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As someone who’s learning Japanese, I crave other methods of language acquisition that don’t feel like studying. Textbooks, flashcards, even watching Japanese media can all feel a bit too close to being back in a classroom. Shashingo, a game that helps you learn Japanese through taking cute photos, may be the study companion I’ve craved. And having covered it two years ago when it was first properly shown off, I’m very happy to see it’s finally arriving later today.
Out of all the Nintendo Direct announcements last week, the one I was most sad to see not get a PC release date was the sequel to the much beloved Metroidvania Ender Lilies. The announcement came as a bit of a surprise, all told, and I was worried I’d have to consign it to what I’ve now dubbed my Unicorn Overlord pile of games that are never coming to PC. Happily, publishers Binary Haze Interactive have now confirmed that Ender Magnolia: Bloom In The Mist is, in fact, coming to PC (and other consoles) after all, and that it’s coming real soon, as its PC early access release has been set for just weeks away on March 25th. Result.
“Ever since the very first Yakuza on PS2, the Like A Dragon series has always tried to capture the cultural zeitgeist of Japan, reflecting and satirising whatever’s trending around when the game comes out. This means that the way people speak in Like A Dragon is constantly evolving to match the times,” says Dan Sunstrum, senior translator at Ryu Ga Gotoku’s localisation team. Keeping things current is, says Sunstrum, “a challenge in some ways but also means we’re justified in using modern English slang to match, whereas such modernisms might feel out of place in a game set in a completely fictional world.”
Sunstrum uses an example from the studio’s latest, RPS Bestest Best winning RPG Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, where permed protagonist Ichiban Kasuga meets a dating app designer. “The app’s creator goes on a mini-rant about ungrateful, entitled users, complaining how when anything goes wrong they’re quick to demand wabi-ishi,” slang for free premium currency. “This would have been a tricky word to localise, but it was made easy by the fact that fans of gacha games had already done it for us: they refer to them as ‘apologems’, and that’s what we ended up using in the game.”
Honkai: Star Rail predecessor Honkai Impact 3rd will drop its massive Part 2 update later this week, shifting the hack-and-slash action RPG’s story to the new planet of Mars, introducing a new main character and revamping its aerial combat.
Helldivers 2 developers Arrowhead have said they will be able to get back to working on future “improvements” for the superb bug-stomping, bot-blasting shooter after finally resolving the weeks-long server struggles caused by the game’s immense popularity.
What the Car? is a zany racing game in which you are a car with legs that must race around various courses to get the best time possible. Except sometimes you’re not just a car with legs, you’re also a car with a jetpack. Or with wings. Or swimming. Or singing. It’s from the folks behind the similarly absurd What the Golf?, and it’s coming to Steam this year.
Rainbow Six Siege‘s creative director Alexander Karpazis doesn’t believe the elderly shooter needs a change of game engine or for that matter, a sequel. He feels that Siege can “last forever”, adding that “I’m not going to name names, but you see games go through sequels and just completely drop the ball.”
Nightingale’s dapper cast of cross-dimensional pathfinders are right about one thing: realmwalking is dangerous business. Attempt to tele-portal between realities on the Steam Deck, for instance, and you may find yourself trapped in the Stygian void, naught but a frozen loading screen tip for company and suspended hopelessly for all eternity. Or until you hold down the power button.
This crashing tendency alone means that while Nightingale can technically run on the Steam Deck, even without resorting to rock-bottom graphics settings, the current early access build isn’t yet ready for regular handheld play. That’s nothing developers Inflexion Games won’t tell you themselves – they’re “not considering [the Deck] officially supported at launch,” after all – but if you were thinking of giving this gaslamp fantasy survival sim a portable whirl, you might want to let that call to adventure go unanswered.
Austrian developers Microbird released a new trailer for their upcoming Alpine dungeon-crawler Dungeons Of Hinterberg over the weekend, giving us a closer look at some of the eponymous dungeon environments we’ll be biffing monsters in come its release later this summer. In addition to the previously revealed mountainsides and glacial snow peaks, it looks like Hinterberg will have a big green swamp to travel to as well. Question is: will it be a poison FromSoft variety of swamp? Or something more innocuous? Hard to tell with that searingly green water on display, but one thing is certain: with Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree and its confirmed poison swamp launching on June 21st, this summer won’t be short on big bog energy.
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When I did my undergrad degree in the nowadays-blissful-seeming early noughties, I swore off videogames entirely. I sternly and sorrowfully turned my back on such hit releases as Shadow of the Colossus, Far Cry and yes, even, that PC gaming essential Half-Life 2, so as to spend 11-hour days boning up on Aeschylus and Samuel Johnson. Then, two weeks before my final exams, I somehow went out and bought Ensemble’s Age Of Mythology.
I’m not sure why – blame the devil on my shoulder, I guess. It wasn’t even a new release at that point. I managed to get good marks in the exams despite several nights of binge-playing, but what direction, in general, would my life have taken if I hadn’t bought Age Of Mythology at such a fateful hour? Better or worse? Could I have been some kind of billionaire don with a Pulitzer by now, if it weren’t for Age Of Mythology? These things keep me awake at night. Anyway, here’s a little more info about the forthcoming reboot Age of Mythology: Retold, which broadly aims to turn this wrinkled titan of the strategy genre into a proper modern esport.
