We’re getting ready for NBA All-Star Weekend 2024 with a look at every basketball game on Nintendo Switch. The three-day event tips off in Indiana on 16th February with contests and challenges taking place every day until the 73rd All-Star Game finale on 18th February.
With all of its high-flying athleticism, nail-biting buzzer beaters, and silky skills, it’s no wonder that basketball is often the number one draft pick for developers looking to make a sports game.
Hello, I’m Alastair, the creator of PlateUp. I love deep roguelike games, which you can play over and over, with a different experience every time. And I love playing co-op games with friends. But it was hard to find a game that had the depth I wanted but was approachable enough for everyone to enjoy. So I left my job and made PlateUp – a co-op roguelite restaurant game – to be the game I wanted to play. After the amazing support the game has seen on PC, with over 1.5 million players, I’m excited to bring the game to so many new players on Xbox with Game Pass.
You’ll need to build up your restaurant from scratch to make it in the cutthroat world of hospitality. Spend your earnings each day to buy new appliances, then arrange your restaurant to optimise your performance. You’ve got complete control of the layout. Can’t reach the sink easily? Pick it up and move it closer. Kitchen too small? Move some things into another room. Customers too far away? Cook in front of them – just try not to set their table on fire!
It’ll start simple. You’ve got one meal to serve. Your customers behave themselves.
But every three days, the heat turns up. You’ll be presented with a choice of two new random challenges and you (and your team) will have to decide what to take on. You might opt to add more to your menu; maybe adding a side, a starter or a dessert. Or you could increase the complexity of one of your existing dishes by adding a sauce or swapping an ingredient out for a home-made version. Alternatively, you can keep your menu simple and handle more – and fussier – customers. Maybe you’ll need to remember your customers’ orders, or maybe from now on they’ll all turn up at the same time?
I wanted PlateUp to be a game everyone could enjoy. There’s lots of depth, but you only need two buttons to interact with everything. You can join your friends mid-session, and it doesn’t matter if you’re not as experienced as them – everyone can contribute without getting in the way. It’s not a blame game, and there’s no shame in losing; it’s all part of the process! I made it a roguelite, so that every time you start a new run you’ll get new dishes to serve, new challenges to overcome, and new tools to overcome them with. Everything you face will be something you’ve chosen to take on. Never get stuck on your least favourite level again.
Replayability is a core part of PlateUp. It’s great to have games to play with friends, but it’s even better when everyone can keep enjoying them. Each run you play will be different, with everything from the layout of your restaurant to the appliances you can buy changing every time. It’ll be a fresh experience for everyone, experienced and new players alike.
And as you play, you’ll unlock more content, including challenging game modes, dishes, and bigger layouts. You’ll also get a reward when your restaurant closes, which you can bring along to a later attempt, helping you get started. The more you play, the closer you’ll get to building the restaurant of your dreams.
Since the game first launched on PC, I’ve grown the PlateUp team and we’ve been hard at work improving the game. Over the last year, we’ve added relaxed coffee shop and bakery modes (no dishes to clean!); we’ve also added Turbo, a fast-paced way to turn up the pressure and push the limits. Throughout the year we’ve had seasonal maps, each with new gameplay and content. I’m excited to bring PlateUp – and all these new updates – to Xbox players, and we’ve added a brand new dish (the much-requested spaghetti) to celebrate.
I hope the PlateUp experience is something you’ll share with all your friends with Game Pass, both locally and online!
PlateUp! combines chaotic kitchen and restaurant management with strategic planning and development to create a delightful roguelite dish unlike any other.
Up to four players build and run a restaurant from scratch, choosing dishes, buying and placing appliances – some of which can be daisy-chained together to create ambitious automatic kitchens – cooking food and serving customers.
Players have free rein to design their restaurant which will expand and develop between shifts – with additional content and challenges unlocked through progression.
Can you cook, serve and manage your way through 15 hectic days in your restaurant and unlock a brand-new franchise?
Classic co-op cooking action, with a wide selection of mains, sides, sauces, toppings, desserts, and starters.
Choose your equipment, lay out your kitchen, curate your menu and plate up your dishes.
From bubbling soups to sublime salads, tender steaks to hearty pies, there’s something for everyone.
Look after front-of-house: seating customers, delivering orders, and managing patience.
Equip your restaurant to handle the most fickle of customers and deliver them what they need, right when they need it.
Co-operate with your team like a well-olive-oiled machine or build a name for yourself going it alone.
Exceed your goals and take your franchise to greater heights at a new location, bringing with you new unlocks and upgrade
Upgrade and rearrange your restaurant to your personal taste: when the restaurant closes for the day, the planning begins!
Decide what new equipment to purchase, and place it wherever you want.
Want to go high-tech? Install the turbo-ovens, crank up the conveyors, and make way for the robo-kitchen of the future.
Fancy something a little more… fancy? Curate your art collection, fix up that wallpaper, enlist a friend as a maître d’ and get ready to provide the culinary experience of a lifetime.
Exceed your goals and start over at your next location, bringing with you new unlocks and upgrades.
Tailor your brand towards gourmet dining, or fine-tune your fast food franchise.
Every restaurant is procedurally-generated with its own climate, customers and conditions.
Return to your franchise HQ to view your achievements, customise your characters and upgrade your kit, ready for your next adventure!
Last week, we asked you share romantic moments from a game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s highlights:
bluegreenherbshares Tifa and Aerith each holding one of Cloud’s arms in Final Fantasy VII Remake
Amianan_NiRaGuB shares Astarion lovingly gazing up at the player character who romanced him in Baldur’s Gate 3
DEX_exiledshares Zo and Varl from Horizon Forbidden West sharing a sweet kiss
JarrinWasHereshares Garrus pulling Shepard into a dramatic dip in Mass Effect Legendary Edition
K_Alien121shares Dion and Terence holding each other close in Final Fantasy XVI
Lny_Trpr_EE7shares Catwoman and Batman sharing a moment in Batman Arkham Knight
Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week?
THEME: Best Friends SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on February 21, 2024
Next week, we’re shining a light on gaming besties. Share a pair of gaming best friends or close companions from the game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.
I promise I’m not trying to turn RPS into a Soggins the Frog fansite, but… If you have a) been enjoying Cobalt Core as part of RPS Game Club this month, and b) especially like it when Soggins turns up with his ship of malfunctioning missile launchers, then I implore you to make Sunshine Heavy Industries your next port of call in your Steam library. It’s what the Cobalt Core devs Rocket Rat Games made first, and you can immediately see a lot of shared DNA between the two games – not least its chunky, charming pixel visuals and some crossover between its cast of characters – including our pal Soggins.
It is, I should stress, a very different game to Cobalt Core – it’s a sandboxy spaceship builder with zero combat involved, for starters – but I’ve been playing it again this week ahead of some other Game Club-themed articles I’ve got cooking, and I’ve been having a lovely time with it. Not least because I get to spend more time with Soggins the very smug frog, all while listening to even more excellent chill tunes from Cobalt Core composer Aaron Cherof.
Star Wars Jedi and Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment is reportedly working on a first-person Mandalorian video game.
Insider Gaming reports Respawn’s Mandalorian game, which in the early stages of development, lets players control a Mandalorian bounty hunter during a time when the Empire is dominating the galaxy. IGN has asked EA for comment.
The player is reportedly tasked with taking on bounties for cash, as you might expect from a Mandalorian video game. There’s word the iconic Mandalorian jetpack plays a part in the game’s “high mobility”, with boost sliding similar to that seen in Respawn’s battle royale, Apex Legends.
It’s said to be “fast-paced”, with health regenerating upon successive kills. Gadgets supposedly include a wrist rocket, grapple hook, and a visor for tagging enemies and bounties. According to Insider Gaming, this Mandalorian game is not open world, rather made up of linear levels set across multiple planets. There’s no word on multiplayer. As for when this game will come out, Insider Gaming reports it’s still a year or two away at least.
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.
Modern Warfare 3 dataminer TheOfficeCOD posted a video showcasing two Space Marine operator skins coming to Activision’s shooter, one from the Ultramarines chapter, the other from the Blood Angels.
#MW3 EXCLUSIVE MW3 x WARHAMMER 40K COLLABORATION LEAK‼️ The first look at the Marines in game!🤠 Is this a W Collab? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/tnIw3UJ5Dl
While the Space Marines look goofy holding Call of Duty guns (these Power Armour-clad transhuman warriors are meant to dwarf the average human in terms of size and power), it sounds like they are reserved for use with the Juggernaut killstreak, which lets you wear a hulking, armoured suit and wield a devastating minigun. That sounds much more up a Space Marine’s street. Perhaps the Juggernaut’s minigun will be swapped out for a Bolter, the iconic Space Marine weapon from Games Workshop’s grim dark sci-fi universe.
Indeed, TheOfficeCOD revealed the Warhammer 40,000 skins are labelled as Juggernaut in the files, and suggests they are reserved for a limited-time event or special game mode. But, there are Space Marine finishers, apparently, which suggests an Operator addition.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone are in the middle of Season 2, which promises a Juggermosh LTM in-season. This mode sees all players play as a Juggernaut in third-person, which would lend itself to seeing the Power Armour in all its glory were it to be aligned with the Warhammer 40,000 crossover. Modern Warfare 3 Season 2 Reloaded is set for early March.
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.
Baldur’s Gate 3‘s latest update has, as per most of their updates, a colossal number of improvements. Notably, there are new animations for folks who hunker down in your camp and a speedier way to dismiss unwanted companions. But most importantly of all, the smooching has been improved tenfold for fans of romance, or voyeurs who relish virtual characters trading saliva.
Update #2 : There wasn’t a Nintendo Direct this week, but there is a Splatfest, so that’s some Nintendo news to be excited about, right?
Yes, this is your friendly reminder that Splatoon 3’s next team event kicks off this weekend (today, if you’re in North America)! This time, the vote is all about “What’s the best day of the weekend?“, with Team Friday, Saturday and Sunday battling it out.
Next Week on Xbox: New Games for February 19 to 23
This is Next Week on Xbox! This weekly feature shows you all the games that are coming soon to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows, and Game Pass! You can find more information about these upcoming games below and click on their profiles for more details (release dates may vary. Let’s get started!
Balatro is a poker-inspired roguelike deck builder all about creating powerful synergies and winning big. Combine valid poker hands with unique Joker cards in order to create varied synergies and builds. Earn enough chips to beat devious blinds, all while uncovering hidden bonus hands and decks as you progress.
Control a Pong ball aching to break free of its life stuck between two paddles. Explore a dangerous, minimalist world, armed with simple two button controls: tap a button to change direction diagonally by 45 degrees, and hold down a button to unleash a cathartic dash forward.
Welcome to the brutal, war-torn universe of Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters, where the forces of Chaos threaten humanity’s very existence. Lead the Grey Knights to exterminate the forces of Chaos in this fast-paced, ferocious, turn-based tactical combat game in a saga penned by acclaimed Black Library author, Aaron Dembski-Bowden
A Time Traveller’s Guide To Past Delicacies (Xbox Series X|S)
A short game about a fictional time traveler raiding the past to steal recipes. Follow a sock puppet into the dark bowels of time and learn new recipes. Meet your long-dead ancestors. Exploit them to further your cooking skills. Take some pictures of dinosaurs. Appropriate what you can in this experimental story-driven adventure.
Return to a simpler style of platforming action in Froggie – A Retro Platformer, a side-scroller presented in minimalistic black-and-white style where you take the role of an anthropomorphic frog as he leaps his way through 100 challenging levels! Run, wall jump, and wall slide with fluid pixel art animation as you hop on enemies’ heads, avoid spike traps and more!
The zombifying pathogen has come out of nowhere. Society is falling apart. People are in pain. Still, they can take comfort in knowing that there is a watchful sniper always on the lookout for zombies. Take the role of that sniper in Geometric Sniper Z, a highly stylized 2D isometric shooter. Challenge yourself in different game modes, neutralize zombies using different weapons, save and escort survivors, and progress through the story.
Shoot, block, and jump your way to victory with your shotgun-rocket-launcher-that-shoots-heat-seeking-bouncy-missiles or one of the other over 11.2 million different powerup combinations. Wave your noodle arms around to assert dominance.
Use swift swordplay, explosive ordnance, and stylish combos against an army of meat and metal. Air juggling, dashes, and frequent target switching allow for you to take down foes of any size while wall-jumping and platforming can help you outmaneuver your enemies. Conquer mini-bosses, set pieces, and climactic 1-on-1 encounters that offer intense challenges against unforgettable villains.
A novel, deterministic combat system, with easy to grasp rules and astonishing depth. No random miss chances. No damage ranges. Manipulate the elements to turn the battlefield to your advantage, but beware the consequences, as nature is complex and fickle. Open chasms, raise mountains, boil lakes, drain rivers. Start fires you later regret.
An anthology of fast-paced arcade games where your goal is to reach the top of the leaderboards in each one. The games go from a dungeon crawler set in a procedurally generated temple where you must seal spirits, to a cute but challenging puzzle where you must prepare the orders of a very hectic potions shop. Come and get that good old feeling of competition you got when going to the arcade, or just having fun and challenging yourself by trying to get all the achievements for each game.
A relaxing gardening game in which you create your dream garden in a peaceful, colorful world. Plant and add ornaments at your own pace, transforming an overgrown forgotten plot into a flourishing community garden.
Play as Sir Mordred, the former black knight of the grim tales. You killed King Arthur, but with his dying breath, he struck you down. You both died – and yet, you both live. The Lady of the Lake wants you to finish what you have begun… in the twisted, dark realm of Avalon! Experience a unique hybrid between tactical games and character-centric RPGs in this dark fantasy version of the Arthurian myth.
Control your Quadroids simultaneously on four screens and make your way through more than 100 danger-filled levels. Jump to avoid acid baths, lasers, deadly spikes, and other vicious traps, or strategically sacrifice your minions to create new platforming opportunities.
Play as a little flying spirit that watches humanity in its early states evolve. You will discover a long-forgotten land with beautiful environments, and you will be able to enjoy the feeling of flying while exploring a whole world filled with beauty and little secrets.
A new action-platform game straight out of the 16-bit era. Play as Gareth, a knight of the royal guard and defeat the evil forces of Asteborg. Learn powerful spells and use them to unlock your path or defeat your enemies. Collect gold from the remains of your opponents and purchase upgrades to unlock your full potential!
The waters have risen to an alarming level, leaving merely a handful of places habitable. As a leader of a small group of survivors, you are tasked to extract resources to construct an ark and move to a safer location. Gather enough resources to flee to safety while the surrounding world gets flooded.
The Great Elevator has broken, and its cogs have been scattered all around the world. Collect the lost cogs, repair the Great Elevator, and unlock new levels in this collectathon inspired by 3D platformers.
We’ve all wondered why no one gets in a car and drives away from the terror in scary movies and games. Pacific Drive by Ironwood Studios lets us live out that scenario. This upcoming first-person survival adventure drives a customizable station wagon into the genre.
Ahead of the February 22 launch date, we spoke with the game’s director, Alexander Dracott, about the inspiration behind this genre-twisting game and its development journey.
PlayStation Blog: What was the inspiration behind Pacific Drive?
Alexander Dracott: The initial idea goes back to some of my hobbies and growing up driving station wagons to go camping and out into the woods of the Pacific Northwest. The seed came from the things I saw driving alone in the woods, fog, and rain, seeing things like mining towns that haven’t seen the light of day. The game started as simple test car in the woods, and as we started inserting more mechanics, we decided you should be able to turn the car off and on. It should have gas like you should have to refuel your car. It became apparent that there’s this overlap between the maintenance of a car you would expect and the item juggling you want from a survival game. What we ended up doing is taking the pressure that is always on the player in a lot of survival games and pushed it onto the car, and it clicked. You’re forming this relationship with this car that becomes your protector.
Where did the idea of the Olympic Exclusion Zone come from, and how does it contribute to the game’s mechanics?
I’ve always been a big fan of zoned stories and players being isolated, but in a space filled with interesting mechanics. For example, a lot of the enemy anomalies aren’t zombies that you just shoot. They’re more interesting and unique, and discovering what they are is part of the experience. The idea behind the Exclusion Zone, something that the government has walled off, instantly clicked because it gave us the freedom to both tell an interesting story and build this world while also filling it with things like those anomalies that people are going to have to learn and discover through the game’s mechanics.
Why did the team decide on this smaller-scale gameplay loop versus a free-roam open-world title?
Initially, we were considering something that was a little bit more like a traditional survival game on a relatively large map. Our maps are big because you have a car and go quick. We found that while all of our survival mechanics were working, we wanted those rest stops. We wanted those breaks like looting and fixing up your car. With that came the birth of the garage as a permanent place that you could go to and fix up your car, take the time, and engage with the different systems that are in the game. That cemented into this idea of, “Okay, I’ve got my garage, but now I can go out and take these trips to other parts of the game world.”
Was it difficult to build so many mechanics around a car?
Pacific Drive is a big game full of systems that interact with each other, so there’s a general complexity behind it that’s always going to be hard to manage. On one hand, you want to be figuring things out, but on the other, these systems all need to be built up on their own. You don’t get a good picture until many are present and exchanging with themselves individually. And with car physics, unlike a lot of other car games where a lot of the focus on those titles is, “let’s take one engine that we’re building our game in and have 300 cars that feel distinct and unique.” For us, it’s the opposite. We’re going to have one car, but that car has to be able to get customized in different ways as players express themselves. How does the car still feel like the car between two players that have built it out completely differently? We build dedicated tools around that and figure out the right way to do it.
Are there any additions that didn’t quite make it into the final version of Pacific Drive you wish could make it in?
It’s a bit of a cop-out answer, but the answer is always just “more.” Whatever number of items that we were going to have, we pulled it back to a more reasonable number. That’s the case across our game, which is still absolutely packed with different items. Because there are tools you can use, resources you can grab, things you can interact with throughout the world, special things to bring back to your garage, and tons of car parts because so much of the car is customizable. We were always planning more of those, but we ended up pulling back to a reasonable number.
What’s your favorite feature in Pacific Drive?
As the guy helping to form the original idea, I’m biased by the atmosphere. The moments where the gameplay complements the atmosphere are absolutely incredible—those moments where this world absorbs me due to weather, visuals, and general vibe. What we were aiming for is a very unique field for the zone and its isolated beauty. You’re alone out there, but you still have those elements of gameplay that are present. You might see a dreary building in the fog and think, “Yeah, it’s a cool piece of set dressing, but maybe there’s stuff over there. See if there’s anything I can grab for my car.” Those moments stand out strongly for me.
What unique PlayStation 5 features can players expect from Pacific Drive?
The big one is the DualSense controller, for sure. We had something special once we started tuning the haptics, especially for the [adaptive] triggers, and how they interacted with the suspension, and what the car is doing. We figured out a very clever way to translate the change of the change of the suspension differences that the car is handling as it drives along and map that out into our rumble. You might drive over a bump and feel like the controller reacts appropriately. If something pops the wheel off your car, it will drop, and you’ll feel it drop. We also added noise into the simulation to help make it feel correct when driving on off-road surfaces. We’re really pleased with how the game feels on this controller.
Pacific Drive takes everything about the survival genre and throws a car into the mix, with tons of relevant atmosphere, obstacles, and pleasantries. When the game launches on February 22, 2024, you can tune up your car and hit the lonely roads.
