Albatroz is a Latin American backpacking RPG with glorious views in which you search for a walking mountain

Albatroz is a “backpacking adventure RPG” that takes place in The Forbidden Lands, a photogenic wilderness “where two worlds converge”. You are jaded city worker Isla, and you are here to search for your missing brother, who was himself searching for the mystical mountain of Albatroz – locally known as “the walking mountain”, for reasons that you will never guess. There’s no combat, and no enemies that I can see – instead, you’ll occupy yourself with equipment management, repairing your dinky car, and improving your hiking skills using points earned by doing favours for villagers along the way.

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Rockstar Games Co-Founder Says Grand Theft Auto Movie ‘Never Made Sense’

Rockstar Games co-founder and former head writer Dan Houser has said a Grand Theft Auto movie “never made sense.”

As reported by GI.biz, Houser told The Ankler that making the film — which has faded in and out of obscurity over the years — was a “huge risk” considering the reputation of the GTA brand.

“Why would we do this?,” Houser and the other Rockstar leads asked the film executives. “What you’ve described is you making a movie and us having no control and taking a huge risk, that we’re going to end up paying for with something that belongs to us.”

“They thought we’d be blinded by the lights and that just wasn’t the case. We had what we considered to be multi billion dollar IP, and the economics never made sense. The risk never made sense. In those days, the perception was that games made poor-quality movies.”

They thought we’d be blinded by the lights and that just wasn’t the case.

Various concepts for a GTA film have risen and fallen over the years, including one reportedly starring Eminem, though Rockstar has remained firmly against it. This comes despite films stars like Jack Black unable to believe the likes of GTA and Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption franchise haven’t been made into films amid the rise if video game adaptations such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Minecraft, Borderlands, and more.

The CEO of Rockstar parent company, Take-Two Interactive’s Strauss Zelnick, made a similar comment to Houser in 2019. “Part of it is, if we were to do something like that, we’d want to have complete creative control to make sure we expressed [GTA] in the way we wanted — and that would mean we’d need to finance that motion picture,” Zelnick said at the time.

GTA makes plenty of money sticking to its video game roots, of course. Grand Theft Auto 5 generated more than $1 billion within three days of launch in 2013, a number which will likely be blown out of the water when Grand Theft Auto 6 is released in fall 2025.

The GTA 6 trailer — which reintroduced fans to Rockstar’s take on Miami, Vice City — featured a ton of intricate details (here are 99 things IGN spotted) and plenty of references to wild and wacky real life events too. While the game was revealed as a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S game, PC players were left frustrated, though not necessarily surprised, that their platform was left off the list.

They weren’t the ones a little peeved though, as several developers from Rockstar itself took to social media to express their frustration at the trailer leaking early. In fact, the entire industry shared their disappointment that the exciting moment was dampened. Several streamers were also hit with content strikes and takedowns in the wake of the leak.

Regardless, it still surpassed Minecraft to become the second most-watched video game trailer of all time with more than 168 million views in the first three months.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

I will literally PayPal you a fiver if you can tell me anything substantial about Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree’s gormless ghost worms

YouTube is a stocked repository of hours upon hours of Elden Ring lore. Ranni’s ending? No worries. Miquella and St. Trina? We got you. Mohg and the Formless Mother? Say no more. Turtle Pope? Sit back. The frenzied flame? Make yourself comfortable. The Elden Ring itself? One page is not enough to contain it all.

And yet, what use are any of you when I cannot find a single solitary lore snippet about these idiot worms?

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Those Tough Elden Ring DLC Requirements Didn’t Stop Shadow of the Erdtree Sales — It Sold an Incredible 5 Million in Just 3 Days

Elden Ring DLC Shadow of the Erdtree is off to a flying start, selling five million copies in just three days.

“This milestone is the result of the tremendous support from fans all over the world, to whom we express our heartfelt gratitude,” publisher Bandai Namco said in a note to press. Shadow of the Erdtree launched across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S on Friday June 20.

Bandai Namco had expressed confidence in Shadow of the Erdtree’s sales ahead of launch despite the fact two bosses, including a tough optional boss many players might have missed, must be defeated before the expansion can be accessed. Steam achievement data showed nearly two thirds of Elden Ring PC players had yet to defeat this boss going into the release of Shadow of the Erdtree. (If you’re still hoping to play, check out IGN’s guide on How to Prepare for the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC.)

Many would assume this to be an issue for developer FromSoftware and Bandai Namco, given the game itself is essentially stopping more than half its player base from accessing the DLC and therefore wanting to spend more money. But Bandai Namco Europe’s chief marketing and sales officer Anthony Macare told GI.biz that Elden Ring sold so many copies that it doesn’t matter.

“That statistic does present a unique challenge,” he said. “However, with over 25 million units sold, even a fraction of our player base constitutes a substantial audience. Our marketing efforts have been tailored to engage this significant segment effectively.”

Five million sales after just three days on sale is an incredible result for Shadow of the Erdtree, and suggests an impressive 20% of Elden Ring base game owners paid another $40 for the DLC. Sales will surely increase over time, as Elden Ring’s did over the course of 2022 and 2023.

After an initial ‘mixed’ Steam user review rating for Shadow of the Erdtree, sparked by a feeling its bosses are too hard as well as performance problems, the DLC is now up to ‘mostly positive.’ Shadow of the Erdtree has certainly enjoyed critical acclaim, and has become the highest-rated video game expansion of all-time by overtaking Witcher 3 DLC Blood and Wine on Metacritic. IGN’s Shadow of the Erdtree review returned a 10/10. We said: “Like the base game did before it, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree raises the bar for single-player DLC expansions. It takes everything that made the base game such a landmark RPG, condenses it into a relatively compact 20-25 hour campaign, and provides fantastic new challenges for heavily invested fans to chew on.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Aspyr Is Bringing Another Classic Star Wars Game To Switch This August

Don’t lose your head.

Aspyr has today announced that 2002’s Star Wars: Bounty Hunter will be blasting onto Switch on 1st August in an all-new package.

You might remember this third-person action-adventure from back in the GameCube days. In it, you play as Jango Fett (before his little run-in with Mace Windu, obviously) on a mission to capture a mysterious Dark Jedi. Expect all the trappings of classic Mandalorian combat as you blast, scorch and fly your way through the campaign.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Xbox Gaming Coming to Amazon Fire TV: Play More Games, No Console Needed

Xbox Gaming Coming to Amazon Fire TV: Play More Games, No Console Needed

Amazon Xbox Hero Image

At Xbox, we’re committed to bringing the joy and community of gaming to everyone.  Today, we’re announcing a collaboration with Amazon where Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members in over 25 countries can play games directly from the Xbox app on select Fire TV devices via cloud gaming, giving people even more choice in how they play their favorite games.

The Xbox app will soon be available on the Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2023) ($59.99) and Fire TV Stick 4K (2023) ($49.99). For people new to console gaming, or for those looking for another way to play, it’s a great low-cost, convenient, and portable option to enjoy a huge library of incredible games.

To get started, players just need a Fire TV Stick, a Bluetooth-enabled wireless controller, and an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership to gain instant access to hundreds of phenomenal games, including Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, Starfield, and Forza Horizon 5, among others.

Plus, Bethesda Game Studios’ beloved Fallout games are also available with Game Pass Ultimate, including Fallout 76 and Fallout 4. Fallout fans will be able to play these games on select Amazon Fire TV devices alongside the acclaimed Fallout TV show on Prime Video, which released in April.

Amazon Xbox Hero Image

Once downloaded, the Xbox app is designed to offer a smooth and seamless experience. Here’s how it works:

  • Simply install and launch the Xbox app from your Fire TV device.
  • Sign in with your Microsoft account to play. If you’re an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate member, you’ll have instant access to hundreds of cloud-enabled games.
  • Not a member? No worries! You can join Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for one low monthly price, or check out Fortnite without a membership.
  • Connect a Bluetooth-enabled wireless controller. Controllers like the Xbox Wireless Controller, Xbox Adaptive Controller, PlayStation DualSense, or DualShock 4 controller are all compatible.
  • Start Playing!

Over the past several years, we have been on a journey to deliver cloud gaming to more devices and to more people around the globe. We are excited to add Fire TV to our growing family of cloud gaming devices and eager to welcome new players into this experience.

Stay tuned for additional details. You can read about Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) on Fire TV devices at Amazon’s blog here, and to learn more about Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta), visit xbox.com/cloudgaming.

The post Xbox Gaming Coming to Amazon Fire TV: Play More Games, No Console Needed appeared first on Xbox Wire.

Jango Fett returns in enhanced Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, coming to PS5 August 1

On August 1, let the hunt begin; Star Wars: Bounty Hunter releases on PS5 and PS4. Let’s dive into what to expect, including unique PlayStation 5 features, visual enhancements, and the ability to play as another iconic bounty hunter…

For the uninitiated, you play as Jango Fett in Star Wars: Bounty Hunter. The most-fearless bounty hunter in the galaxy is hired to capture a deranged Dark Jedi. Jango takes on the bounty armed with an array of deadly weapons and tools, including dual blasters, a flamethrower, toxic darts, jetpack missiles, and more. Suit up and hunt your quarry, dispatching galactic scum along the way.


Jango Fett returns in enhanced Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, coming to PS5 August 1

Visual improvements

Improved environment textures: To give more depth and texture to the environment, we’ve added bump maps. The result is a richer environment that feels a bit more modern.

New lighting effects: With dynamic lighting, we now see more color and impact throughout the environment. Every bolt from Jango’s blasters will illuminate throughout the entire velocity.

New flashlight equipment: If you ever thought some areas felt dark, we did too. We added a flashlight to navigate these darker areas.

PlayStation 5 features

Unique to players on PS5, we’ve taken full advantage of the DualSense wireless controller technology to enhance your bounty hunter experience. Let’s take a look.

Integrated adaptive triggers: Each weapon in Jango’s arsenal now has a unique rhythmic feel.

Voice comms: We’ve routed Jango’s in-game radio communication to play through the DualSense wireless controller’s speaker for an all-new immersive experience.

Lightbar meets health bar: Use the lightbar display on your controller as a visual indicator of Jango’s current health status.

Restoring Boba Fett

The most devoted fans of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter may have heard about an easter egg left in the game. A very low-resolution texture with a message written in Aurebesh— “Cash in all bounties to play as Boba.”

While the message did exist, the feature did not. So even if you hit 100% on your save file, you were only able to play as Jango Fett.

We’ve brought this easter egg to life, so after completing the campaign, you will be able to equip a new Boba Fett skin for your next playthrough.

We hope you enjoy revisiting Jango’s origin story! We’ll see you August 1 on PS5 and PS4.

Meet the Nintendo 3DS Fans Hoping to Finally ‘Beat’ Puzzle Swap By Tracking Down its Rarest Puzzle

I vividly remember from young adulthood the thrill of pulling my 3DS out of my bag at the end of the day and seeing the familiar blinking light indicating I’d received a StreetPass while I was out and about. I’d open the app and see the Miis of the different people I’d passed that day, with cute messages and silly hats. And every time, I’d immediately open Puzzle Swap to see what puzzle pieces they had given me.

When I first started Puzzle Swap, I entertained delusions that I might someday complete every puzzle just by passing fellow 3DS owners on the street. I quickly learned this was a nigh-impossible fantasy for a number of reasons, one of which being that several of the available puzzles couldn’t even be unlocked unless I traveled across the globe for special, limited-time events where unique puzzles were being handed out. I settled for trying to finish the various Mario, Kirby, and Zelda-themed puzzles that came by default on the device, or through occasional online updates. Admittedly, I never managed that either.

Now, my 3DS is gathering dust in a cabinet somewhere, its online services having been permanently shut down earlier this year and my motivation to use it having long since dried up. But a dedicated group of fans are still trying to realize the dream of collecting every Puzzle Swap puzzle, and they’re doggedly working to find their white whale: ANA: the rarest puzzle of them all.

Chasing ANA

The missing puzzle is a bit of a strange one. It’s called ANAでDS, ANA for short, with ANA standing for “All Nippon Airways.” It’s a special puzzle distributed way back in 2012 from July 21 to September 30 in Japan, but only at three select airport locations: Haneda Airport Terminal 2 (Tokyo), New Chitose Airport (Hokkaido), and Naha Airport (Okinawa). What’s more, the puzzle itself cannot be passed to others via StreetPass. You can collect pieces from others who have them if you already have the puzzle unlocked, but with the event having concluded over a decade ago, there’s no “legitimate” way to acquire the puzzle if you didn’t receive it at the time. As a result, the puzzle is exceptionally rare compared to other puzzles distributed more widely, eluding many hunters over the years.

Which is where Benny and his fellow puzzle hunters come in.

Benny runs a Discord server called The Search for ANAでDS, where roughly 20 individuals have been collaborating over the last several weeks to track down the final missing puzzle. Benny tells me he became interested in finding ANA only recently, after his love for the 3DS was reignited thanks to a homebrew application called NetPass, which allows players to receive StreetPasses over the internet.

Through his interest in NetPass, Benny stumbled upon and joined the search for the Japan-exclusive マックでDS ビッグマック (a picture of a McDonald’s Big Mac), which was only just officially cataloged last month. Just before that, others in the community managed to track down another time-limited puzzle, EU-exclusive Mario & Happy. With the inclusion of both Mario & Happy and the Big Mac, 62 of Puzzle Swap’s 63 total puzzles were officially uploaded online and available for anyone to download. With just one puzzle left, Benny’s next objective was clear: ANA.

“Those puzzles were easier to recover because the required SpotPass data had already been dumped by users on the Internet; it was essentially just a matter of finding the data,” Benny explains. “In this case, it is more difficult because to the best of our knowledge, the ANAでDS puzzle data has not been publicly dumped anywhere, so we have to search for someone who has the puzzle so we can recover the required data from them directly”

What Benny and his fellow hunters need to document ANA is simple on its face: they just have to find one individual who has the puzzle unlocked on their 3DS who is willing to upload a file from their SD card to the internet. That’s it! No homebrew or modding required, and the individual doesn’t even need to have the puzzle completed. Just a single piece is enough.

Since May, the group has been spreading the word to news outlets, subreddits, forums, and other communities in an effort to find ANA. Once the file is uploaded, the community will take matters from there and incorporate the puzzle into a larger file with all the other puzzles, enabling anyone who wants a complete puzzle collection and doesn’t mind a bit of homebrew to download all 63 puzzles at once.

“If someone has the puzzle, they can contact us by email at puzzleswapana@gmail.com, send us a Twitter/X direct message at @PuzzleSwapANA, or join our Discord server at https://discord.gg/JTAJF3DgxY and we will guide them through completing the simple steps needed to recover the puzzle’s SpotPass data (it should only take at most 10 minutes),” Benny explains.

Puzzle Preservation

It may seem strange that a community has rallied around a game like Puzzle Swap especially after Nintendo officially discontinued online communications for the device earlier this year. While local communications are still possible, meaning StreetPass itself still works, not a lot of folks are carting 3DSes around in their bags in 2024.

But a number of those I spoke to in the community tell me that it was Nintendo’s discontinuation of services for the 3DS that motivated them to pick up the handheld device again.

“I’m personally using it about as much as my switch, but I think the shutdown motivated a lot of people (me at least) to start archiving, modding, getting replacement services (ie Pretendo), etc,” said Croton, another community member who’s been heavily involved in the hunt, “like I forget when the shutdown was announced but I only just modded on a random Tuesday in October, and when the SpotPass archival server started recovering game data I modded my family’s 4 other 3ds’s to archive more data.”

Even if it’s a relatively unknown or niche part of the legacy of the 3DS, it still matters.

Some of those in the community are in it simply for the collect-a-thon. One community member, MrNoobingtonThelll, tells me that after the Big Mac puzzle was found some of the energy for puzzle hunting started to die down. “[T]he missing puzzles topic kinda died but Benny was one of the few one [sic] actively searching for it, so with my collectors anxiety of [100 percenting] a game I started to offer a little help.”

Others, like Ninja Squid, see the hunt as critical to game preservation. “It’s rewarding to be a part of this team and see all the amazing work we’ve done,” he said. “Finding this puzzle is important because, even if it’s a relatively unknown or niche part of the legacy of the 3ds, it still matters and is a big part of eventually archiving most of the history of the 3ds. [I]t’s a very neat novelty from an interesting time in Nintendo’s history that I would love to know is accessible to anyone. Being a part of this gives me the opportunity to help archive an important and rare piece of this amazing console’s history, and it’s nice to know that we are getting to be one big step closer to archiving as much of the 3ds as possible.”

At the time this piece is being written, the ANA hunters do have one lead – a comment on a NintendoLife article from a user claiming to have ANA on their DS. The community has reached out and is waiting for a response. In the meantime, they’re keeping their eyes open for other leads on ANA in case this one falls through. But overall, the mood is hopeful.

“[D]ude since the file for every puzzle combined is new the first person to complete ana ds would be the first to actually beat puzzle swap,” observed MrNoobingtonThelll.

He may just be right – and it only took 13 years.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Selfloss is a relaxed, fish-fancying jaunt through exhaustion, desolation, and melancholy

When the ageing, silent character you play in puzzle adventure Selfloss performs a roll, it is a tumble of such poignant melancholy I spent the first five minutes of my time with its Steam demo just keeling about in the starting area. It’s a ponderous, pained roll, creaky and ancient. If it has i-frames, the ‘i’ stands for “I would like to not do that again for at least five minutes, please.” Each time you roll, or sprint, your character wipes beads of sweat from his brow, and you can tell the exertion is genuinely taxing. My man is exhausted. Also, surrounded by fish, both symbolic and literal.

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Donkey Kong Country Returns HD Costs $60 and Fans Aren’t Sure How to Feel

The upcoming Nintendo Switch remake Donkey Kong Country Returns HD costs $60 and fans aren’t sure how to feel.

The Nintendo eShop listing for Donkey Kong Country Returns HD — a remake of the Nintendo Wii original which was also ported to Nintendo 3DS — revealed the $60 price point. While many are saying it’s too much for what was originally a 2010 game, others are okay with it.

“To the surprise of no one,” wrote linkling1039 on a Reddit post discussing the cost. “That’s way too expensive,” said shadow0wolf0. “I was expecting $40.” X/Twitter user @myriad_truths agreed: “$60 for Donkey Kong Country Returns is f**king ludicrous by the way. I do not care how good that game is.”

$60 for Donkey Kong Country Returns is f**king ludicrous.

Many hoped for a $40 price tag as Metroid Prime: Remastered, which brought the original GameCube game to Nintendo Switch with HD graphics and earned a 10/10 in IGN’s review, was sold for that amount.

This arrived the same day Nintendo announced The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom would be its first $70 game, however, and many believe it released Metroid Prime: Remastered at a lower price ot offset that a little. “They wanted to release it as proof they would be releasing games at different ranges of prices,” said TackoftheEndless on Reddit. “Only to never do something this generous ever again.”

Other fans understand and accept the $60 price, however, pointing out that Metroid isn’t as recognizable a franchise as Donkey Kong among other things. “Probably helps that DK was a major focus in the recent Mario movie, is getting his own section in the Mario theme park, and is very recognizable,” said OK-Flow5292 on Reddit. “Metroid, however, doesn’t have that kind of reach and generally pulls smaller numbers compared to Nintendo’s big hitters”

Another commented on the realities of extreme video game development costs. “As a consumer, I’d like cheap games obviously. But as a long term fan I’d also like a sustainable industry,” falconpunch1989 said.

It’s not just Nintendo releasing remakes at $60 either. Disney’s Epic Mickey: Rebrushed comes to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, Nintendo Switch, and PC on September 24, 2024 also at $60, with a $200 Collector’s Edition being sold too.

Another remake of a Wii title, Epic Mickey has drawn similar ire over its price point. “I was looking forward to this, but $60?,” asked Lukar on ResetEra. “Epic Mickey is destined to die another death.” But regardless of opinion, this is a game published by Embracer Group-owned THQ Nordic and at least shows companies other than Nintendo are charging the same price.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.