In a free world, all Overwatch 2 heroes would be playable no matter how annoying they might be to face off against because sometimes them’s the breaks. We don’t live in a free world though, not anymore at least, as Overwatch 2 season 16 starts today. Most notably it’s introducing its new mode Stadium, but also something that’ll change up the competitive aspect of the shooter quite a bit: hero bans.
Bethesda has confirmed The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered does not feature official mod support, but that hasn’t stopping dedicated fans from already pushing out a few unofficial mods of their own.
A handful of community mods made their way to popular website Nexus Mods just hours after Bethesda and Virtuos’ Oblivion reimagining shadow-dropped for players across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S. Although these mostly amount to small customization options, it’s proof that few modding communities are as dedicated as those found in The Elder Scrolls fanbase.
At the time of this story’s publication, a surprising 22 mods are available on the site. The first to cross the finish line simply allows PC players to personalize their desktop by replacing the default Oblivion Remastered shortcut with one of two images of its infamous Adoring Fan. More than a few allow players to skip the introduction Bethesda and Vitruos logo screens, while others, including one that tweaks the Wizard’s Fury spell and another that removes the compass, are already tackling options to customize gameplay.
The wave of early mods arrives as Bethesda, which usually encourages mod support in its games, announced that Oblivion Remastered does not feature official mod support this time around. Confirmation that players would need to turn elsewhere for mods was detailed in an FAQ section on its website.
Meanwhile, Nexus Mods user GodschildGaming uploaded their Iron Longsword damage mod in part to show Oblivion Remastered is still ripe for modding.
“This is just to prove modding is possible,” they said in the mod’s description. “Bethesda says no mod support, I say false. It really is Unreal slapped on top of Oblivion, the data folder is nested in a lot more folders but same concept.”
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered launched today, 19 years after the original, for PC and consoles. As more players get their hands on it in the weeks and months ahead, its pool of mods will only increase and offer more bizarre ways to tailor the experience to your liking. While we wait for more mods to drop, you can read up on why some players think today’s release is more remake than remaster and why Bethesda opted to give it that “Remastered” name in the first place.
We’ve got a comprehensive guide to everything you’ll find in Oblivion Remastered, including an expansive Interactive Map, complete Walkthroughs for the Main Questline and every Guild Quest, How to Build the Perfect Character, Things to Do First, and much more.
Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
“I think there’s an opportunity there”.
Blizzard’s Diablo series is tailor made for the Switch. Both Diablo II and Diablo III are fantastic on the hybrid console, and there are rumours out there that the latest entry — Diablo IV — may well be coming to Switch 2.
And, in an interview with host of GamerTag Radio Danny Peña, series manager and former producer of the Gears of War series Rod Fergusson has said that the prospect of Diablo IV on Switch 2 is “something to look at.” (via Nintendo Everything).
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Not only is the world of Labyrinth of the Demon King uniquely cold, oppressive, and brutal – but it is also a meticulously crafted narrative experience that weaves together elements of classic dungeon crawler titles, action RPGs, and the survival horror genre. In this challenging first-person dungeon-crawler set in a mythical re-interpretation of feudal Japan, you’ll need every resource you can find to overcome the demons that block your path. Prepare yourself to enter into the ubiquitous labyrinth yourself on May 13th, when Labyrinth of the Demon King launches on Xbox Series S|X and Xbox One systems.
The world of Athens is weird, highly unusual, and filled with a host of surprises. Along the way, you’ll meet tons of friends (and foes!) as you navigate the world in your own unique way, you’ll decide how you want to interact not only with those you meet, but also the world itself. As the world shifts and you interact with denizens, you’ll begin to flesh out your very own rhapsody. You can meet 16 potential party members, all with tons of depth – the very world will change depending on who you have in your party when. Plus, every single enemy can be fought or befriended! You’ll also find smaller friends and foes to commune with, and find tons of unlockable outfits to deck yourself and your party out with.
The world of Labyrinth of the Demon King is brought to life (so to speak, anyway) through its unique “retro-grim” art style. The game’s dark, foreboding world takes inspiration from authentic Japanese folklore and tradition; the developer spent extensive time in Japan studying architecture and history. Inspired by a mixture of mythologized feudal history and supernatural folklore, the setting of Labyrinth is as gorgeous as it is brutal. Venture through sprawling castles, idyllic teahouses, dilapidated bath houses and more as you make your way towards the Demon King himself.
As a foot soldier of your former Lord, you must be not only well trained in the art of combat, but on your toes at all times for possible threats Labyrinth of the Demon King features brutal, challenging combat that emphasizes patience, strategy, and diligence. As you explore the labyrinth, you’ll come across a slew of weapons, including an axe, naginata, bow, and more – on top of your trusty katana, of course. Face off against the numerous Yokai of ancient myth that roam the earth, and put your skills to the test. You’ll need to study the moves of each monster you come across. Be assured however, that any victory – no matter how small – is an accomplishment.
As the name suggests, the Demon King’s Labyrinth is complex, confusing, and full of twisted nooks and crannies full of monsters, treasure, traps, and sometimes…friends? As you adventure through the Labyrinth, carefully managing your resources, you’ll come across a handful of other denizens; some trekking throughout the lands like yourself and others with more…cautious goals and morals. Be careful who you trust – it could affect your fate!
Developed by J.R. Hudepohl with co-development help, porting assistance for Xbox, and publishing by Top Hat Studios, Labyrinth of the Demon King lands on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One May 13.
The post Venture Into the Labyrinth of the Demon King appeared first on Xbox Wire.
If you asked ChatGPT to combine all the most popular action-RPG mechanics in the hopes of creating a single game with broad appeal, you might end up with something as regrettably unfocused as Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree. This 2D sidescroller borrows from soulslikes, metroidvanias, platformers, and more, but it only ever achieves a moderate level of success with any of them and is spread woefully thin in the process. You can see a glimmer of potential in its combat, but that’s immediately undermined by one-dimensional, repetitious enemies with easily evaded attacks; The setting and characters start out intriguing, but quickly devolve into a chain of predictable tropes; And initial lure of running back through previous areas with new abilities becomes monotonous once you get about halfway through and realize how shallow this map really is. None of these missteps are so grievously bad that I outright regretted my time dodge-rolling around the world of Faelduum (apart from the combat), and the deep RPG options the six interesting character classes, dense skill trees, and in-depth equipment and crafting systems provide went quite a long way toward keeping me invested, but this still an otherwise underwhelming adventure in most aspects.
Mandragora’s mix of familiar ideas manages to stand out as its own kind of thing, but no matter what general label you decide to put on it, the important part is that you’re going to be swinging melee weapons, dodge rolling away from attacks, slinging spells, and swinging across gaps with a grapple hook. As you do, you’ll get to know this pessimistic and creepy world, which has been overrun by evil creatures who have left humanity cowering behind city walls. You play as an inquisitor who is sent out into the world in search of evils to kill, all while the creepy voice of a creature you sympathy-murdered whispers things in your head (long story). Unfortunately, that interesting starting point evaporates into a series of extremely lame anti-twists and cliches. For example, there’s not one, but two sections where you meet a character who is obviously the person you’ve been hunting down, but your dumb character believes them when they deny it…only for them to completely shockingly reveal they misled you less than an hour later.
It’s really too bad, because in my early hours I was quite intrigued by the bizarre dark fantasy world filled with 10-foot tall witches, dangerous monsters, and a mysterious cosmic energy called Entropy that seemed like it was going to be a really big problem. There are some great characters to meet too, like the completely unhinged jewel collector, Yrsa, who I always enjoyed bantering with. But that writing, not to mention voice acting, is nowhere near consistent, and you spend a lot of your time hearing from various bad guys about how you can’t possibly defeat them as a mere human. Sounds like someone received a word-a-day calendar filled with bad guy cliches for their birthday!
If there’s one thing Mandragora is consistent about, it is its extremely shallow combat, which pits you against sluggish soldiers and skeletons with hilariously obvious windup animations, pushover rats, and flying bats that are there to annoy you more than anything else. All of them have you simply dodging back and forth each time they take a swing, then getting a few hits in before doing so again. Boss fights are even worse, as most only have three or four unique attacks they hopelessly spam, many of which appear five or more times across the 25-hour campaign, making them feel like rank annoyances that completely betray the difficulty they’re clearly going for. Dying in Mandragora therefore usually has more to do with impatience in trying to get through a certain section of samey enemies or repeated bosses than actual challenge. There are moments where the combat’s promise comes through and you get an energizing 2D duel, like when you come across a new minion with a fresh bag of tricks or during a few of the bigger, more unique boss fights. But I mostly found myself starved for those encounters and immediately upset when they passed and I went straight back to fighting bland suits of armor for a couple more hours.
The main things that make combat more bearable are the skill trees and RPG mechanics you build up and customize along the way, which have some pretty neat options that at least offer new ways to defeat that fourth giant poisonous rat boss. I spent most of my time as a fast-moving assassin with poisonous daggers, teleporting in to close the distance with my enemies, but there’s also spell slinging options and tanky sword-and-board builds, plus the option to cross-pollinate into other skill trees to make yourself a little more well-rounded. For example, I ended up leveling my assassin into my two neighboring magical skill trees to diversify the types of damage I could deal, since poison wasn’t always effective when fighting the sixth giant poisonous rat boss (they seriously like reusing that boss). You’re also able to find and craft loot, tweaking its stats with runic enchantments and all that usual RPG goodness, and that level of buildcrafting depth is one of the ways in which Mandragora stands out.
As a sidescroller, there’s also a fair bit of platforming and secret hunting to be done, but these sections have mostly acted as the most minor of breaks in between combat sequences. There aren’t any puzzles to solve, and the handful of sections that have you dodging traps are mostly extremely obvious obstacles where giant blocks slam up and down with basically no chance of actually crushing you unless you straight up aren’t paying attention. In true metroidvania fashion, you’ll find plenty of spots that are just out of reach until you unlock a certain upgrade, but this too is quite shallow – there’s only a grapple hook, a double jump, and a glide, all of which are spread super far apart.
You’ll see about a hundred opportunities to use a double jump before you get it way too late in the adventure, and not in a tempting, “I can’t wait to get up there” sort of way. The glide is particularly hilarious as you don’t get it until the very last hour, by which point you’ve got little incentive to go back through every area looking for extras before heading into the final stretch. I generally enjoy backtracking for secrets in games like this, but after seeing eight-hours worth of new levels before getting the next upgrade, it’s a bit exhausting to consider retracing all of that just to get a few upgrade materials, especially when you’d be subjecting yourself to the same tedious combat encounters you’ve already completed a bunch of times.
Mandragora also suffers from some mild technical issues. Whenever I played for long stretches at a time, the framerate would gradually begin to tank until it was nearly unplayable. It never outright crashed, but I got to the point where resetting my PlayStation was the only real option, and that would reliably fix the problem for the next six-to-eight hours. I don’t imagine going for that long in one sitting will be the way most people play, though, and I only ever encountered the most minor of problems outside of these marathons, so this might not be an issue if you aren’t an absolute goblin like me.
Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 is not the third game in a series about creepy rednecks and dinosaurs in a mansion. I’d forgive you if that was where your mind went, given the number three in its name, but I assure you, it’s a brand new game that just came out today! It is also a match-3, survival horror, comedy RPG metroidvania, a combination of genres that I never thought was possible, and yet here we are with a game that looks pretty fun.
In what’s gotta be the worst-kept secret in recent gaming memory, Bethesda has shadow-dropped The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered for Xbox, PS5, and PC. If you’re a PC gamer (or a Steam Deck owner, as it’s verified on Deck) you can save some cash, because it’s already on sale for PC. Right now, both Fanatical and Green Man Gaming are offering deals on the Steam version of Oblivion Remastered that drop the price up to 17%. Not bad on a brand-new version of a classic game.
The standard edition of the game comes with the original base game, plus the Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine story expansions, as well as some additional downloadable content. The above links bring you to the best deals currently available. We’ll update the list if any more pop up.
For about $10 more, you can get the digital deluxe edition (which is also on sale at the above retailers). If you do, here’s what you get, in addition to the base game:
This remaster, made by Virtuos Games while Bethesda keeps plugging away at Elder Scrolls VI, has a number of improvements over the original:
The remaster preserves the massive open world that helped make Oblivion IGN’s Game of the Year 2006 winner, while bringing it in line with contemporary performance standards on Unreal Engine 5.
Chris Reed is a deals expert and commerce editor for IGN. You can follow him on Bluesky @chrislreed.com.
Remember Spore? I never played the original one myself, just that crappy one Spore Creatures on the DS, but I’ve long appreciated what Spore was trying to do from afar. There’s an almost whimsical macabre feeling to it, playing god and all that, leading a creature down the path of evolution. You don’t see too many games like that these days, though today’s a bit of an exception given the announcement of Voidling Bound, a monster-taming/ gene splicing game from a team made up of former Skylanders devs.
Born to Play… on Switch 2.
Despite somewhat meagre sales when compared to the rest of the Nintendo console line-up (Wii U notwithstanding), the GameCube is widely considered to be one of the very best in terms of its games catalogue.
Indeed, several titles from the GameCube – including Metroid Prime, Pikmin, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Resident Evil 4, and more – have already been ported or revamped for the Nintendo Switch, all of which remain as enjoyable today as they were back in the early ‘00s.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
After three years of development, Post Trauma is now available on Xbox Series X|S.
While it’s finally time to visit The Gloom, the question is can players find their way back out?
When playing Post Trauma, you will need to keep the old school classics like Resident Evil and Silent Hill in mind. In addition to the fixed camera angles and top down, third person views, your enemies are a fearsome bunch, and the puzzles are pretty fiendish too.
The developer, Roberto Serra of Red Soul Games has focused on atmosphere and story-telling to drive Post Trauma forward, and as part artist, part programmer, has used fixed-camera angles to showcase the game’s striking cinematic sequences.
From the very beginning, having a pen and paper next to your controller will prove to be just as useful as arming Roman with a crowbar or shotgun. Studying the environment carefully is going to be essential to progress, from the opening moments where looking at unusual highlights on old subway maps reveals clues to a padlock combination to carefully reading through documents to discover critical information.
The game’s puzzles have purposefully been designed to be a challenge and the aim is to fill you with a sense of reward when you solve them. Just like the classics it’s inspired by, Red Soul Games have opted to build tension through storytelling while maintaining an authentic feeling 90s style survival horror experience.
You will also need to think on their feet in heart-pounding confrontations that will test Roman’s willpower and endurance. Rather than opt for the traditionally athletic super cop in this setting, Roman is just an average man, who doesn’t really know how to fight and gets tired if he runs for too long. As a character, Roman is better equipped for escape-room style situations, but with that comes its own unique set of challenges for you.
Not every encounter needs to be fought and won, though. Sometimes it’s in Roman’s best interests to run for safety and use radios in conveniently placed ‘Save Rooms’ scattered around The Gloom. Opting not to use these rooms could lead to Roman’s eventual downfall, though, and potentially put him right back at the beginning of a challenging encounter he only just scraped through.
In the trailers, you’ve caught a glimpse of the horrors that lie in wait in this twisted reality. Enemies such as the affectionately known ‘Potato Head’ are definitely not a friendly bunch, nor are more traditionally named enemies like ‘Henry’.
Fortunately for Roman, he will not be alone. Finding unlikely allies in the face of grave danger could make all the difference as to whether he stays trapped in The Gloom forever or finds a way home. You might even find yourself stepping into their shoes from time to time.
Bringing these characters to life is an all-star voice acting cast. Having previously worked withRaw Furyon Wolfstride, this time Togo Igawa voices Roman, a retired train driver who is unsure of where he is or how he got there, bravely attempting to piece together the mysteries of The Gloom.
Alongside him is Autumn Ivy, who plays the enigmatic ‘Jill’, and Hyoie O’Grady who delivers a chilling performance as Carlos.
And rounding out the cast is an unnannounced actor who plays an undisclosed role in the game. This person has a deep connection to the horror community and plays a character that hasn’t been featured in any of the trailers or screenshots to date. We’ll keep this a surprise for you for now, but the best way to find out more is to play Post Trauma!
With an emotionally charged soundtrack from the extremely talented Nicolas Gasparini (Myuu) and an unpredictable world that feels ominously real, built from the ground up by Roberto Serra and Red Soul Games in Unreal Engine 5, Post Trauma continually builds tension rather than simply opting for jump scares.
Post Trauma started out as a solo developer project but a small team has grown over course of development, from a 2D artist to a writer, animator and audio designer, all in the name of making the game better and providing players with a truly memorable experience.
On behalf of the developer, Red Soul Games and all of Raw Fury, thanks for all of the support since the initial reveal at The Game Awards! Post Trauma is finally here and the world of horror will never be quite the same again!
Raw Fury
Players will explore a terrifying, twisted reality that constantly unsettles as its story shifts and unravels.
Fight or Flight?
In Post Trauma, players control Roman (Togo Igawa), a tormented train conductor who awakes to find himself in a surreal dimension following a terrible panic attack. Faced with horrifying architecture and nightmarish abominations, Roman can choose to defend himself with an array of weapons or try to find the path of least resistance.
A new world of horror that pays homage to the greats
Inspired by key staples of the Survival Horror genre, Post Trauma blends fixed camera angles with stunning visuals through Unreal Engine 5 to create a truly unsettling, yet familiar horror experience. But just when you think you have the answers, this hellscape changes the questions as you enter the unknown to face your greatest fears.
Can you find a way home?
To survive this cruel world, you must piece together an ongoing mystery across several, seemingly unrelated settings. Deducing your environments to find unlikely hints and discovering precious tools in unexpected places will help you make continued progress.
As you find clues and solve puzzles, you’ll gradually learn more about where you are and how you can escape, using a delicate mix of patience and cunning to stay alive. And maybe a pad and paper too.
Built and enriched by world-class talent
Featuring a fully voice acted cast (Togo Igawa, Autumn Ivy, Hyoie O’Grady) and a captivating, ambient audioscape, elevated by a hypnotic score from Nicolas Gasparini (Myuu), Post Trauma has been crafted to be a homage to beloved franchises and a new merging of playstyles. The intent is to create a truly special, unforgettable horror experience fuelled by pure passion and incredible talent.
The post Title: Post Trauma Taxes and Terrifies Xbox Series X|S Players Today appeared first on Xbox Wire.
