Is the new Elden Ring DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, too difficult? Opinions are mixed, but fortunately, there are many options to make the DLC more doable if you’re struggling. One of them that’s particularly beloved by the community right now is one of the new weapons introduced in said DLC: thrusting shields.
The Elden Ring community has reached a consensus: these shields are good. Real good. There are dozens of threads on the Elden Ringsubredditpraising themover the last few weeks, with one thread in particular shooting to the top of the subreddit in recent days with the following subject: “New Thrusting shields are the strongest weapons in the entire game and it’s not even close. NG+ DLC was absolutely obliterated. Thrusting shields can be enchanted with any affinity/damage type that makes them extremely versatile. And it’s just so much fun to slap the grace out of every single boss!”
Based on all the upvotes and comments, the community agrees. Some people are even suggesting the shields are too good, and that they’re bugged, though other players insist their excellence is intended behavior.
If you’re not familiar with thrusting shields, this new weapon type was added in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC along with other weapons like perfume bottles, hand-to-hand arts, and throwing blades. Unfortunately, there are only two of these shields in the entire game: the Dueling Shield and the Carian Thrusting Shield. These shields allow players to both attack and defend at once, and two-handed thrusting shield builds are especially powerful, allowing players to perform lunging stabs that deal major damage, all while still guarding from enemy attacks. And when you throw certain talisman or flask benefits on top of that (such as the Two-Handed Sword Talisman or the Deflecting Hardtear), the build becomes even more powerful.
Regardless of how you feel about the thrusting shield build, it was inevitable that with time and practice people would find ridiculous new build combos in Shadow of the Erdtree that allow for “cheese” boss strats. Brutal as the expansion can be, tricks like this can help players push through its most challenging fights. That, or just finding enough Scadutree Fragments like everyone keeps telling them to.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
It’s been a good while since we last got a proper Transformers video game, with the four years since the XCOM-ish Transformers: Battlegrounds in 2020 only seeing long-in-the-works MMO Transformers Online finally biting the dust. That’s about to change, with the reveal of a curious new combination of racer and roguelike starring the robots in disguise.
The third-person sci-fi shooter Goddess of Victory: Nikke is teaming up with Dave the Diver for a collaborative event. The event launches with the summer update on July 4, and perfect for summertime, it adds a brand-new minigame set underwater that combines the gameplay of Dave the Diver with the characters of Nikke.
If you haven’t had the chance to check out Goddess of Victory: Nikke yet, it’s a free-to-play RPG available on iOS, Android, and PC. You play as a commander leading a squad of soldiers called Nikkes into battle against alien invaders. You can switch between Nikkes to fire their respective guns or use their unique abilities to complete missions in an effort to take back Earth.
Nikke’s latest collab is with Dave the Diver, an action-adventure game that has you spend your days diving into an ever-changing body of water and using a harpoon gun to catch fish of varying types and sizes. You then spend your nights working at a local sushi restaurant, where you determine the menu based on what fish you caught.
To celebrate their new collaboration, Yoo HyungSuk — Director of Goddess of Victory: Nikke — and Jaeho Hwang — Director of Dave The Diver — answered some questions about what brought them together, their plans for the future, and more.
Can you share the story behind Nikke’s collaboration with Dave the Diver? How did this opportunity arise?
Yoo HyungSuk: Nikke and Dave the Diver are both games developed in Korea. We happened to discuss a collaboration because our Nikke team generally loves creative games, and naturally, we also enjoyed playing Dave the Diver. Additionally, Dave the Diver combines casual management gameplay with its diving mechanics, making it an excellent fusion of different gameplay styles. Nikke has also continuously tried to bring new experiences to players through various types of casual minigames in different versions, including a survival minigame for its first anniversary and a tower defense minigame for its 1.5-year anniversary. We hope to bring players different experiences by collaborating with Dave the Diver and learning from their expertise. So we’re honored to have this collaboration project.
Were your team members familiar with Nikke before the collaboration?
Jaeho Hwang: Many of us in the team are players of Nikke, so when we received the collaboration proposal, it’s fair to say we felt both anticipation and concern. This is because the platforms and art styles of the two games are quite different. Previously, Nikke collaborations have mainly focused on storytelling and characters, but we were curious about how this collaboration could integrate Dave’s gameplay into Nikke.
However, after receiving the test build, we saw that the Nikke development team had blended Dave and Nikke very well, creating a wonderful synergy between the two games. We are deeply grateful for this and are even more excited about this collaboration event.
What is the idea behind each collaboration with Nikke?
Yoo HyungSuk: Our goal is to maximize the enjoyment of the collaborative IP as much as possible. While we are creators of these games and cultural content, we are first and foremost users of games and cultural content. We respect the works we collaborate with and hope that through Nikke, you can once again experience the intentions and fun of the original work. We look forward to more diverse and exciting collaboration opportunities in the future.
Will there be any special events or activities in Dave the Diver to complement this collaboration?
Jaeho Hwang: Of course, we plan to bring Nikke-themed boat skin into Dave The Diver. Please look forward to it!
What gameplay or characteristic elements are expected to be included that can bring players a new experience?
Yoo HyungSuk: Since it is a collaboration between the two games, you’ll be able to see scenes featuring both Dave the Diver and the Nikke characters together. Additionally, diving as a Nikke character instead of Dave will offer a different kind of fun. We incorporated the fishing and sushi restaurant operation gameplay of Dave the Diver into Nikke, designing a brand-new minigame that combines the characteristics of Nikke characters and weapons. We hope this will surprise and delight players.
How would you evaluate the special edition Diver Nikke (Mast, Anchor, Helm) released by Nikke?
Jaeho Hwang: Dave the Diver doesn’t have many female characters, so we’re delighted to see the charming female diver characters in Nikke. In particular, the team responded very well to Mast’s outfit. It turns out that a wetsuit can be both cute and sexy! Who knows, maybe Duff will end up liking Nikke’s characters more than Leahs!
What were some of the biggest challenges you encountered during the game’s development, particularly with the Dave the Diver crossover?
Yoo HyungSuk: We put in a lot of effort to present Dave the Diver in the world of Nikke faithfully. Nikke is available on both PC and mobile platforms, so it was challenging and rewarding at the same time to produce an enjoyable Dave the Diver experience on mobile platforms as well.
Given the distinct styles of Nikke and Dave the Diver, how did you manage to merge them seamlessly?
Yoo HyungSuk: The gameplay of Nikke and Dave the Diver may seem significantly different from each other, but they are in fact similar in some ways. For example, both games feature shooting elements to some extent. This time, we have combined Dave’s underwater weapons with the unique characteristics of Nikke characters’ weapons, allowing players to experience a differentiated diving and fishing experience by operating different Nikkes. In terms of art style, we retained the original style of Dave the Diver, aiming to provide a visual experience that is different from Nikke.
Can you talk about your design ideas for the minigame of this collaboration?
Yoo HyungSuk: Dave’s game content is vast and rich, while Nikke’s minigames lean toward providing a lightweight experience. Therefore, the challenge in the design process was how to simplify the framework while retaining the essence of the original gameplay, and at the same time, incorporate Nikke’s unique elements. We hope the outcome can bring you enjoyment and a different gaming experience from before.
What else can Nikke players expect from this collaboration?
Yoo HyungSuk: In the collaborative minigame, you can catch various kinds of fish. Separately, you can enjoy a fishing minigame in the Nikke event field. We believe many of you may find it fun to compare the types of fish you can catch in each minigame.
What considerations led to incorporating the new minigame into Nikke?
Yoo HyungSuk: Although Goddess of Victory: Nikke is based on arcade shooting gameplay, we’ve always strived to offer various fun elements beyond that, including storylines, character collection and growth, decoration, puzzle games, explorations, and co-op mode. Therefore, we have developed many different types of minigames to provide all Commanders with a richer and more diversified experience.
How does this collaboration and minigame compare to what you’ve done in the past?
Yoo HyungSuk: The minigames we have developed so far have been fast-paced, light-weighted ones (e.g. grilling skewers), while Dave the Diver is actually a larger-scale game with more comprehensive gameplay. In this collaboration, we have integrated the settings of both games so that you can fully enjoy the fun of Dave the Diver in Nikke. Besides, we will strive to cover more diverse and exciting genres in the Nikke minigames.
What are your thoughts on how this collaboration aligns with the summer event’s theme?
Yoo HyungSuk: While collaborating with Dave the Diver, we will also launch Nikke’s summer event — Beauty Full Shot. The event’s storyline revolves around the player (commander) and several Nikkes spending their vacation at the seaside. We’ve prepared a variety of activities that allow you to fully enjoy your summer vacation both at the seaside and underwater. We hope everyone can have a refreshing summer together with Dave the Diver and Nikke.
What kind of collaborations do you foresee in the future?
Yoo HyungSuk: Nikke has already engaged in various forms of collaborations and will continue to do so in the future. Especially, there is an unannounced collaboration plan for this year. Stay tuned for more updates!
Dave the Diver recently celebrated its anniversary. Could you tell us about the key activities and significant plans you have for the future of Dave the Diver?
Jaeho Hwang: The new story of Dave the Diver will be released in the form of a DLC. We are working hard to develop it and will strive to release relevant information as soon as possible. Additionally, because many players like the characters in Dave, we are internally discussing the possibility of showing more of the stories of each character in the game. Please stay tuned!
The Goddess of Victory: Nikke and Dave the Diver collaboration will run in July and features a new story and new art for your favorite characters. You can download Nikke on the official site, on the App Store, or Google Play. If you need help settling in, join Nikke’s active Discord, check the Twitter account, and get tons of info from the game’s YouTube channel.
Surgent Studios, developers of this year’s fetching Afrofuturist platformerTales of Kenzera: Zau, have laid off more than a dozen staff. The cuts come just over two months on from the release of the debut video game release from the multimedia studio founded by Assassin’s Creed Origins star Abubakar Salim.
It’s no secret that AI, and specifically generative AI, has become more and more prevalent in recent years, but if you’re concerned about Nintendo utilising the technology in its game development, then you can put those fears to rest… at least for now.
During the company’s recent annual shareholder meeting, president Shuntaro Furukawa was specifically asked about Nintendo’s interest in applying AI to its game development. Furukawa acknowledged AI’s benefits but seemingly confirmed that Nintendo would not be pursuing the technology for the time being, citing potential issues with intellectual property rights (a topic the firm is infamously strict about).
When crafting a sequel, innovation is a delicate balance – the need to expand on the elements that people enjoyed in a game, without straying too far from the specific formula that made people love it in the first place. Citizen Sleeper creator Gareth Damian Martin is no stranger to this, and – following the recent announcement of a release window for Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector stopped by to chat to us about the road to building a successor to their RPG hit.
We were also able to get our hands on a demo of Citizen Sleeper 2, and get a closer look at the brand new stories, situations and systems that Damian Martin is crafting. Just like the first game, you’re beholden to the roll of the dice, which means no two experiences will be the same. Like the first game, Citizen Sleeper 2 plays out in ‘Cycles’, and at the start of each, you’ll roll a set of six-sided dice, and you’ll use these dice to perform actions throughout the Cycle. The higher the dice number, the higher the chance of success in those actions.
There are also a ton of new mechanics to explore, as well as fresh dynamics – you’ll run a ship, assemble your very own crew, and cut your teeth on a variation of Contracts – standalone missions that’ll help you and your crewmates make credits and build a future. It’s tabletop-role-playing-meets-sci-fi-television, and you’re going to love it.
The demo begins on the Hexport, a space station serving as your hub that is modest in size but brimming with opportunities to earn cash and make connections. You’ll need to do plenty of both, as you, alongside your friend Serafin, are also on the run from a former employer, Laine. The escape was a partial success, but you’re now tasked with fixing up The Rig (the stolen ship you made your escape in) and making sure you can stay ahead of Laine.
This is where Citizen Sleeper 2 starts to really shine – in its portrayal of a dystopian interstellar gig economy, where jobs are high-risk, high-reward and the schemes are often harebrained. By taking Contracts, you’ll be able to embark on individual missions either alone or with a chosen party, and complete them in whichever way suits you best. Damian Martin describes these as mini-episodes of a sci-fi TV show, which all offer their own narratives.
Damian Martin’s own goal was to lean into the idea of a classic ship-and-crew story, where a ragtag group of misfits can assemble, adventure together and lash together a sense of belonging in their cruel, fruitless surroundings. The addition of these colorful, NPC companions is a big evolution for Citizen Sleeper 2 from a gameplay perspective too. You’re no longer reliant on only your own skills to survive – you can utilize the strengths of other characters via their own dice if you take them out on Contracts with you.
Damian Martin has harnessed this opening setting to make a few changes to the logistics of being a Sleeper too. In short, a Sleeper is a human mind that has been immortalised in a robot body, to be kept under control by a corporation. Thanks to Serafin’s attempts to reboot you both, you’re no longer reliant on the Stabiliser, the material used by the corporation to keep you alive in the first Citizen Sleeper, which is a design choice as much as a narrative one.
“It’s a massive change,” Damian Martin says. “You essentially reboot yourself at the start of Sleeper 2, you wake up with short term memory loss and no need for the Stabiliser, because that’s what Laine has been using to control you. Changing that up has been really fun, and it means the game has a fundamentally different arc.”
That adaptation has not been made to make your life easier, mind. Your Sleeper can now feel Stress, another new mechanic that means not looking after yourself – and taking risks – will have additional consequences. This can be as simple as ending a cycle without eating, for example – and can lead to further hindrances like ‘breaking’ a die, which means you can’t use it for an action that cycle.
This system is designed to force a gamble, which, in the unforgiving world of Citizen Sleeper, can be the difference between life and death. Gambling on stress lets you utilise a new ‘Push’ mechanic, which will give you a boost where it’s needed most in exchange for a higher Stress level. You’ll have to address that later on, but the idea is that, in this moment, where success is so crucial, you can lean on a risky bargain.
“The systems I’ve been exploring have been about finding ways to model things that feel like long-term harm or difficulty, which is something that games don’t necessarily explore that often,” Damian Martin explains. “Harm in games is usually short term, but here, you’re constantly spinning the plates of this body that you’re trying to work with.”
Citizen Sleeper 2 also goes one step further with a class system, giving more flexibility in how you choose to roleplay your Sleeper. The classes featured in the demo – Operator, Extractor, and Machinist – each offered proficiency in certain skills, but a debuff in others. I opted for the Machinist role, which offered useful bonuses in engineering situations, but a sizeable difficulty in succeeding in social interactions. Over time, you’ll be able to level up most of these skills, but each class also has one skill that is completely locked out – you’ll never be better at it, so you really have to play to your strengths as you progress.
The addition of these skills means that there are several more avenues to success that you can attempt. As the Machinist, I prioritized routes that required the Engineer skill, which wasn’t easy at first. After running out of credits and almost starving to death, I was eventually able to power through some shifts and replenish my ship’s supplies. Citizen Sleeper 2 deftly keeps you on your toes – those big dice rolls, paired with skill proficiency, will boost your confidence, but the reality of the rolls and the ever-looming prospect of total failure will keep you grounded in this world.
“I quite enjoy that [Game Master] trick of not necessarily always giving the players what they want, but giving something that that that they might enjoy, even if it’s difficult,” Damian Martin adds.
Citizen Sleeper 2‘s main objectives come in the form of Major and Minor ‘Drives’ – the former is a wider goal that will take you a few cycles to get through, and how you approach that is largely up to you. Minor drives are smaller, sometimes optional tasks that help you on your way to the Major drive.
“When you run into people, you actually have something they want, which is often the opportunity to escape the situations they’re in,” Damian Martin says. “In the first Citizen Sleeper you were often receiving aid from others, but there’s now an interesting texture to the responsibility you have for the characters that come onto your ship, and a big part of the game is how you treat those people.”
One key thing to note is that you are not solely in charge here – it’s not a fantasy in which you’re in complete control of the companions you amass, even if you can utilise their skills. Sometimes a certain character will have their own things to do, and giving them agency will put you, the player, in interesting circumstances as a result of their choices.
“I really didn’t want this feeling that you are their boss,” Damian Martin says. “Cowboy Bebop is a great example – who is the captain of the Bebop? It’s not really an official position, and even if it was, nobody would really respect that position.”
This also helps solve a wider gripe for Damian Martin. In RPGs, there’s often a tendency for companions to be pawns to push around, and you have total authority over what happens to them. This won’t be the case with Citizen Sleeper 2: “One of the philosophies of the original Citizen Sleeper that’s carrying through here is that you’re just a person in the world, same as anyone else.”
We’ve only seen a snippet of what Citizen Sleeper 2 will offer, but so far, the evolution is extraordinary. Stay primed for the full adventure, launching on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and Game Pass in early 2025.
At Sony Interactive, we’re always looking for opportunities to bring our players closer to some of PlayStation’s most beloved games – and that includes bringing to life collections of physical products to add to your home decor. Today we are pleased to reveal a new collaboration with Spin Master, a leading toy company, to introduce The Shapes Collection – a new line of collectibles, based on our hit PlayStation Studios titles. This includes iconic characters from God of War Ragnarök, Horizon Forbidden West, and Ghost of Tsushima.
The highly detailed figures deliver the interactive storytelling element of these titles in an all-new way, extending the gaming experience from digital to physical. This creative line takes inspiration from details in each game, with interchangeable accessories and dozens of points of articulation to pose and display each figure in your collection of memorabilia.
PlayStation Studios developers have closely collaborated on this new creative lineup from Spin Master, and share details they are most excited about with the PlayStation community.
“It was a great pleasure to work on the Aloy and Varl figurines together with Spin Master.
They are based on the actual digital sculpts used for the game, something you can really see in the final result. We made sure the many articulation points made sense and even the finest textural detail shows up on the figures.
A personal highlight was the ability to provide different facial expressions for Aloy, which, together with those many articulation points (even her hair has some!), make her a very poseable figure. Also, the technique used to apply color to the faces meant we were really able to maintain the likeness of actual models, something that was very important and adds a lot to the appeal of these figures.”
– Arno Schmitz, Lead Character Artist, Guerrilla
“We’re excited to have a new action figure version of Jin that fans can keep on their shelf to protect their home. Jin’s Ghost armor has so many beautiful details, including intricate fabric patterns and overlapping armor plates that are integral to the design of his character. In addition to his katana, it’s also always important to us to see all of his various Ghost tools represented to capture his different fighting techniques.”
A community of dedicated Nintendo 3DS Street Pass fans has finally found the rarest puzzle in Puzzle Swap, ANAでDS, after weeks of searching. This means StreetPass Mii Plaza: Puzzle Swap has officially been 100% completed for the first time since its release 13 years ago.
We covered the group’s hunt last week, as for months a small community of Puzzle Swap-lovers has been hunting down every puzzle ever made available for the Street Pass app. That includes several time and region limited puzzles that over the years have become quite rare.
As of June they had found every single puzzle bar one: a rare airplane-themed puzzle that was only available at select airports in Japan for a few months. The group was exhausting every connection they could to find just one person who obtained the puzzle back in the day, at which point a simple file upload would allow the group to share it with the world.
Yesterday, July 3, 2024, someone finally came through. Community leader Benny received an email from an individual containing a friend code and a zip file with the text, “I hope the following information is exactly what you’re looking for.” The community immediately got to work. While the file itself looked promising, they needed the person who sent it to accept a friend request first for the transfer to work. The data also needed to be decrypted and put into a usable format, a process which multiple Discord community members helped with.
Then, at 4:45pm Pacific time, a post:
And moments later:
The Discord erupted. The stranger who had reached out with their puzzle had come through, and at last all 63 Puzzle Swap puzzles had been found and archived. In the following hours, the group worked together to share the puzzle with everyone in the Discord who wanted it, before discussing plans to bundle all 63 puzzles together in one file so that anyone in the future who wants access to them can enjoy.
Here it is, in all its glory:
If you yourself want all the puzzles, you do have to be willing to mod your 3DS. For help with that, we recommend tracking down the community behind the hunt, which has a Twitter, email, and Discord all right here and can help out. But even if accessing the puzzle is only doable via modding, this remains a triumph for game preservation and archiving. It is, to the group’s knowledge, the first time all 63 Puzzle Swap puzzles have been assembled in one place.
So what’s next? It’s tough to say. The community first wants to ensure that all puzzles are readily available to anyone who wants to put in the modding work to obtain them. After that, there’s been some discussion in the group about finding ways to add custom puzzles to Puzzle Swap, or try other modding feats with what the group has learned. But many are content just to have finished the puzzle hunt at all.
“I just want to thank the team for their hard work and everyone else who shared and promoted the search!” Benny said when I asked him for comment. “We are grateful for everyone’s support.”
IGN reached out to the kind stranger who sent Benny the ANA file to try and learn the story behind them picking up the puzzle and finding the hunt years later, but we haven’t heard anything back yet. Thanks, mysterious stranger, whoever you are.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
There’s no genre like the open world for inducing choice paralysis, so it’s fitting that I’ve been agonising over how to begin this irregular article series on open world games for months. I have a lot of material, oodles of interviews with developers of all shapes and sizes – big shops like Remedy and CD Projekt, smaller studios like Ace Team and Awaceb, all holding forth on such topics as whether Elden Ring or Zelda did bandit camps better, and how you make a forest feel endless. There is so much you could talk about, so many trails heading off in all directions, but perhaps it’s best to begin with the more personal and superficial question that inspired this investigation: how did the open world game get so boring?
Fans of the Attack on Titan anime and virtual reality can finally get their hands on Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable when it hits Early Access on July 23, 2024.
Alongside the release date reveal came the first look at gameplay for the titan slashing game, and given how much players swing around the city at high speeds, it’s likely not one for VR newbies.
“Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable is a 3D VR action-adventure platforming game based on the manga/anime Attack on Titan,” the official synopsis reads.
“Players will join the Scout Regiment and help defend the human race from the onslaught of Titans that have broken through Wall Maria.
Complete timed objectives including outpost defense, securing supply drops to aid fellow soldiers in combat, and slashing towering Titans as they increase in difficulty.”
The gameplay trailer shows a lot of that, but doesn’t show much of the story or drama which fans of the anime or manga may be looking for. The game is launching in Early Access, of course, so improvements are likely to be made in the future. It launches onto Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, and Meta Quest Pro via the Meta Quest story.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
