Last month, Nintendo announced it would be discontinuing the My Nintendo Gold Points program, with it no longer possible to earn these points after a certain date.
In case you missed this, Nintendo has issued a reminder on social media ahead of the big day next week on 24th March 2025 (or 25th March depending on your location). While you’ll no longer be able to receive Gold Points from purchases, there will still be other ways to earn points:
In February, Nintendo revealed Game Vouchers would not extend to the Switch 2 game exclusives in an official notice on its website. Now, in an update, Nintendo has gone to the extent of reuploading its YouTube game voucher trailer with fine print specifying the same thing.
“Nintendo Switch Game Vouchers cannot be redeemed for games exclusive to Nintendo Switch 2 and may not be combined with any other sale, discount, or promtional offer unless otherwise specified.”
Listen to some of Kirby and the Forgotten Land today.
Nintendo has been regularly updating its Nintendo Music app with different soundtracks but this week it’s slightly different
Following the addition of multiple albums last week, today we’re getting just part of an album. It’s 23 tracks from the recent Switch title Kirby and the Forgotten Land – with the rest of the game’s songs scheduled to arrive on the app “later this year”.
You see that mountain on the horizon? You can go there! That old gaming chestnut has been around for a very long time now, but for old-school gamers who remember the compartmentalised kingdoms of yore, there’s a special magic still to be derived from being able to trek your way to a distant summit in modern open worlds. Video games, eh? Marvellous.
Paradox have announced that 4X space strategy game Stellaris‘s next major overhaul will launch on 5th May, alongside the game’s BioGenesis DLC pack. The latter adds living spaceships together with new civics, traits and megastructures, but I’m more interested in the 4.0 update, which they’re branding the “phoenix update” in that it aims to overhaul performance problems caused by the 4X game’s update-bloated systems, while making “guidance and pacing” changes with new players in mind.
It doesn’t sound nearly as exciting on the surface as living spaceships, I’ll grant you, but this is a 4X game, don’t forget – the mythological firebird is in the detail.
♫ Stabbing a man. Stabbing a man. Sometimes in Greece. Sometimes in Japan. Stabbing a man. Sometimes in a meadow. Here is our verdict on Assassin’s Creed Shadows ♫
Nic: To kick off this verdict, I have no choice but to ask my most insightful question: how Assassin-y is this Assassin’s Creed Game?
Jeremy: This is the first AssCreed game I’ve engaged with since Assassin’s Creed II, which I watched my roommate play through in university. So my opinion is not especially scientific, but from what I’ve seen it is very Assassin-y. The story – which is serviceable if not anything original – revolves around tackling a group of masked bad guys known as the Onryo (that’s Japanese for ghost), who are introduced with cool chanbara-style music. You’ve got to kill all of them, and sometimes you have to kill other folks who are connected with them, and in general there is a whole lot of assassinating going on, either with Naoe (who slices and dices with the standard hidden blade) or Yasuke (who has a ‘brutal’ assassination where he shoves his katana into someone’s face).
While its patent lawsuit with Nintendo rages in the background, Palworld developer Pocketpair isn’t willing to completely turn its back on the House of Mario just yet. Namely, the dev would still consider Switch 2 a prime target for a Palworld port down the line, if it’s powerful enough, of course.
That’s according to Pocketpair communications director John ‘Bucky’ Buckley, who recently told IGN that a Switch 2 port is “100% worth considering” if the console is “beefy enough”. He made it clear that the studio has no inside knowledge about the console’s specs for the time being, but hey, we’re all hoping for a power boost.
Few places hold as much shared history for Helldivers 2 players as Malevelon Creek. Around this time last year, it was the site of a massive Automaton incursion, with divers fighting through a hail of scrap and laser-fire. Now, it seems like we might be heading back to the Creek.
In its most recent update, Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Studios announced in-game that players had failed the most recent Major Order. The Automaton Incineration Corps, armed with powerful flame weaponry, made significant gains.
“The enemy remains at large,” the notification read. “Reports indicate the enemy’s strategic goal is to seize old industrial assets in the Severin Sector, where the Automatons first emerged.”
It seems that the automatons are seeking to reclaim “old industrial assets” in the Severin Sector, the battlefield where some of the bloodiest fights on the automaton front took place, including Malevelon Creek,… pic.twitter.com/6eqnDitM5p
Now, with the prospect of Automatons returning the sector to take territory, potentially armed with flame weaponry, Helldivers are gearing up for a scrap.
“A part of me is in fear as I was there but another part of me WANTS to go back,” one Reddit user wrote, in response to a post about the Major Order update. “… a part of me never left,” another responded.
Some expressed terror at returning, while others are ready to hold out again. “I fought hard for that planet once, and I’m prepared to do so a second time,” one user responded.
The Major Order failure has raised another point of concern for Helldivers 2 players, though. As one post outlined, some Major Orders can feel frustrating to accomplish, organize around, or not feel incentivized. As responders note, the active player base can also vary, which can make quantity-driven Orders difficult if they’re not based around the current average.
One player puts it succinctly: “Stop giving us kill quantity MOs when the player base can vary by up to 70k over the course of a single week.” Further replies suggest percentage-based scaling.
Failure can make for interesting storytelling, as proven by the initial fight at Malevelon Creek. Heading into what feels like a major moment for Helldivers 2 though, it’ll be interesting to see how Arrowhead handles it all. Alongside teasing a return to one of its most infamous battle sites, the team has also sent a black hole directly towards Super Earth. There’s no shortage of threats for the Helldivers these days.
♫ Stabbing a man. Stabbing a man. Sometimes in Greece. Sometimes in Japan. Stabbing a man. Sometimes in a meadow. Here is our verdict on 
