Tag: video games

New Year New News

Mission: Hitman Changes

Fans of the Hitman series are undergoing some changes in order to create an “ever-expanding” world that could evolve over time. And this next step is set to allow IO Interactive realise the vision they’ve set out to achieve.

Hitman 3 will become HITMAN World of Assassination, and will include access to Hitman 1 and Hitman 2. Those who already own Hitman 3 will get a free upgrade to HITMAN World of Assassination. This also means that World of Assassination will be the only single option to start playing.

“There will be no more confusion over which edition to buy, what content you own, how to redeem Legacy packs or import locations, etc. We’re done with that,” says IO Interactive.

These changes will come into effect on the 26th of January, 2023.

Sonic’s Dad Indicted for Insider Trading

The blue hedgehog’s co-creator, Yuji Naka, along with a former Square Enix employee, Taisuke Sasaki, have both been formally indicted after their arrest in November for alleged insider trading.

Naka has been determined to have confidential information about Square Enix’s plans to develop a Final Fantasy spin-off, and used this information to buy ¥144.7 million yen of company stock, or $1.6 million AUD, knowing that the announcement would cause the stock value to rise.

Square Enix has stated that they are fully committed to working with authorities as the investigation continues. It is unclear when Naka and Sasaki will stand trial.

What’s This? It’s Sephiroth with the Chair!

Kenny Omega, a famous wrestler joined the fray at Japan’s Wrestle Kingdom event in a Sephiroth cosplay, even walking out to his theme song, “One Winged Angel ”.

Kenny Omega has spent a few years in America in AEW, a newer competitor to WWE. Omega however returned to Wrestle Kingdom, which is exactly what it sounds like. And yes, his walk was exactly as cool as you imagine it would be, featuring Sephiroth’s wing, giant screens, and pyrotechnics. Omega also won the match.

Logan’s NFTs

YouTuber Logan Paul had developed a “really fun game that makes you money”, CryptoZoo, where you buy currency to spend on egg NFTs that hatch. You can breed these animals to make hybrids, and eventually you’re supposed to be able to cash out money. Members of Paul’s team ended up selling their currency early to make millions, while fans ended up losing thousands.

Logan Paul did address accusations of CryptoZoo being a scam by attempting to discredit his critics, such as investigative YouTuber Stephen “Coffeezilla” Findeisen, who had spent a year looking into CryptoZoo, as well as a slew of scams in the crypto space.

I don’t want to talk about this anymore.

 

And now for some upcoming games!

January 10

  • Flash Party (PC)

January 11

  • Children of Silentown (PC, PS4, XBO, Switch)
  • Kandria (PC)

January 12

  • Gatewalkers (PC)
  • One Piece Odyssey (PC)
  • Rogue AI Simulator (PC)
  • Terror of Hemasaurus (Switch)
  • Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider (PC, PS4, Switch)

That’s it this week in gaming news

 

Goats, Exploits, An Aurora Filled Sky, and Games Done & Gone

Goat’s stepping on toes, or going for the viral takedown?
Developers of Goat Simulator 3, Coffee Stain Studios, have been slapped with a takedown notice from Rockstar Games for using footage from the September GTA 6 leaks. The now-removed video featured an interview with Shaun, a professional NPC, where he talked about his many experiences as an NPC in games, including in the leaked GTA 6 footage. After being removed from Twitter, it was replaced with a tweet from the company with the following gif…

Act of stupidity or marketing genius? You decide.

Why all the Updates Nintendo?
You may have noticed the recent slew of updates hitting some old and new favourites from Nintendo, coming with the patch notes;

“Several issues have been addressed to improve the gameplay experience.”

These patches have been pushed for many games such as Mario Kart 7 for 3DS, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Splatoon 2&3, ARMS, Super Mario Maker 2, Nintendo Switch Sports and are probably needed for many more. This patch is actually to prevent an exploit called “ENLBufferPwn” which allowed full takeover of the system without detection through security holes in online play, allowing access to saved payment information, as well as in-built peripherals such as cameras and microphones. The worst part? While the issue is relatively easy to patch on the Switch, the Wii U and 3DS eShops’ ability to roll out patches for this and future exploits will close in Feb 2023, leaving any vulnerability open for future exploitation.

Aurora taking Sky: Children of Light into the Stratosphere.
In a recent interview Jenova Chen, founder and CEO of Thatgamecompany, creators of Sky: Children of Light, revealed that more than 1.6 million players have attended the Aurora Concert that first occurred on December 8. This has been achieved through the intense work of the programmers and servers to maintain instances of around 4000 players, each with emote interactivity to the entire instance and a text based proximal chat with players in their row. Contrasted to other games’ concerts, such as Fortnite with only 40 people per room, highlights the near year of work of the team at Thatgamecompany to make it happen. The show officially called “The Musical Voyage” contains several performances from Aurora where players are collectively involved in the visual space. The performance has been playing every 4 hours since, with the last show to play January 1st.

Now, normally I’d do games coming out… but since there are none, I thought I’d list some of the games that Shutdown this year.

Long standing tactical shooter America’s Army
Released 4th July 2002,
Shutdown 5th May 2022.

MOBA that couldn’t break League of Legends’ hold Heroes of Newerth
Released 12th May 2010,
Shutdown 20th June 2022.

Fantasy MMO Tera, who’s developers just wanted to move on,
Released 25th January 2011,
Shutdown 30th June 2022.

Car sim Project Cars 1 & 2 succumbed to car and track licence expiry date blues,
With one released 6th May 2015,
Shutdown 3rd October 2022

And two released 21st September 2017,
Shutdown 21st September 2022

Overwatch
Released 3rd May 2016,
Shutdown 3rd October 2022

Just a year and a bit of life, the MMO Crowfall fell,
Released 6th July 2021,
Shutdown 22nd November 2022

Free-2-Play Super Bomberman R Online bombed out
Released 1st September 2020,
Shutdown 1st December 2022

Fuser, the Harmonix successor to Guitar Hero and Rock Band and reviewed by our own Paul, just didn’t hit the bigtime
Released 10th November 2020,
Shutdown 19th December 2022

Square Enix’s Final Fantasy kart game, Chocobo GP… not quite gone, but the store and purchased mithril will be worthless past the shutdown date
Released 12th January 2022,
Last Update 21st December 2022,
Shutdown 1st June 2023

Literally every game that was released for Google Stadia
Released 19th November 2019,
Slated to be shutdown 18th January 2023.

That’s all this week in gaming news.

Games Awards, VR Showcase and Pokemon gets patched

 

Games Awards!

The 2022 Game awards will be held on Friday December 9 at 10.30am – 1.30pm Australian Eastern Standard Time.  There are 31 award categories including Game of the Year, Best Indie, Most Anticipated Game, Innovation in Accessibility and Best Art Direction.

In addition to this there is the game awards future class, ‘50 inspiring individuals who represent the bright, bold and inclusive future of video games’.

Composer Maize Wallen and designer Chantal Ryan are two Australians that have been included in the 2022 Game Awards Future class list.

Chantal Ryan is the Director of the game development studio ‘We have always lived in the Forest’ and produces ‘experimental narrative games and systems built upon disruptive language technologies’.

Maize Wallen has produced audio for games such as God Fall, Receiver 2, Wayward Strand and Cosmic Express.  Their focus is 3D spatialised audio and dynamic music.

https://thegameawards.com/future-class

Pokemon scarlet and violet get patched

A whopping 1GB patch was made available on the 1st of December – Nintendo’s support website stating that the patch includes season 1 of ranked battles, fixing an issue that caused music to not play correctly during the elite four and top champion battle and lastly, other select bug fixes.

They have also acknowledged that many players may encounter issues that affect the games performance.  Given that this has been the buggiest pokemon game ever released, this is an understatement.

https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/60277/p/989#v110

VR Showcase Winter 2022

The Upload Gaming Showcase 2022 steamed this morning and showcased ‘exciting game updates, announcements and exclusive reveals’.  Some of these are:

Call of the Sea VR, by Out of the Blue, a mysterious adventure game where you solve puzzles and maybe become some sort of sea monster? Intriguing!

Across the Valley, by FusionPlay is a VR farming simulator for those who want their cow milking to be more immersive.

Maskmaker by Innerspace VR is a puzzle game where you play a mask maker’s apprentice.

Survival Nation by Wenkly Studio is an outdoor adventure sim with added zombies.

And The Signifier by Playmestudio is a detective thriller that has you using victims’ dreams to solve crimes.

https://uploadvr.com/upload-vr-showcase-winter-2022/

And now for the releases!

December 8

Chained Echoes for the PC, Playstation, Xbox and Switch, NecroBouncer on PC, The Rumble Fish 2 for PC Playstation, Xbox and Switch, Witch On The Holy Night for Playstation 4 and Switch.

December 9

Dragon Quest Treasures for the Switch, Jitsu Squad for Playstation and the Switch.

December 12

Wavetale on PC, Playstation, Xbox and Switch

December 13

Crisis Core –Final Fantasy 7– Reunion on PC, Playstation, Xbox and Switch, High on Life for the PC and Xbox Series X.

December 14

The Witcher 3 comes to Playstation 5 and the Xbox Series X.

And that’s all this week in gaming news!

News? In My Media?

Ads? In My Windows 11?

You’re probably familiar with the start menu in windows, an easy-to-access feature that allows you to access programs quickly. Well, it seems ads will be joining the start menu, with testing underway. Some of these ads will be used to promote Microsoft services. Recommended website listings, and an ad in the account menu, are already present in preview builds, and there’s more features planned for Windows 11.

Windows states on their site, “We’ve been working on adding more valuable content to the Recommended section in Start and are excited to introduce a new content type: websites.”

PS5s? In My Honda?

Honda and Sony have recently created a new venture called Sony Honda Mobility, and with this venture comes an interesting proposal: a car designed to maximise the entertainment possibilities Sony has to offer.

That’s right, an electric car that’ll allow drivers to always be prepared with music, movies, and video games.

Yasuhide Mizuno, chair of the joint venture, says that the first car model may hit North American markets by 2025. However, a very specific feature may need to be developed first before we can see PlayStation 5s in cars; autonomous driving. After all, you can’t drive and play video games at the same time.

Shovelware? In My PlayStation Store?

PlayStation is cracking down on shovelware games, that is games that have been reskinned, non-games, and games designed just to give people platinum trophies. A letter to developers states that shovelware games will be either banned or delisted, and involved developers are at risk of being banned from publishing future games.

PlayStation states, “SIE strives to ensure that customers can search and discover the full breadth of experiences on PlayStation, and that partners have a fair means of being discovered. When partners oversaturate or “spam” PlayStation Store with many variants of the same type of content, it can negatively impact both the customer and partner experience.”

Monsters? In My Pocket?

Despite Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s rocky launch, with the games being criticised for glitches, bugs, and generally underwhelming, Nintendo has reported 10 million sales, with it being reported to have the highest global sales level on any of the company’s consoles in the first three days.

However, many players have reported returning their copies due to their experiences with the game, and successfully receiving refunds.

And now for some upcoming games!

November 24

  • Dysterra (PC)

November 25

  • Horse Club Adventures 2 – Hazelwood Stories (PS5, PS4)

November 28

  • Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr: Sororitas DLC (PC)

November 29

  • Gotham Knights: Heroic Assault (PC, PS5, XSX)
  • In Nightmare (PC)
  • The Knight Witch (PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch)
  • Soccer Story (PC, PS4, XBO, Switch)

November 30

  • Warhammer 40,000: Darktide (PC, XSX)

December 1

  • Dwarven Skykeep (PC)
  • Gundam Evolution (PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO)
  • Romancing SaGa -Minstrel Song- Remastered (PC, PS5, PS4, Switch)