May 25, 2023

More Murder, Less Loot-boxes

New Games announced in the world of Dead by Daylight

Behaviour Interactive’s asymmetric horror Dead by Daylight is one of the most popular horror games around. It recently celebrated its 7^th anniversary with a stream where they announced a huge amount of content for the future, including two new games set in the same world as Dead by Daylight.

The first new game will be a single player story-focused experience developed by Supermassive Games who are known for creating gripping narrative games like The Quarry or Until Dawn. More information on this game will be coming out later this year.

The second new game will be “a multiplayer PvE experience where instead of facing off against each other, up to four players can team up, enter another one of the Entity’s realms, and take on a host of deadly enemies that occupy it”. This is being developed by Midwinter Entertainment and is not as far along in development as the first, so we don’t know yet when we will hear more about it.

The anniversary stream also featured announcements for new content coming to the base game. A new chapter “End Transmission” will take Dead by Daylight to the stars on June 13. New cosmetic packs inspired by the bands Iron Maiden and Slipknot are coming soon. And, strangest of all, Nicholas Cage is becoming a survivor and joining the game on July 5^th. He even does his own voice over, as discussed by the game director:

“He’s got such an iconic voice and delivery. We couldn’t do this without him…In some cases, for the screams and grunts, we have used different people sometimes because these are extremely strenuous exertions, and they can take a toll on people. But in this case, Mr. Cage told us there has never been a voice sound-alike for Nic Cage, and we will not have one now. So, he was generous enough to record every single grunt, scream, and exertion that you will hear in Dead by Daylight.”

Kid sues Nintendo over loot boxes, after spending $170 on dad’s credit card.

An unnamed kid has filed a lawsuit against Nintendo over the “immoral” loot boxes within Mario Kart Tour. This mobile game came out in 2019 equipped with loot box microtransactions, and while this is fairly standard for mobile games it does seem egregious coming from a company like Nintendo. While Nintendo did remove microtransactions from the game in later 2022, lawsuits like this one are only now making it to the courts.

With a single draw costing a few dollars, the child who filed the lawsuit spent 170 USD through a card linked to the game. In that lawsuit they now claim that Nintendo used “dark patterns” to trick players into spending more money on the game’s microtransactions, and that “Minors are especially susceptible to these addiction-enhancing elements of game design.”

Public perception of loot boxes and similar microtransactions has soured greatly in the last few years, and lawsuits like this are popping up more and more often, but it’s still hard to predict what way they will go.

Playstation Showcase 2023:

In the early hours of the 25^th of May, the Playstation Showcase took place, announcing a huge number of upcoming game titles and new hardware. Here are some of the highlights from the show:

Playstation is going handheld with a new piece of hardware coming later this year that will allow you to stream any game from your PS5 console using remote play over Wi-Fi. The device, known as Project Q, sports an 8-inch HD screen and all the features of the dual-sense controller.

In addition to this they announced they will be launching their own pair of Bluetooth-enabled earbuds. They promise lossless audio with low latency and will be compatible with Playstation 5, PC, and the new Project Q device.

Bungee, the studio that gave us Halo and Destiny, has announced Marathon – a revival of one of their earliest titles which released for Mac in 1994. The new Marathon is said to be a PVP extraction shooter and is also multiplatform with full cross play and cross-save coming to PS5, Xbox S/X and PC.

Revenant Hill is the latest game from the studio that created Night in the Woods. The announcement trailer showed off a very similar art style to Night in the Woods, but the games are not connected in any way. Revenant Hill takes place in 1919 and you play as Twig, a cat who has fallen on hard times and is working odd jobs to make ends meet until they can reach their dream of becoming a familiar.

After Months of rumors we finally got confirmation that Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is getting a remake as Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. In addition, we’ll see a rerelease of the first three MGS games as part of the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection which will be coming later this year to PS5.

Square Enix is bringing us Foamstars, a 4v4 shooter coming to PS4 and PS5. The gameplay is very similar to Splatoon except instead of paint players will shoot foam at each other. Teams aren’t racing to cover the map in their paint but instead the foam is used to both attack and change the layout of the map.

The showcase concluded with a 12-minute gameplay reveal of Spiderman 2 showing off many of the games most exciting features. We saw more from our villain Kraven the Hunter, we saw the black symbiote suit in action, and we saw action from both playable spider-heroes Peter Parker and Miles Morales. Although we weren’t given a date for the game’s release, we were given a window of fall 2023 – or spring for us.