017. That’s nice, as that piece of the game had long felt abandoned and old. The publisher is also promising changes to improve the already-existing Avenger, a large aircraft added in a previous update.
GTA Online’s next free update adds more quality-of-life changes
As has become the norm in recent updates, Rockstar isn’t just adding big new missions and business opportunities to GTA Online with June 13’s update. It’s also once again adding some long-requested features in its continued effort to make the game less of a hassle to play.
One big one is that players will finally be able to choose a new option for sprinting. Currently, players have to continually mash the X or A button to sprint in GTA Online. The faster you mash, the faster your character runs. It’s a neat idea but has long been considered annoying and possibly a barrier for some players who don’t have the dexterity to repeatedly and quickly mash buttons. Now, Rockstar is adding a “hold to sprint” option to the game, which is greatly appreciated.
Another nice quality-of-life change is that, after June 13, players will be able to replace all their destroyed vehicles via Mors Mutual Insurance at once. Another nice change that makes me wonder “Why wasn’t it like this to begin with?” Rockstar is also expanding the content creation tools by adding more props and snow options.
All told, it’s a solid update that isn’t the most exciting in the game’s history, but one that will be appreciated by folks who have spent the past decade tapping X for hundreds of hours just to run faster. Finally, we are free.
A new glitch in Destiny 2’s Season of the Deep makes it easy to farm infinite Legendary Shards through unlimited Exotic drops. It’s super simple and easy and probably won’t be around for long.
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I came upon the exploit via theDestiny streamer Leopard, though it’s been spreading like wildfire throughout the community because of how fast and generous it is. Season of the Deep added new class-based Exotic quests for existing gear that’s been reworked over at Ikora Rey in the Tower. One simple trick allows you to take the single Exotic reward and multiply it indefinitely. Here’s how it works:
Go to Ikora and pick one of the Exotic quests.
Get to step four
Go back and speak to her but don’t collect the reward
Instead back out and open your quest log and abandon the quest
Now talk to Ikora again and pick up as many copies of the Exotic as you want
You’ll want to make sure the inventory slot for the relevant armor piece is empty, otherwise space will fill up quickly. But once you get going you can just start deleting all of the extra Exotic pieces and then grab more without ever leaving Ikora’s quest screen. Each broken-down Exotic will net you seven Gunsmith reputation, 500 Glimmer, and five Legendary Shards.
Shards are used for focusing Engrams, buying other resources like upgrade modules, and grabbing new weapons and gear from various vendors. They’re easy to run low on, especially if you’re a new player. And you never know which way the wind is going to turn in Destiny 2’s economy, so it’s always a good time to stock up.
Bungie likes to patch these exploits quickly, however, so who knows how long this one will remain viable. For now it’s nice to have something to fill the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom duplication glitch-sized hole in my heart after that game’s most recent update.
Update 5/26/2023 7:05 p.m. ET: And it’s already gone. Bummer.
Rarely do I watch a trailer for a video game more than once. Yet with Bungie’s Marathon reboot/sequel/whatever, I’ve found myself looping its slick and stylish announcement trailer. It’s not just because the trailer slaps, but because Bungie is teasing looks to be one of the coolest shooters released in years.
On March 24, shortly before a Spider-Man 2 trailer would set off a whole new “puddlegate,” Bungie (Halo, Destiny) revealed its next big first-person shooter: Marathon. If that name sounds familiar, that’s because this is actually Bungie returning to one of its oldest franchises, the Mac-only shooter trilogy, Marathon. You can read more about those old games, their beloved lore, and how it connects to Halo and modern extraction shooters in this piece from our very own Claire Jackson.
However, I’m not here to talk about Marathon’s lore, history, fandom, or anything involving the Bungie mythos. No, instead, I want to just gush for a few paragraphs about how damn refreshing and awesome this game’s look and announcement trailer are compared to most other shooters and games out there today. And I don’t seem to be alone in loving this trailer as it has hit 18 million views on YouTube already.
PlayStation / Bungie
Marathon has one of the best game trailers of 2023
Anyway, the running character breaks out of the darker tunnels and enters an incredibly bright world where we see that they are also rocking vibrant colors, including a bright, neon-pink helmet. The music builds as the camera zooms in closer and closer to the runner. Things feel tense as the music builds into a digital mess and then BAM! That’s all she wrote for this runner as they are sniped from afar by a slick-looking and white-as-paper android. Our runner, now dead, is seen collapsing in slow motion into what appears to be a milk-like substance, their blue-inky blood mixing and swirling into the water around their corpse. As the robot sniper rips out something from the dead runner the music builds again, glitches out, and BAM! Bungie reveals that this vibrant trailer was for a new Marathon.
“Vibrant” is really the keyword here. Everything in this trailer pops in a way that I’ve not seen in most other shooters released in recent years. A lot of modern shooters seem focused on realism, which can look lovely, but also a bit drab. The popular color scheme we typically see on shooters also starts to make shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield blend together. Or they all look a bit too much like Fortnite, which while colorful, isn’t visually distinct anymore. I enjoy a lot of these modern shooters regardless. But with Marathon, things are different.
Actually, it’s beyond colorful. It’s almost garish with all of its pinks, yellows, greens, and blues clashing in nearly every frame. Yet it’s all balanced by hyper-realistic lighting, materials, textures, and models. The color palettes are incredible to look at and a few of us at Kotaku couldn’t stop gawking at the trailer.
Marathon’s new art style is fresh and bold
Bungie calls Marathon’sart style “graphic realism,” as mentioned in a recent behind-the-scenes video about the rebooted shooter. Bungie dev Emily Katske further elaborates on the game’s art, saying it’s “bold, colorful [and] stylized.”
The game’s director, Christopher Barret, in the same video, also says that the team wanted the art to be “beautiful” and “vibrant”, “mysterious” and “familiar,” “but also, strange.”
Bungie
Normally, I’d roll my eyes a bit at this kind of talk, but after seeing the trailer and concept art of this new take on Marathon, yeah, I get it. Balance is key, though. Bungie has to carefully balance when and where to “dial [things] up to 11” and when to pull back a bit so folks don’t get overwhelmed while trying to play.
It’s a risky option, taking a beloved franchise and reworking it into something bold. It’s also quite a departure from the original Marathon games, which featured more subdued or grimy textures and Doom-like sprites. I’ve already spotted some longtime Marathon fans upset about this new, more colorful, and stylized direction. And until we actually play the final game, we won’t know if any of this will actually work out. Was this a big, expensive mistake? Or a huge gamble that lands perfectly? No idea!
But Marathon’s trailer, concept art, and overall style has me more excited than I expected to play this upcoming extraction shooter. I’m not even a fan of that genre of online FPS, but I want to see more of Marathon so badly that I’ll give it a shot. As long as I can waddle around Bungie’s new incredible-looking world for a few minutes before getting killed, I’ll be happy to play and explore Marathon whenever it comes out.
Online vehicular shooter War Thunder made some changes to the way its economy works recently, and players of the game are so upset that not only have they review-bombed the game to hell and back, but the developers have been forced to take extremely apologetic actions in response.
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Basically, a game that has over the years become increasingly pay-to-win—as well as becoming a dumping ground for state secrets—recently implemented economy changes that made it even harder to get anything out of the game—especially progression—unless you were regularly spending actual money.
Players, fed up with the exploitation, did one of the few things available to them: they took to Steam to leave negative feedback, posting thousands of messages protesting the changes and attacking developers Gaijin. At time of publishing the game’s Steam review section looked like this:
The most popular negative review sums up the situation nicely:
I didn’t want to leave a negative review, but Gaijin’s blatant contempt for their own players has forced my hand.
War Thunder is a game like no other, with a comprehensive damage system, combined arms, and variety of beautifully modeled tanks, aircraft and ships.
Unfortunately, this “uniqueness” has left Gaijin with little real competition over the years. What started off as a “free to play” title has over time become less and less free. Gaijin keeps adding nations and vehicles, while at the same time increasing repair costs and lowering RP/SL gain. A premium account isn’t enough to comfortably progress anymore, now you also have to buy premium vehicles in every nation.
For the new players reading this, Gaijin has recently admitted that they balance free vehicles around a negative SL income for average players. That means they WANT you to lose money by playing, so you’ll be forced to buy a top tier premium vehicle.
In response, Gaijin have cancelled the most recent and punitive economic changes—though this will do little to reverse the gradual trend that had already alienated so many long-time players—and posted one of the sorriest apology statements I have ever seen:
Dear players,
Firstly, we would like to extend our sincerest apologies to each and every one of you. We deeply regret the fact that our actions have let you down, and that we have failed to adequately address the concerns you have voiced over time. We share your passion for the game, and it pains us that our decisions have not lived up to your expectations.
Over the past week, we’ve been diligently analyzing the feedback you’ve provided. We acknowledge and agree with your concerns regarding the balance of the economy (Silver Lions and Research Points), as well as modification research. We have therefore prioritized addressing these issues as our immediate concern.
We are in the process of creating a plan to tackle these problems. While we have made some initial progress in understanding the scope of these issues and potential solutions, we anticipate providing a more detailed roadmap by the 14th of June.
We understand the urgency you feel for changes to be implemented, and we assure you, we share your eagerness. However, given the scale and complexity of a project like War Thunder, some time is required to ensure that any changes we make are both effective and beneficial to the player experience.
We are also continually reviewing the vast array of other feedback and suggestions we receive. Rest assured, these are important to us and will be addressed, but at this moment, our first priority remains the game’s economics and progression.
We are truly sorry for the disappointment and frustration that we have caused. We commit to you that we are doing everything we can to improve the game, and regain your trust.
Thank you for your understanding and patience during this time. We value your continued support and your dedication to the game we all love.
During Take-Two Interactive’s recent earnings call with investors, CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked about other publishers selling AAA games at a discounted price shortly after launch. His company has been one of the many to start charging $70 for games, and at least according to him, he hasn’t seen any “pushback” on the new price point.
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On May 17, Take-Two Interactive—the publisher behind games like NBA 2K, GTA V, Borderlands,and BioShock—released its 2022 earnings report alongside a press release that seemed to hint at GTA VI-levels of success coming in the next year. As part of this process, the company also conducted a call with investors, who asked questions about Take-Two’s plans and past performance. It was here that one person brought up AAA game prices.
“We’re not seeing a pushback on frontline price,” Zelnick said. “What we’re seeing is consumers are seeking to limit their spending by going either to the stuff they really, really care about, blockbusters, or to value, and sometimes it could be both. And the good news is, we have a bunch of blockbusters and we have a wonderful catalog.”
The rise of $70 games
Basically, Zelnick believes that gamers are just buying fewer games and focusing on getting a couple of big, expensive $70 blockbuster titles or are willing to pick up older or smaller games that cost less. As the video game industry continues to struggle with layoffs and big games failing to sell well, it seems odd that Zelnick is fine with people being unable to afford more games and instead having to “limit their spending.” But I’m not a big rich CEO, so what do I know?
The reality is that while gamers are definitely vocally pushing back on $70 games—Zelnick should check out the comments on literally any story about these pricey titles—the reality is that publishers are going to move forward anyway. There’s too much money to be made, and as Tears of the Kingdom’s massive sale numbers have shown, a $70 game can sell like hotcakes if it’s good enough.
I was on board with Lego 2K Drive the moment I learned we were getting an open-world Lego racing game, complete with the ability to build your own vehicles. And having played nearly 12 hours so far, I’m still having a lot of fun with the game. But it’s impossible to ignore a nagging feeling that it really wants me to spend money in its in-game store.
Announced in March, Lego 2K Drive is the first game to come from a deal struck between 2K and Lego back in 2022. The two companies apparently decided to glue their names together and add “drive” to the end to create what might be the most boring video game title of 2023. Thankfully, the video game itself is much, much more fun than its drab title, which sounds less like a wacky open-world racer filled with cool power-ups and more like a bad sports game featuring a sport I’ve never heard of but which is nonetheless popular.
Bland name, but fun Lego racing
Get past the bland name and Lego 2K Drive comes right out of the gate firing on all cylinders with an exciting CG cutscene and a fairly short but fun tutorial. It makes a good first impression. And the moment the game gave me full control, I was in awe of what I saw. Lego 2K Drive is set in a brick-built world filled with side missions, mini-games, collectibles, and so, so many Lego vehicles. It’s very colorful and gorgeous. And massive! The open world of 2K Drive is split into a few different biomes, each with its own theme, characters, missions, and vehicles. Playing this game is like getting to play in the basement of the rich kid you knew in elementary school who had every Lego set. Lucky bastard. But now I, Zack, have all the bricks and cool sets to play with!
The basic setup behind the main story mode is that an evil racer hates you—for reasons the game jokingly doesn’t elaborate on—and you have to win the big trophy to prove yourself the better driver. To get a chance at that big win you’ll have to earn a bunch of flags by beating rivals, leveling up to unlock new races, rank up, and eventually gain access to the big final tournament. There’s not much to the actual story, but the writing is similar to the recent Lego movies, occasionally making me smile and rarely annoying. And I think kids will enjoy the zanier moments.
Screenshot: 2K Games / Lego / Kotaku
But to win the big trophy and prove yourself to your evil rival, you’ll need to do more than race Lego-built cars around various tracks, as piloting boats and mastering off-road vehicles are on your agenda, too. And like the cars, all of these are brick-built. However, you don’t actively choose between each type of vehicle. Instead, as you race around, the game auto-swaps between either your car, boat, or off-road ride of choice. This streamlines what could have been an annoying part of 2K Drive, and also means that you can explore the entire Lego-filled world of Bricklandia as you please.
Driving real fast and reach a river? Keep driving and you’ll just turn into a boat! Take a sharp turn off a paved road and onto some dunes? Don’t worry, the game will swap your car out for a jeep without missing a beat. It takes the open-world driving of Forza Horizon and makes it even more arcadey and exciting as you can literally go anywhere at any time.
All the bricks and cool stuff in the world can’t save a racing game with bad driving physics or poor controls, and luckily, Lego 2K Drive avoids those pitfalls and is a blast to play. Once I mastered the drifting and jumping controls, I was masterfully swooping, swinging, and gliding around the world like a Lego pro. And on Xbox Series X performance was smooth as butter, making it easy to enjoy all the high-speed action.
Lego 2K Drive’s disappointing microtransactions
The moment bricks start to fall off this creation is when you start to dig around the menus, where you’ll encounter a store complete with a season pass. While the game does feature an amazing, in-depth, and easy-to-use vehicle builder—letting you make nearly anything you can imagine—it also features some disappointing microtransactions.
Technically, you can just drive around, have some fun, unlock some cars, build your own creations, and never really interact with the in-game store. But, if you don’t want to (or can’t) build something like an ambulance or a giant hamburger car, the store offers official Lego builds that you can buy and use in-game. However, all of these cars cost $10,000 Lego Bux. And after playing for 12 hours I’ve only reached around $8,000.
This is the part where 2K Games would, while twirling its mustache, likely say: Don’t worry, you can buy some Bux if you want to. This is true, sure, but it’s so out of place in this otherwise colorful romp of creativity and wackiness.
And the way the economy is balanced, it really feels like you’ll need to fork over some cash if you want to buy more than one of these pre-made cars without grinding for hours. It’s also sad that the in-game store contains Lego part packs for sale. These are cheaper than the cars (thankfully) and the builder in-game does come with a lot of parts available for free (and you earn more by completing missions), but the fact that some bricks and bits are locked behind a paywall—even one that you can bypass via grinding—is frustrating.
Screenshot: 2K Games / Lego / Kotaku
The other big part of Lego 2K Drive is multiplayer, which I’ve only barely poked as there weren’t many other players online while I played the game before release. The online races play similarly to the single-player races, but with the added wrinkle that your opponents might have spent hours figuring out how to build the ideal, perfect race car. Or a giant dick. Or maybe they just spent some real cash and bought a car using Bux. Until the game is out in the wild, it will be hard to say how multiplayer will shake out, but I have some concerns.
It’s really a shame that such a lovely and fun open-world sandbox is tied to stuff like a season pass, premium currencies, and expensive in-game purchases. Perhaps 2K will tweak some levers to make it easier to earn and unlock new cars—which would be nice—but until then the specter of greed will always be there, nagging at me as I build, smash, and race.
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That launch week would prove to be the high water mark for the game; while it would eventually be released as a free-to-play multiplayer shooter and got some live-action adaptation attention, the game itself wasn’t as interesting as its aesthetic, and in 2018 its servers were closed down.
But, man, it looked so good, and a lot of people remember and love it for that, so it’s perhaps not a huge surprise that 505 Games have decided to bring the franchise back, announcing Hawken Reborn earlier today:
Their Overstock Is Your Savings Amazon overstocked on a ton of everyday items, and they’re all up to 50% off. Whatever is on your list to grab this week, they probably have a sale.
Hawken Reborn is already up on Steam, with an Early Access release planned for May 17. “Play a part in the next chapter of mech warfare in the Hawken Universe with six opening missions to complete in this initial Arc”, the game’s description reads. “Venture out in your mech and fight alongside new characters to discover all new storylines hidden deep in Illal that will continue to evolve in the future.”
For the second time in two years, things in the Battlefield community—or at least the worst elements of it—have gotten so toxic that it has led to some pretty stern requests for people to get a grip and cut it out.
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It’s an understatement when we say that this subreddit has grown incredibly toxic. It’s near impossible to have a simple discussion without insults being flung around at each other—and it’s really starting to harm the entire Battlefield community, and each of us that are part of it. […] The mods have an obligation to follow the rules set out by Reddit, and if we are found to be in breach of not enforcing them, or doing a poor job at enforcing them, we risk the community getting banned altogether.
Now, a year later, the developers of the games themselves have taken to social media with a statement—co-signed by all four Battlefield studios—saying “we have witnessed increased harassment towards members of our development team”, and that “we will take appropriate action” against players found to not be adhering to the series’ community guidelines:
Recently we have witnessed increased harassment towards members of our development team.
Across all of our Battlefield Studios we are open to constructive feedback and criticism about our games.
But to maintain a healthy and open dialogue with our community, we will protect our teams and people from toxicity and harassment. We believe this has no place inside our game or within the Battlefield community.
We want to remind our players that through our EA User Agreement and Battlefield Community Guidelines we will take appropriate action to uphold these values.
As a community, we play the objective, together.
I get it, Battlefield fans have been through the wringer in recent years! Every time the series changes direction parts of the fanbase get upset, and I don’t think anyone would say that Battlefield 2042 launched in a fit and proper state.
That should be a good thing! But no, this is the internet, and this is the video games corner of the internet, so of course there must be people who are angry, all the time, and like always they’re getting angry at the wrong people. Battlefield 2042 was rushed out the door to hit a fiscal objective in the middle of a pandemic by the people running EA, not the level designers and artists and community managers working at DICE.
I’m glad this statement uses such supportive (of their teams) and forceful language; if someone is dumb and hateful enough to be harassing the developers of a video game, for whatever reason, then that person isn’t going to be fun to play multiplayer video games with, or against.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is really, really good. You’ve probably heard this already. Our own review and other reviews of the game have praised it quite a bit. But this isn’t a review. Instead, this is just us reaffirming that, yeah, it really is as good as so many other people have claimed. In fact, some of us at Kotaku are already penciling it in for our Game of the Year list.
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And don’t worry, no spoilers below.
For those just tuning in, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the follow-up to 2019’s Jedi: Fallen Order. And just like before, in this latest adventure from Respawn and EA, players take on the role of Cal Kestis, a Jedi who survived the purge as a young boy and who now hangs out with his ragtag found family of misfits as they try to free the galaxy from the Empire. Oh and also try not to get caught by all the people hunting them down. (And there are a lot of people after them.) To bring down the Empire, outrun their enemies, and save the day, Cal has to do a lot of jumping, sliding, climbing, fighting, and exploring. And in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor all of this—every jump, lightsaber swing, wall climb, and more—feels great.
Jedi Survivor is one of those games that just feels fantastic to play. Controlling Cal quickly becomes effortless while either platforming or fighting. You stop thinking about pressing buttons or whatever and instead Cal feels like a natural extension of your own body. And to be clear: The first game played really well. But Survivor just feels more honed in, with every part of the game seemingly built to be fun and satisfying to play.
EA / Lucasfilm
Whenever folks playing the game at Kotaku talk about Jedi: Survivor, it usually evolves into people just gushing about the latest sequence they experienced or just trying to describe how awesome combat or platforming felt during their last play session. A lot of the time people don’t even say full sentences, instead going “Ahhh, man… so good” or “Uhhh it’s sooo great” or making other noises that aren’t words but convey how much they are enjoying it.
I’ve heard some complaints about how animations look in the game, and I get that sometimes they might look janky, but this is just because Respawn has clearly prioritized input and feel over how it looks. So yes, watching someone play as Cal as he jumps around platforms might look odd, but playing it feels heavenly. I’m not sure about others, but I rarely fast-travel in this game because moving around the planets you visit is such a blast that fast traveling often feels like I’m missing out on one of the best parts of Jedi: Survivor. When simply moving and jumping in a game feels this good, you know you got something special.
Jedi: Survivor Is Way Better Than Just A Star Wars Game
It can be easy to assume that all the hype around this game is just because it’s Star Wars, but even some non-Star Wars fans around these parts are having a blast with the game. Again, when you start to drill down into why, it ends up coming back to how mechanically satisfying and fun Jedi: Survivor is to play. You don’t need to know or care about the Clone Wars or Jedi or the Force to enjoy Cal sliding down a cliff, leaping into the air, force-dashing further, and then grabbing onto a distant rope to swing over a group of enemies that you eviscerate in seconds with your laser sword. That’s just universally cool stuff.
And while I just said it’s great not just because it’s a Star Wars game, it’s still an awesome Star Wars game. I’ll have more to say about this in the near future, but something I appreciate about Survivor is just how Star Wars-y this game truly is. Crusty alien cantinas, weird but loveable characters, dangerous bounty hunters, cute droids, excellent music, genuinely charming friends, cool ships, and all the perfect sound effects.
EA / Lucasfilm
This is Star Wars at its finest (and weirdest), and an example of how AAA games can be big and yet still feel like each aspect was designed with care. In other words, they can still be incredible if done right. Other devs, take note of sequences like everything leading up to and directly following the moment you get the crossguard stance, or the amazing escape sequence on Jedha. More of this, please!
Sure, the game has some performance issues, but even those can’t stop us (and the rest of the internet) from playing and enjoying this latest and possibly greatest Star Wars video game. Good luck to everything else coming out in 2023!
There are, by my count, 1732 indie games coming out every day now, which makes promoting them (for devs) and covering them (for us) almost impossible. One trend I’ve enjoyed lately, though, is an attempt to market a game not just by showing the game, but by showing what went into making the game.
This Wacky Magical Girl Anime Is Studio Trigger-Coded To Perfection
The Dungeon Experience is a good example of this, but another one popped up over the weekend for Lunark, a “modern take on the 2D cinematic platformer genre”, by which its developers (mostly just creator Johan Vinet) mean its in the same vein as classics like Another World and Flashback.
Those were two games defined not just by their cinematic aspirations, heavy on cutscenes and dramatic framing, but because they achieved a lot of that via rotoscoping, the technology where people act scenes out on film then animators recreate it in a game/show/movie.
Lunark, appropriately, does much the same thing, but what I was so happy to see over the weekend was the footage behind the animation, which reveals that for every scene involved a dramatic sci-fi chase or some complex alien machinery, there was…a dude in his kitchen sitting on a shelf, swinging on some bars at a children’s playground or lovingly touching his floorboards:
If you’re into what you’ve seen here, the official pitch for the game is:
Set in a future where the Moon has been transformed into a vessel for humanity’s survival, LUNARK is a 2D adventure inspired by ‘90s classics. Run, jump, hang, climb, roll, and shoot through gorgeously animated environments while overcoming traps, solving puzzles, battling enemy droids, and more! Uncover the dark origin of humanity’s new home in this epic story of survival, revolution, and mystery.
Lunark was released back in March, and is available on Steam, Switch, PlayStation and Xbox.
In 2021 Mythic Games, with the backing of Ubisoft, announced a Kickstarter campaign for an officially-licensed board game adaptation of Rainbow Six: Siege. Two years later, Mythic are asking people who already paid for the game to pay a bit—and in some cases a lot—more.
Let’s Talk About Gotham Knights’ Predictable Ending
The game, simply called 6: Siege, is pretty much what you’d expect: two teams of operatives do battle on a tactical map, one side attacking, the other defending. And as you would also expect from an officially-licensed board game appearing on Kickstarter, it is supposed to be huge, promising all kinds of plastic miniatures, expansions, 3D buildings and terrain.
In 2021 you could get the game in three tiers: a basic $69 copy, a deluxe $199 version and an even more premium $269 edition. That last one came with a lot of stuff: five “years” of expansions, multiple map packs, extra units, a neoprene dice tray, 3D buildings and even a little laser pointer so you could quickly and accurately determine line-of-sight stuff.
Now, in 2023, with the pandemic having wreaked havoc on the board game industry, Mythic (via Wargamer) have posted an update on their campaign website stating that, as things currently stand, the money that people paid during the initial campaign isn’t going to actually cover their manufacturing costs.
As a result, they’re giving backers three choices: they can pay more money, they can wait for prices to come down and receive their games at some point in the future, maybe, or they can ask for a refund. Backers of the $69 edition are being asked to pay an additional $39, $199 backers will need to pay $99 more and the $269 backers are being asked to pay an extra $129.
…the combined crises of COVID and the war in Ukraine, which we had not anticipated, have changed the international situation. Prices have literally exploded in all areas, and the estimates on which we based ourselves before and during the Kickstarter campaign are absolutely no longer relevant.
To give you some examples, the cost of paper and cardboard has increased by 50 to 100% on average (the paper we use for example has gone from $600 per ton to $1200 per ton), the cost of labor in China where our games are produced, assembled and shipped has also doubled from $4 to $8 per hour. The cost of energy, plastic and raw materials has increased by almost 50%. Finally, while container fees have recently dropped from their ridiculous highs (but not back to pre-crisis prices), the cost of the Last Mile has skyrocketed and has never been higher. On our side, it must be said, we spent much more than expected in the development of the game, with more people than we expected working on it and longer than we originally estimated (which caused extra costs, but also has the advantage of having an optimal, well-tested, varied and balanced game in the end).
Wildly, this isn’t the first time Mythic has had to do this; their Darkest Dungeon adaptation had to ask for extra money as well, something that 20% of backers refused to do. In this case Mythic’s update says that “If we do not reach the commitment rate, we commit to reimburse all contributors for these additional costs by the amount of their contribution”, and that “At the end of the fundraising period, if we have reached the minimum commitment to go into production, we will start printing.”
While I have a lot of sympathy for board game publishers and manufacturers right now, these conditions aren’t new; I wrote “Board Games Are Having A Bad Time” in April 2020, and this game was Kickstarted a year later. For Mythic to have not gone overboard with allowances for pricing variations during such tumultuous times reflects poorly on their campaign planning, and fans are right to be upset at being not only asked to pay more, but to pay so much more.
It’s also yet another example of the dangers inherent in the arms race so many board game publishers are trapped in on Kickstarter, offering increasingly obscene amounts of plastic miniatures and other luxuries with their games in an effort to appeal to backers, all the while making their projects far more expensive—and thus risky—to actually make.
I’ve contacted Mythic to clarify what exactly happens to the whole campaign if the “commitment rate” isn’t met, and will update if I hear back.
I still haven’t gotten around to playing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order or its new (apparently fraught) sequel Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, but the more I see of the game’s extensive fashion and customization options for protagonist Cal Kestis, the more tempted I feel. However, one Jedi rebel hairstyle is getting a lot of attention online, and that’s the mullet. It turns Cal from a spacefaring twink into a good, ol’ fashioned (still spacefaring) lover of beer, blasters, and the Second Amendment.
Let’s Talk About Gotham Knights’ Predictable Ending
Though I’ve seen all the movies and played several games, I’m not a Star Wars fan. But I am a fan of Shameless actor Cameron Monaghan, who both voices and performs the Jedi and provides Cal’s face. As a gay man who lived in the rural south most of his life, I find his Shameless character Ian Gallagher incredibly relatable as he sorts through his identity, the conservative expectations of Middle America, and how he deals with patriotism in a country that does not care about people like him. Because I latched on so heavily to his character during my ongoing marathon of the show on Netflix, I’m drawn to Jedi: Survivor for the actor at its center more than any of the other good things the game has to offer. But looking at Monaghan with a mullet and mutton chops feels like looking into an alternate universe in which Ian never overcame the expectations enough to become his own person, and fell hard into some right-wing, gun-nut mentality. It’s unsettling, but I can’t look away, especially as jokes about the mullet are spreading online.
Cal looks extremely silly with the mullet in context, but that hasn’t stopped fans from latching onto the lewk and making jokes about the intersection of Star Wars lore and conservative, good ol’ boy politics.
The quote retweets on this tweet showing Cal in his full space redneck persona are full of zingers.
Ultimately, as much psychic damage as it does to me to see Ian Gallagher with a mullet, the jokes have been very good, and it does speak to how much customization Jedi: Survivor allows. Between this and the game’s scene-stealing alien, Turgle, I keep finding new reasons to maybe jump into Respawn’s take on a galaxy far, far away. Maybe after I finish Shameless and the rest of the Summer Games Hell is over.
Redfall, a vampire shooter out this week on Xbox and PC, was developed by Arkane Studios, the same team behind classics like Dishonored and Prey. It’s one of Microsoft’s first-party exclusives for 2023, a big release for the company’s Game Pass subscription service. And by most accounts, it sucks.
Let’s Talk About Gotham Knights’ Predictable Ending
We’re currently playing the game together for our own impressions, which will be published soon, but in the meantime—because I find the reception so extraordinary given the scale (and price) of the release—I thought I’d roundup some of the impressions and review pieces out there from outlets who managed to receive code ahead of Redfall’s release (we, obviously, did not), or have been updating a review-in-progress piece as they go along.
Ultimately, Redfall is a game that should not have been released yet. Its litany of bugs hampers the gameplay loop of exploring its world with friends, and that loop itself feels compromised by elements that are poorly executed and ill-suited to the team implementing them. I can’t pretend to know whether Arkane chose to make a loot-shooter or was assigned to make a loot-shooter, but I can tell you what it feels like: one of the best game studios in the world suddenly made toothless.
Redfall is ultimately not up to Arkane’s usual standards. It feels rushed, unfinished, and unsatisfying to play. Single-player is hampered by a squad-based open-world shooter structure, multiplayer held back by odd decisions, and decent gunplay is marred by uninspiring mission structures. It’s a confusing game, full of contradictions, and the result is unfulfilling.
With Redfall arriving at IGN just a couple of days ahead of its official release date we haven’t had enough time to complete a final review yet – certainly not without becoming a nocturnal monster myself and staying awake all weekend. However, after several sessions – solo, co-op with a friend, and also in a group of three – I must admit I’m thoroughly underwhelmed by Redfall’s vanilla missions and lifeless world, and very disappointed at its lengthy list of display issues and bugs.
Redfall fails to compel on nearly every level, not just in its uninteresting story, but also its all-too-familiar gameplay. Not only does Redfall feel like a game stuck in yesteryear, even its performance finds a way to disappoint.
Eurogamer’s early impressions are actually quite optimistic, writer Christian Donlan preferring to reserve final judgement until the game was done, but I thought his anecdote at the end here was a pretty good summary of the game’s visuals:
So how is it ugly? It’s technical stuff, I think, and while I’ll leave that to Digital Foundry I’ll say that the edges – technical term – are a little rough. Textures sometimes pop in late or not at all, so those beautiful trees are always bursting into fiery life a little too close by, and at one point the classic immersive sim storytelling graffiti on a wall was weirdly pixellated. Character models are still and oddly lit. I should add here, I’m trying to be objective, which is always a mistake. I think the patchy textures – yes, I’m really about to say this – gives the town a slightly impressionist feel. The waxy characters are wonderfully waxy, the kind of things you might meet on a trip through a haunted Hall of Presidents. Even so, there’s no ducking the fact that my wife came into the room when I was playing, looked at the screen in horror and said, “Jesus! What happened to Fortnite?”
I should note not all reviews and impressions pieces are so down! If you head over to Metacritic you’ll find some outlets—many of which I’ve literally never heard of, but still—have given the game positive scores, like We Got This Covered, who rated it 4.5 stars out of 5, saying:
With rich, beautiful open worlds, a multitude of weapons, and a wide variety of enemies to square off against, Redfall amazes. Players won’t regret staking their claim on Arkane’s latest masterpiece.
OK. Enough with the professional reviews. Let’s see what people who paid for the game—and if you bought this instead of playing on Game Pass it was a full-price $70 release, an important point to remember here—have to say. Here’s a selection of some of the top Steam reviews at time of posting:
Ignoring the performance issues, this game is bad. The AI is pathetic, even on the highest difficulty. The controls are clunky. The graphics are average. The world is empty. I don’t understand why these companies think they can start charging $70 for unfinished garbage. I couldn’t even stomach an hour of this game.
Extremely average and unfinished game. Poor performance on PC and riddled with bugs and glitches.
I’ve heard great things from Arkane, but this is not it. I played with two friends, who also refunded. Going to try and give it a go tonight on the $10 PC Game Pass instead. But that first hour was clear to me: this is not a $70 AAA release.
I’m going to wind up with that last one because, having played it for most of yesterday, it’s actually the closest to my own experiences with the game. This plays like a remaster of a PS3 shooter. It’s an unfinished concept piece, a pitch project that somehow made its way to retail.
It’s tough to explain how raw the whole thing feels without playing it yourself. Even the fonts look like placeholders. Arkane is a studio responsible for some of the most important first-person games of the last decade; to see their name attached to this just…really bums me out.
Anyway! Like I said, our own impressions will be coming soon, so check back to see if a few days of multiplayer madness will have our team (not me, I live on the far side of the moon) thinking any differently to these reviews.
Back in 2015, Grand Theft Auto Online players found a way to spawn a car that is usually only available in Grand Theft Auto V’s single-player campaign. While some developers might simply patch the exploit out of the game, Rockstar decided that wasn’t enough, and that these cheaters deserved a punishment fitting of a Grand Theft Auto game. So instead of removing the car, the studio made it so that whenever a player attempted to get inside it, the vehicle would spontaneously explode, leaving the cheaters with a sudden “Wasted” game over and a jump scare for good measure.
Why was this car so significant? It was the Duke O’ Death, given only to players who upgraded from the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Grand Theft Auto V to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One ports. Rockstar eventually made the car available to all players in 2021, even in Grand Theft Auto Online, but at one point it was a prized possession that Rockstar went the extra mile to keep out of multiplayer.
Oshi No Ko Is An Early Anime Of The Year Contender
This video by a user called Art from the Machine shows “a Skyrim mod which allows for conversations with NPCs via ChatGPT, xVASynth (text-to-speech), and Whisper (speech-to-text). This update introduces Skyrim scripting, which allows for lip syncing of voices and NPC awareness of in-game events.”
That’s the aim, anyway. Here’s what all that looks and sounds like in practice:
It’s a horror show, I know. Particular highlights are the way the video has to be sped up to mask the amount of time it takes the game to respond to questions, the terrible synthesised voice acting and the bland, generic standard of all the “writing”. Oh, and the fact the people running Skyrim’s stores—in a world without watches—will now tell you their opening hours like they were getting a phone call in a mall. Sorry, sir, we close at five pum.
A console staple Because the Xbox Series S is $30 off, you can put that $30 towards storage, an extra controller, or the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
I spent ages writing earlier drafts of this blog where I took this opportunity to launch into a tirade against the idea that machine learning can or should replace human artists, but you know what? This is a Skyrim mod. If this is what a lot of people still playing this game want—and clearly it is, even though what they actually want is to play a tabletop RPG with friends—then have at it. If you’re happy with word soup dialogue written by a machine that was trained on stuff that was already pretty generic in the first place, no amount of me saying “we need to value human art as the only true human experience” will convince you that if this is the future of video games that you want, you’re going to get everything you deserve.
As Bungie continues on its warpath against Destiny 2 cheaters, the studio has won $12 million in the lawsuit against Romanian cheat seller Mihai Claudiu-Florentin that began back in 2021.
Oshi No Ko Is An Early Anime Of The Year Contender
Claudiu-Florentin sold cheat software at VeteranCheats, which allowed users to get an edge over other players with software that could do things like tweak their aim and let them see through walls. Naturally, Bungie argued that the software was damaging to Destiny 2‘s competitive and cooperative modes, and has won the case against the seller. The lawsuit alleges “copyright infringement, violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), breach of contract, intentional interference with contractual relations, and violations of the Washington Consumer Protection Act.” (Thanks, TheGamePost).
You can read a full PDF of the suit, courtesy of TheGamePost, here, but the gist of it is that Bungie is asking for $12,059,912.98 in total damages, with $11,696,000 going toward violations of the DMCA, $146,662.28 for violations of the Copyright Act, and $217,250.70 accounting for the studio’s attorney expense. After subpoenaing Stripe, a payment processing service, Bungie learned that at least 5848 separate transactions took place through the service that included Destiny 2 cheating software from November 2020 to July 2022.
While Bungie might have $12 million more dollars out of this, VeteranCheats’ website is still up and offering cheating software for games like Overwatch and Call of Duty. Though, Destiny no longer appears on the site’s home page or if you search within its community.
A console staple Because the Xbox Series S is $30 off, you can put that $30 towards storage, an extra controller, or the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
According to the lawsuit, Bungie has paid around $2 million in its anti-cheating efforts between staffing and software. This also extended to a blanket ban on cheating devices in both competitive and PvE modes earlier this month.
While Destiny 2 has been wrapped up in legal issues, the shooter has also been caught up in some other controversy recently thanks to a major leak that led to the ban of a major content creator in the game’s community.
Respawn went on to develop Apex Legends, a game set in the Titanfall universe only—crucially—without the Titans, and which has been printing money for years. They’ve also made the new Star Wars Jedi games, which have been a successful return to form for a franchise long stuck in licensed adaptation hell.
They’ve been very busy with those, and given their success likely will be for the foreseeable future. You also need to know that, as critically successful as Titanfall 2 was, the game—released alongside a bunch of other blockbuster shooters, including EA’s own Battlefield 1—was seen by publisher Electronic Arts as an enormous commercial failure.
So the likelihood that we ever get a Titanfall 3, especially a Titanfall 3 in the same vein as Titanfall 2, are slim! Actually that’s being generous. The likelihood that Respawn, as busy as they are, will make a Titanfall 3 with backing from EA, a publisher who will throw an under-performing franchise in the trash without a second’s hesitation, is pretty much zero.
This week, we’re back in said ringer. Speaking with Barron’s(thanks, PC Gamer), mostly about their new Star Wars game, Respawn boss Vince Zampella was asked about the possibility of there ever being a Titanfall 3, to which he replied
I hate to say yes, then people latch onto that, and then skewer you when it doesn’t come.
But I would love to see it happen is the real answer.
My man, you are one of the handful of people on the planet with the power to make this happen! You don’t need to pine about it in a interview, go call some meetings!
I kid, of course, there are a multitude of planning, resource-related and financial reasons we haven’t seen a Titanfall 3, but refreshingly—and in the only piece of good news to be had here today—that’s partly down to the fact that were such a thing to ever happen, Respawn want to do right by the game, rather than just drop Titanfall Tour on iOS or something.
“It has to be the right thing”, Zampella says. “It’s such a beloved franchise for the fans and also for us. If it is not the right moment in time, the right idea, then it just doesn’t make sense.”
Maybe that time will be soon. Maybe it’ll be never! All I know is that until we reach that right moment in time”, every time I have to type “Titanfall 3″ and not follow it up with “Announced” is going to kill me.
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