“Progress has still been steady”.
Undertale creator Toby Fox has rolled out his “holiday newsletter” for 2024 and it’s got some “progress updates” in it about Deltarune Chapter 3, 4, and 5.
Chapter 3 has recently been tested by a “professional team on PC” and it’s “pretty solid now”. According to Fox, “only console-related aspects remain”. He’s even got some impressions from the team who playtested it:
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Japan-only for now.
SNK has announced new ACA NEOGEO Selections – this time including Vol. 3 and Vol. 4. It will be releasing for the Switch next year on 10th April 2025, with each collection featuring 10 games previously released as ACA NEOGEO games on the eShop.
Here’s a look at the collection, courtesy of Gematsu:
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The comeback wasn’t going to happen. I was blowing it. I lost my first character in my first match of The Hidden Ones because I didn’t cash out with my Ultimate Skill, but I made a comeback with my mid before losing her to my opponent’s anchor. I didn’t have a great answer for what he was doing, and I was convinced I was going to waste what had started off as a great comeback. Then my anchor came out. It was my first game; I’d never used her before. And at first, it was going about the same, and then I realized what I was doing. I canceled my default combo into another combo then another, and cashed out with my Ultimate. And on the last hit, I got the kill. God, I love fighting games, and if my time with it is any indication, The Hidden Ones is living up to what makes the genre so great.
If you’re not up on The Lore ™, The Hidden Ones is based on the anime Hitori No Shita: The Outcasts, which in turn is based on Under One Person, a Chinese webcomic. Whew. Okay, so the history is a little complicated, but you don’t really need to know what’s going on with the other parts of the series to vibe with The Hidden Ones. I have no experience with the anime, but I was able to follow what I saw pretty easily. I started with the story mode, which dropped me into the shoes of Wang Ye. Ye is one of the Outcasts, blessed with one of the Eight Secret Arts, which were generally believed to have been lost to time. Once people figure out what Wang Ye has, though, they go after him to get it.
Wang Ye tries to nip this in the bud by speaking with Li Gaofeng, the head of the Li Troupe, and trying to convince him to leave Wang and his family alone. Impressed by Wang’s gumption and fighting prowess, Li agrees to let him go and leave his family alone. Of course, things don’t go as planned and Wang finds himself framed for Li’s murder and battling the Li Troupe as he tries to escape.
Whew, okay, set up. What’s cool, though, is the game Morefun games has made out of this. The Hidden Ones would probably be best described as an arena fighter, but you don’t just go from fight to fight. Between the fights themselves, you’ve got the ability to run around and check out The Hidden Ones’s world, whether that means enjoying the environmental detail on display or checking out a ledger or diary you find in the world. This attention to detail is important: during an interview that happened between my two play sessions, Lead Game Designer Fox Lin and Senior Game Designer Stan Fan told me that the team at Morefun spent a long time capturing the detail of these environments, many of which are based on actual, individual Chinese streets. They wanted the world of The Hidden Ones to feel real, and that comes across even in the relatively small area I was playing in.
The same is true of The Hidden Ones’s visual style. This game is stunning, and that attention to detail is clear in everything from the characters to the way they fight. This is intentional, too. The story and world of The Hidden Ones are based heavily (though not exclusively) in Chinese martial arts and myth, and that meant getting the little details right, right down to the motion capture done by real martial artists.
Morefun is also quick to note that while the Outcasts are incredibly powerful, they’re also folks going about their day. Maybe they’re going out to buy groceries or just using their abilities to accomplish their goals in subtle ways. The point is these are regular people, and that’s a major part of the story here, even if they are throwing punches and casting magic.
Speaking of the fighting, The Hidden Ones feels great when you’re throwing punches. This is an arena fighter, so movement is crucial, but the rock-paper-scissors interactions of what makes a fighting game a game fighting work are here, too. You’ve got your basic attacks, which lose to special attacks; those losey to your defensive stance; and your defensive stance loses to attacks, which become throws if they’re in that stance. There’s also a dodge, which costs a limited amount of stamina, and you can time perfectly for a Witch Time-style slowdown that will allow you to retaliate when you otherwise wouldn’t, and a parry that you can perform out of your defensive stance during special attacks, so you can swap from defense to offense with a well-timed button press.
Stamina also comes into play on offense. You can spend it to cancel actions — whether they’re physical or special attacks — allowing you to build custom combos and combos into your Ultimate Skills, which is how I won that match I told you about at the start. If you’re the one getting your face rearranged, you can also spend stamina to break out of combos and reset to neutral. Put together, all of this means that, despite The Hidden Ones’s fairly simple control scheme and combo structure, you’re constantly making interesting choices where you’re alternating between playing neutral, reacting, and pre-empting your opponent, all while managing your character’s unique skills (Wang Ye, for instance, has a special attack that can go into three different variations). The right play at the right time, like say, throwing out a special attack when you think they’re going to swing at you, can swing a match.
The real meat and potatoes, and my favorite part of my time with The Hidden Ones, is going to be the mano a mano fights between your three-person teams against other players, but I also really enjoyed the three boss fights I got to play. The first, which I ran into during the story mode, started off as a one-on-one brawl before the boss in question brought out her skyscraper-sized snake, forcing me to play around its massive fangs before its master would come down and I could get back to the fine art of knocking her out.
If that’s not enough for you, though, there’s also Trial mode, where you can face off against a boss with any of the characters you’ve got. There were two available in the demo I played, and both were challenging, especially on the highest of the available difficulties. Both eventually went down, but they forced me to use characters I knew, pick my spots, and learn their patterns. It’s a fun change of pace for a game like this, and I’m eager to see what other fights look like in the future.
When my time with The Hidden Ones ended, I left excited, and wishing I could have played more, especially more multiplayer. But I left with a good idea of what Morefun is trying to accomplish, and I liked how much cool stuff there was and how unique and interesting the characters they’ve created here are. Arena fighters are a tricky business, but so far Morefun has nailed the balance of simplicity, depth, and game feel that any good fighter needs while providing more to do if you’re not looking to throw down online. I’m excited to see where The Hidden Ones goes, and in the meantime, I’ll be thinking about landing that Ultimate Skill at the right moment, and how cool it was that The Hidden Ones gave me the options to play how I wanted in that moment. Like its characters, The Hidden Ones knows even when the chips are down and the outcome is uncertain, there’s always a play to be made, hidden in plain sight.
Around £250k’s work have been taken in a “targeted attack”.
Thousands of pounds of Pokémon Trading Cards have been stolen from Ace Grading, a Banbury-based Card Grading company run by TCG YouTuber Randolph.
As reported by the BBC, the break in took place on Friday 13th December in what Randolph and his company has called a “targeted attack”. Thames Valley Police believes that an estimated GBP £250,000 worth of cards have been stolen from the company’s headquarters.
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From iconic names like Indiana Jones and Final Fantasy to indie sensations like Balatro and Animal Well, 2024 has provided gamers with a variety of incredible experiences. IGN is in the process of picking our game of the year, but now you have the chance to have your voice heard too in the IGN People’s Choice Tournament.
With our partners at Truth, we’ve selected 64 of the best titles of the year to be placed in a bracket and randomly sorted into groups. They’ll go head-to-head, with the winner moving on to the next round and the loser being eliminated. As the rounds progress, the competition will get tougher, until there’s only one title left standing as the fan-voted Game of the Year. If you’re familiar with how March Madness brackets work, it’s the same concept.
Voting will take place on IGN’s Instagram starting today, December 18. We’ll post the matchups to our Instagram stories around 3 p.m. ET / 2 p.m. CT / 12 p.m. PT, and you’ll have 24 hours to vote. The 32 winners will move on to the next round, where the process will repeat. Here are the dates when each round will be posted (around the same times listed above), so make sure to check back on our Instagram stories to continue voting for your favorite games:
As we mentioned earlier, the bracket placements of the 64 games we selected were randomized. They were split up into four groups, like the regions of March Madness. Group 1 is led by some heavy hitters: Helldivers 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. But they’ll have to go up against breakout indie Animal Well. Plus, three popular sports games: Madden NFL 25, College Football 25, and MLB The Show 24. And you can’t look past the beautiful visuals of Unicorn Overlord and Infinity Nikki.
Group 2 is led by the excellent Silent Hill 2 remake, but it’ll face stiff competition from a trio of RPGs — Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance. There’s also heralded remasters and remakes from Nintendo with Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. And we can’t leave out the technical marvel Senua’a Sage: Hellblade II, or another standout indie in Lorelai and the Laser Eyes.
Group 3 ended up stacked with three games that have been cleaning up during awards season: Astro Bot, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and Black Myth: Wukong. They’re joined by an eclectic group of competitors. There’s entries from massive franchises in Star Wars Outlaws and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 (which will face off against each other in Round 1). There’s games from other long-running series in Tekken 8 and Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble. There’s the latest version of sports franchises in EA Sports FC 25 and NBA 2K25. But also some notable new IPs with Stellar Blade and Slitterhead.
Rounding things out, Group 4 is also full of some big names. First, there’s indie darling Balatro, which has also done very well for itself this awards season. But it’ll have to get through two huge RPG sequels in Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth and Dragon’s Dogma 2, as well as a popular RPG remake in Persona 3 Reload. And they’ll be up against several family-friendly opponents in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, LEGO Horizon Adventures, Super Mario Party Jamboree, and The Plucky Squire. Not to mention the often overlooked Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and surprise hit Enshrouded.
As you can see, this year is going to be a hotly contested race. So make sure you head over to Instagram to vote for each matchup and help determine which games will move on and which will be sent packing. It’ll all build to a big reveal of the fan voted Game of the Year. Happy voting!
According to tradition, the holiday season actually began over a month ago when Mariah Carey once again emerged from a giant block of ice to sing Christmas anthem “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” Fortnite’s is arriving a bit late to the holiday party, but leakers say an upcoming update to the game will replicate this timeless holiday tradition and have Mariah Carey burst forth from a large block of ice in the game, bringing with her holiday character skins and the Winterfest event.
Santa Shaq, Snoop Dogg, and Mariah Carey pic.twitter.com/zGvE8xyhQH
— iFireMonkey (@iFireMonkey) December 18, 2024
This news comes from prominent Fortnite leaker iFireMonkey, who has previously been a source of credible Fortnite leaks. Per their information, Mariah Carey will be getting a Fortnite skin as part of its upcoming Winterfest 2024 event, alongside Snoop Dogg and Shaquille O’Neal. All of them will, of course, be dressed in holiday finery.
Another leaker, Egyptian_Leaker, suggests that there will be an additional event involving a large block of ice that’s already appeared on the Fortnite map. Per them, the ice block will defrost after three days, and Mariah Carey will appear in-game as an NPC handing out gifts to players.
MINI-LIVE EVENT CONFIRMED: There’s a very small Winterfest event at the start of it ‼️
Mariah Carey will be an Ice block on the map for 3 days. After she defrosts there will be a small sequence with Fireworks.
Mariah Carey will then be available as an NPC that gives gifts to… pic.twitter.com/lzoBCUuues— Egyptian Fortnite Leaker (@Egyptian_Leaker) December 18, 2024
For the time being, she remains tragically frozen:
Alongside Mariah Carey, iFireMonkey has posted a number of other holiday-themed leaks we’re likely to see in the coming days. These include loads of holiday-themed skins and accessories (one of them is a backpack full of bread dogs!), new emotes and dances, and the return of Sgt. Winter as an NPC. We’ve also heard that Skibidi Toilet is coming to Fortnite…tonight. Just in time for the holidays.
Winterfest 2024 launches on December 20 and runs through January 7. In addition to the rumored holiday skins and Mariah Carey’s ice block extravaganza, Epic Games has confirmed we’ll see the return of Jonesy’s Cabin.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
“A unicorn is worth more than riches”.
In 2009, in the run-up to Christmas, I remember poring over a recent issue of Official Nintendo Magazine looking for games I might want for the holiday season. Flicking through the pages and taking in every single word, one review in particular jumped out at me. The art style was something I’d never seen in a video game before. I was obsessed with Japanese folklore at the time. And, even though the gameplay sounded like nothing new, it scratched my 2D action-platformer itch.
That review was for Muramasa: The Demon Blade, and this was my first brush with Vanillaware. My love of the Osaka-based developer, and this game in particular, is documented, but it was established at the very moment I saw Muramasa on the TV screen, with Edo Japan rendered in beautiful watercolour visuals. Vanillaware has always been known as the studio that makes pretty games with pretty food – and, sometimes, the studio that gives us, um, very exaggerated art – but over the past four years, I’ve seen a real shift in appreciation that I’ve been hoping for.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
A few weeks ago, we released the latest trailer for Atomfall, our upcoming game where you will have to uncover the mystery behind what happened at the UK’s Windscale nuclear power station in the 1950s. This is a fictionalised telling of what happened following this real-life nuclear disaster in Northern England.
The trailer showcases the game’s folk horror influences and give you the first glimpse of Casterfell Woods, an eerie location within Atomfall where you will encounter an unsettling wicker man and a ringing telephone box that needs to be answered.
But what were our influences behind Casterfell Woods? We thought it would be interesting to let you know how we came up with this unique aesthetic.
From the outset, we knew that we wanted some spookier areas of the game, where we could emphasise folk horror and provide some contrast with our more idyllic areas. Most of our outdoor environments are very green, vibrant, pretty, and very much British. But for Casterfell, we wanted the player to question what things might happen in the deep dark woods. Hidden things can happen there, secret and ancient things… We knew that this would be a ton of fun – so started doing our homework.
Our initial goal was to establish the visual baseline for our sandbox spaces, with a focus on the content that we needed to build out our various natural biomes. Then, we could start adding our thematic twists.
Early in the project, the team took quite a few trips up to the English Lake District for reference gathering and to capture photogrammetry content. For several of the non-Brits on the team (myself included, as an American) this was incredibly exotic. For anyone who hasn’t been there, it is an extremely diverse area of outstanding natural beauty and diversity. It is just so wet and green, with lakes and streams everywhere, and tremendous stone formations topping the high fells and hilltops. The entire area is just dripping with greenery, ferns, and moss.
As I was new to driving in the UK, I found those tiny Cumbrian roads terrifying! There are slate stone walls on one edge, and steep drops into a lake on the other. But the trips were very educational, and the views were sensational. By the end of the trip, we had a ton of fantastic reference, fabulous photogrammetry content, and were confident that we could ground the game visually in the north of Britain.
Next up, were the twists. How could we make our world different from a typical holiday trip to a beautiful natural destination? How could we layer in an older era, and warp things a bit more?
We started looking at storytelling focused on folk horror, sci-fi, and old-school British imaginative fiction for inspiration. Films like The Wicker Man, The Blair Witch Project, Annihilation, and Midsommar were great to look at. Then of course we have BBC programming like Doctor Who, The Prisoner, and The Quatermass Xperiment, as well as books by John Wyndham, who has so many wonderfully weird stories.
We wanted the player to feel that they are stepping into an older era. The real Windscale nuclear accident was in 1957, which is when the quarantine began in our game. As we were intending to be a period piece, how could we impress that into a natural area? This was a tough one, and we had a lot of conversations about it. I mean, especially in the woods, where trees pretty much would have looked the same in 1957, 2024, or 1066.
We began asking ourselves who was living out there, beyond the comforts of village life? How would they survive with no manufactured resources?
The answer was pretty simple in that these outcasts would survive just as they had in archaic times. We would regress them even further back and have them use what was at hand. Wattle (and daub) construction became our go-to architectural style. Thatched roofs, woven branches and vines, and dry-stone structures also seemed to fit. Even though many of these traditional methods of construction can still be seen in the modern day, they are really ancient and foreign to many of us who grew up elsewhere.
Then, taking into account our inspirational media reference, and our desire for more Britishness, we began layering even more symbolic imagery. Ancient markings, effigies, and wickermen, all intermingled with more traditional maypoles and bunting to give strong pagan religious overtones.
We think you are going to love exploring Casterfell Woods and discovering the secrets that it holds when Atomfall is released on March 27 for Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC, and day one with Game Pass. We can’t wait for you guys to get your hands on the game.
Rebellion
Desperate Combat: With weapons and ammunition scarce, each frenetic engagement will see you blend marksmanship with vicious hand-to-hand combat. Manage your heart rate to hold a steady aim and ensure you have the energy you need to reach for your cricket bat and land the killer blow.
Green and Unpleasant Land: The picturesque British countryside, with rolling green hills, lush valleys, and rural villages belie the dangers that await you. Navigate cult-controlled ruins, natural caves, nuclear bunkers and more as you explore this dense, foreboding world.
Reimagining Windscale: A fictional reimagining of a real-world event, Atomfall draws from science fiction, folk horror, and Cold War influences to create a world that is eerily familiar yet completely alien.
The post Creating Atomfall’s Haunting Casterfell Woods – Check Out Exclusive New Screenshots appeared first on Xbox Wire.
It was wonderful to see the launch of the PlayStation 5 Pro console a few weeks ago. For those interested in the in-depth technical aspects of PS5 Pro, we’ve put together a video describing the bits and bytes behind the console: how it came together, how it works, and why it’s the first step in an exciting new journey for gamers. You can watch below!
Note: the below video is focused on the technology behind PS5 Pro and doesn’t feature new game announcements or new gameplay footage.
In the presentation, you’ll learn what the “advanced” in “Advanced Ray Tracing” really means, the difference between FLOPS and TOPS, and some of the challenges involved in developing the efficient machine learning hardware needed for PSSR – the AI-driven upscaling featured in PS5 Pro.
At the end of the presentation, I also do something that we typically don’t do at SIE – I touch on how our learnings with PS5 Pro will fuel our future ambitions in our never-ending quest to push the boundaries of play. AMD has been a fantastic partner for SIE for many years now, and I’m honored to announce that we have begun a deeper collaboration with a focus on Machine Learning-based technology for graphics and gameplay. Both AMD and SIE share many of the same goals related to advancing the medium of video games. Watch the presentation to learn more about this exciting plan!
We also did an encore presentation of this lecture before an audience including journalists from Digital Foundry, IGN, and Wccftech. Keep an eye out for their coverage, and more discussion of RDNA, ray tracing, and machine learning.
Ubisoft’s failed Call of Duty rival XDefiant has received a hefty final update today, December 18, ahead of its shutdown in 2025.
The XDefiant X/Twitter account shared the patch notes, below, while executive producer Mark Rubin thanked fans and the development team in his own post for their dedication to the game since before and after its May 2024 launch.
“I wish everyone who worked on this game directly or indirectly the best for their future endeavors,” Rubin said. “And the same goes for all of the fans who played our game, who streamed it, or who worked to build the XDefiant community.”
XDefiant’s final S3.0+ update includes the previously announced Assassins class, which are modelled after Assassin’s Creed’s titular heroes, alongside myriad additional features that were planned for now cancelled future seasons.
This includes a total of three new factions, 13 new maps, a new experience called Tactical, a means of gaining experience versus bots, new weapons, new progression mechanics for Faction Mastery and Badges, and more.
xDefiant is a free-to-play, fast-paced arena shooter that combines intense gunplay with personalized loadouts and specialized factions. But that market can be incredibly brutal, and perhaps after PlayStation arena shooter Concord was shut down after just two weeks on the market, some fans of xDefiant grew concerned for its longevity.
While Rubin said in September that XDefiant “is absolutely not dying,” Ubisoft announced earlier this month it would be shut down on June 3, 2025.
New Faction: Assassins
New Faction: Wolves
New Faction: Blood Dragon
Fixed a couple of glitches with the Cleaners’ Incinerator Drone when Hijacked by a DedSec player:
New S3 Maps
New Future Maps – These maps were scheduled for later seasons but were too much fun not to release!
Fixes and Changes:
New Modes:
New Party Modes Playlist
Fixes and Changes:
Ranked BOMB!
Top 500 Leaderboard
Ranked Emblem in HUD
New Ranked Rewards
Fixes and Changes:
Fixes and Changes:Sawed-off Shotgun Balance Adjustment
Introduced the Tapered Barrel, an attachment for most weapons that increases handling speed but reduces damage. Here are the pluses and minuses:
New Reticle Customization
Fixes and Changes:
Fixes and Changes:
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
