The meme that willed itself into existence, Cult of the Lamb’s ‘sex update’, is upon us. The roguelite cultist sim’s Sins of the Flesh update is live now, bringing a whole bunch of new items, systems and other additions, as well as its promised woo-hooing.
Call of Duty: Warzone players excited to jump into Season 1 Reloaded are running into new issues that are leaving the game almost unplayable.
The Season 1 refresh update dropped for all players today, bringing new cosmetics, multiplayer maps, changes to the Zombies formula, anti-cheat improvements, and more across the entire Call of Duty experience. They’re enticing additions that many battle royale fans aren’t getting to enjoy. Those who hop into the open-world FPS mode are being met with intense visual and gameplay glitches if they are able to make it into a match at all.
Social media sites like X/Twitter are already filled with clips and reports of lackluster experiences. A notorious clip making the rounds sees streamer Fifakill struggling to move at all after attempting to open the “Create a Class” menu.
If you try to go to ‘create a class’ in the menu your game will bug and you’ll have to restart. If you try to hit loadout in game this happens… 😂 pic.twitter.com/rliLXOGdgq
— Fifakill (@Fifakill_) January 17, 2024
The issues don’t stop at Create a Class. Fifakill also shared a clip on X/Twitter that shows off what can only be described as a strange dent in the Urzikstan map where there wasn’t one before.
Houston, we have a problem. @RavenSoftware @SHGames pic.twitter.com/DeUqycip8Y
— Fifakill (@Fifakill_) January 17, 2024
Terraformed map sections might be funny to some, but others have found themselves unable to access Loadout Drops, too. Streamer MerK and players with them found that the Precision Airstrike Killstreak is no longer notifying nearby players when activated.
Notifications just straight up aren’t working on PA’s, just be ready for some stealth bombers pic.twitter.com/INpbGNEaeo
— MerK (@JoeDeLuca) January 17, 2024
It’s a warning that could mean life or death for a squad, but it’s also only an issue you need to worry about if you’re actually able to enter a game. X/Twitter user Kaitlyn Smiles, as well as many others, are finding themselves caught in a loop that restricts access to even something as simple as the main menu.
NEW WARZONE UPDATE MUST WATCH pic.twitter.com/zEElKWNAiz
— MPIRE Astro (@astroboihero) January 17, 2024
Call of Duty: Warzone developer Raven Software is used to making changes on the fly but has yet to announce when a fix for today’s Season 1 Reloaded issues will arrive. However, the team has reported that the Loadout, geographical distortion, Killstreak notification, and main menu loop bugs are being looked into.
Call of Duty: Warzone was previously meant to bring Weapons Cases and Covert Exfil’s to the experience before Raven decided to delay the features due to negative fan feedback. No information on when those features will make their way to players has been revealed.
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.
Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.
Destructive game-show shooter The Finals has received its biggest update yet. Patch 1.5 arrives with a litany of bug fixes, balance changes and more, along with the introduction of a brand new mode – the game’s first time-limited variant, as well as its first mode for solo players.
Larian CEO Swen Vincke has been reading Ubisoft director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay’s thoughts from yesterday about how players need to “get comfortable” with renting their games as a package, rather than “having and owning” an individual copy. His broad takeaway is: that ain’t it, chief. In a social media thread today, Vincke wrote that “it’s going to be a lot harder to get good content if subscription becomes the dominant model and a select group gets to decide what goes to market and what not”. He feels that “direct from developer to players is the way”. As such you shouldn’t expect Baldur’s Gate 3, Divinity: Original Sin 2 or any other Larian RPGs to join the Game Pass bandwagon anytime soon.
“I think this is the first time we’ve ever let a player self-insert into one of our games”.
Last year was a busy one for Riot Forge, which published three solid, indie-developed games set in the expansive Runeterra universe (The Mageseeker, Convergence, Song of Nunu), each featuring totally unique art styles and gameplay. Now the company is turning its attention to its 2024 slate, which will kick off next month with the adorable Bandle Tale by Lazy Bear Games.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown launches tomorrow, January 18, for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, and is available now with a Ubisoft+ subscription or for purchasers of the Digital Deluxe Edition. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is an adventure inspired by Persian mythology and the Metroidvania genre, in which players step into the boots of Sargon – the youngest member of Persia’s most elite warriors, the Immortals – and brave the dangers of the mysterious Mount Qaf on a journey to save the kidnapped Prince Ghassan. Wielding acrobatic parkour abilities, mystical time powers, and fluid, combo-driven sword skills, Sargon discovers a world shattered by a time curse, where he’ll battle sand zombies, screen-filling monsters, and even alternate versions of himself.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was developed by Ubisoft Montpellier, the studio behind Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends – and some of those games’ DNA persists in Sargon’s adventure, particularly when it comes to platforming. Like Rayman and crew, Sargon has a certain rhythm and bounce to his movements that helps make exploration a blast, and a lot of his time is spent navigating deviously designed platforming sequences that dare players to thread their way through gauntlets of spikes and traps with increasingly less room for error. To find out more about this connection, and how Ubisoft Montpellier’s experience on the Rayman games helped shape Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, we spoke with Game Director Mounir Radi.
Rayman Origins, Rayman Legends, and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown are obviously very different games, but is it fair to say the Rayman games were a starting point or reference for The Lost Crown?
For the platforming aspect, yes; not for the combat. Those two things are quite different, but for the platforming aspect, the flow, we are talking about how to convey the weight of your character and the musicality. When we are talking about level design and the way you progress through levels, I like to compare Rayman and Prince of Persia to musical partitions, and this is where we used our expertise the most in mastering the flow of progression.
Some developers tend to build a game before a toy, and we took a lot of time to make a toy first. Before having Sargon and his animation, we worked with just a capsule. Sargon was, for one year, a capsule – and yes, it was super weird! But if you establish a good weight, a good flow, and a good feel with the capsule first – and then bring the animation, the VFX, and the background, you can upgrade this feel in phases. If it’s the other way, you might miss something.
We took a lot of time after that to try to figure out how to convey Sargon’s weight, and to think about his physicality. The weight, for me, is the whole thing, and we took a lot of time figuring out the lengths of specific animations to convey it – sometimes it was just about one frame. One frame, I swear it! We were like, “One frame! No, remove this frame!” We were jumping, bouncing. And it was super-important, because while this approach is super-demanding, it pays off in the end.
Speaking of weight – what do you need to do differently to communicate the weight of a cartoon character like Rayman, versus a more anime-inspired hero like Sargon? What needs to be different about how they move?
You know, when you deal with a character who has no arms and no legs, you are not exposed to the uncanny valley. Your brain can accept everything; Rayman is using his hair to fly, and that’s OK. But when you are playing with Sargon, you are in semi-reality. You are expecting specific things from his movements. Sometimes you can trick players, but you have to do it step by step, and use specific references that players may know, so they can accept new things.
Sargon is an Immortal; he’s part of a specific world-building logic. Even if it’s mythological, people have weight, so when we were working with our animators and VFX team, and even with the 3D models, we took a lot of time to find the right balance. It’s during special abilities, like when you parry, when you are using fancy executions, and when you use your Athra Surge abilities, that you reach the highest point of spectacularity, of superheroic capacity. During this, we bring in these flashy colors, which is our way to indicate that you just unleashed a super ability, and you performed it the right way – because these are not something you can perform without a challenge. To perform an execution, you have to parry; to perform an Athra Surge, you have to build up your gauge.
So we used fighting games as a reference, like Super Smash Bros. or Street Fighter, because in those games, there’s purity in the balance between each attack; one attack, one function. That’s why there’s one button in Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown for attacking.
Musicality in the Rayman games and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is something you’ve spoken about previously, with the idea that platforming has a clear rhythm. How does that affect the shape the level design takes? How do you find a beat that works consistently?
It’s about foreshadowing the path for the players. We used the camera to ensure that the path is super-readable, and made sure that the blocking elements of level design present a specific variety. Imagine that you’re on the ground and you have to go upward; in some games, you’d jump three times to rise three levels, so it’s hitting the same button three times – pam, pam, pam! The same button triggers the same sound, the same animation, the same VFX. That can cause fatigue, and we tried to manage this fatigue – to bring short notes, long notes, and to be sure that players have the ability to create a partition.
Level design offers different ways to create different partitions, and it involves a lot of iteration, because sometimes you have friction. Wwhen you see people being exposed to a challenge for the first time, and you know that they are in the zone, and they are able to pass the challenge, that means that you got it right. That means that you took enough time to train them before, so that they could absorb the mechanics – and that now, with their reflexes, they can predict the path. They have the ability to stay in the flow.
One clear callback to the Rayman games is the Xerxes Coins, which echo the Skull Coins in Rayman Origins and Legends. They float in midair close to hazards that can often be very challenging to navigate, and players need not only to grab the coins, but to land safely in order to claim them. Have the developers always had that affinity for this kind of very tight “splatforming,” or is it something that developed over time?
It was right from the beginning. When you’re talking about exploration, people are free to experiment with different abilities in this world. So sometimes, when you have a specific path and you give players some tools, you cannot control how they beat that path, even if there’s a specific challenge. By offering them Xerxes challenges, we were more in control. We were saying, “you have to beat it like this, to play it like this, in order to play as intended.” That was our way to get players to play specific notes in a place where they’re aware of the composition. They can use the same attacks, they can use the same amulets, they can use the same abilities to progress, but when we use Xerxes challenges, we are telling our players to play with these specific conditions or elements.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown has a few superficial similarities with Rayman in terms of combat – the feel of the aerial slam attacks, for example – but The Lost Crown’s combat is much more elaborate and responsive, in a way that’s rare even for Metroidvanias. How did that new approach take shape?
First and foremost, before even going into the Metroidvania genre, we wanted it to be a Prince of Persia game. In Prince of Persia, when you venture into the world and fight against enemies, colliding with enemies is not a danger. In a lot of Metroidvanias, enemies are obstacles: if you touch them, you’ll take a hit. But that was not what we wanted to achieve here, because for me, Prince of Persia is about experimentation.
In the previous games, and even in the Sands of Time trilogy, the choreographic aspect of the combat was animation-driven: You press a button, you execute an animation. Sometimes it’s a flowy animation and an execution, but there’s a balance between execution and spectacle. To make sure that this new choreography is in the hands of the player, we wanted to be sure that the game is super-responsive. So the choreographic aspect is back, but now it’s the player doing their own choreography with the toolsets we give them.
This is a new approach, and one intended for fairness – but also because if a player uses a defensive mechanic like a parry, dodge, or even a jump, it could cancel any animation. And that was the beginning, because this is less a vertical approach to game design, and much more of a horizontal approach to game design: Give them toolsets, amulets, and special abilities, and they can compose their own playstyle. I think that’s part of the legacy of Prince of Persia, of respecting players’ cleverness. This is authored gameplay, and players are free to compose, to create, to build their own choreography.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown launches on January 18 for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC – and players with a Ubisoft+ subscription, or who purchase the Digital Deluxe Edition, can start playing Sargon’s adventure right away. Secrets and danger abound throughout Mount Qaf – along with plenty of opportunities to push your combat and platforming skills to the limit – so get ready to explore, battle, and see just how warped a time-cursed mountain citadel can become.
UBISOFT
Dash into a stylish and thrilling action-adventure platformer set in a mythological Persian world where the boundaries of time and space are yours to manipulate. Play as Sargon and evolve from sword-wielding prodigy to extraordinary legend as you master acrobatic combat and unlock new Time Powers and unique super abilities.
UNLEASH YOUR INNER WARRIOR
Use your Time Powers, combat, and platforming skills to perform deadly combos and defeat time-corrupted enemies and mythological creatures.
LOSE YOURSELF IN THE PRODIGIOUS MOUNT QAF
Discover a cursed Persian-inspired world filled with larger-than-life landmarks and explore a variety of highly detailed biomes, each with their own identity, wonder, and danger.
LIVE AN EPIC ADVENTURE
Immerse yourself in a Persian mythological fantasy through an intriguing and original story as you use your wits to solve puzzles, find hidden treasures, and complete quests to learn more about this corrupted place.
This game leverages Smart Delivery allowing access to both the Xbox One title and the Xbox Series X|S title.
The post How Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Builds on Rayman’s Platforming Legacy appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Of all games ever to capture the hearts of outcasts, misfits, and ne’er-do-wells around the world, none has had an impact as powerful as “the world’s greatest role-playing game”: Dungeons & Dragons. An iconic game featured in numerous shows, popular podcasts, and movies, including the recent star-studded blockbuster, Honor Among Thieves, Dungeons & Dragons celebrates its 50th birthday this year. To celebrate, miniature maker Wizkids has announced their biggest booster set so far, slated for release this July, with 60 figures featured throughout Dungeons & Dragons’ 50 years of history.
The D&D Icons of the Realms: 50th Anniversary Booster Set includes modern pre-painted 5e versions of various D&D monsters alongside their classic 1e versions, the latter of which features monsters never before recreated as minis or even in color. You can pre-order booster packs, each containing one large mini and 3 medium or small minis, here, or even supercharge your collection with the $200 booster bricks, which contain 8 booster packs with random minis.
Among the iconic characters to be featured are 1e and 5e versions of the resurgent Vecna, who recently regained his popularity owing to his appearance as the central villain in the fourth season of Stranger Things. You can also collect multiple versions of the spider queen herself, Lolth, who comes in her spider 5e incarnation and her 1e drow form. And there’s the 1e Eidolon from the iconic cover art of the 1e Player’s Handbook.
Check out side-by-sides of these retro and modern incarnations here:
“The 50th Anniversary Booster Set has become a passion project for the entire D&D community to enjoy,” said Joseph Nuzzo, senior product producer at Wizkids. “Whether you have been playing D&D for 50 years or you just had your first session, there is a miniature in this set for everyone to get excited about.”
Alongside the booster set, Wizkids will also debut the Classic Red Dragon Boxed Miniature for $29.99, which can be pre-ordered on IGN Store. This classic D&D monster, featured on the cover of the original 1977 Dungeons & Dragons: Basic Set has all the same cartoonish goodness from the days of your basement-dweling youth, and stands nearly 5 inches tall with a 75 millimeter base, covered in the creature’s coveted loot. Booster Sets are also available for preorder on DNDMini.com and at local game stores.
There are 10 secret rare figures in the 50th Anniversary Booster Set. IGN is thrilled to announce two of these figures: the Green Knight and Blue Wizard. Along with the Classic Red Dragon, fans can use these two figures to recreate the iconic cover of the 1977 basic set.
Travis Northup is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @TieGuyTravis and read his games coverage here.
When cute crafting RPG Bandle Tale: A League Of Legends Story was first announced at the end of last year, I don’t think I really appreciated the fact it was going to be the next game from the devs behind mortuary farming-me-do Graveyard Keeper. I keep turning this fact over in my head as I watch Lazy Bear Games’ associate producer Vlada Redko play a portion of Bandle Tale over Discord for me, with creative director Nikita Kulaga and Riot Forge’s creative director Rowan Parker telling me about what’s happening onscreen in front of me. As Redko explores the whimsical, knitting-themed city of Bandle as one of League Of Legends’ tiny fluffy Yordle creatures, it is, to put it lightly, quite the tonal shift from their previous work. But don’t let its cute looks fool you.
This is a crafting RPG with a ferociously long set of skill trees to master, with 40-60 hours’ worth of new abilities to learn, objects to construct, errands to run, friends to enlist and – crucially – parties to throw. For in the Bandle woods of Runeterra, life’s problems are solved by having a good old fashioned boogie, including the rather urgent issue of fixing the world’s portal network, which has collapsed in a mysterious accident. It may have a softer, fluffier-looking surface than Graveyard Keeper, but underneath it looks as though there’s just as much to dig into here, so here’s what I’ve learned so far ahead of its release on February 21st.
2023 and 2024 have shown that 2TB PS5 SSD upgrades are actually worth the price. In 2022, prices for 1TB PS5 SSDs averaged around $150, whereas 2TB SSDs hovered closer to $300. Now, we’re seeing 1TB SSDs trickle below the $70 price point and 2TB SSDs can drop to around $100 or sometimes even lower if there’s a good sale. It’s worth noting, though, that you can’t use any old SSD and expect it to perform well on the PS5 console. You’ll want to pick up a PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 solid-state drive with at least a 5,500MB/s read speed to match the PS5’s internal drive.
Note that Sony recommends a heatsink attached to your SSD and not all SSDs listed here have pre-installed heatsinks. For the ones that do, we’ll be sure to mention it. For the ones that don’t, all you have to do is purchase your own heatsink (like this one for $9) and install it yourself. For our top recommended picks for 2023, check out our full breakdown for the Best PS5 SSDs.
As part of Best Buy’s Deal of the Day, you can save $80 on the Samsung 980 Pro 2TB SSD with heatsink, bringing it down to $149.99. This is an excellent pickup for your PS5, and only lasts today so act fast!
This is an excellent deal for getting 1TB of storage, saving you around $20 off its MSRP of $124.99. This Seagate SSD is officially licensed and built with the PS5 in mind. It even has a built-in heatsink so you don’t need to worry about spending extra cash on one. On top of all that, it features 7300MB/s read speeds and 6000MB/s write speeds.
If you’re looking to up your storage on PS5 even further, you can’t go wrong with this excellent deal on a 2TB SSD from XPG. Its price has dropped 33%, from $209.99 to $139.99, but you’ll have to grab a heatsink to go with it (which you can do here for $9). This SSD also has read and write speeds of 7400/6800MB/s.
For those wanting a 2TB SSD with the included heatsink, Lexar has their 2TB NM790 SSD with heatsink discounted at the moment to $151.70. This saves you around 11% off its MSRP of $169.99 and is well worth the investment for its incredible performance (7400MB/s read speeds and 6500MB/s write speeds).
WD is the only brand that sells an officially licensed PS5 SSD. The SN850P is physically the same SSD as the SN850X, which is the latest generation of WD’s flagship Black series M.2 SSDs. The SN850P’s upgrades over the SN850 include newer flash chips (BiCS5 vs BiCS4) and an updated firmware, both of which offer improved sequential and random read/write speeds. It’s easily one of the fastest SSDs on the market.
The Samsung 990 Pro is an excellent SSD for your PS5. From a purely performance perspective, it’s overkill; the stock SSD in your PS5 will be the limiting factor. You’ll want to pick up an PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 solid state drive with a rated 5,500MB/s read speed to match the PS5’s internal drive and the 990 Pro is much faster. This one does not come with a heatsink, though, so you’ll need to invest in one.
Sony recommends you install an SSD that has an attached heatsink. If the SSD you purchase doesn’t include one, it’s simple enough to buy one for $9 on Amazon and add it yourself. Most of these heatsinks are just attached using an adhesive like thermal tape.
There may be other SSD deals out there, but these are the PS5 SSDs we’ve tried ourselves and highly recommend. They also double up as outstanding boot drives for your gaming PC, in case you don’t need additional storage for your PS5 console.
It’s extremely easy! Removing the case cover is completely toolless. In fact, the only screw you have to remove is the one that keeps the cover for the SSD bay in place. You don’t even put it back when you’re done. Sony has a quick and easy YouTube video guide.
I enjoy Games Done Quick, an organisation that raises money for charity (this year is the Prevent Cancer Foundation) by playing games at peak efficiency. If you’ve never watched it before, I recommend loading up the Twitch stream at about 1am and sort of gently dissociating while someone plays an 80s NES game you’ve never heard of. Speaking of, one of the headline acts for this year’s stream – which is running through to this Sunday 21st – was Peanut Butter, a shiba inu trained to press buttons on command, “playing” a NES game that came out in 1985. Although Peanut Butter obeyed his training, some technical issues colluded to snatch a world best time from him – but he raised many thousands of dollars, so good for him.
Peanut Butter is the latest high tide line in the efforts to put more weird and difficult hurdles between you and the controls of games when speedrunning or streaming them. And I must ask: where next? A cat? A snapping turtle biting pressure sensors? A Grey parrot to play a game without any input from you at all? Where will this madness end!?
