If you’ve ever tried to play a hardcore RPG that’s way above your brain’s pay grade, or got lost in tutorials that use complicated words and bizarre jargon, then you’ve probably felt right at home reading headlines about AI recently. Why are people angry that this character has seven fingers? Why does Nvidia want me to talk to a robot about ramen? Why is everyone saying AI is smart when it still can’t manage its Classical Era luxury resource economy in Civilization properly? In this new series, we’re going to explore what ‘generative AI’ is, why it’s arrived now in the games industry, and what it might mean for people who make, write about and play games in the future.
It’s been a hot minute since we last saw a music video from the talented musicians of Splatsville, but now Nintendo has released a new piece titled ‘We’re So Back’ from Splatoon 3, and it’s a doozy.
Well, it’s a doozy if you’re into this sort of thing. For everybody else, it could well be two and a half minutes of pure confusion. Any and all reactions are perfectly valid! Either way, it’s a pretty cool little comeback for Pearl and Marina, who mostly featured in Splatoon 2 before being largely replaced by the band ‘Deep Cut’ in the third entry.
Create a sustainable exofarm on a mysterious new world, filled with mysteries to uncover
Join up to three friends online and work together to clean up the planet by taking care of the environment
Lightyear Frontier launches into Early Access for Xbox Series X|S, PC, and via Game Pass March 19
Explore a strange new planet, pilot and customize your very own mech suit and work with up to three friends online to clean up and create a sustainable environment in Lightyear Frontier, out in Early Access March 19 on Xbox Series X|S, PC, and via Game Pass.
Take a new direction in the farming-sim genre, as Lightyear Frontier sends players beyond the stars to a beautiful planet, where the goal is not to destroy or conquer but to nurture and cultivate a homestead for you and your friends. Embark in your mech and live in harmony with the world’s wondrous nature, as you help restore the planet to its natural beauty.
Find The Mech, Save The World
Where many games invite players to alien worlds to battle waves of monsters or save the universe from an intergalactic threat, Lightyear Frontier brings fresh ideas to the table. Instead of embarking on a path of destruction, players will work to help cultivate this forgotten land, managing their relationship with the ecosystem as they create a sustainable, healthy environment for themselves and all the wildlife that roams the planet.
Pollution has taken over the world, causing environmental hazards and challenges for players to overcome. With your trusty mech, it’s up to you and up to three of your friends to clean up the hazards that have soiled this world. Use your hose tool to power wash devastating pollution or equip your trusty hose to clean up noxious weeds to unlock new areas and uncover the past of this world.
By restoring regions of the planet, the landscape will blossom with vegetation, as once barren locations return to life with grass, plants and wildlife. Players can explore these beautiful new vistas to secure new materials and build the farmstead of their dreams, giving you an extra incentive to bring the planet back to its former glory.
Work Together, Live Together
All this work can be tough for one exofarmer, which is why Lightyear Frontier allows up to four players to explore together online, with full cross play. Journey out with your friends to help manage your relationship with the ecosystem and create a sustainable, living space for not only you but the plants and wildlife that inhabit each region.
Using the materials you find, create the dream exofarm for you and your friends, as you each pilot your very own customisable mech to help build a fully-fledged, retro-futuristic farm space. As you all gather new materials, you can perform as a team to build your living space further and unlock new upgrades to help in your journey of saving the planet.
Work together to cultivate and harvest crops, or even assign daily duties on your farm as a group to help jobs pass with ease. Have one player plant new seeds whilst the other waters crops, and even send the rest of your team out on expeditions to excavate new resources to aid in your mission to create a sustainable world.
Give Back What You Take
While other farming simulation games will have you take from the world and not give back, Lightyear Frontier promotes keeping the world nurtured and alive. As you harvest resources from the land to aid your journey be sure to keep replenishing the supply to ensure the planet can remain self-sufficient.
For every tree you cut down, help nurture the planet by replanting what you’ve taken. You can even plant trees much closer to your farmstead to make future gatherings easier for your group. There are many unique interactions to uncover, including feeding animals to help replenish supplies faster, such as aluminium deposits to help build you and your friend’s farm.
With the peculiar pollution overtaking regions of the planet, you can also use the additional mech power of your friends to quickly hose down purple goo damaging the environment and achieve your goal together of reforming the planet. Lightyear Frontier not only works as a solo experience of keeping the planet green but is even better when you tackle the adventure together with your friends.
The Journey Is Just Beginning
The Early Access release of Lightyear Frontier on Xbox Series X|S and PC is only the beginning. As development continues toward the game’s full launch, new updates, unfurling mysteries and ways to interact with the world will keep you coming back for more. Nurturing the planet is only the first step in your journey, with many new adventures on the horizon.
This game is a work in progress. It may or may not change over time or release as a final product. Purchase only if you are comfortable with the current state of the unfinished game.
Start your interstellar homestead in this peaceful open-world farming adventure!
Build your sustainable exofarm, grow alien crops, customize your mech, and explore a new world full of mystery with up to three friends!
RELAX ON A PEACEFUL WORLD
Live the quiet life as you take in the sights and sounds of your new home. Enjoy a low-stress, combat-free experience without the need to manage things like thirst and hunger. Just focus on farming, exploration, and discovery!
Relax to a chill, atmospheric cosmic country soundtrack
PILOT AND UPGRADE YOUR MECH
Farm, build, and explore in a customizable mech! Choose from an array of tools, unlock new upgrades, and personalize your mech with an assortment of paint choices and mech parts.
TAKE CARE OF YOUR ENVIRONMENT
Carefully manage your relationship with the ecosystem, restoring the surrounding regions by cleaning up the mysterious pollution, clearing out invasive weeds, and mitigating the effects of hazards. Plant new trees to replace the ones you harvest, and ensure a sustainable homestead!
PLANT, GROW, HARVEST
Get your new life started by sowing a diverse harvest! Collect seeds of numerous plants as you explore the planet, growing them into fully-fledged harvests. Care for your fields by watering them consistently while enhancing their growth with fertilizer. Trade the harvested crops for credits or turn them into materials for buildings and upgrades.
CREATE YOUR NEW HOME
Create the exofarm of your dreams as you turn resources into buildings! Grow your presence as you expand your homestead from basic structures to a fully-fledged, retro-futuristic farm. Make your place your own with alternative color palettes and decorations.
EXPLORE A PLANET WITH A PAST
Venture out into the wilderness to discover this new world’s ancient secrets. Team up with your friendly scanner satellite to decipher clues spread across the planet’s varied environments and uncover lost knowledge.
FARM AND EXPLORE ALONE OR AS A GROUP
While your mech can handle anything the world throws at you, feel free to invite up to three friends to join you on this journey of settling and exploration! Pool your resources to create the perfect exofarm, and share the rewarding feeling of a good harvest with your pals!
Microsoft has created another custom Xbox Series X, this time theming after Fallout in celebration of the upcoming Amazon show.
Revealed in a post on X/Twitter, below, the console will be given away to one lucky fan who follows Xbox and retweets the post. The prize includes more than just the custom Xbox Series X, however, as it also bundles in a controller (which can actually be bought) and a custom vault to keep the hardware in.
This is a seemingly working safe with various bits of Fallout branding on it. It’s marked as Vault 33, which is the same bunker where the Fallout TV show’s protagonist comes from. Interestingly, it also has “Fort Knox” written on it, which is only mentioned in Bethesda’s game universe in Fallout 76.
HoYoverse have announced that sign-ups for Zenless Zone Zero‘s next closed beta test are now available. While the start and end dates of the next closed beta haven’t been unveiled just yet, we do know that there’s going to be a new character to play, a new faction, new missions, and overhauls to the game’s combat and exploration. I’d imagine it’s worth a look if you’re into Genshin Impact, or are into your anime fights. Either one will suffice.
Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian has issued hotfix 22 across PC, PlayStation 5, Mac, and, crucially, Xbox, bringing players on Microsoft’s console up to date.
The sprawling Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game had lagged behind by a number of hotfixes on Xbox Series X and S as a result of an Xbox exclusive crash bug, but now with the release of hotfix 22, Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox has hotfixes 20 and 21, too.
Alongside this release, issues with Xbox cross-saves should now be resolved, Larian said. “Thank you again for your patience while we worked to fix the issue, and we’re sorry for any inconvenience it may have caused,” the developer added.
Hotfix #22, meanwhile, resolves further crashes and blockers, and, as Larian put it, makes Minthara “pinky promise to stop repeating her thoughts about Gale in Act III.” What’s that about? As Larian explained in the patch notes: “We’ve also fixed an issue where a legacy dialogue flow had been enabled unintentionally while carrying out fixes for Minthara, which meant that some players had been able to view dialogue where Minthara would seemingly end a relationship with Dark Urge players if they had resisted their urges and made a certain choice in Act III.”
Baldur’s Gate 3 Hotfix 22 patch notes:
CRASHES AND BLOCKERS
Fixed a crash caused by the game trying to access the duration of a condition on a character with no conditions set.
Fixed conditions sometimes trying to get their duration from the source entity instead of the target entity.
Fixed some potential internal crashes on Xbox when suspending the game (e.g. when suspending the console or loading another game), causing it to reboot when you went back to it.
UI
Improved the messaging for syncing and cross-saving by indicating when a cross-save sync has failed and adding an option to try again. Also prevented the saving and cross-saving messages from appearing for secondary local players.
Voice chat will no longer overlap the minimap on split-screen.
Fixed the ‘Another Player Is Joining’ pop-up not triggering while the host has a panel open on Xbox, potentially preventing the client from joining.
SCRIPTING
Fixed an issue where legacy dialogue had been enabled unintentionally as part of another line of fixes, in which Minthara would seemingly end a relationship with Dark Urge players who had rejected Bhaal.
Made Minthara promise to stop repeating her thoughts about Gale in Act III.
Fixed a bug causing you to get perpetually stuck in a dangerous area if you triggered hostilities in the Emerald Grove and then left while it was still a dangerous area.
Fixed a rare issue where dialogues would end suddenly when you went to kiss your romantic partner.
Fixed a bug causing you to get stuck in combat with the enemies on top of Moonrise Towers if you found a way to sneak into the Mind Flayer Colony.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
The Monster Hunter Stories remaster was officially announced during the Nintendo Direct in February. If you want both that and its sequel, Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin, together, you can now preorder the physical version of the Monster Hunter Stories Collection for Nintendo Switch at various retailers (see at Amazon). This version comes with a game card for Monster Hunter Stories and then a download voucher for Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin.
It’s set to release on June 14 this year and will set you back $59.99. Head to the links below to secure a copy for yourself today.
There are a few preorder bonuses you’ll get when ordering the Monster Hunter Stories Collection ahead of time. The first is King and Queen outfits for Navirou and the second is the Kamura Maiden outfit for Ena.
Monster Hunter Stories Remaster Trailer
What is Monster Hunter Stories Collection?
The remaster of Monster Hunter Stories was announced during February’s Nintendo Direct. While originally a 3DS exclusive, the Monster Hunter Stories remaster now comes with full voice acting and HD visuals. Per Capcom‘s website, it also includes a Museum Mode that features, “over 200 previously unreleased pieces of design artwork and background music tracks.” The Monster Hunter Stories Collection features both this game and the sequel, Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin, so fans can enjoy them on Nintendo Switch.
We gave the original Monster Hunter Stories an 8.9/10. In our review, we stated that it “expands the world with a shiny, new, undeniably cute coat of paint. But don’t let that deter you, because Monster Hunter Stories’ heartwarming story is served with amazingly fun RPG gameplay that never gets old, even beyond the 50-hour campaign.”
More Preorder Guides
Looking for even more games to preorder? We’ve got you covered with our selection of preorder guides below, including everything from Dragon’s Dogma 2 to the highly-anticipated Elden Ring expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelance writer who works with the Guides and Commerce teams here at IGN.
Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter’s #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by a meaty walking truck, opportunities for hubris, slime cleanup troubles, submarine dilemmas, and more. Check out these attractive and interesting indie games!
Publisher astragon Entertainment has laid the groundwork and is ready to start putting the foundations in for Construction Simulator 4, which will be heading to Switch on 28th May.
This will be the first time that the series has popped up on Switch, though we’re sure that you can imagine what it might entail, all the same. Would you believe us if we said that there was construction? Well, you better, because there’s a lot of it.
The Lee family is reuniting once again to rid the streets of crime as Billy and Jimmy Lee’s cousin, Sonny Lee, is joining Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons on April 4. An unconventional fighter, Sonny thrashes his enemies with a flurry of punches and kicks to prove he’s just as powerful as his cousins.
First appearing in Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone, Sonny Lee joins Double Dragon Gaiden as part of the free Sacred Reunion DLC coming to PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. Sonny is the lazy, distant cousin of the Lee brothers, but just like Billy and Jimmy, he has practiced the art of Sōsetsuken since he was young. However, Sonny has a hard time keeping up. He opts to give the ancient technique his own creative spin and now wanders the streets to test the might of his new moves.
Also joining Sonny in the Sacred Reunion DLC is the secret assassin Ranzou and one additional mystery fighter. Ranzou is a mysterious young ninja from a secret organization, known as The Secret Society of Ninjas. He has no stake in the fate of New York, but he is sent here by his organization as a test of his abilities. Along with the new characters, the Sacred Reunion DLC will include Survival mode, Versus mode and online co-op.
As a fighter, Sonny distinguishes himself as a rushdown/offensive warrior. He executes an action attack similar to a quick breakdance maneuver that travels a short distance and covers threats from all directions. Despite his Sōsetsuken roots, we wanted to ensure that Sonny is his own character, and he is designed to play differently from Billy and Jimmy with much more eccentric moves. His role as the familial outcast significantly influences his fighting style, resulting in a blend of showboating and non-traditional stances. Sonny’s distinctive approach to combat reflects his individuality within the family dynamic, which gives him more depth and personality, allowing him to shine brighter in the game.
Furthermore, our commitment to providing each character with a distinct fighting style facilitated the exploration and implementation of Sonny’s unconventional techniques. This emphasis on uniqueness granted us the flexibility to fully develop Sonny’s distinctive combat style, enhancing the overall gameplay experience.
Quick attacks, dodges and unexpected movements are what drive Sonny’s attacks. This includes the special move Feigning Dragon where Sonny pretends to fall back while knocking enemies far away with a barrage of punches and kicks. This is a very quick aerial move that can be easily used to cause high damage from opposite directions. It can be used as a great combo ender, but the move makes Sonny vulnerable upon landing.
Another special move of Sonny’s is Dragon’s Regret, which allows Sonny to dish out rapid punches. Activating this move allows Sonny to potentially travel across the screen while attacking, but if you hold the attack in the opposite direction when the move ends, you can deliver a final punch in the opposite direction. Dragon’s Regret is a great combo starter and extension.
The last move we’re going to talk about is the Sleeping Dragon. This is a quick jump kick, followed by an elbow drop to knock down nearby enemies. Sleeping Dragon covers a large amount of ground and can be used as an anti-air attack and as a combo extension.
Celebrate the Lee boys getting the band back together when the Sacred Reunion DLC releases April 4 on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 as a free update to Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons.
