The latest Nintendo Download update for North America has arrived, and it’s bringing new games galore to the eShop in your region. As always, be sure to drop a vote in our poll and comment down below with your potential picks for the week. Enjoy!
Switch eShop – New Releases
4×4 OffRoad Collection(Boomhits, 25th Dec) – Experience the thrill of Trials Driving! Make it through the rock mazes, bumpy terrain “test tracks”, through mud paths and rivers, over incredible log bridges, hill climbs and cross-country races! Control the power of your cars to make it around in one piece. You’ll have to summon the skills required if you want to be the Ultimate Off-Road Driver!
Yakuza is a storied franchise that keeps on giving. Each installment in the series leading to 2020’s Yakuza: Like a Dragon has offered something new and innovative, along with consistently satisfying expansions to the evergrowing story of main characters Kazuma Kiryu and Ichiban Kasuga.
I’m glad to say that after a hands-on preview of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, the trend continues. There is almost too much here for Yakuza fans, both new and old, to sink their teeth in and enjoy. This latest entry features a fusion of the series’ original beat-em-up and current turn-based roleplaying style, an island-building mode, and even more charm than ever.
With all this present and more, I’ve found that the title Infinite Wealth might just describe everything the game offers and how long it may last. Read on for a few highlights revealed during my gameplay session.
Get your walking shoes (and segways) ready
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is the first title in the Yakuza series to take our favorite motley crew out of Japan and into new territory. Kasuga and Kiryu’s missions lead them to this new location: Honolulu, Hawaii, where they decide to team up.
Not only is this locale full of many new sights, sounds, allies, and enemies, but it is the most extensive map ever featured in the Yakuza series. It was so large that during my hours of playing, I wasn’t even able to explore even half the map. There’s no dead air to be found here. Enemies, missions, activities, and lively characters surround each corner. The only decision you have to make is what to tackle first.
Your friendly neighborhood ex-Yakuza
Personality points are nothing new to Like a Dragon, but Infinite Wealth gives a new way to allow Kasuga to move up the ranks. By being a friendly and outgoing tourist, you can constantly grow friendships with Honolulu’s population and boost your personality levels each time.
All it takes is a simple hello. By pressing square when walking by certain marked NPCs, Kasuga will release a welcoming, Helloooo! and get a good response back. Sometimes, these greetings will even unlock a small task like buying a kid a hot dog, which grants Kasuga a more significant personality increase. These increases unlock extra abilities like more skill slots, enhanced resistance to status ailments, better healing, and more guts. Plus, it’s just charming to make Kasuga into an even nicer guy than he already is.
Tourism buffs
Being a good tourist isn’t limited to just greeting bystanders. Kasuga and the gang eventually find a tourism company called Alo Happy Tours. Specified for Japanese visitors touring Hawaii, Alo Happy Tours is a place where you can pay to jump into activities like surfing, yoga, and fire dancing. But these vacation sessions aren’t just for fun.
Each new skill learned through Happy Tours leads the party to unlock a new job and fighting style. For example, learning to fire dance unlocks an attacking mage style, learning to host gives access to a buffing support job, and learning to be a pop idol lets characters heal and cure allies. And there are so many activities and styles to learn that it felt nearly endless. Not to mention the amount of party combos you can come up with.
Past wishes fulfilled
Kasuga isn’t the only one with a new way to unlock abilities through means other than fighting or the usual activities. Kiryu’s new ailment and decision to not get treatment have put his life on a clock. With his new friends Seong-Hui and Yu Nanba, he’s decided not to let it go to waste and tackle a bucket list before he checks out.
This bucket list isn’t just a plot element, but a gameplay mechanic. Kiryu can awaken his soul (Brawler fighting style), tech (Rush fighting style), and body (Beast fighting style) by completing items from this bucket list. Whether it’s a simple fishing trip or tasting some food he’s always wanted to taste like candy, Kiryu’s strength grows by living life to the fullest. I nearly shed a tear when he talked about everything he wanted to do without the fear and need of trying to look cool for people around him.
A game within a game
Download the image
To round out the hands-on time with Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, I visited Dondoko Island, which can be best described as an entirely different game within Infinite Wealth. This island build and curation segment of the title tasks Kasuga with going around an island on the verge of obscurity. Being the nice guy he is, he decides to take matters into his own hands, helping its owner clean up trash, build new attractions, and bring visitors and life back to Dondoko.
If you’ve ever played a building simulator, then you know what you’re in for here. As soon as this mode started, I was hooked. Walking around and decorating the island in my own style, gathering supplies to create new items, catching fish and bugs, and fending off enemies were some of the most addicting elements I was exposed to so far in Infinite Wealth. And the fact that we’ll be able to visit the islands of other players makes the whole thing even more exciting. I’m just scared that my life might become absorbed by this mode so much that I won’t even finish the RPG side of the game.
Join Kasuga and Kiryu’s variety-packed trip to Hawaii when Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth drops on PS5 January 26.
Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red has revealed the game’s Phantom Liberty expansion has sold more than five million copies.
Revealed in a post on X/Twitter (below), the developer confirmed the sales milestone and thanked players for their support. “Over five million agents have infiltrated Dogtown,” it said. “Thank you for all your support, and good luck on your mission.”
Though no exact timeframe was released, CD Projekt Red said the five million copies were sold in 2023, and as Phantom Liberty launched on September 26, it reached the milestone in just over three months.
In our 9/10 review of the expansion, IGN said: “Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty completes an immense turnaround for CD Projekt Red’s future RPG kickstarted with the anime spin-off, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and its latest 2.0 Update.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Korean publisher Nexon have been fined 11.6 billion won – around $8.9 million – for secretly altering the drop rates of coveted items in free-to-play MMO gacha game MapleStory. The fine, issued by the Korea Fair Trade Commission, is the largest penalty ever doled out for violation of South Korea’s Act on Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce.
Russian Roulette is just an edgy version of Snakes & Ladders. It’s pure luck gussied up with high stakes and the cool aesthetic of spinning a six-shooter. A grizzled mafioso whose cheeks glitter with fragments of other people’s teeth has as much chance of winning Russian Roulette as a sleepy five-year-old in SpongeBob pyjamas. But take Russian Roulette, swap the revolver for a pump-action shotgun, mix up live and dud rounds, and add Inscryption-esque items which let you change the rules, and now you have a more skillful game. That’s Buckshot Roulette, the latest from Mike Klubnika, the dev behind those excellent horror games about operating machinery. Great weird machines here too.
Kiryu Kazuma and Kasuga Ichiban are two sides of the same Like a Dragon coin. Their personalities could not be more different — Kiryu, a world-weary lone wolf, and Kasuga, a Dragon Quest-loving golden retriever — but they live by a similar code of ethics and share a similar past, both locked up for crimes they didn’t commit to help out their yakuza families. It was a bummer that Kiryu didn’t stick around longer when he came around in Yakuza: Like a Dragon. The two men would sure as hell have a lot to talk about.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth finally brings the two mainline protagonists together for an ultra-compelling and sprawling game that lives up to its subtitle. The three-and-a-half-ish hours I spent roaming Honolulu and Yokohama, sprucing up the trashed Dondoko Island, and battling a Megalodon-sized shark felt like a drop in the Pacific Ocean in terms of the game’s scope. And that’s just speaking to the gameplay. Having both Kasuga and Kiryu as playable protagonists place the story on a broad emotional spectrum that plays to the strengths of each character’s worldview: Kasuga and his ridiculousness, Kiryu and his legacy of struggle. It’s a great balance between the past and future of the Like a Dragon franchise.
Over in Honolulu, Kasuga and his pals are out searching for his mother once thought dead. The map here is something to behold. It’s Ryu Ga Gotoku’s biggest-ever area for the series, beautifully designed, and the amount of detail put into it is staggering to take in. More restaurants, shops, minigames, and substories are available, and locations to unlock bond conversations with Kasuga’s teammates are now conveniently marked. A bigger map also means more transportation options. Aside from the taxi stands, trolley lines are all around Honolulu, which is a more relaxed option to take in the sights and have conversations with Kasuga’s teammates. Lastly, Kasuga acquires a rechargeable Segway through an appropriately ridiculous substory, which is, of course, much faster than running around on foot, less rigid than the set locations of trolleys and cabs, and extremely goofy-looking. All around, a net positive.
Infinite Wealth also carries on the same turn-based combat as Yakuza: Like a Dragon. It either works for you or it doesn’t — I’m in the former camp — and the studio has made definite improvements to that system so that I felt more engaged and had more ways to act strategically. It seems simple, but having a circle in which to move around gives a real advantage when it comes to actions like utilizing nearby objects as weapons or sneaking behind an enemy to perform a powerful back attack. The command interface has also been improved (and Persona-fied). Tag Team moves are no longer hidden in skill lists but shown directly next to the command menu. Maybe the best improvement in this category is an easier way to avoid fighting. In Yakuza: Like a Dragon, I always got a little annoyed when I got tangled up with some of the street freaks when I was just trying to get from one place to another, especially if they were so many levels below me that the experience points from defeating them would be negligible. In Infinite Wealth, enemies are now color coded by strength, and they’re less sensitive to me running by.
I can say so much more about just hanging out in Honolulu — All my new friends! The abundance of job changes! Swimming in the ocean! — but then this would go on for an hour. Instead, I’ll just say that Hawaii is a blast, filled with hidden gems and a fantastic sense of humor.
Dondoko Island could legitimately be its own standalone game that the cozy gamers might sink 300 hours into without batting an eye.
Next, I was ported over to Dondoko Island, which many people have already called, rightfully, Like a Dragon’s Animal Crossing. The garbage-filled landmass gets Kasuga as its one-man cleanup crew with the goal of building it up into a five-star resort. Aside from the more violent spearfishing, the mechanics of picking up shells and netting bugs is pretty much identical to Animal Crossing, and time also similarly passes. Kasuga has a cozy house to decorate, he can buy junk from the island’s general store, and he can craft new items by acquiring resources like wood and stone. But, in true Like a Dragon fashion, even the serene Dondoko Island isn’t immune to a little fighting here and there. It’s the one place where the game turns back into an action brawler to take out pirates and other threats. All in all, it’s a nice break from the main storyline and could legitimately be its own standalone game that the cozy gamers might sink 300 hours into without batting an eye.
Jumping over to Yokohama, Kiryu’s point of view begins and the tone of the storyline turns significantly more melancholy and existential. Kiryu has cancer, and his new buddies in Kasuga’s old squad encourage him to write a bucket list of things he wants to do before he dies. At the top of the list is, yes, karaoke. On top of those tasks, the map is littered with callouts to take nostalgia trips that replay key parts of Kiryu’s life. The quick 30-or-so minutes I played in Yokohama felt like the beginning of what would probably serve as a long, bittersweet goodbye to Kiryu.
In many ways, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is a watershed moment for franchise. It’s quite likely a final send off for the cancer-stricken underworld legend Kiryu, and the official induction ceremony for Kasuga as Kiryu’s successor in the series moving forward. It’s no surprise, then, that RGG would have put an immense amount of time and effort to make such a massive game that ups the ante on the nearly 20 years of titles that came before it while nailing the balance of silly and serious. I have no reason to believe this game isn’t gonna rule.
Rockfish have announced that they’re updating arcade dogfighter Everspace 2 to run on Unreal Engine 5. The engine rollover will arrive as part of or alongside the game’s Incursions update in spring 2024, which includes tweaks and bugfixes as well as extra legendary items and a new game feature of some description. The idea is less to take advantage of UE5’s various whizbangs and bellwhistles, like the new Nanite geometry system, than to grease the launch chutes for future Everspace 2 updates and expansions.
The Trails / Kiseki series might be one of the biggest RPG franchises around right now — at least, in terms of size and scope.
This storied JRPG saga takes place on the continent of Zemuria and follows different interlinking arcs, characters, and stories. Everything is carefully interconnected, with events affecting other storylines and characters frequently reappearing in future games. And with a staggering 12 mainline games to follow — with a 13th coming out in Japan later this year — its reputation is nothing short of prolific.
Well, well, well. Of all the detectives in all the world, she came to me. She was a dame with hair red as communion wine spilled by a bishop looking at a nun’s cleava- oh what, wait, she’s how old? Christ, Philip, get your head out of the gutter for once, this is a family website. I was previously a snob about the Nancy Drew point and click puzzle games, and then came to regret it when a fan of them (very nicely) emailed me explaining they’re actually really good. We’re going to find out for ourselves by playing them. There are north of 30 in total, and I will update the rankings at the end of each article.
The first is 1998’s Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill, in which Nancy solves the murder of a Floridian highschooler named Jake Roberts, and there’s a lot to love about it right away. There’s a restrained cast, three locations in total, and the school sports team is called the Fighting Manatees. Thus the icon for the game is a lil’ cartoon manatee – and to be absolutely accurate, this is the remastered version of the game from 2010, not the original 90s version. I’m as disappointed as you.
Originally revealed in the Future Games Show Spring Showcase back in 2022, publisher Untold Tales and developer Demagog Studio have today announced that the apocalypse-set 2D platformer The Cub is set to pounce onto Switch on 19th January.
Framed by the publishers as a “Jungle Book meets the armageddon fusion,” this one will see you returning to the dystopian world that the developer previously set out in Golf Club: Wasteland, parkouring your way through the landscape to escape the ghosts of your past.
