If you’ve finished Return to Monkey Island and are simply itching to dive into another point-and-click adventure, then good news, because Tall Story Games’ Lucy Dreaming will be launching on Switch on February 28th, 2023.
Described as a mix of Monkey Island, Monty Python, and Blackadder, the game – which originally launched in October 2022 on Steam and mobile – stars Lucy, who finds herself in the “very British” town of Figgington amidst a decade-long mystery. With visuals that resemble the rather excellent Thimbleweed Park and voice talent including Dominic Armato (Guybrush Threepwood) himself, it definitely looks like one to keep a close eye on.
Forspoken is finally available on PS5, and it’s time to show off your wicked cool magic-slinging combat skills to the world. You’ll learn a lot of different magic types during Frey’s journey, but Purple Magic will be with you from the beginning and remains a great tool throughout the game. To help you get a leg up on your journey, let’s take a closer look at Frey’s combat-focused Purple Magic and what it can do.
Frey will start with the following attack magics: Burst Shot, Shield Shot, and Scatter Shot (each at level 1), along with the support magic Bind. To learn more spells, you’ll need to spend the mana points you accumulate from leveling up and by finding mana pools scattered across the massive landscapes of Athea. The order you learn spells is up to you, but if you think you made a mistake, don’t worry–you can always unlearn a spell to get a mana refund to use elsewhere.
Now, let’s check out some Purple Magic spells and detail how to best use them:
Attack Magic
Burst Shot: A powerful and reliable way to attack, burst shot creates a huge rock explosion after you release its charge. The higher the spell’s rank and the longer the charge, the bigger the ka-boom that ensues. When enemy defenses are tough, give a charged Burst Shot a try–it can penetrate the defenses of enemies who flaunt shields at you with ease.
Shield Shot: Some enemies don’t respect Frey’s personal space. That’s where the shield shot comes in. If you’re charging Shield Shot and an enemy tries to attack you from the front, they’re in for a nasty surprise when you counter by blowing up the shield in their face. The shield grows bigger at higher levels and can also function to protect you from certain projectile attacks. Be careful, though, because you’re still vulnerable to side and back attacks and shield-breaking strikes.
Scatter Shot: Do you love powerful attacks but hate that whole “can’t attack while you’re charging” thing? Then you’ll appreciate the mechanics of Scatter Shot. Holding down the button will send out a rapid-fire spray of small magic blasts while you charge up to unleash a big finishing blow. The higher the spell level, the bigger the blast. Scatter Shot is excellent for long-range combat and especially effective on many flying enemies.
Support Magic
Bind: Some enemies aren’t going to sit still while you try to aim at them, but Bind is here to help. Bind will temporarily hold enemies within a wide radius still while you take your shots freely, or if you’re just not feeling up for a fight, you can hold them at bay while you skedaddle.
Tendril: If you’ve got an angry mob coming at you from all sides, Tendril is an amazing crowd-control spell. It can be used on the ground or in the air and sends a huge vine sweeping around Frey in a large circle. Not only can it knock down numerous enemies at once, but it also heals based on the damage you’ve dealt.
Implant: Implant might not seem to be doing much at first, but every time your attacks hit, you’ll also do a little bit of extra damage. It’s a nice spell to use when facing an opponent with a big health bar.
Prime: This spell is a little tricky but well worth it. Use Prime to lay a trap in the ground, then try to lure your foes into it by using yourself as bait. As soon as they step on the trap, a blast will lay nearby enemies on the ground. (Or, if you feel mischievous, your charged burst shot can also set the trap off.) The knockdown potential makes this one great for setting up killing moves.
Disperse: This spell lets Frey plant a massive flower in the ground, which quickly blossoms into a beautiful turret hell-bent on shooting any foe that comes into range. It works well in tandem with scatter shot for when you want to keep a distance, and it’s also great on flying enemies.
Leach: It cures you if you’re poisoned. Not much else to say here, but keep it close to mind whenever you find yourself at the precipice of death by slowly depleting health.
Screen: Want the guard functionality of the shield shot, but up against enemies that it doesn’t work well against? Screen provides a similar protective wall against a hit from the front. Careful, though: it takes quite a long time to recharge and can be broken through with guard-break attacks.
Surge Magic
Genesis: Genesis is a Surge Magic spell, a powerful attack you can use by pressing L2 and R2, preferably during sticky situations, as it has a long recharge time. The spell sends out rock vines hitting anything on the ground a short distance in front of Fray. By upgrading Surge and holding down L2 and R2 longer, the area of effect grows larger over a few seconds, causing even more damage. As devastating as this spell is, it doesn’t cover Frey’s back and sides and can leave Fray vulnerable to attacks, especially when holding down L2 and R2 for extended periods. Be mindful of your surroundings whenever you decide to unleash Genesis’s power.
That’s a lot of spells and plenty to develop fun combat strategies with. And if you think these spells are cool, just wait until you see what Red, Blue, and Green magic offers. Don’t forget to use the Spellcraft books to undertake combat and exploration challenges centered around each spell, as completing them offers some very beneficial combat boosts.
As a kid, we would refer to it simply as “The Banana Game”. I had to rely on my Dad to play it, as only he was able to access an unfathomable portal called “DOS”, summoning it out of the inky void using long strings of seemingly random letters; an incantation that gave it a sort of mystical allure.
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.
Shadowgate was notoriously deadly. The type of thing that fell very much into the ‘touch anything and you’re dead’ bracket of early adventure games. Getting eaten by sharks, burned to death by a dragon, and the awkward fate of being dragged into space through a shattered mirror were just some of the ways you could cop it on the black and white Apple Macintosh original. Heck, if you lost your torch while exploring, you’d also fall and break your neck within minutes. Happy days! No doubt, then, that you’ll be pleased to hear that the original creators are now making a Shadowgate sequel for PC, more than 35 years after its initial release. Beyond Shadowgate is launching a Kickstarter campaign on February 18th, and promises lots more ridiculous ways to pop your clogs.
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.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is probably one of the most popular games for speedrunning. One of the many well-known tricks in the game is that Ruto, the Zora princess you need to rescue from inside Lord Jabu-Jabu’s belly, has a hitbox if you throw her. As you can imagine, this can be used for many different things all the time you have her. But you don’t have her for very long — unless, of course, you hack her in.
That’s exactly what Vidya James, a member of Zeldathon, Randomizer runner, and occasional speedrunner, has done. James wanted to know if you could use the Zora princess to defeat Ganon at the end of the game just by throwing her at him. So he hacked her into the practice ROM of the game. The results, as you might expect, are pretty hilarious. You can watch the results above. Who needs the Master Sword when you can just, y’know, chuck a Zora at someone?
The 528.24 WHQL driver is mainly aimed at tuning up GeForce graphics cards for imminent PC releases Forspoken, the Dead Space remake, and Deliver Us Mars. All three will include DLSS support, which might come in handy for Forspoken in particular, given its slightly bananas system requirements. But 528.24 will also get Hitman 3 and Marvel’s Midnight Suns ready for DLSS 3 upgrades, with both games set to gain support for the overhauled upscaler in forthcoming patches.
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.
Windosill. It’s still a joy to poke and prod at the wee indie puzzle game, tugging on orbs, spinning carousels, and jabbing at the many beaks and eyeballs and mouths and noises emerging from an ever-shifting box. It’s such a reward for curiosity. And it still looks great too, with that unaging smooth vector art from developer Vectorpark. Now it’s out on Android phones and tablets too. I bought it, and really enjoy how much a touchscreen adds to the tactile experience.
Qbasic Gorillas was called for over 20 years.
Shadowgate was notoriously deadly. The type of thing that fell very much into the ‘touch anything and you’re dead’ bracket of early adventure games. Getting eaten by sharks, burned to death by a dragon, and the awkward fate of being dragged into space through a shattered mirror were just some of the ways you could cop it on the black and white Apple Macintosh original. Heck, if you lost your torch while exploring, you’d also fall and break your neck within minutes. Happy days! No doubt, then, that you’ll be pleased to hear that the original creators are now making a Shadowgate sequel for PC, more than 35 years after its initial release. Beyond Shadowgate is launching a Kickstarter campaign on February 18th, and promises lots more ridiculous ways to pop your clogs.
RTX 40 series GPUs.
Windosill. It’s still a joy to poke and prod at the wee indie puzzle game, tugging on orbs, spinning carousels, and jabbing at the many beaks and eyeballs and mouths and noises emerging from an ever-shifting box. It’s such a reward for curiosity. And it still looks great too, with that unaging smooth vector art from developer Vectorpark. Now it’s out on Android phones and tablets too. I bought it, and really enjoy how much a touchscreen adds to the tactile experience.