Link, Mario, Samus, a whole hoard of beautiful folk from the Fire Emblem series. We all love a good hero and Nintendo has become pretty darn great at creating them. You know what we all love more than a good hero though? A good boy.
We are, of course, talking about dogs. Regardless of whether you are a ‘dog person’ or a ‘cat person’ (team Nintendo Life seems to be an even 50/50 split), there is no denying a pup’s goodness. Regardless of the dog’s training, obedience or, indeed, sex, we dog-loving humans throw out the phrase “what a good boy” at near enough every pooch we meet. And yes, that includes ones that we come across in games.
July continues to bring the heat with another packed Free Play Days weekend! PGA Tour 2K23 Cross-Gen Edition, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition, Meet Your Maker, and TramSim Console Edition are available this weekend for Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members to play from Thursday, July 20 at 12:01 a.m. PDT until Sunday, July 23 at 11:59 p.m. PDT.
Starting September 14, Xbox Live Gold members will automatically become Game Pass Core members. Game Pass Core will give players access to our advanced multiplayer network, a select collection of over 25 games to play with friends around the world, and exclusive member deals! Read more about Game Pass Core at Xbox Wire.
How to Start Playing
Find and install the games on each of the individual game details page on Xbox.com. Clicking through will send you to the Microsoft Store, where you must be signed in to see the option to install with your Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership. To download on console, click on the Subscriptions tab in the Xbox Store and enter the Gold member area to locate the Free Play Days collection on your Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.
Keep the Fun Going
Purchase the game and other editions at a limited time discount and continue playing while keeping your Gamerscore and earned achievements during the event! Please note that discounts and percentages may vary by title and region.
Challenge the greatest players on the PGA Tour and find your swagger in PGA Tour 2K23. Bolstered by a diverse cast of playable pros, you can swing on world-renowned, officially-licensed courses. Enjoy a bevy of online competitive modes, ranging from competitive Online Societies to the always-funTopgolf mode and adrenaline-inducing Divot Derby.
Become legendary monster slayer Geralt of Rivia and explore a vast dark fantasy world in TheWitcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition. Immerse yourself in the monster-infested continent across the epic main adventure plus two acclaimed expansions Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. This Complete Edition is updated with a suite of improvements that take advantage of Xbox Series X|S, including community-made mods, performance and quality modes, a variety of gameplay tweaks — as well as ray tracing elements on Xbox Series X.
Meet Your Maker is a building game of brutal expression and conquest. Create deadly fortresses using traps, guards, and more or raid those built by others in a post-apocalyptic test of skill and wits. Build and raid solo or combine your creativity and play with a friend from July 20 through July 23.
Urban Transport comes to life in TramSim: Console Edition! Experience photo-realistic graphics in two iconic European cities, no matter where you are in the world, and drive true-to-life trams on a variety of lines. Start with beginner mode, learn in the tutorials, and master the art of tram driving, the passengers of Vienna and Munich await in TramSim: Console Edition!
Don’t miss out on this exciting Free Play Days for Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate member! Learn more about Free Play Days here and stay tuned to Xbox Wire to find out about future Free Play Days and all the latest Xbox gaming news.
Some of the best coming-of-age stories happen in times of great upheaval: war, revolution, calamity… but graduating high school while you’re staring down your almost-inevitable extinction, at the hands of one of the greatest disasters to ever hit planet Earth? That’s some rough stuff. Such is the setting of Goodbye Volcano High, a dramatic, narrative-driven tale of awkward proto-avian teenagers at a turning point when they should have the rest of their lives ahead of them–except they don’t.
Montreal-based indie studio KO_OP has been working on Goodbye Volcano High for several years now, and its tale of prehistoric high-school life is releasing very soon on PS4 and PS5. We sat down with the game’s director, Kyle McKernan, to get a deeper dive into character writing, wrangling the narrative, and how to weave mini-games into the fabric of a sprawling drama.
A drama for the Stone Ages
“The themes at the core of Goodbye Volcano High are love, friendship and youth facing what feels like an inevitable catastrophe,” says McKernan. “The game explores what it means to embrace family and found family in a time of crisis and the different ways people cope with impending disaster… One of our driving focuses was how you reconcile all your wants, needs, goals and love when the time to reach closure has been cut short.”
No matter what species you are, being a teenager isn’t easy, and the narrative of Goodbye Volcano High can often tackle some tough subjects: love, facing others’ expectations, drug use, and the looming specter of premature death. “Crafting the narrative was challenging because it demanded we probe some serious and often difficult topics for ourselves in order to realize them in our characters,” McKernan continues. “Facing mortality isn’t an easy thing to ruminate on, and it especially isn’t easy to focus on for years of development. Making sure we honored those feelings in our story was important to us and we placed a lot of pressure on ourselves to get it as right as we could.”
Tough situations means sometimes making tough choices, and when faced with tough decisions, you’ll be able to peer directly into the mind of protagonist Fang. “Our UI can reflect Fang’s thoughts to the player. When the player is making choices, they aren’t just picking something, they’re seeing what Fang thinks and what they are willing to do or say.”
Prehistoric personalities
Key to crafting an engaging narrative are characters that players come to love (or love to hate.) Volcano High’s students include: Fang, a would-be indie band vocalist; songwriter and guitarist Trish; drummer and dungeon master extraordinaire Reed; shy Student Council president Naomi; and straight-laced class president Naser–who also happens to be Fang’s brother.
To help the narrative connect with players, the KO_OP team put extra care into developing the personalities of these central characters, along with the many other faces at Volcano High. “The key focus for us is to let the player see themself in our characters one way or another,” says McKernan. “In games, you have a lot more tools at your disposal for doing that because the player is directly engaging with and influencing the game itself. We want the player to get inside the mind of Fang and draw out the experience they get from it naturally. Our cast of characters has a wide range of reactions to the end of the world–we hope we’ve provided a space for players to engage with their own internal struggles through our characters.”
The central cast went through quite a few iterations as development progressed, as McKernan tells us. “Our characters went through a lot of revision and refocusing as our overarching narrative and mood of the game settled into place. As the threads of our story evolved, the characters’ voices and personalities needed to match them and vice versa. It was a long process to make the characters’ internal struggles feel real and realized in the context of the game’s story. The push and pull of development requires a willingness to toss things out and break things down so that you can reform them.”
Ultimately, McKernan hopes that players will find themselves connecting to the gang. “We wanted the player to feel what our characters feel in the game. Not just fear and anxiety (which we have an ample supply of in the real world) but love, camaraderie, creativity, and hope amplified in the face of immense crisis. Even though the core of our narrative is difficult in a lot of ways, we want the player to come away from it feeling hopeful. That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of ups and downs there–we hope it’s all keenly felt. To us, authentic characters are critical to any narrative art, so for us it was extremely important that we feel our characters have an authenticity to their behavior, thoughts and feelings–especially for us to feel a connection to our work.”
Jurassic jams
One of the story’s main elements is Fang and Trish’s band, VVORM DRAMA. The band isn’t just a piece of background information–there will be parts of the game where you’ll need to play a rhythm mini-game to belt out a jam. As McKernan explains, these portions are just as emotionally charged as the rest of the game. “In order to let the music performance moments shine emotionally, it was important that we create rhythm mechanics that let the player be a part of the music while not being overly challenging. We wanted the player to engage with Fang’s fantasy around music and let them in on everything that means to the character.”
You won’t just be alternating between making decisions and playing tunes, though–there are also bits of experiential gameplay that help set the stage for what’s currently happening. “We have moments in the game where you get to look around at people in the world and get thoughts on them, or take a look at their social media posts that help to give a sense of place to the world our characters inhabit. We also have moments that show the emotions specific characters are feeling and engage the player in them: moments like doom scrolling social media when things get bad or playing music for your friends and hoping they like your song. Our mini-games serve to flesh out the world on a larger scale and the relationships/characters on a smaller scale.”
This prehistoric story may have been 66 million years in the making, but you won’t have to wait much longer to hang out with Fang and friends. Goodbye Volcano High will be available digitally for PS5 and PS4 on August 29.
If you’ve been waiting for an opportunity to pick up the 14-inch-tall Gengar Squishmallow, now’s your time to shine as Amazon has it in stock for $24.99. It’s been totally sold out at other retailers for a while, or avaialable with a huge markup from third-party sellers. But Amazon has it in stock at list price. Make sure to grab it quickly before it’s gone!
Gengar Squishmallow at Amazon
If you’re curious to see more toys and collectibles that are available right now to pick up, or are up for preorder, we’ve got a few worth checking out. In the world of Funko, you can preorder Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Bitty Pops, which are set to release on July 31. These have four different boxes available as well, so you have quite a variety to choose from. One box even has Raphael, Donatello, Leonardo, and a mystery figure in 8-bit format, which is a fun way to have them on display!
There are also Funko Advent Calendars available to buy. Yes, you can kick off your shopping for the holidays right now in July, if you want! These come in two different boxes: a DC Heroes one and a Pokemon one, the latter of which would fit perfectly if you’re picking up that Gengar plush from above. And if you’re truly in the spirit of the holiday season right now, you can even preorder some of Hallmark’s Keepsake Christmas ornaments, which are set to release on July 24. These feature some very fun options as well, from Samus to Shazam to Finding Nemo.
If you’d like to see even more toys and collectibles, make sure to check out our toys and collectibles gift guide for 2023. Here, you can find a wide variety of items that are worth picking up for yourself or someone else in your life, including several different Amiibo, LEGO, and plenty of action figures.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelance writer who works with the Guides and Commerce teams here at IGN.
The GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin will no longer come to Steam. Back in March, it was announced that the long-running emulator would get a surprise release on the storefront, but that was soon “indefinitely postponed” due to legal troubles with Nintendo and Valve. Now the team have cleared up the situation and are “abandoning” their efforts completely.
“First things first – Nintendo did not send Valve or Dolphin a [DMCA Takedown] notice against our Steam page,” the team clarified in a recent blog post, before adding that “Nintendo has not taken any legal action against Dolphin Emulator or Valve.”
What actually happened was a legal back and forth. Valve’s legal department had contacted Nintendo regarding the emulator’s Steam release. A lawyer representing Nintendo asked Valve to prevent it. And then Valve forwarded that statement to the Dolphin team, “and told us that we had to come to an agreement with Nintendo in order to release it on Steam.”
The Last of Us Part 1 on PC is being modded by one fan to include a brutal and bloody first-person mode.
As reported by ComicBook.com, YouTube user Voyagers Revenge uploaded an eight-minute video of the mod in action, showing the intense and graphic battles of The Last of Us from a new perspective.
Featuring a handful of sections of the game alongside some modded content, the video shows the player taking on human and infected enemies alongside the creepy clickers and bloaters that are even more terrifying in first-person.
Showing off a handful of weapons too, from grenades to pistols to molotov cocktails and assault rifles, the mod truly displays the goriest side of The Last of Us.
No release date for the first-person mode was shared, though the modder did reveal some other elements of its gameplay. Every encounter is on a custom difficulty to make things as realistic and brutal as possible.
“My First-Person Mode concept showcase lets us survive up close and personal in this beautiful, realistic, chaotic world that Naughty Dog has developed,” Voyagers Revenge said.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that when aliens threaten to exterminate your home, only the world’s most insufferable, unhinged scientists can help you save the day. XCOM knows it, and now Xenonauts 2 is following suit. Case in point, yer man up the top there. Look at that smug mullet and his unimpressed raised eyebrow. He doesn’t give two hoots you’re here to save the world from extinction, leading (probably several) teams of nine (unwitting) brave souls into the unknown (i.e.: repeated death by alien overwatch). He’s got research to do. Organs to pickle. Dead alien carcasses to splice. Yeah, the same ones you literally strapped into your troops’ tactical belts in the last mission so you could bring them home. We had stinking brain monsters wrapped round our torsos, guy! The least you can do is deign to make us a nice cuppa when we get back. Honestly. You can’t get the staff these days…
Here’s the best deal we’ve seen yet on a Nintendo Switch OLED: Woot has the hybrid console on sale for $289.99. That’s $70 less than the MSRP on the device. The only catch is that this is the Japanese model. Functionally, it’s exactly the same as the US model. You can select English for the language, and the Switch is not region locked, so it can play games from any region, no problem. Basically, you just get a brand-new Switch console for $70 less than the normal price.
Save $70 on a Switch OLED (Japanese Model)
The one other difference is that, instead of the standard one-year warranty you get from Nintendo on a US model, buying this one only gets you a 90-day warranty from Woot. Woot is owned by Amazon, so it’s a reliable company, but the warranty is shorter. That said, you get free shipping if you’re a Prime member (and who isn’t, this soon after Prime Day, amirite?).
You get to choose between the model with white Joy-Cons and a white stand, or the one with neon red and blue Joy-Cons and a black stand. They both look good, but I prefer the white one. It adds a splash of class to the entertainment stand, if you ask me. It also pairs well with the PS5, if you have one of those under your TV.
The only other question is whether now is a good time to buy a Nintendo Switch console. Honestly, it depends on your circumstances. The OLED screen really is gorgeous, and the colors pop way more than on the original Switch. But even at a discount, this would be an expensive upgrade for just a display.
It’s also possible that Nintendo announces its next console pretty much at any time going forward. That would be a bummer for anyone who just bought a brand-new Switch. That said, at this point in its life cycle, the Switch has a game library good enough to stand up to any other console in history.
Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN’s board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed or on Mastodon @chrislreed.
Bandai Namco Online have announced that Gundam Evolution, the free-to-play shooter based on the popular anime, will no longer be playable after November 29th. The mech FPS was released last year but executive producer Kazuya Maruyama now says it’s “no longer possible” for the team to provide ongoing support.
The Might and Magic series is about as ‘old-school RPG’ as it gets—it’s been around since the distant, ancient days of the 1980s. As the series has changed hands a couple of times over the decades, plenty of spin-offs have been generated, with Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes being the one Nintendo fans are likely most aware of. As part of the then-new Ubisoft continuity, this DS project aimed to broaden the fanbase by going with an action puzzler gameplay design that would be generally more approachable and fit comfortably on the humble hardware. Now, a decade on, it has been revived as Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes – Definitive Edition by none other than developer and publisher Dotemu, of Streets of Rage 4 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge fame. Though not much has changed here since its introduction, this Definitive Edition nonetheless shows that this was always a solid and enjoyable puzzler that stands as a welcome addition to the Switch library.
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is set in the magical world of Ashan, taking place in the Ubisoft timeline a few decades before Heroes of Might and Magic V. The story kicks off with you playing as Anwen, a young elf girl who is quickly orphaned when a sudden demon attack plunges her camp into chaos. The demons are after a mythical artifact called the Blade of Binding (no, not that one) which could open a portal to the demon realm and kick off a full-scale war in Ashan if the demons got their hands on it. Thirsty for revenge and desperate to avert the impending conflict, Anwen sets out on a fraught race against time.
