Surprise, miners. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, the Vampire Survivors-like spinoff that puts a bullet heaven twist on one of the PC’s best co-op games, is launching into early access just a couple of weeks from now. It’ll be out on Steam from February 14th, incidentially gifting the possibility for all kinds of cheap Valentine’s Day slogan gags. You are my Rock and Stone? My Ommoran Heartstone belongs to you? Drill you be Mine? Hilarious. Also, there’s a trailer.
Scratch that glitch.
A game as massive as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was always going to have a couple of bugs just waiting to be found by the glitch hunters out there. Since its launch, we have seen players discover ways of getting infinite items, fire immunity, even one-hit weapons, but none have felt quite as personal as this — skipping the game’s introductory area.
Let’s not forget, Breath of the Wild‘s Great Plateau was such a sticking point for the glitching community back in the day, with the possibility of skipping it becoming the holy grail of all discoveries. The answer is still yet to be found, so it’s natural that certain players would take to the TOTK equivalent, The Great Sky Islands, with the same level of skippable optimism.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
The post 30 Under 30: Small Indie Teams Making Big Waves With ID@Xbox appeared first on Xbox Wire.
You know what game I’ve been secretly hankering for after playing so much Palworld recently? It’s Lightyear Frontier, the upcoming farming/crafting mech adventure game from Frame Break and Amplifier Studio, and happily, we now know when it’s finally coming out. Lightyear Frontier will be launching into early access on both Steam and Game Pass on March 19th, and you can go and play a demo of it right now, too. The demo is technically part of Steam Next Fest next week, but it’s live now for all to enjoy (just like every other Steam Next Fest demo, it seems).
Upcoming Obsidian RPG Avowed takes place in Eora, which in the fictional universe of Pillars of Eternity, is pretty diverse. But after Pillars let players choose from a number of different character races, fans have been wondering for some time now why Avowed is only letting them pick human or elf when customizing a player character.
We’ve learned that Avowed player character creation is limited to making either a human or an elf in previous game reveals – no dwarves, no aumauas, and definitely no godlikes. While this has been a disappointment to some fans, Avowed game director Carrie Patel has made it clear that the reasons for this limitation are twofold: it’s both a story choice and a development decision.
On the story side, Patel explains in an interview with IGN, it’s because the player in Avowed is a representative from the Aedyr Empire, which is predominantly made up of humans and elves. Those familiar with Pillars of Eternity lore will recognize that this is indeed established canon, and has shaped a lot of the region’s particular culture.
Still, that might be cold comfort to those hoping to recreate their aumaua OC from Pillars in Avowed. For those folks, Patel offers some additional context that helps things make a bit more sense from the development side:
“We want to make sure that whatever experience we’re offering is smooth and natural and well paced to the player,” she says. “And one of the things about the species of Pillars that I think is a lot easier to account for in an isometric game is just the variation in sizes. You have aumaua and then you have humans and elves who are at roughly the same scale, and then you have orlans and dwarves who are quite a bit smaller. And for each of those, especially in first person, you’re adjusting the height of the player character’s capsule and sort of where their weapons are relative to enemies and how their hits land and how hits land on them. And it’s obviously not that any of these things are impossible to solve, but you’re always making choices and choosing your priorities and development.”
Patel declined to comment further on the character creator in Avowed, which we haven’t seen much of yet, but it’s also important to remember that Avowed is a game that largely or entirely takes place in the first-person. While it’s a bummer not to be able to be a dwarf, realistically, the only part of yourself you’ll be seeing for most of the game is your hands.
Avowed got a 2024 release window recently, after first being teased back in 2020 at the Xbox Games Showcase and getting a more complete reveal at a 2023 Xbox showcase. We also spoke to Patel last week about why Avowed is foregoing romances to focus on different kinds of companion relationships.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Developer 4A Games has made clear Metro Awakening, the PSVR2 game announced during the January 2024 PlayStation State of Play, is not the next mainline Metro game but instead a spin-off.
Following its announcement at the State of Play, Metro fans without Sony’s $550 / £530 PlayStation 5 accessory grew a little concerned they’d waited five years for another game only to see it announced for a platform they didn’t own or want.
4A Games took to X/Twitter to alleviate these concerns, however, reassuring fans it’s still working on the next multiplatform mainline Metro game, while Awakening is developed by Vertigo Games.
“This is not the next mainline Metro game by 4A Games,” the developer said. “That is still in development and, as we have stated previously, will come to generation nine consoles and PC. This is a different project developed by Vertigo Games.”
Generation nine refers to the current generation of consoles, meaning the PS5 and Xbox Series X and S. Nintendo continues to allude typical console cycles, though its imminent Switch successor could also be a possibility for whatever this next mainline Metro game is.
Awakening will arrive as a PlayStation VR2 exclusive sometime in 2024, bringing the single-player, first-person post-apocalyptic shooter franchise to virtual reality for the first time. It’s set before the events of 2010’s Metro 2033 and has players take control of Serdar, a doctor searching the metro tunnels to find his wife.
The State of Play also saw a typically bizarre Death Stranding 2 trailer released alongside the revelation that Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima is returning to his stealth action roots with a PlayStation exclusive. Team Ninja’s Rise of the Ronin and Shift Up’s Stellar Blade also received enhanced looks, and you can read about every other announcement right here.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
RPS Game Club is back in action for 2024 today, and our first pick of the year is the exceedingly good Cobalt Core, a spaceship roguelike deckbuilder where you’re slipping and sliding out the way of incoming missiles to get to the bottom of why you and the rest of your animal pals seem to be stuck in a pesky timeloop. I had an absolute blast with it when it came out at the end of last year, and really, this is just the perfect excuse to shove it back in front of your faces again.
Lookin’ sharp.
Poor Switch Lite. Although Nintendo’s smaller, budget-friendly handheld certainly has its audience, there’s no doubt in our mind that it pales in comparison to the Switch – OLED Model thanks to the latter’s far superior screen.
This could well be a thing of the past, though, as YouTuber and handheld specialist Taki Udon has created a prototype mod that replaces the standard LCD screen in the Switch Lite with an OLED screen. What’s more, Udon has stated that the mod shouldn’t cost too much to implement, with prices ranging from $25-$50 based on overall interest.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Sony is giving PlayStation Plus Premium members on PS5 a free trial of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 from Insomniac Games.
Revealed on the PlayStation Blog, those subscribed to the $159.99 / £119.99 a year PlayStation Plus tier can download Spider-Man 2 at no additional cost on February 6 and play two hours before making the decision to purchase it fully or not.
As is the case for all PlayStation Plus Premium game trials — which also include heavy hitters Baldur’s Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, and more — all saved data and trophies will carry over if players do decide to purchase the game later.
Spider-Man 2 continues the story of Peter Parker and Miles Morales as they take on a rogues’ gallery of Marvel villains headlined by the big bad Venom. It earned an 8/10 in IGN’s review, as we said: “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 delivers Insomniac’s best tale yet, and despite its open world falling short, is a reliably fun superhero power trip.”
Those picking up the game now will also enjoy its various post-launch patches, as Insomniac has removed myriad bugs (thankfully not arachnids) from Spider-Man 2 while upping the stability and general level of polish.
February 6 brings a handful of other games to PlayStation Plus users including hero shooter Foamstars, which has received both praise for its gameplay and criticism for its use of AI generated assets.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Sega of America will lay off 61 people in March, according to the state of California and the Sega of America AEGIS union. The layoffs are allegedly aimed at the company’s QA and localisation departments, and represent around 13% of Sega of America’s workforce.
