French games publisher Nacon, which is co-publishing Daedalic Entertainment’s upcoming action-adventure game The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, recently released an earnings report that detailed yet another delay for the Tolkein-inspired adventure.
The report lists Gollum as one of their titles that will be released in “the first half of the FY 2023-2024,” which due to Nacon’s offset fiscal calendar, places that window between April and September of this year.
Previously, Daedalic Entertainment delayed the title from its initial 2021 window to 2022, then delayed it again “by a few months,” offering no specific release date at that time, but not so far off as this new timeframe places it.
— The Lord of the Rings: Gollum (@GollumGame) July 25, 2022
Gollum is a stealth game with a narrative focus that takes place during Bilbo’s hayday chronicled in The Hobbit books and movies, immediately after the halfling comes to possess the One Ring. IGN saw 20-minutes of last year and was not impressed, which may explain the delays.
Heat: Pedal to the Metal is something extraordinary — it’s a table-top racing game with an actual sense of breakneck speed. The designers achieve this both through the brilliant deck-building mechanics, and also with clever mechanisms that accelerate the actual process of play. In fact, Heat might be the best racing board game ever designed, surpassing recent standouts and seasoned classics alike.
The setting here is 1960s Grand Prix, and the core of the design is clever hand management. Each player secretly chooses a subset of their hand to play for movement each round. The number of cards you play is limited by your current gear. So, if you’re in second gear you play two cards, third you play three, and so on. Add up the value of the cards, and that’s the number of spaces you scoot your little car down the track. Want to move farther? Then shift into a higher gear so you can play more cards and tear up the road.
Corners gum it all up and function as speed bumps. They force you to slow your velocity and downshift. Each corner presents a number which is the maximum speed you may cross it without penalty, speed being the total number of spaces you are moving that turn.
You can push your automobile and take corners without stomping the brakes. This comes at the cost of the titular heat. Heat enters your deck when you blow through corners or when you rev your engine and boost additional spaces after a movement. These cards are functionally dead, unable to be used or even discarded once they enter your hand. Instead, you must slow down and allow your engine to cool if you want to vent them out of your deck.
It’s a table-top racing game with an actual sense of breakneck speed.
In sum, this system is magnificent. It’s simple, yet it forces agonizing tactical and strategic decisions. You must assess your hand, current gear, position on the track, and even the makeup of the rest of your deck. Heat is a resource to be used as opposed to totally ignored. Pushing through a corner and tearing up your vehicle may be the correct gambit, but timing is crucial.
Once you’ve accumulated heat, there’s a constant tension as you know those cards sitting in your discard pile will make their way into your draw deck and finally your hand. Your car feels appropriately fragile, as if it could fall to pieces at any moment. At some point you will have to ease off the pedal, but you better hope like hell you can time that moment to occur near a corner so you don’t forfeit the opportunity for massive gains on a straightaway.
As you gain and release heat, the act of deck-building is fluid and gripping. Heat, functioning as a burden to be dealt with later, also obfuscates the current status of the racers in a similar way to hidden victory points in other games. Simply leading the pack does not mean a car is actually in an enviable position, particularly if their deck is clogged with heat and their competitor’s isn’t. It’s fascinating how simple and smooth the deck-management is as a tactical process.
Despite the streamlined play, Heat’s largest obstacle is the learning experience. It’s a simple enough game, but internalizing the processes can take several rounds. The flow is partially obfuscated by the player board, which offers a poor set of iconography representing the phases. However, after a single lap most drivers will be comfortable white-knuckling the steering wheel and letting loose.
Your car feels appropriately fragile, as if it could fall to pieces at any moment.
There is such a tremendous sense of momentum here. It’s illustrated through the card play but equally expressed through several physical and procedural flourishes. For instance, all of the planning for the round –including shifting gear and choosing cards to play — occurs simultaneously. This is half the game, plotted and resolved in a couple of moments with little downtime.
Another smart touch that speeds up the typical soft moments of racing games is the numbering of spaces so that you can see how far you are away from the next corner. This means you don’t need to keep counting spots on the board for planning or when actually moving your plastic car. It’s all so quick and snappy and folds into Heat’s strong pace of play to build that sense of velocity.
My biggest criticisms revolve around Heat’s lack of verisimilitude. While it nails the feel of ’60s auto racing, it lacks somewhat in simulation. This is seen with cars in higher gear moving slower than those in lower gears when the driver plays a number of reduced value cards for the round. It’s also plainly evident in the catchup mechanisms. The game just flat out gives a bonus movement to the last place car, writing it off as “adrenaline.”
Additionally, slipstreaming is a key component, allowing you to slide additional spaces if you end your turn adjacent to another vehicle. This works to model a core element of the sport, but it serves primarily to allow cars farther back to spring ahead. That may annoy some as contestants tend to cluster around each other, but it does result in dramatic moments with constant jockeying for position. It’s also not impossible to burst ahead of the pack with strong play, even if it’s uncommon.
If this was the totality of Heat, it would be enough. But it’s not. This product feels rich, not just in its ability to deftly capture Grand Prix racing, but also in its offering of content. It comes with two fold-out double sided tracks which present various tactical challenges. Several modules are also included to mix up the rules. It has weather effects, changing road conditions, and even exceptional AI controlled opponents which allow you to fill out a lower player count or even play it as a solo board game. But Heat fully realizes its potential with the championship mode.
This is league play where you embark on a three-race series. Points are earned based on finishing position, and whoever possesses the most at the conclusion of the third track is the winner. This approach mimics an abbreviated career mode in popular sports titles like Madden. You actually modify your car each race, adding new cards into your deck. The number of upgrade options is tremendous, which results in asymmetric builds and automobiles with legitimate personality and identity. Additionally, you can earn short term rewards from sponsors by showing off on the track and performing daring maneuvers. There is such a wealth of options that it feels as though Days of Wonder delivered the game with an included expansion, one that is highly effective.
Heat: Pedal to the Metal is fantastic. Designers Asger Granerud and Daniel Pederson’s exceptional card system comes across as a revision of their previous hit bicycle racing title, Flamme Rouge. That is a fantastic game in its own right, but it’s not Heat. The brilliant capturing of motion at the heart of this genre is an unmitigated achievement. Pair this with such a complete and thorough product, and we have an absolute champion.
Discussion of Hogwarts Legacy has been banned from popular forum website ResetEra due to the controversy surrounding Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.
As reported by PC Gamer, ResetEra general manager B-Dubs has released a statement from the moderation team that bans all mention of the Harry Potter-universe video game on their platform.
ResetEra had previously banned any promotional posts around the game – things like new trailers and announcements – but has now extended this to include any discussion.
“The mod team has decided to expand our prior ban on promotion for the Hogwarts game to include the game itself,” the statement read. “There will be no [off topic chat] and no discussion of this game.”
Rowling has been criticised for sharing transphobic views on social media, supporting anti-trans researcher Maya Forstater, writing an essay that included harmful statements and unsubstantiated claims about trans people (that were later debunked by experts), and more.
“After continued internal discussion, we began to start outlining the issues put forth by Rowling and the game in question and each time, and as we discussed it all, we kept coming back to the simple fact that Rowling is not only a bigot but is actively pushing, in her position as a wealthy and famous individual, for legislation that will hurt trans people,” the statement said.
I didn’t know that I wanted to be a katana-wielding police officer in a cyberpunk version of Hong Kong who fights a giant spider tank and then eats five bowls of ramen, but that’s what I got with upcoming slasher/shooter Wanted: Dead, and I haven’t been able to put it down. Everything from its bizarre story and tone to its challenging and chaotic combat reminds me of the PS2/OG Xbox era of games from my youth, where experimentation and style was prioritized over polish. And there’s something awesome about that approach that’s captured my attention and kept me smiling ear to ear after over 15 hours with it.
One of the main ways in which Wanted: Dead nails its old school feel is in the high level of difficulty of its fantastic combat. While slashing and shooting my way through armies of enemies, death loomed constantly, as even one mistake could mean instant death for my ninja cop. Even with a squad of up to three NPCs accompanying me, I was usually outnumbered at least ten to one, as enemies shot at me from afar while their friends smacked me with melee weapons in a ruthless attempt to overwhelm me. I was forced to master the timing of my parries, dodges, and counterattacks, and to keep moving in order to avoid my immediate demise. Upgrading my skill tree along the way made things easier, thankfully, as improving my mobility options with the dodgeroll or the sliding blow made me much harder to hit, but even with two skill trees almost completely upgraded it was no walk in the park. Still, it was all worth the trouble when I finally beat a section, triggering numerous kill animations along the way that can only be described as delightfully badass.
In the many cases where I did die, though, I was reloaded back to the previous checkpoint, which, in another old-school touch, sometimes meant a brutal amount of progress lost. Luckily, learning each level and becoming more efficient at massacring my enemies was part of the fun, and I rarely found myself annoyed at having to repeat a section.
When I wasn’t turning faces into potato salad, I spent my down time doing a whole host of bizarre side activities that I still have trouble believing are a part of the same game. I wasted way too much time playing a claw machine, battled it out with my fellow cop in a contest to see who could digest the most ramen, sang karaoke, and even played a fake 1980s arcade game for some reason. These silly distractions weren’t always amazing additions, especially since ramen eating and karaoke are essentially the same minigame, but they went a long way to make me love how unflinchingly goofy it all was.
“There’s just something so odd and PS2-era about it that I couldn’t help but love it.”
There’s also a weird amount of charm to its sometimes janky presentation, which features voice acting that’s almost always stilted and character models that look a bit wonky. But then it’ll have perplexingly beautiful moments like how it occasionally seamlessly transitions to anime or even live-action cutscenes as a strange but effective way of telling its story. There’s just something so odd and PS2-era about it that I couldn’t help but love it, even when the dialogue made my eyes do a 180 in their sockets.
I’ve already played through most of Wanted: Dead, and find it hard to believe something so wonderfully old school exists in 2023. I’ll definitely be recommending it to all of my retro-loving friends when it’s released next month. Stay tuned for our full review soon.
Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is finally coming back to Netflix in the U.S. on February 1.
As reported by GameSpot, Netflix announced the return of all three films on Twitter (below), meaning The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King will once again be available to watch.
Somewhat oddly, this will also be the first time all three films have appeared on the streaming service at the same time. The Fellowship of the Ring was available for two brief stints in 2018 before being removed in January 2019, and its sequels appeared from September 2019 to March 2020, but none of the films have been available since.
“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.”
Peter Jackson’s incredible The Lord of the Rings trilogy comes to Netflix US on February 1! pic.twitter.com/6hlwumO9NU
Though what’s considered by many to be the best fantasy film trilogy of all time doesn’t need much help, The Lord of the Rings was making headlines again last year thanks to Amazon’s The Rings of Power series.
First spotted late last week, the remote code execution exploit [RCE] allows cheaters to effectively corrupt accounts from afar. Players affected by the exploit will finding themselves permanently trapped in Grand Theft Auto’s loading screen.
RCEs have been an ongoing concern in several multiplayer games, most notably Dark Souls, which saw its PvP servers shut down for months due to the issue. While a firewall rule can help, fans are currently being encouraged to take a break since RCE expoits can be quite dangerous, allowing hackers to do significant damage to a player’s PC from afar.
In a tweet earlier this afternoon, Rockstar said that it’s aware of the exploit and that it’s preparing a security-related title update. It encouraged players to reach out to the studio’s support page if they run into additional problems.
While Rockstar didn’t reveal when the promised title update would be released, fans can likely expect it soon due to the severity of the exploit.
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
It’s not enough to just watch The Last of Us — viewers are ready to play, too. As The Last of Us makes its television debut, the first chapter in Joel and Ellie’s journey are reaping the benefits with a hefty jump in UK sales on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
According to GamesIndustry.biz, the game’s 2022 PS5 remake, The Last of Us Part 1, reentered the UK sales charts at the No. 20 spot after a 238% jump in sales for the week of January 21, 2023. Its PS4 predecessor, The Last of Us: Remastered, also saw a sizeable boost with a 322% sales bump that placed it at No. 32.
Perhaps the least surprising detail is that those numbers coincide with the first episode of its live-action The Last of Us series, which debuted on January 15. The UK data only reflects physical sales, so the number of viewers who rushed to play Joel and Ellie’s story through PlayStation’s digital storefront remain an unknown.
Despite the boost, The Last of Us lost out to heavy hitters like newer PlayStation titles and the usual Nintendo staples. Last week’s tactical Switch RPG, Fire Emblem Engage, debuted at the number one spot. While 2022 releases like God of War Ragnarok, Pokemon Violet and Scarlet, and FIFA 23 occupied other top ten boxed sales spots.
But The Last of Us has more than reinvigorated sales data to its name. Its first episode broke records over at HBO, with more than 4.7 million viewers tuning in for the premiere. That makes the video game adaptation HBO’s second-best debut in the last decade, only beaten by the Game of Thrones spin-off, House of the Dragon.
For those still unsure of how the game-to-TV reimagining shaped up, check IGN’s 9/10 reviews for the “stunning adaptation” in episode one and “edge-of-your-seat tension” in episode two. If you’re looking to start your Clicker-fueled marathon, IGN also has a handy guide on where you can watch HBO’s The Last of Us, along with a breakdown on the rest of season one’s schedule.
Andrea Shearon is a freelance contributor for IGN covering games and entertainment. She’s worn several hats over her seven-year career in the games industry, with bylines over at Fanbyte, USA Today’s FTW, TheGamer, VG247, and RPG Site. Find her on Twitter (@Maajora) or the Materia Possessions podcast chatting about FFXIV, RPGs, and any series involving giant robots.
In a new tweet, Supermassive Games confirmed the game would no longer release as a launch title for the PSVR2, opting to delay the game a few weeks and ensure players “receive the most polished, terrifying experience possible.”
Announced in November, the Dark Pictures: Switchback VR is a spin-off game from Supermassive’s interactive anthology series. Set in 17th-century New England, players will face “distorted apparitions,” “demonic incarnations of persecuted witches,'” “vampires,” and a “sadistic serial killer.” Switchback VR’s gameplay is similar to that of Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, another on-rails shooter developed by Supermassive and released in 2016 for the original PlayStation VR.
Switchback VR is one of several new games Supermassive Games currently has in development. Other titles confirmed to be in the works by the studio include Directive 8020, which will serve as the first game in the second season of mainline Dark Pictures Anthology Series, with additional titles already been trademarked but yet to be announced by the studio.
In an alternate universe, Sonic the Hedgehog instead looks like a little human boy with spiky blue hair. That’s according to the original Sonic character designer, Naoto Ohshima, who recently shared some concept art of what would go on to become the iconic Blue Blur as we know him.
On Twitter (via CBR), Ohshima posted two images of concept art for early versions of the original Sonic the Hedgehog game. Ohshima wrote that the concepts were for “an action game about twin brothers who protect the dream world from Nightmare World’s boss ‘Thirteen’.
Ultimately, this concept evolved into Sonic.
I made a draft of the game. An action game about twin brothers who protect the dream world from Nightmare World’s boss “Thirteen”. It evolved into Sonic. 私はゲーム原案書を作った。 ナイトメア世界のボス「サーティーン」から夢の世界を守る双子のアクションゲーム。 ソニックに進化した pic.twitter.com/nJECKnsI4w
Taking a look at the images, it’s easy to see how this concept eventually morphed into Sonic. The nature in the background is reminiscent of Green Hill Zone, complete with the loop, and the villain’s evil grin isn’t a far cry from Dr. Robotnik. Plus, Sonic retained the spiky blue hair in his final design.
Ohshima worked on the Sonic franchise from the beginning all the way until 1998’s Sonic Adventure, which saw the character’s first major redesign. The developer would then go on to direct Blinx: The Time Sweeper and its sequel.
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.
The second episode of HBO’s The Last of Us series just hit the streamer yesterday, and fans are already criticizing the show for changing certain things from the games.
The episode, titled “Infected,” recreates several of the first few levels of the original game. It sees Joel, Ellie and Tess sneaking through an overrun city to drop off Ellie with Firefly rebels. In a deviation from the game, creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin introduced a new way of spreading the fungal infection. The infected use tendrils from their body and plant a nasty kiss on them, thus giving them the cordyceps fungus.
In the game, one of the major ways in which the infection spreads is through airborne spores; the show’s omission of spores has already caused some fans to feel that the series is being too flexible with its adaptation.
“I’ve learned to expect backlash from sneezing,” Druckman said in an interview with Variety. “I think it speaks to the kind of fans that we have, who are so protective and love the world and these characters so much that anything they see as a deviation, without the full context of what it means, they assume the worst and push back on it. I think that addition is something worthwhile. It’s actually one of those additions where I’m like, ‘Oh man, I wish we had it for the game. I wish we had thought of it years ago, because I love it so much.'”
Mazin added: “That’s all right if people are upset by it — I don’t blame them. Everybody dreams of working on something where the fan engagement is to this level, where people will argue about these things or feel passionate about them. I do feel sometimes, if you just see how it goes, I think you’ll be OK. A lot of that has happened, but there will also definitely be people who are like, ‘You fucked up,’ and I get it. We definitely will not make everyone happy, I know that much.”
The omission of spores makes sense practically for a live action adaptation, as the presence of spores would mean that Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey would have to wear gas masks for much of the shows runtime. However, Mazin insists that the show still has not completely eliminated the spores.
“If you listen carefully, the word ‘spores’ is mentioned,” he said. “I don’t necessarily know if we’re going to see any spores this time around, but to say that our world is devoid of them would not be accurate. We don’t quite know yet: That’s part of the fun of adaptation, and leaving these blurry edges of the map for our characters to discover as the adventure continues.”
The Last of Us series is just getting started, so it’s anyone’s guess as to how the rest of the show will live up to the beloved video games. For now, though, the creators seem to know that backlash is expected when adapting one of the greatest games ever made.
Carson Burton is a freelance news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter at @carsonsburton.
