NZXT’s AiOs are some of the best liquid coolers in the business, whether considered in terms of performance or aesthetics, and their new Kraken Elite RGB release is now on sale at Newegg in the US. The 280mm size AiO in white is now down to $200 after a $70 discount, and highly recommended by this writer at that price.
Super Smash Bros. and Kirby director Masahiro Sakurai revealed he’s still making games while juggling his recent shift into becoming a video game YouTuber.
In the latest episode of Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games, aptly titled “Creators Change, Too,” Sakurai reflected on what it was like entering the video game industry at a young age and experiencing his predecessors slowly phase out of public consciousness. As if reading the room via the internet, Sakurai addressed whether the subject matter of his video pertained to himself saying he’s still actively working in the industry.
“As for me, I’m still creating games for the time being,” Sakurai said. “But I’m also making this YouTube channel. I’d never done anything like this before starting out, so in a way, you could say I haven’t exactly stayed put either.”
Although Sakurai coupled his announcement with an old Smash Bros. gameplay video, he didn’t disclose whether or not he was working on a new entry in the eclectic video games Oscars-esque fighting game series. However, in a previous YouTube video, Sakurai has gone on record saying “I can’t imagine a Smash Bros. title without me,” and that he’d still like to “keep working with Nintendo.” Regardless, we’ll have to keep our fingers crossed for whatever Sakurai has been cooking at a later date.
Toward the latter half of the video, Sakurai encouraged viewers not to grieve developers if they’ve pivoted out of the industry or “secured patents that made them a fortune” to pursue a non-public-facing career path. Look no further than fellow video game figures like Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto and former PlatinumGames developer Hideki Kamiya coming out to say they haven’t left the industry wholesale despite their respective absences. Instead, Sakurai urged fans to support developers in their new ventures even if that means they’ve found fulfilling work outside of games.
“Aside from those who reach retirement age, there are quite a few people who disappear from the game industry part way through their careers,” Sakurai said. “Of course, for some of them it’s simply unclear where they ended up. This isn’t limited to the game industry, but if a creator you know does suddenly vanish without a trace please don’t write them of as “washed up” or “finished”!”
Isaiah Colbert is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow them on Twitter @ShinEyeZehUhh
Montech’s King 95 Pro was chosen as TechPowerUp’s runner-up PC case of the year, and now it’s discounted to a historic low in the UK: £114, a solid price for a full-size dual-chamber design with six RGB fans included, tonnes of useful features and excellent thermal performance.
That deal price is for the blue version, but the white version (shown below) is also relatively affordable at £125 if you’d prefer a trendy gleaming design.
Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt makers CD Projekt Red have said in no uncertain terms that they “are not interested” in being acquired by another company, while still leaving the door open for the studio to potentially acquire others in the future.
Scratch that nostalgia itch with these Switch neo-classics.
Updated with Gravity Circuit and Chico and the Magic Orchards DX. Enjoy!
Ah, nostalgia — it’s a tricksy thing. How many times have we gone back to revisit a treasured classic only to find that modern games have spoiled it for us? For all the brilliant aspects of retro games, the mod cons and performance we’re used to now are pretty fantastic, too, and sometimes going back can be tough. Was this slowdown always here? I don’t remember it looking this fuzzy. You mean I have to start again… at the beginning?!
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Last year (wahey), you narrowly decided that giving items to other players is better than throwing grenades back. I feel glad for your family and friends, who doubtless received wonderful gifts for Christmas rather than regifted junk. You’re a little sweetie. Well, 55% of you are little sweeties. The rest… best not to dwell. Let’s open this new year with a question of beginnings. What’s better: a fresh new MMO server, or Viscera Cleanup Detail’s Sniffer tool?
Microsoft has announced the games coming to Xbox Game Pass in January 2024, with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Resident Evil 2 headlining this month’s offerings.
Revealed on Xbox Wire, the mysterious adventure game Close to the Sun is available today, January 3. Set in the 1890s, players must board a mysterious ship complex created by Nikola Tesla in an alternative version of history. In our 7/10 review, IGN said: “Close to the Sun is a harrowing and thoughtfully designed first-person exploration adventure that shows a twisted world in which Nikola Tesla’s ideas came to life.”
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is the 2020 entry in the long running and popular franchise in which players take on the role of Eivor, a Viking raider who does as much screaming and smashing as they do sneaking and stealth. Following on from the role-playing game style gameplay of Assassin’s Creed Origins and Odyssey, Valhalla features England as its main map but also lets players visit the likes of Norway and North America.
In our 8/10 review, IGN said: “Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is a massive, beautiful open world fuelled by brutal living and the dirty work of conquerors. It’s a lot buggier than it should be but also impressive on multiple levels.”
Resident Evil 2 is the other heavy hitter of early January, with the 2019 game completely recreating the beloved survival horror entry for a modern audience. Players take on the role of Leon S. Kennedy as he starts his first day as a police officer in Raccoon City in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, or Jill Valentine who goes searching for her missing brother. These intertwining storylines see both characters forced to overcome one horrifying challenge after the other.
In our 9/10 review, IGN said: “Now this is how you remake a classic. Resident Evil 2 expertly reanimates the horrifying atmosphere and moments of extreme tension that made the original so revered.”
Sticking to the spooky atmosphere, We Happy Few is another horror title joining Xbox Game Pass in January. It sees a group of slightly terrible people try to escape from a prescribed cheerful lifestyle, having to force their way through some horrifying citizens to do so. In our 7/10 review, IGN said: “There’s a great story lurking in We Happy Few, but you’ll have to escape some repetitive levels to find it.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
In 2024, I am learning to do cryptic crosswords. Last year I complained about Puzzmo’s crossword clues being very US-centric and Excors commented that US and UK puzzles seem very different, both in their form and in the fact that UK crosswords are often crytpic. Which is true! Often if you see a “quick crossword” in a UK paper that means “crossword with clues that are general knowledge questions and not an archaic set of riddles – you know, for if you’re waiting for the kettle to boil, or are an idiot”. So I decided to look into how you actually do cryptics. It’s way harder than I thought, but at the same time I did not realise it’s just smug puns.
Mecha BREAK, at first glance, has all the flash of a mecha anime brought to life. I’m talking massive, colorful robot suits, each with their own movesets, roles, and specialties strafing across arena shooter-style maps in bouts of neon-lit glory. What you might not have been able to glean from its energetic reveal trailer at The Game Awards, though, is that it’s actually a multiplayer-only experience. And with Titanfall on ice and Armored Core 6 burying its PvP behind a few chapters of its campaign, it’s cool to see a mech game on this scale fully commit to multiplayer.
Despite their hulking size, mechs in Mecha BREAK don’t feel like lumbering bots of mass destruction. Instead, they move with speed and grace. Strafing to dodge enemy fire just to get in close to hit them with a few melee attacks before parrying their counterattack with your shield and then finishing the job, feels much tighter than you’d expect. Hits land with the appropriate oomph, and each attack lights up the screen with bright colors. It’s clear Mecha BREAK understands that mechs are inherently cool and that a good mech game needs to transmit that coolness through the controller.
Of the three modes planned for Mecha BREAK’s launch, only two — a 3v3 and a 6v6 mode — were available in the closed alpha I played. Both focus on recognizable PvP structures that you might find in any standard multiplayer shooter with a handful of objectives to capture or play towards, and there’s a solid mix of different things happening here. That said, I hope developer-publisher Amazing Seasun makes them a bigger focus in the final version. Plopping objectives on maps about the size of a scaled-up Halo level makes for good chokepoints to encourage skirmishes, but these objectives don’t feel balanced. Momentum gets to be just a bit too intense here; a few of the matches I played ended far too quickly because my team captured and held every objective right at the beginning of the game which gave us the starting boost we needed to achieve an almost complete blowout.
Beyond the pacing of any individual match, these multiplayer bouts reminded me a lot of Halo. From the time to kill to the types and placements of the objectives to its tense melee showdowns and ranged standoffs – and even down to its map layouts – there’s an unmistakable Halo-like sensibility to the ebb and flow of these matches, and I mean that in the best way possible. I found myself fervently mashing the respawn button through the respawn timer just so I could get back into the action one frame sooner like I was 13 again.
I would like to note, however, that my experience with Mecha BREAK was pretty limited. While I can see the difference in playstyles between various mechs and have cycled through some of the unlockable options, I can’t exactly speak to their diversity in movesets or playstyles beyond their descriptions and their roles like “Attacker,” “Tank,” or “Brawler.” Progression here seems to be pretty well-designed around rewarding regular players through a battle pass-like system, though what I saw is certainly subject to change.
In addition to the hands-on time I had with Mecha BREAK, I also had the opportunity to talk with some of the developers at Amazing Seasun about their approach to designing a multiplayer game, their inspirations, and a handful of other features appearing in Mecha BREAK including its third mode, which wasn’t playable during the closed alpha period. Amazing Seasun hasn’t discussed this mysterious third mode too much, beyond describing it as a PvPvE experience that’s similar to a battle royale. They weren’t able to share much about this mode, spare some very vague details about fighting NPC mecha and enemy players to progress, but if you watch the game’s reveal trailer, you’ll see players fighting a giant boss-like mech.
I came away from the closed alpha and the interview for Mecha BREAK wanting more thanks to the fun, dazzling mech action at its core, but I also came away excited and curious to learn more about its third large-scale multiplayer mode. Here’s hoping we won’t have to wait long to see what it’s all about.
Developer is now sole publisher of the IP.
Developer Frogwares, known for its work on the Sherlock Holmes franchise, has become the sole publisher of its open-world investigative game The Sinking City after a lengthy legal dispute with Nacon (formerly Bigben Interactive).
In a post on social media, Frogwares stated that the latest version of the game will be published on the likes of Steam, Epic Games, GOG, and Gamesplanet in the coming weeks. As we mentioned a little while back, the Switch version of The Sinking City has been unaffected by the ongoing dispute since Frogwares originally published it instead of Nacon.
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