Teardown is getting Wild West and destruction derby DLC, beginning this November

Delightful destructive heist sim Teardown is getting four paid DLCs, with the first to be released on November 15th. It’s called Time Campers and will transport players back in time with a caravan to tackle new heists with “old-timey tools and architecture” in the Wild West.

It’ll be followed by a second DLC, the destruction derby-focused Folkrace, and two more before the end of 2024.

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Sony Reveals 6 New Games Coming to PS VR2

Earlier today, Sony announced a handful of games on the way to the PlayStation VR2.

Posting these announcements on both the PlayStation Blog and the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Sony shared new details on six games that will be playable on its headset. With release dates varying from next month to next year, here’s a roundup of the six VR games Sony highlighted that are coming to PS VR2 soon.

Among Us

PlayStation’s first announcement was that Among US VR will arrive on PS VR2. Though no release date was announced, the news is great for PS VR2 fans, as it was released on Meta Quest and Steam VR headsets nearly a year ago; it seemed only a matter of time before Schell Games released a PS VR port.

Journey to Foundation

Inspired by the Foundation novel series by the late American author Isaac Asimov, Journey to Foundation is an upcoming VR sci-fi RPG where players will explore uncharted regions of outer space. Players assume the role of an agent for a shadowy organization and become involved in a battle for “control of all humanity.”

The game was actually revealed in February, but today’s announcement revealed that Journey to Foundation arrives on PS VR2 (plus Meta Quest) on Oct. 26.

Heroes of Forever

Lucky Mountain Games, the developers behind Hotshot Racing, are making a new fast-paced arcade shooter, Heroes of Forever. In Heroes of Forever, players will jump through various dimensions and timelines to stop as many bad guys as possible and maintain order in the multiverse.

Heroes of Forever is slated to release sometime next year.

Tin Hearts

Tin Hearts is a puzzle game that originally released earlier this year as a non-VR game for PS4 and PS5. After demands from the VR community, developer Rogue Sun announced today that it was releasing a PS VR2 version of the game.

Set in the Victorian era, players control Albert Butterworth, a toy maker, with gameplay akin to the 1991 Amiga game Lemmings. While no release date was revealed, a demo for Tin Hearts is out on November 2.

Tiger Blade

A slash-and-dash arcade game originally announced back in June, Tiger Blade developer Ikimasho Games announced that its next project is out on Nov. 17, exclusively for the PlayStation VR2.

Inspired by Korean neo-noir action cinema, Tiger Blade combined fast-paced sword combat with gunplay. The game’s trailers remind me a lot of the 1999 PlayStation 1 game Rising Zan: The Samurai Gunman, where the titular character also dual-wielded a katana and a pistol.

The Foglands

An anti-Western rougelite, The Foglanss is a new action game coming to PS VR2 on Oct. 31. The Foglands has players control Jim as you venture into parts unknown to fight monsters, collect loot, and make your way back before the fog swallows you.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Video: We’ve Played Super Mario Bros. Wonder – Here’s 8 Minutes Of Gameplay

“Mmm, refreshing!”.

With the first brand new 2D Mario game in over 11 years just weeks away from jumping onto Switch, Super Mario Bros. Wonder has us in a daze.

We went hands-on with the game at a special event earlier this week — and we’ll bring you some more impressions on the game in the near future. But for now, we’ve got around eight minutes of gameplay from the upcoming platformer.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

The Xbox Mastercard Preview Expands to Additional Xbox Insiders Today!

Team Xbox is so excited to see the initial response to the Xbox Mastercard with the first group of Xbox Insiders! We’re happy to announce that we’re opening up the Preview to another group of Xbox Insiders starting today. You can find out if you’ve been selected by checking the Xbox Insider Hub and looking for the Xbox Mastercard activity under the Previews section.

Also, don’t forget we are rolling out the Xbox Mastercard Preview in waves. If you do not see it available this week, check back next week. If you are not an Xbox Insider, you can join the Xbox Insider Program for free by downloading the Xbox Insider Hub on console or Windows PC.

For those of you who have already joined, and for those of you who are part of today’s expansion, you will notice a new Activity for you in the Xbox Insider Hub in the Previews section. Thanks to your feedback we’ve made improvements to the application process to make it simpler and more actionable. Keep the feedback coming!

How to get Xbox Insider support and share your feedback

If you’re an Xbox Insider looking for support, please join our community on the Xbox Insider subreddit. Official Xbox staff, moderators, and fellow Xbox Insiders are there to help. We always recommend adding to threads with the same issue before posting a brand new one. This helps us support you the best we can! Don’t forget to use “Report a problem” before posting—the information shared in both places helps us understand your issue better.

Thank you to every Xbox Insider in the subreddit today. We love that it has become such a friendly and community-driven hub of conversation and support.

For more information on the Xbox Insider Program follow us on Twitter at @XboxInsider and this blog for release notes, announcements, and more.  Keep an eye on future Xbox Insider Release Notes for more information regarding your Xbox Update Preview ring.

If you’d like to help create the future of Xbox and get access to new features download the Xbox Insider Hub on your Xbox Series X|S or Xbox One. Share with us what your dream gaming community looks like and help shape the future of gaming!

The post The Xbox Mastercard Preview Expands to Additional Xbox Insiders Today! appeared first on Xbox Wire.

Avatar: The Last Airbender – Quest for Balance Review

If you, like me, are a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the promise of playing through its fantastic story yourself is an enticing concept that, shockingly, has yet to be truly delivered on in the 18 years since the animated show premiered on Nickelodeon. Avatar: The Last Airbender – Quest for Balance set out to change that: finally you and a co-op partner will be able to relive iconic Avatar moments, like that time Aang had to save a village from an angry monster by solving a sliding block puzzle, or that other time he had to enter the Spirit World to… solve a sliding block puzzle. Quest for Balance is easily the worst adaptation of the series since M. Night Shyamalan’s abysmal live-action movie. It picks baffling moments from the story to highlight, fills them with awful combat and bottom-of-the-barrel quests, and tops itself off with a healthy coating of jank that leaves fans still waiting for a decent Avatar game to emerge from the ice.

Quest for Balance splits Avatar’s three-season tale into 18 chapters, each loosely retelling an episode or portion of the cartoon. The word “loosely” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, too, as the events of each chapter frequently focus on the most mundane parts of Aang’s incredibly rich adventure while breezing over many of the exciting bits in text transitions between scenes or 2D animatics that separate levels. For example, the first level has Katara and Aang exploring the rather ugly wreckage of a Fire Nation ship where nothing of note happens until a text box at the end of the stage explains that they set off a trap, saw the Fire Nation attacking Katara’s home, and had to rush back… by doing an incredibly bland Temple Run knockoff where you collect coins while sliding on an otter penguin.

It’s not a problem for an adaptation to make changes to its source material in order to better fit its new medium, but the scattershot way it’s been done here leaves the story completely unintelligible for newcomers and totally unsatisfactory for longtime fans. Huge sections of the show are reduced to half-hearted “and then this happened” exposition sessions while Quest for Balance asks you to complete exciting missions like delivering fruit tarts or punching faceless bandits for a meager reward instead. Some moments are even told incorrectly or out of order, and they are frequently warped into strangely anticlimactic versions of themselves. Almost identical fights against Prince Zuko are the boss encounters for three of the first four chapters, while the fight against the fierce panda spirit Hei Bai is literally a sliding block puzzle. Yes, another one.

The fight against the fierce panda spirit Hei Bai is literally a sliding block puzzle. Yes, another one. 

Reusing the same mediocre activities is one of Quest for Balance’s favorite tricks, with multiple Temple Run-style sections (none of them fun), lots of recycled enemies and fights, and such a large number of decent-but-thematically-irrelevant block puzzles that it almost feels like this started as a completely different game that was then retrofit with an Avatar theme. A downright ludicrous amount of its puzzles are based around the idea that nobody, including the literal Avatar, can jump while holding a torch. To its credit, there is a respectable amount to do overall; it took me about nine hours to complete all 18 chapters, you’re allowed to revisit them with all your characters and upgrades for 100% completion after the fact, and there are even 19 bonus trials to complete. The trouble is that piling on more low-quality content doesn’t improve a game that wasn’t fun to begin with.

Squandering the flashy bending powers that scream for an excellent fighting system, combat is a clunky, button-mashing mess. It’s only ever incredibly easy to spam through waves of bandits and evil benders, or frustrating as the sheer quantity of them and their wildly inaccurate hitboxes causes you to get locked into constant knockdown animations. Perhaps the best example of how laughably inaccurate Quest for Balance has made itself is that Sokka is by far the most powerful fighter the whole way through, able to spam similarly strong attacks faster than any bender, and with an ability in his skill tree that eventually makes him totally immune to knockdowns. I did have to occasionally be thoughtful with my dodge (while not using Sokka), focus on enemies that put shields on others, or use special abilities that provided some crowd-controlling stuns, but the fights are such a one-note jumble the entire time that any subtlety gets waterbended away.

Sokka is by far the most powerful fighter the whole way through.

The skill trees for each of the nine playable characters are actually a small bright spot, if a very dim one, letting you use Pai Sho pieces collected from quests to improve stats and abilities – sometimes with boring statistical bumps, but other times in more noticeable ways (like that Sokka ability). It’s actually a nicely tuned progression system, making me consider which character to spend that limited resource on as I went… or it would have if any of it mattered even slightly in the actual combat, where swinging wildly and occasionally using a healing item was all that mattered.

(The first playthrough also has a few trap characters – it lets you dump points into skill trees of people like Suki or the Blue Spirit, who show up briefly only to basically not be relevant again until the end of the campaign.)

The way in which Quest for Balance is also fundamentally janky cannot be overstated. It’s not the most buggy game I’ve played in recent years, but to say its edges are rough would be to overstate how much they’ve been sharpened into edges at all. The controls are an unsatisfying mess, and it’s not uncommon to get stuck on geometry or for its rigid camera to completely cut off parts of the action. It’s also broken in some hilarious ways: most notably, healing items sell for more than they cost at shops, letting you get infinite money any time you want and rendering nearly all of Quest for Balance’s breakable objects and hidden treasure chests pointless in the process. It’s one of those “How did this make it out of testing?” kind of flubs.

The way in which Quest for Balance is fundamentally janky cannot be overstated.

What’s particularly disappointing is how easy it is to see the bones of what this game could have been underneath all that grime. It probably wouldn’t ever have been great, but not all of its ideas are ill-conceived. While the 3D animations are pretty much terrible throughout, the 2D animatic cutscenes are actually pretty cute. The whole thing is framed as a few members of the White Lotus recounting the Avatar’s tales, chiming in to provide all those hastily glossed-over details as they do – and while many of the voices seem to be soundalikes, the handful of moments where conversations are voiced really aren’t bad.

If that’d been paired with a game where the side activities were actually entertaining instead of pointless fetch quests, where switching between your teammates provided interesting bending playstyles instead of different flavors of the same button mashing, and where this legendary story was retold in a way that respected the source material rather than using it to shoehorn in overused and only loosely related minigames, Quest for Balance might’ve actually fulfilled its promise. It’s not unthinkable that with a bit more time (probably a lot more) the fun could have been found here, but what we got instead feels like the bare minimum required to look like it might be alright and get it out the door so that Quest for Balance could live as yet another trap on store shelves, laying in wait for well-meaning parents who don’t know any better.

Epic lay off 830 people thanks to “unrealistic” metaverse ambitions

Unreal Engine and Fortnite publisher Epic Games are making an absolutely enormous round of job cuts. As announced by founder and CEO Tim Sweeney in an email to staff today, the company will lay off approximately 830 people, totalling “around 16%” of their workforce, in order to achieve “financial sustainability” following a period of heavy investment and lower-than-hoped returns from Fortnite.

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Hellboy Web Of Wyrd Release Date Pushed Back Slightly

Still releasing in October, though.

The upcoming Hellboy video game from Upstream Arcade is being delayed by two weeks to ensure “that all players – longtime fans and newcomers to the Hellboy universe alike – receive the best experience possible”, publisher Good Shepherd Entertainment has revealed today.

Hellboy Web of Wyrd will now be launching on 18th October 2023, right in-between some of the month’s biggest releases. The upcoming third-person beat ’em up with procedurally generated levels looks particularly striking thanks to its hand-drawn-style visuals that attempt to recreate the magic of creator Mike Mignola’s art style. The late Lance Reddick plays the iconic Big Red who is sent to the realm of Wyrd after a Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.) goes missing.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

It’s Time to Eat, Pizza Possum Is Out Now on Xbox Series X|S

Risk it All for One Final Crumb of Food!

It’s time to embrace your inner chaotic possum in this short and sweet arcade experience. An adorable mix of mischievous and wholesome, you hide and seek your way through the village alone or with a friend, using items and bushes to bamboozle the local patrolling guard dogs. Eat everything from a massive wheel of cheese to a whole cake in one gulp as you make your way to the top of the village, eat the massive pizza, and steal the crown from the dog leader’s head.

So, what are you waiting for? Pizza Possum is out now on Xbox Series S|X and it’s time to eat!

Pizza Possum screenshot

Short and Sweet, Filled with Bushes and Treats

Pizza Possum isn’t a particularly complicated game, and you will notice this quickly as you are tossed head-first into this vibrant village filled with goodies and treats. As you manage to shove more food into your mouth, your key meter will begin to fill, allowing you to gain and use a golden key to open the locked gate blocking your path. These gates are scattered across the island, so make sure you fill your meter so that you can make a quick getaway to a new district if you get chased.

You will also find bushes and caves with a distinct P printed over the entrance throughout the village. These are both fundamental tools in allowing you to progress and not get caught, as the bushes are your main means of hiding from oncoming patrols. As for the caves, or more accurately the possum boroughs, these act as checkpoints if you get caught. Simply run up to the one in the latest district you reach and plant the flag to ensure you can return there and keep planting them in the newest ones you find. If you don’t, it’s back to the beginning for you.

Pizza Possum fountain

Items Can Make All the Difference

There is a high risk that at some point on the island, you will get caught. When you do, your key meter total will act as your high score for that run, and depending on how many points you got you might even unlock a new item to use. These items can make all the difference when navigating the village as they allow you to dodge guards in a smoother fashion.

The items themselves are split into three categories. The first are active usable items with a total set amount per item (e.g. energy drinks, dog bones). You can increase the stacked amount of your currently active item if you get lucky and collect the same item in any of the floating boxes spread throughout the village. The second is passive stacked items that increase your possum’s stats, like coffee for added speed or mints to make sure your bloated form doesn’t last as long. Lastly, you have wearable passive items which can give you different kinds of boosts, like the chef’s hat that lets you get more points from consuming food.

You will find all these types of items in the floating boxes scattered throughout the various districts though be warned that you can only have one active item in use at any time. This means that if you pick it up, your previously equipped one will be dropped, so select your tools carefully.

Pizza Possum screenshoty

Climbing Your High Score and Stealing the Crown

The main objective of the possum’s travels throughout the village is to get to the top of the island, eat the gigantic pizza and through that act get the dog leader’s crown. However, the leader known as Bella Chonki is most persistent, so if you want to experience the Tasty Ending, you need to run up to them, eat their pizza and steal their crown not only once, not only twice but three whole times. And if you get caught, in your second and third run, the dog guards will reclaim all your stolen crowns.

There are other things you can do as well, such as challenge your past high scores in an attempt to see how high you can climb. You can also explore the village and find all the collectible zeppoles scattered across the island. Or maybe you just want to eat all the gigantic meals found in the various districts. The choice is yours.

Pizza Possum screenshoty

Couch Co-op Mischief

You can play Pizza Possum alone or with an accomplice, who will take on the role of your fellow Racoon friend. Together, you and your couch buddy can maneuver around the guards and even help each other if one of you gets caught. All it takes is to run up to the guard and bonk them on the head, and they will drop their hold on their captive. Just make sure you don’t both get caught or it’ll be back to the last activated checkpoint.

Pizza Possum nautical

Get to Eating

And that’s about it for now! With this information we hope we’ve managed to give you at least a few pointers on how to dive into Pizza Possum and we hope you enjoy unleashing your inner ravenous possum and manage to climb in your high scores. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get to eating!

Xbox Live

Pizza Possum

Raw Fury


$6.99

$6.29

Life is good when you are a possum. You can eat all you want, and there is no one who can stop you. Well, except for all the guard dogs patrolling the village you’re in. But really, who are they to stop you. Besides, if you get chased, a quick hide in the bushes will often do the trick and get them off your scent. So what are you waiting for? Time to eat!

● Engage in adorable arcade-style hide-and-seek action
● Wreak havoc as an irresistible bloatable possum
● Escape or distract dog patrols using a wide range of tools, from smoke bombs to punching gloves
● Join forces with a playful friend and increase the chaos in the local co-op
● Embrace the chaos by screaming when you get chased or giggling when you get away with it
● Chase the frightened pig and goose neighbors long enough for them to drop more fruit for you
● Sink your teeth into the biggest cheese of wheel your possum eyes have ever seen
● Devour ice cream unbothered with a dog mask on
● Risk it all for one final crumb of food

In short, life is simple when you are a possum: Eat, run, hide, eat again.

The post It’s Time to Eat, Pizza Possum Is Out Now on Xbox Series X|S appeared first on Xbox Wire.

The Foglands launches October 31 on PS VR2 and PS5

Jump into PS VR2 and smack some monsters around, then sit yourself down and play with a controller on your PS5 while you cool off. The Foglands will release with an FPS-mode on PS5 alongside PS VR2 at launch October 31. So no headset required! Either way you play, the fate of the Hold is in your hands.

Welcome to the Foglands

The Foglands is an upcoming anti-Western atmospheric roguelite that puts you in the boots of Jim, a brand new Runner. As a Runner, the people of the Hold rely on you to bring home scavenged goods and fend off the twisted creatures of the Fog. When a hulking behemoth from the depths threatens the survival of the Hold, it’s up to you to go out there and put a stop to it… and die trying.

Lucky for you, the mysterious figure known only as The Stranger is eager to lend a hand. His eldritch deck of cards can grant you supernatural abilities to boost your running prowess – for a price. He’s also got a few tricks up his sleeve, namely preventing Jim from yeeing his last haw. Explore, fight, loot, and die… and then do it all over again!

You’ll navigate an ever-shifting world of fog, exploring, fighting, and collecting along the way as you seek to defeat the giant, worm-like creature that threatens your Hold’s survival.

Explore

Many things get lost in the Fog – but the more you look, the more you find. While adventuring through the floors that change with every run, rooms that shift their contents with each visit, and the diverse biomes that would rather see you dead than alive, you’ll uncover the secrets the Fog clings to along the way. You won’t just find lost keys that belonged to Runners of old to unlock their secrets – you’ll even find some of those lost Runners themselves!

Fight

With a healthy mix of barfight melee and shoot-em-up gunplay, The Foglands uses the best of the PS VR2 eye tracking and precision latency to deliver a mix of fist-fighting, gunslinging, and aim-assisted throwing. Intention targeting and eye tracking allows any grabbable item to become a weapon – after all, Runner training advises you think on your feet and not rely too much on shootin’ irons (you never know when a Scuttler will steal your trusty hand cannon). The more you develop your personal playstyle and land those sweet combos, the more the time-slow effect will assist you in fending off the denizens of the Foglands.

Collect

The Foglands might seem like a desolate hellscape of creaking metal and lurking predators, but there are riches for those who know where to look! Collect Scrap and Fog Oil to unlock gear upgrades, new items, and new areas. But take heed: death means items you’ve gathered are left behind, so make sure to use Loot Chutes to send your Scrap home to spend on the next run.

There’s more than material acquisitions to be found out there: while on a run you’ll collect Abilities from The Stranger’s Cards that make you ever-more-powerful. Play to your strengths by choosing from three distinct suits that enhance each playstyle: Fists (melee), Guns (uh, guns), and Keys (exploration). So get out there and start lootin’!

Pre-order now

Now that you know what it takes and what’s at stake to be a Runner, you can prepare for your first day by pre-ordering on Playstation Store today. See you out in the Foglands, partner!


VR Day: All Announcements