Silent Hill 2 remake wranglers Bloober Team have emerged from the newly high-resolution, volumetric fog to threaten us with the prospect of another “game based on Konami’s IP”. Thank heavens, I was beginning to think we’d never get a new Frogger. Whatever the project is, we won’t hear about it for a while.
Mecha Break recently launched into a new round of open beta play on Steam, and quickly dethroned some titans in the process. Even though it’s just a glimpse of the final experience, Mecha Break’s demo is bumping elbows with the likes of Marvel Rivals, Grand Theft Auto V, Apex Legends, and Naraka Bladepoint. So why’s it got such a bad rating on Steam?
The open beta launch pulled in over 300,000 players on Steam, deseating Marvel Rivals and hitting a top-four place in the most played games on Valve’s platform. Even right now, at the time of writing this, Amazing Seasun Games’ mecha battler has the fourth-highest concurrent players per SteamDB, though it falls behind Rivals’ 24-hour peak.
Popularity doesn’t naturally incur positivity; Apex Legends has a ‘Mixed’ overall rating on Steam, as does Delta Force, and both have substantially more recent players than many other games on the PC platform. Yet Mecha Break’s demo is sitting at ‘Mostly Negative’ right now, with over 6,500 reviews.
Taking a look through the reviews, there are a few discernible complaints. The most easily addressed are the server issues. With hundreds of thousands of players flocking to the open beta, which apparently overwhelmed the servers. Amazing Seasun responded, saying the studio has addressed the problem and is issuing several batches of “Ultimate Maintenance Boxes” to players as compensation.
Those boxes are a constant, and longer-term, point of concern among players though. Individual mechs are unlocked through the store or battle pass, as well as cosmetic purchases. There’s also a loot box mechanic for mods, which come with mild upsides and downsides, that has players worried about long-term balance and time investment.
It seems that while many aspects of Mecha Break can be unlocked for free, it will take at least some time to do so. “Outside of missions, the match to match reward of currency is very low. In order to unlock the entire roster you’ll likely have to play hundreds of games to get there,” one reviewer said.
Another repeat critique across several reviews is the anti-cheat measures. Mecha Break uses the kernel level anti-cheat Anti-Cheat Expert, or ACE. These often allow for greater access to users’ machines, in exchange for monitoring for more extensive cheating options. Usually, players aren’t too happy about anti-cheats like this. The anti-cheat is also apprently causing problems for Linux desktop users, per GamingOnLinux.
Tack on some extra customization woes, like spending currency to re-customize your in-game pilot, and the negative reviews paint a fairly stark picture of frustration over currencies and grinding for unlocks. Mecha Break is set to be a free-to-play game, so some of those do end up coming with the territory. And interestingly, there does seem to be a counter-movement of positive reviews, though it’s still lagging behind the negative ones by raw numbers.
At the very least, while there are some gameplay concerns, those sentiments seem to be broadly positive compared to the out-of-combat critiques. Most of the positive reviews and even many of the negative reviews praise the actual mecha battles, as well as the pilot and mecha customization options, which include a bunch of cosmetics and paints to create, say, your very own Evangelion Unit-02 or Gundam Heavyarms.
We’ll see if Amazing Seasun works to address the negative responses leading into the full release sometime later this year.
Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.
A question, readers. What sounds more fun: doddering about on your own two feet – like an idiot – or storming through deserts on a cannon-packing megacrab? I only make such a clearly self-answering inquiry because for some reason DuneCrawl, or at least the Steam Next Fest demo that shows off its isometric action, seems to think both sides have valid points.
My lunch yesterday consisted of air fried lumps of failed pizza dough from a disastrous first batch. One of my new year’s resolutions was to learn how to make flawless pizza. This might be against the spirit of asceticism these goals usually incorporate, but such puritan edicts have no place here. The platonically perfect slice, like hailstones battering the word ‘bum’ into soft cement, is a natural marvel impervious to notions of morality both spiritual and profane.
Would the dough have turned out better if I’d sought the help of Into The Restless Ruins’s harvest maiden, who grants the desires of those who petition her? Oh. Oh. The ‘harvest’ refers to slaughter, not grain. Should have guessed really.
Or heck, Switch 2!
During Xbox’s recent Indie Showcase, a new gameplay trailer for Hotel Barcelona was debuted ahead of its release later this year.
From writer and director Hidetaka Suehiro (Swery65) and based on an original idea by Goichi Suda (Suda51), Hotel Barcelona looks utterly ridiculous, and we’re sincerely hoping the team at White Owls Inc. has either the Switch or the Switch 2 in its sights as we get closer to its eventual launch. Neither has been confirmed at the time of writing, but we’d honestly be surprised if this title completely skips a Nintendo release.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Two Point Museum is a game about how the crushing practicalities of life eventually force you to spend less and less time on the things you truly care about.
More specifically, it’s a game where I started every stage as an enthusiastic interior design sicko and gradually devolved into the sort of dispassionate bean counter who’d happily shove a snack machine next to a priceless prehistoric armadillo skeleton if it meant raking in a two percent bump to customer satisfaction. Feast on snacks, you swine. Feast so I may harvest your fulfilment to unlock a wall hanging that looks like melted cheese.
Tekken 8 has sold 3 million copies a year from release, Bandai Namco has announced.
The company said it had achieved the sales milestone at a faster pace than Tekken 7, which has so far sold 12 million copies worldwide 10 years after launch.
Tekken 8 had sold 2 million units a month after going on sale in January 2024, so it’s sold an additional 1 million units in the last 12 months.
“We hope that everyone will stick with us, as we have a lot of cool stuff planned to keep the franchise going,” Bandai Namco said during a live stream update.
For context in the fighting game world, NetherRealm’s Mortal Kombat 1 is now up to 5 million copies sold, having gone on sale in September 2023, and Capcom’s Street fighter 6 is on 4.4 million units, having gone on sale June 2023. Tekken 8 has a way to go before matching its competitors, then.
Meanwhile, Bandai Namco announced Anna Williams as the next Tekken 8 DLC character. She launches on March 31 for Character Year 2 Pass owners and April 3 for all.
As part of the roadmap of support for Tekken 8’s second year, summer 2025 will see a new stage and character, fall 2025 a new character, and winter 2025 / 2026 a new stage and character. That’s a total of four DLC characters for Season 2.
It’s not been all plain sailing for Tekken 8. In December, Tekken 8 boss Katsuhiro Harada stepped into a row over the sale of a premium DLC stage after fans accused Bandai Namco of “corporate greed.”
Alongside the release of DLC character Heihachi Mishima and the accompanying free story mode expansion, Bandai Namco sold the Genmaji Temple stage for $4.99, sparking a backlash from fans who had expected the stage to be made available for free — as the stage that accompanied the release of prior DLC character Lidia Sobieska was.
Harada ended up saying he needed to reorganize not only the Tekken business but his role within it to ensure community expectations were met in the future.
IGN’s Tekken 8 review returned a 9/10. We said: “Tekken 8 is an incredible evolution for the series, with tons of single player content, an excellent suite of training tools, a great online experience, and exciting new mechanics that make Tekken more dynamic than ever.”
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.
Call of Duty maker Activision has finally admitted to using generative AI in the development of Black Ops 6, nearly three months after fans had accused the company of creating an “AI slop” Zombie Santa loading screen.
In December, following the release of the Season 1 Reloaded update, fans noticed a number of telltale signs in Black Ops 6 loading screens, calling cards, and art used to explain how Zombies community events work.
At the centre of the backlash was a loading screen image of Zombie Santa, aka ‘Necroclaus,’ which some said showed the undead Father Christmas with six fingers. Generative AI often struggles with hands, adding extra fingers where they shouldn’t be.
Another image of a gloved hand was used to show off a new Zombies community event. It contained what looked like six fingers with no thumb on-screen, suggesting up to seven digits on this hand.
The release of the Zombie Santa image sparked a closer look at other images in Black Ops 6, which some in the Call of Duty community subsequently called into question. Redditor Shaun_LaDee highlighted three images included in paid bundles that have irregularities that could suggest the use of generative AI.
Fans then called on Activision to disclose the use of generative AI for art that is included in bundles that are sold, and following new AI disclosure rules for Steam, it has now added a vague disclosure that covers the entirety of Black Ops 6 on Valve’s platform.
Black Ops 6’s Steam AI Generated Content Disclosure reads: “Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets.”
In July, Wired reported that Activision sold an “AI-generated cosmetic” for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 last year. The cosmetic in question was not named, but was linked to the Yokai’s Wrath bundle released in December 2023. The store did not disclose any use of generative AI for this bundle.
This bundle cost 1,500 COD Points, the premium virtual currency sold for real-world money that generates hundreds of millions of dollars for Activision each year. 1,500 COD Points is approximately valued at $15.
Wired pointed out that Microsoft, which owns Activision Blizzard after its $69 billion acquisition of the company last year, cut 1,900 staff from its gaming business just months after Activision sold this skin. The report alleged that 2D artists’ jobs were being replaced by AI at the company.
“A lot of 2D artists were laid off,” one anonymous Activision artist told the site. “Remaining concept artists were then forced to use AI to aid in their work.” Activision employees were allegedly “made” to sign up for AI training, with its use promoted throughout the business.
Generative AI is one of the hottest topics within the video game and entertainment industries, which have both suffered massive layoffs in recent years. Generative AI thus far has drawn criticism from players and creators due to a mix of ethical issues, rights issues, and AI’s struggles to produce content audiences actually enjoy. For instance, Keywords Studios attempted to create an experimental game internally using entirely AI. The game failed, with Keywords citing to investors that AI was “unable to replace talent.”
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.
In typical shinobi style, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has slipped through the cracks of physical and digital retail and sneakishly released itself a month ahead of schedule. The game is due to launch on 20th March, but people are already posting photographs of boxed copies, while others say they’ve managed to lift a code from the crevices of the PlayStation store.
Videos of the game have been popping up on Youtube like Ninja Whac-a-Moles, no sooner seen than shurikened by Ubisoft’s lawyers. Quite how all this has happened remains to be explained, but Ubisoft are naturally rather annoyed. They’ve put out statements asking people to avoid sharing spoilers, plus the boilerplate cautionary note that any footage you encounter isn’t representative of the quality of the final game.
Sequel is finally launching later this year.
It’s been a bloomin’ long time coming, but Level-5’s Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is finally making its way to the Switch on 22nd May 2025 following multiple delays.
To really drive the message that this date is likely final, two new commercials have been released (thanks, Go Nintendo) that highlight some tasty gameplay before reconfirming the game’s upcoming launch. They’re not particularly lengthy, but we get a good glimpse at what you’ll be getting up to during the time with the game, including the various farming mechanics, mining, crafting, and, of course, a sprinkling of combat.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
