Author: Game Infliction

Larian Reveals Key Baldur’s Gate 3 Romance Stats, Including Who Chose Halsin’s Human Form and Who Picked the Bear

It’s been one year since Baldur’s Gate 3 launched, and now, developer Larian Studios has revealed how players chose to navigate their journey through its Dungeons & Dragons video game.

The studio unveiled a smorgasbord of stats in a lengthy X/Twitter thread. While it includes interesting data related to Baldur’s Gate 3’s soul-crushing permadeath Honour Mode and which characters fans favored over others, it also reveals that 1.9 million players were, at one point or another, turned into a wheel of cheese.

Another crucial stat update reveals that while everyone’s favorite dog, Scratch, was pet 120 million times, The Owlbear Cub and His Majesty the cat received only 41 million and 141,660 pet attempts, respectively. What matters most, though, is that we now know just how everyone chose to approach the game’s romance options.

Larian’s posts include a nice selection of romance-related figures. Baldur’s Gate 3 companions have been kissed more than 75 million times in total, with Shadowheart leading the pack at a whopping 27 million kisses. Astarion is, unsurprisingly, in second at 15 million smooches, with poor Minthara in last with 169,937. We also have a look at some stats about Halsin, Larian’s infamous Druid character. Of the 658,000 players who had sex with Halsin, 70% chose to sleep with him in his human form, while the other 30% chose his grizzly bear form.

In all of Baldur’s Gate 3, Astarion proved to be the most-played as Origin being at 1.21 million characters created with him to start. That’s a lot of High Elf Rogues running around, but Larian does clarify that 93% of players did choose to create their own custom character when beginning an adventure. Meanwhile, while 141,660 players managed to complete Honour Mode, a staggering 1,223,305 playthroughs ended in a loss.

As for some of the more important story moments achievable in Baldur’s Gate 3, 3.3 million users managed to kill the Netherbrain, while another 1.8 million chose to betray the mind-flayer emperor. Interestingly, only 34 players who chose Lae’zel as their Origin character also chose to kill themselves at the end of the game.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game of near-infinite possibilities, and that’s one of the biggest reasons players fell in love with it last summer. Despite so much to offer at launch, Larian has continued to deliver more content in post-launch updates, with many speculating that Alfira may be added as a new companion when Patch 7 arrives soon.

While we wait for Larian to expand on the already massive world of Baldur’s Gate 3, be sure to read our 10/10 review. At the time of its launch in July 2023, we said, “With crunchy, tactical RPG combat, a memorable story with complex characters, highly polished cinematic presentation, and a world that always rewards exploration and creativity, Baldur’s Gate 3 is the new high-water mark for CRPGs.”

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.

Review: Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid (Switch) – A Pleasant Vacation, If You’re Patient

A great vacation, or Natsu much?

In a world where problems and frustrations seem to be around every corner, you might find yourself wanting to escape from it all. Maybe you dream of taking in the Japanese countryside, strolling around in a field of sunflowers, catching some bugs, fishing, all without a worry in sight. Well, if that’s what you’re looking for, and you don’t mind muddy textures, a little funky translation, and blocky 3D models, then this is just the game for you.

Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid takes place in Japan right around the turn of the millennium. August 1999, to be exact. You play as 10-year-old Satoru, who’s traveling with his circus-owning parents, and since you’re only a kid, you aren’t performing and instead have all the free time in the world for the 31 days the circus is in town. Each day follows roughly the same structure. Wake up, eat breakfast, do morning stretches, and then you’re free to do what you please until 5pm, when dinner-munching commences, and afterward, you’ll also have some nightlife hours before you enter dreamland.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

SteamWorld Heist II: Upgrading Greatness

SteamWorld Heist II: Upgrading Greatness

SteamWorld Heist II Hero Image

It’s rare to see a new idea nailed on the first try, but 2015’s SteamWorld Heist very much managed it. In an age where squad-based tactical games like XCOM were hugely popular, Heist asked a bold design question – how do you do that, but in 2D? The result was an experiment gone very, very right – a tight-knit strategy experience that saw turn-based tactics given a freeform twist, where you controlled the precise angle of every gunshot, performing outrageous ricochet trickshots, striving to achieve perfectly executed spaceship heists, and desperately grabbing loads of collectible hats.

Sadly, the original Heist never made it to Xbox consoles, but I’m very happy to say that its sequel will arrive on your console or PC tomorrow, August 8. SteamWorld Heist II returns with a new design question – how do you make a sequel to something that felt so complete? The answer is to keep the core of the action intact, and make everything around it bigger and better. Relocating the action from outer space to the sea, SteamWorld Heist II offers a more explorable world, more player choice, and new ways to tinker with your squad, all set amid a new robot-pirate aesthetic.

SteamWorld Heist II Screenshot

Returning players will immediately notice how much more expansive this seems – where the first game saw you travelling down a broadly linear map of missions, you now control a dinky submarine, physically guiding your vessel across the seas, taking down enemy ships in miniature real-time battles, and choosing where you want to head next. Missions are plentiful, and come in many forms – some will see a whole squad having to survive for a set number of turns, others will have you pitting a single character against a gauntlet of challenges.

Each mission still offers reputation (a currency that effectively unlocks your progress through the game), but also offers bounty points, which can be spent on a series of rewards. In a single in-game day, each squad member can only take part in a single mission – and you quickly realise there’s an art to making sure you squeeze in every mission possible, before sailing to a local bar for a rest, and a chance to claim all your bounties.

SteamWorld Heist II Screenshot

It’s a small mechanical decision with major ramifications – as you build your ragtag group of robots (hiring new ones along the way), you don’t just need to think about which set of weapons and abilities will go best together, but also which smaller groups can complement one another to allow you to take on as many missions as possible.

This leads us to another of Heist II’s big changes – any robot can take on any class by simply equipping them with the requisite weapon, but they can also transfer abilities from classes they’ve already levelled up. It allows you to tinker with your strategies to a minute degree – aided by the fact that every new character comes with personal abilities that only they can use.

SteamWorld Heist II Screenshot

Once you begin digging into the possibilities at your metallic fingertips, you’ll realize there’s an enormous flexibility here. Personally, I’ve been a huge fan of turning a crew member with the ability to fire a giant laser that pierces multiple enemies into a Flanker, offering them bonus damage for hitting enemies from behind – there’s nothing better than travelling across the map to line up a perfect shot and taking out three enemies at once.

It’s another bold move from a bold series – SteamWorld games have come in many different forms in the decade and more they’ve been around – and its latest incarnation shows no lack of that same ambition. This is bigger, longer, and more open to your interpretation than any SteamWorld game before, but still shows the same spark of genius that powered the original Heist. If you didn’t play the original, now’s the time to take a dive into SteamWorld Heist II’s perfect blue seas.

SteamWorld Heist II comes to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows PC on August 8.

The post SteamWorld Heist II: Upgrading Greatness appeared first on Xbox Wire.

Choose your career path in Monster Jam Showdown

Hello to all Monster Jam fans out there! We know you’ve been waiting for a while, but the most action-packed motorsports event on four wheels will soon land on PlayStation in a whole new guise. I’m Federico Spada, Monster Jam Showdown Game Director, and I’m here to sweeten the wait by taking you through the discovery of career mode, our single-player campaign also known as the Showdown Tour. 

The Showdown Tour will be the pillar of your journey, with over 130 events combining speed and skills. From the outset, this variety has been an important element in terms of design. Developing a game with Monster Jam trucks is way different from working on any other racing title, as this is a one-of-a-kind discipline that expands the competition beyond pure racing. When we designed the Showdown Tour, our goal was to leverage this uniqueness to create the most tailored gaming experience and exalt the strengths of each player. To do that, we came up with a sandbox-like design where you will be free to enjoy the events you prefer without a given order.

You’ll compete in 8 different game modes and explore 3 original environments

To welcome different playstyles, we grouped the events into three categories: Stunt, Short, and Racing. Once a certain event has been played, you will unlock new events in the same category as the one just played. This way, you will constantly find new challenges akin to your preferences, but nonetheless, you’ll get plenty of variety as events from the same category will cover several game modes and take place in all three original environments we developed. 

Importantly, the locations of the Showdown Tour are wild and out of the ordinary, the perfect place to push your Monster Jam trucks to the limit and unleash their full power even beyond what you see in live events. Whether it’s a stadium, an open-air arena, or an actual circuit, the environment will put those mechanical beasts to the test, from the glaciers of Alaska to the scorching desert of Death Valley and the forests of Colorado. Following our free-progression approach, you’ll get to race these untamed landscapes from the very first minutes of play simply by navigating a map with all the events, which will gradually appear as you progress. For instance, after completing a Freestyle event in Colorado, you might find a new Freestyle contest in another region of the map as well as a different game mode, such as a Best Trick match. 

Showdown Events are epic boss battles that unlock new Monster Jam trucks and paint outs 

By earning victories in the same event category, you will collect medals which will grant you access to Showdown Events, which are special challenges that unlock higher-difficulty competitions within the same category. In Showdown Events, you will have to prove to be the worthy owner of some of the most iconic Monster Jam trucks by competing against their previous driver. If you succeed, you will become the official driver of that truck and it will be added to your collection. But beware – Showdown Events are not just simple 1v1 races; to win, you don’t just have to come first, but you also have to please the crowd by performing a spectacular run. That’s why you’ll see the layout of the circuits changing at every lap in these races and will find even more destructible objects or bigger ramps to boost your run.  

This design will leave you completely free to decide at any time whether to progress within the same category by playing the most difficult events or to test yourself in something different. In one case, you’ll maximize your skills in your favorite game modes and unlock the associated trucks. However, to fully complete your career and collect all 66 vehicles* and over 140 paint outs, you’ll have to master all categories. I’m sure both kids and adults will give their all to have each of the fan-favorite Monster Jam trucks in their private collections.  

You can think of the Showdown Tour as the elite Monster Jam competition. Only the best trucks can join this championship, which pushes both vehicles and drivers to the limit in a series of extreme and unconventional clashes that broaden the action of real-life Monster Jam events. By beating the best trucks on the planet, you will make your way to the victory of the Showdown Tour and eventually become the ultimate Champion of the toughest Monster Jam competition ever. 

If you do think you have what it takes, get ready to step on the gas and kick off your career as Monster Jam Showdown will release on PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4 on August 29, 2024, with Early Access available from August 26, 2024.

*40 trucks will be included in the base game and 26 will be available through free or premium DLCs

UK video game voice actor’s union proposes new minimum rates and protections against AI and abusive NDAs

UK arts and entertainment union Equity have unveiled a raft of “best practice guidelines” for video game developers hiring voice actors, including some suggested minimum rates that are designed to address “systemic low pay” for performers. Other measures are designed to improve voice actor working conditions, and stop companies using their voices and likeness as fuel for generative AI tools without their consent. It’s both a praiseworthy endeavour and an interesting breakdown of the voice-actor’s trade.

Read more

Former Assassin’s Creed and Warhammer Online dev announces new fantasy game based on Welsh myth

Former Ubisoft and Eidos-Montréal developer Stevan Anastasoff has announced Tales from the Mabinogion, a third-person narrative game based on ancient Welsh folklore that’s written primarily in the Welsh language. The game puts you in charge of a wandering monarch, who is embarked on quest to save the realm from a horrible fog. Find a trailer below. Yes, there are English subtitles.

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Fallout T-60 Power Armor Action Figure Collection Announced and It Looks Incredible

Holy smokes! Bethesda and Fallout have partnered with MEGA to announce the T-60 Power Armor Action Figure Collection. This new buildable set includes five different posable T-60 Power Armor figures to display, each with a unique paint job: Vault-Tec, Hot Rod Flames, Brotherhood of Steel Paladin, Military, and Rusted.

There are also accessories, including a Nuka Cola Dark and a Hot Rodder magazine. Finally, to finish it off, the whole set comes packaged in a crate-inspired box from Fallout 4, truly a collector’s dream. The MEGA Fallout T-60 Power Armor Action Figure Collection will cost $29.99, and release on November 20, 2024, but is available to preorder now at Amazon.

The set was first announced on X (formally Twitter), with the official Fallout account proclaiming: “You collected them in-game, and now they’re yours to build. Introducing the T-60 Power Armor Collection, featuring 5 buildable figures with unique paint jobs and matching accessories.”

Considering this costs just $30, we’re also expecting this set to be incredibly popular and will likely sell out immensely fast. If you want to ensure you don’t miss out, we’d recommended placing your preorder with Amazon ASAP.

You’re safe to do so, as Amazon doesn’t until the item ships, and protects your order against any price drops or increases with it’s preorder price guarantee. No matter what, you’ll pay the lowest price possible that’s listed at Amazon between now and the set shipping in November.

Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.

Random: Tears Of The Kingdom’s Unbreakable Master Sword Reclaimed With Very Complicated Glitch

Masterful.

Getting the Master Sword in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a highlight. No matter how you come across it — whether by following the Geoglyph sidequest or simply stumbling upon it by chance — it’s a magical moment, and gives you one of the best swords in the game. But what if we told you there was a way to make it even better…?

Fans have managed to find a way to make the Master Sword “unbreakable” via an extremely long and convoluted process of glitches, and YouTuber El Duende 05 has documented the steps in an hour-long video. Yes, an hour (thanks, ReadWrite!).

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II’s PvE Operations Mode Feels Like a Whole Separate Game

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II’s PvE Operations Mode Feels Like a Whole Separate Game

For a few moments, me and my two teammates stood on the edge of a building in sheer awe as we watched a horde of Tyranids besiege a stronghold. Hundreds of monsters stream across a long bridge – darting past the flaming debris of destroyed Astra Militarum tanks. Red lasers from positioned snipers glaze across waves of Termagants, futile in their numbers. 

While this sounds like some sort of epic endgame cinematic, it’s not – this is just one of the many epic set pieces presented during one of the Operations Mission in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II. On the surface, these additional three-player PvE missions could feel like ‘extra’ content to indulge in outside of the main story campaign – but what you’ll actually find here is a series of compelling standalone challenges, class choices, and an impressive progression system that makes Operations Mode feel like an entirely different game grafted onto the campaign we expected. 

Screenshot from Space Marine 2

The team at Xbox Wire are all big Warhammer 40,000 fans, and what better way to test our mettle as a trio than getting stuck into one of these missions?

In Operations Missions, you’ll be able to play as your own custom Space Marine, and choose from one of six classes: Tactical, Assault, Vanguard, Bulwark, Sniper, and Heavy, each offering unique loadouts, perks and an ultimate ability. The Vanguard, for example, comes with the Grapnel Launcher ability that lets you propel through the air towards an enemy and kick them, which feels just as cool as it sounds every time you do it. My teammates chose the Sniper and Heavy classes – the former’s ultimate ability is a Camo Cloak to allow powerful shots from afar, while the Heavy provides a powerful barrier that can shield the team from ranged damage.

Before you enter an Operation, the Battle Barge serves as a base for you to prepare for the mission ahead. The Armouring Hall offers a robust suite of customization options for your Space Marines. Here, you can make tweaks to your loadouts for each class and up to three weapon slots within them, comprising a main weapon, a sidearm and a melee option. Completing Operations will earn XP, which you can then use to unlock cooler weapons, add perks to customize your playstyle, and access new skills that’ll aid you in the more difficult battles to come.

Screenshot from Space Marine 2, showing the Heavy class

Another wonderful detail is that even in an area that is essentially just a place for you to look through menus, the attention to detail in the design is incredible. The authenticity of the models, the idle animations of NPCs – units wandering about, repairing equipment, a Skiitari unit quietly blessing a pair of massive rockets in a corner. Everything feels built with attention and care, to create a believable and immersive Warhammer 40,000 setting. 

You can also unlock and create new cosmetic designs for each of your Marines across each class. Fans of the series will get to unlock and choose from multiple canon Chapters of Space Marines – but customization goes far deeper. Each individual section of armour can be tweaked to your heart’s desire. So, if like me, your IRL Space Marine army is painted purple, you’ll have all the tools to (re)create your dream units.

Screenshot from Space Marine 2 showing Marine holding a sword

Organizing your loadout is key as, once you enter an Operation, you’ll find that these missions offer a serious challenge even on their easiest difficulty. The Tyranid swarms are relentless, frankly, so running classes and loadouts that complement one another will make for a much easier time on the battlefield. As you’d expect, there’s a lot of different enemy types to consider – you’ll blitz through squishy enemies with ease, but some of the bigger foes require a bigger beating and may favor different classes taking them on.

Screenshot from Space Marine 2

Stomping through the mission as a chunky Marine feels extremely satisfying, and the weapons on offer – from standard issue Bolt Rifles to numerous melee options, connect with all the brutality you’d expect and deserve from Space Marine II. That said, the gallery of finisher animations is where the combat really shines, offering intense, gory and downright awesome views of your Marine decapitating a horrible creature, vehemently beating it to a pulp with its own severed claw, among other ends that are almost too gruesome to describe.

The Operations themselves are far more varied than you might go in expecting – with multiple objectives in each one. At one stage, my team is ordered to stand our ground through waves of ferocious enemies before a Hive Tyrant emerges. Rather than gunning it down, we’re told to do something less expected – lay an explosive trap, and watch on in awe as a giant stone statue topples and crushes it. Once again, another epic spectacle that you’d expect as some sort of climax, but in Space Marine II, this eruptive scene is just the benchmark for spectacle.

Screenshot from Space Marine 2 showing a Marine grapple towards an enemy

The statue tactic is only part of the solution – the creature survives, and the mission culminates in a boss fight against the Tyrant. The fight feels exhausting in the best possible way, sprinting and dodging around waves of unrelenting attacks as you desperately chip away at its health bar in a multi-stage fight. Space Marine II does everything is possibly can to make you feel like a badass, but you’re also not invincible – these big bosses will make you struggle.

Screenshot from Space Marine 2

The sheer level of effort put into Operations is kind of a wonder to behold – you could feasibly expect this to be a whole other game, or a DLC expansion, but instead we’re being blessed by the Machine God with a second strand to Space Marine II that feels just as vital as its bombastic Campaign. And we haven’t even played the PvP multiplayer mode yet…

Assemble your squad and prepare to take on the horde in Space Marine II, launching September 9 for Xbox Series X|S. 

The post Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II’s PvE Operations Mode Feels Like a Whole Separate Game appeared first on Xbox Wire.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 – The Final Preview

Warhammer 40K has spread so far and wide from its humble tabletop origins that I would almost consider the fantasy of being one of the Adeptus Astartes – a Space Marine – as being on-par with being Batman or a Jedi Knight at this point. And Space Marine 2 brings me closer to that fantasy than any previous game has. At its best, it’s practically 40K nirvana, mowing down disorienting numbers of Tyranids with a heavy bolter or cutting a path through them with a chainsword. At times, the controls can get a little clunky – especially on a controller. But I suppose some of that comes with being an eight-foot-tall juggernaut coated in ceramite.

I had access to the first little bit of the campaign, which has Clive Standen (aka Rollo from Vikings) giving an inspired, gravely performance as Captain Titus from the first game, who is immediately embroiled in some interesting drama with his new squadmates due to his checkered service record. They ultimately set that aside, though, to do battle with the Tyranid hive fleet threatening the soaring gothic spires of the imperial world of Avarax.

What’s immediately striking is how detailed and well-animated everything on the ground is, from the humble Cadians who will often kneel and talk in a whisper as the Emperor’s Angels approach, to the smallest gilded details on the architecture. I don’t think I’ve ever had the feeling of standing on the ground in the Warhammer 40K universe to this level of satisfaction before. The graphics are gorgeous, the chaotic soundscape is spot-on, and no expense has been spared filling every square inch with the kinds of small touches that delighted me as a long-time fan.

Suit Up

As far as nailing the experience of playing as one of the Emperor’s Finest, Space Marine 2 generally does a respectable job there as well. Titus and his buddies’ Primaris armor is rendered in gleaming fidelity, with lots of moving parts, managing to feel imposing and maneuverable at the same time. Any time I got to remove an obstacle through pure super strength was a highlight. And most of the guns feel great to use, from the classic bolter to a plasma gun that makes enemy armor seem like a joke.

I wasn’t totally sold on the melee stuff, unfortunately. Carving through gaunts with a chainsword is just as exhilarating as it should be, but Space Marine 2 has also tried to implement a Sekiro-esque system of telegraphed dodges and parries to counter enemy special attacks, and I’m not sure it works here. Maybe six hours just wasn’t long enough to get the hang of it yet, but I got the sense that it really slowed close combat down with canned animations, breaking up the flow a bit too much.

You really can’t argue with how awe-inspiring it is to see Titus rip a traitor marine’s head off and discard it like trash

Likewise with the Doom 2016-style finishing animations, though they are gloriously brutal in their spectacle. You really can’t argue with how awe-inspiring it is to see Titus rip a traitor marine’s head off and discard it like trash. Maybe they’re just a bit too long, or they lock the camera in place too much. But they feel like breaks in the action, rather than part of it.

Pest Control

The main enemies in the missions I played were primarily Tyranids, though the forces of Chaos are definitely up to something behind the scenes, as they often are. And the variety of chitinous baddies is pretty impressive, from hordes of regular gaunts who mainly serve to show off your godlike power, to slippery lictors who require a bit more finesse to take down. These guys, likewise, have never looked better in a video game, with some of the more complex model updates from the tabletop shown off in all their creepy splendor.

The mode I spent the most time with, though, is the new three-player co-op, which seems to be where the meat of Space Marine 2 lies. There are tons of perks and weapon upgrades to unlock and – much to my delight, as someone who rolls their eyes at playing boring Ultramarines – character customization includes the ability to unlock armor colors and liveries from dozens of chapters, including both my beloved Space Wolves, and some fairly obscure ones. On top of this, you have six different classes to choose from, each of which has at least three primary weapons to level up, allowing for a huge amount of build diversity.

Battle Brothers

I probably had the most fun with the standard Tactical marine. I know, I know, right after I said Ultramarines are boring. The Assault Marine can be exciting, too, but as I never fully got comfortable with the melee combat, and I found the jump pack to also be a little bit fiddly to work with, it ended up being the build I wish I was good at but never quite got there. The heavy is also great fun when you can fire hose away with a heavy bolter and watch an entire swarm evaporate, but they don’t have much to do when they’re out of ammo, which isn’t as big a problem for the other classes. I feel like some levels could use a bit of re-balancing in terms of ammo drops, at least if you have a Heavy on the squad. It can be a long time between resupplies.

The bot teammates just aren’t very good.

Since I was playing on a pre-release build, I was often paired with bots. And they’re… really not very good, even on the lowest difficulty. The aforementioned Heavy marine just isn’t that viable because you can’t count on your AI teammates to keep strong melee enemies off of you. But when I did match with other humans, I was having a great time, so I imagine this issue will be resolved when the servers are open to everyone. The more linear levels and somewhat clunkier movement is definitely an adjustment when I’ve played hundreds of hours of Helldivers 2 already this year, but there’s no mistaking that I could definitely see myself spending an obsessive amount of time unlocking all the cool visual and mechanical kit for my favorite classes.

And They Shall Know No Fear

Space Marine 2 has a real shot at being the quintessential third-person action game set in the 40K universe. It’s exactly what it says on the cargo canister. You get to be an enormous, super strong, nearly invincible battering ram of post-human destruction, slinging retribution at uncountable hordes of xenos across beautiful and detailed battle spaces that bring this universe to life in a way it never has been before. Ideally, with a couple friends. You’ll be able to check it out yourself on September 9.