I always like to balance the inherent cynicism and general corporate awfulness of covering events like Prime Big Deal Days by focusing recommendations on hardware I genuinely like, and ideally, what I actually own. Partly hence the G515 Lightspeed TKL keyboard post from yesterday. And here’s another: the sleek-lookin’, sharp-recordin’ Logitech StreamCam, which is down from £139 to £70 in the UK and down from $170 to $100 in the US.
The developers of A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead have revealed its microphone noise detection, an optional feature that lets the game’s monsters hear sounds players make in real life.
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is a single-player horror video game based on Paramount Pictures’ popular post-apocalyptic franchise, which revolves around blind extraterrestrial creatures with an acute sense of hearing. The first movie, starring Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, met with criticial and commercial acclaim back in 2018.
Here’s how the noise detection works: by activating your microphone, this optional feature lets the game’s deadly creatures detect every sound you make in real life, bringing the horror “right into your room.”
Here’s the official blurb:
Capturing the frantic terror, unnerving atmosphere and gripping human drama that made the franchise famous, A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is designed for fans of the films, horror games, and story-driven adventures alike. With nothing more than your wits and the simple tools you can scavenge, you’ll have to overcome the many treacherous challenges and obstacles that lie ahead, all while trying to survive the ever-present dangers that lurk all around you.
Experience the harrowing journey of Alex, a young college student suffering from asthma and struggling to survive the end of the world alongside her boyfriend, Martin. But the nightmarish creatures stalking the land aren’t the only threat she’ll have to contend with as she travels through the ruins of civilization in search of a safe haven for herself and her family.
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is developed by Stormind Games, the Italian studio that created survival horror franchise Remothered and action RPG Batora: Lost Haven, and published by Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 maker Saber Interactive. It launches on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S on October 17.
It’s a busy time for the A Quiet Place franchise. Following the breakout first movie in 2018 and its 2020 sequel, prequel A Quiet Place: Day One came out in June, with a third mainline movie expected in 2025.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Serenity now!
Sigh… Okay, let’s do this.
While fans are absolutely desperate to hear from Nintendo regarding the upcoming Switch successor hardware, the firm has instead revealed an official alarm clock dubbed ‘Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo’.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
With the gaming world waiting with baited breath for Nintendo to announce Switch 2, the company behind Mario has once again surprised its fans with the announcement of a completely unexpected piece of hardware: an interactive alarm clock.
“Ever wish that you could wake up in one of the playful worlds from Nintendo?” the company asked in a note to press. “Well, it’s time to stop dreaming!”
The Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo is an interactive alarm clock designed to add “some Nintendo charm to your home and your daily routine.” Alarmo is due out early 2025 priced $99.99, with Nintendo Switch Online members in the U.S. and Canada able to buy it right now via the My Nintendo Store.
Alarmo features motion sensor technology that responds to your movements, letting you snooze your alarm with motion alone and stop it by getting out of bed. You can pick from 35 scenes inspired by five Nintendo titles – Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Splatoon 3, Pikmin 4, and Ring Fit Adventure – then set a time and let Alarmo do its work.
Here’s the official blurb from Nintendo:
In the morning you’ll experience immersive sounds and music from the scene you picked. Rise to sounds of the Mushroom Kingdom with Mario and friends, begin your day’s adventure with Link and Princess Zelda, or start fresh with the Inklings from Splatoon 3. And those are just some of the experiences you can wake up to!
That’s not all – you can also check Records to see how much you move around in your sleep, set an hourly chime themed to your chosen title, and change between Steady or Gentle Modes for your morning alarm. In Steady Mode, the alarm will gradually get more intense the longer you stay in bed, whereas Gentle Mode offers a more consistent intensity level. There’s also Button Mode for a more traditional, tactile “hit the snooze button” alarm clock experience. You can even use sleepy sounds to wind down with soothing music and sounds at your set bedtime.
Wake up to a world of games with Nintendo Sound Clock: #Alarmo – an interactive alarm clock that detects the movements you make while getting up! pic.twitter.com/tLbCE6iUHX
— Nintendo UK (@NintendoUK) October 9, 2024
Here’s how it works. Before the alarm, a character from the title you selected waits patiently on screen. When the alarm begins, gentle sounds unique to the scene you’ve chosen begin to play. Then, a visitor arrives. After a few seconds, someone (or some thing!) from the scene you picked will appear. You can then wave your hand or move your body to make the clock quieter. Depending on the title you’ve choosen, you might also hear coins or other familiar game sounds when you interact with Alarmo.
Eventually, your visit will end and gentle sounds will play again until your visitor returns. (This will repeat a number of times if you stay in bed.) If you stay in bed too long, your alarm will get more intense and you’ll get a visit from someone “more persuasive,” Nintendo warned. (Yes, it’s Bowser.) When you get all the way out of bed, the alarm will stop and you’ll be treated to a brief victory fanfare.
Like releasing patches for its video games, Nintendo will update Alarmo with scenes from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing: New Horizons for free when they become available.
It’s worth noting that Alarmo is only compatible with Twin to King-sized beds, so it won’t work with a single. It should be placed facing the center of the bed, within arm’s reach, and no higher than eight inches above the sleeper, Nintendo said. If there is more than one sleeper in the bed, Nintendo recommends using Button Mode for “the best experience.”
It’s not the expected Switch 2 announce, but Alarmo is new hardware from Nintendo, which is always worth getting out of bed for.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Starfield’s Shattered Space DLC was meant to usher in a new era for Bethesda’s divisive space game Starfield, rekindling memories of the studio’s great DLCs of the past such as Fallout 4’s Far Harbor. But following its launch last month, things haven’t gone to plan.
Sci-fi RPG Starfield launched in September 2023 as Bethesda’s first brand new intellectual property in years and its first mainline single-player game since Microsoft bought parent company ZeniMax Media in March 2021. IGN’s Starfield review returned a 7/10. We said: “Starfield has a lot of forces working against it, but eventually the allure of its expansive roleplaying quests and respectable combat make its gravitational pull difficult to resist.”
A year later, Shattered Space has a ‘mostly negative’ user review rating on Steam, as Starfield players complain about everything from a lack of value to boring quest design.
Now, Emil Pagliarulo, studio design director at Bethesda Game Studios, has responded to one fan’s concern about not just Starfield and Shattered Space, but the direction Bethesda is headed. This concern was prompted by a GamesRadar interview with Pagliarulo who enthusiastically bigged up the expansion. This, the fan said, suggested Bethesda was dismissive of community concern around Starfield.
In a series of tweets, Pagliarulo responded directly to this suggestion and more generally to the ongoing discourse around Starfield and Bethesda. “My optimism is in no way meant to be mud in the eye of any dissatisfied fan,” Pagliarulo insisted. “That’s not how it works.”
Pagliarulo went on to say “I’m also very proud of Shattered Space. We all are,” and confirmed that most of the quests and levels in the expansion were developed by designers who worked on previous Bethesda games and DLC, going all the way back to 2002 masterpiece Morrowind. “They’re good at what they do, and it shows,” he added.
“If folks haven’t played Shattered Space, and they like Starfield, I think they’re missing out,” Pagliarulo continued. “If folks have played Shattered Space and still don’t like it, that makes me sad, honestly. Just know that we’ve also been hearing from plenty of people who love it.”
Pagliarulo offered an explanation of sorts for this apparent disconnect between the way he views Shattered Space and how fans have reacted to it. “Maybe it’s a game of expectations,” he suggested. “Fans want a lot, and we do all we can to accommodate them. Here’s what I can tell you – nobody, and I mean nobody, at Bethesda is patting themselves on the back while ignoring our players.”
Now Shattered Space is out, fans have wondered what’s next for Starfield. In June, Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard said the company was committed to supporting Starfield, which has seen 14 million players across PC and Xbox Series X and S, and confirmed at least one other story expansion would release following Shattered Space. Howard said Bethesda is aiming to release an annual story expansion for “hopefully a very long time.”
Pagliarulo reiterated this commitment of support, saying Bethesda will continue to address community concerns and make fixes while “listening to our fans every step of the way.”
“Starfield is a massive game, and it takes time for us to address things,” he explained. “We move as fast as we can, as safely as we can. Game development is always tricky, but with a game as big as Starfield, every fix could potentially break something else.
“To close, let me just say… I love games. I love Bethesda’s games. I’ve been playing them since the Terminator days. All I or anyone here wants to do is make those games and then make them better. No ego. No arrogance. Just a lot of hard work, and appreciation of our fans.”
It’s a busy time for the 450-person Bethesda Game Studios, which currently operates five teams: Starfield; Elder Scrolls 6; Fallout 76; mobile; and external development partnerships. It’s working on the aforementioned Elder Scrolls 6, ongoing content for Fallout 76, various mobile games, updates for older games, and, eventually, the next Fallout.
But will Starfield see a sequel? If it does materialize it may be some time before we see anything of it, with Elder Scrolls 6 expected no earlier than 2028 and another Fallout game set to follow.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 won’t be an “open sim” like the 2004 original game, according to Paradox Interactive. Now in development at The Chinese Room, it’ll be an action-RPG with a relatively linear story set in the World Of Darkness universe. This obviously plays to The Chinese Room’s strengths – they’re better known for melancholy or horrifying strolls through broken spaces than the Dishonorable massaging of intricate systems. But it also reflects Paradox’s view that the original Bloodlines has been “mythologised” a bit: people love the memory of it more than the reality, and there are aspects of the 2004 game, according to Paradox’s deputy chief executive officer Mattias Lilja, that simply “wouldn’t fly today”.
The CEO of the developer behind Spectre Divide, a new free-to-play competitive multiplayer shooter fronted by streamer Shroud, has insisted the game isn’t dead despite low player concurrent numbers.
Spectre Divide launched early September on PC via Steam, where it saw an encouraging 30,971 peak concurrent players. But that concurrent figure has fallen steadily since on Valve’s platform where it has a ‘mixed’ user review rating. Yesterday, October 8, Spectre Divide had a peak of 2,769 concurrent players.
Now, a month on from launch, Mountaintop Studios CEO, Nate Mitchell acknowledged the discourse around Spectre Divide low player numbers, but vowed to stick with the game.
“Some folks out there have declared Spectre ‘dead,’ mostly as a result of low concurrency,” Mitchell said. “It’s true that Spectre’s concurrent player count is lower than we’d all like.”
Mitchell admitted that a PvP game like Spectre Divide needs lots of players for healthy matchmaking, and that without them, players will experience longer queues and less fair matches.
“With that said, I can assure you that Spectre isn’t going anywhere,” he added. “The servers aren’t shutting down, and the updates aren’t going to stop.
“If player count drops from here, we have strategies for bringing players together, like combining the matchmaking queues. And we’ll continue working toward bringing new players in. We love this game – we’ve poured our heart and soul into it these past four years – and we’re just getting started.”
Mitchell explained that Mountaintop is an independent studio with a small team, but “we have the funds to support Spectre for a long time. And I promise: We’re going to make Spectre awesome together.”
As for the future, Mitchell said the developers need some time “to go heads-down, improve the game, and tackle some of your bigger asks,” with Season 1 set to kick off in December or January. Priorities include client performance, ping and server regions, anti-cheat, and game stability.
Last month, shortly after Spectre Divide launched, Mountaintop cut 13 staff, with Mitchell saying at the time that the layoffs “make sure we’re set up to support Spectre and its community for the long term.”
Expanding on the reasoning now, Mitchell said: “We made the difficult decision to reduce our monthly spend to make sure we were set up to support Spectre for the long term. In the run up to launch, the studio grew from more than 85 devs to support a bigger live service roadmap. We’re now back to around 75 full-time devs, but we have plenty of firepower to bring our plans to life.”
As for Shroud’s ongoing involvement, Mitchell said Mountaintop is still working with the streamer on future design iterations, “and he’s been helping us think through ways to make Spectre as compelling as possible for both community members and streamers.”
But, Mitchell stressed, Spectre Divide does not belong to Shroud, as some had assumed. “The reality is that Mountaintop has been bringing Spectre to life since 2020, and the game belongs to Mountaintop,” he said.
Spectre Divide launched amid a tumultuous time for the video game market and in particular live service games. 2024 has seen a number of high-profile live service missteps, including the failure of Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Sony’s Concord.
Photo by Robert Reiners/Getty Images.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
A new PlayStation blog (thanks cheery fanzine PCGamer for the spot) has provided some illuminating info on the upcoming Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii, and in many ways, the LAD series as a whole. The biggest takeaway: the fact pirate Yakuza was, at one point, going to be a fishing game called Like A Dragon: Tuna.
It’s a fantasy showdown.
Splatoon 3‘s “regular updates” might have come to an end, but the seasonal events are still alive and kicking — and one of them is right around the corner.
Yes, ‘Splatoween’ is returning to the Splatlands this year and it has a spooky Splatfest to boot. This time, we’ll be picking sides for “What would you be in a fantasy world?” with Team Wizard, Knight and Ninja all up for grabs.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Firaxis is working with the Shawnee tribal nation to ensure “an authentic, sincere recreation” in the upcoming Civilization 7.
In Civilization 7, Shawnee are an Exploration Age civilization, which means they will have to become another civ in the Modern Age (presumed to be the Lakota or Iroquois).
Here’s Firaxis’ official description:
An Algonquian-speaking people originally from what is now the eastern United States, the Shawnee fought hard to keep their land and traditions. Their fiercest battles were with the United States, as the new nation pushed westward. Seeking to build a coalition of indigenous people to form a united front, the Shawnee established a settlement at Prophetstown, but the U.S. Army loomed on the horizon.
Speaking to the Associated Press, producer Andrew Frederiksen revealed that developers from Firaxis had asked the Shawnee to imagine a Shawnee university or library of the future and to create new Shawnee words to describe futuristic concepts for use in the hotly anticipated 4X game.
Shawnee Tribe Chief Ben Barnes, already a fan of 1999’s Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, jumped at the chance to be involved with Civilization 7 after Firaxis said it wanted to make a playable character out of their famous leader Tecumseh.
“Firaxis was asking questions about language we never would have thought to ask,” Barnes said. The partnership also involves a donation of hundreds of thousands of dollars in language revitalization programs and facilities.
According to Firaxis, Tecumseh, “the one who leaps across the great expanse,” was a Shawnee chief “who challenged the westward expansion of the early United States. Together with his brother Tenskwatawa, he spread a message of unity and resistance among indigenous people. Although Tecumseh was killed during the War of 1812, his vision of cultural persistence lives on.”
Firaxis historian Andrew Johnson revealed that academics had warned the studio against including Tecumseh as a playable leader, but got in touch with Shawnee leaders directly to find out what they thought. “I think so often you get people assuming that representation in Civ is a reward of some sort. It’s not,” Johnson said.
“This is a company and we’re selling a product and we’re using an image and likeness to make a profit. And getting your ‘civ’ in Civilization doesn’t really help you very much if you’re struggling to preserve your culture.”
AP said the partnership comes after an acknowledgement from Civilization creator Sid Meier and other Firaxis executives of “past missteps in the Civilization franchise’s casual treatment of history, including how it incorporated Indigenous groups and colonization more broadly.”
The report mentions that Firaxis ditched its plan to add a historical Pueblo leader in 2010 after tribal leaders objected, and that the studio faced public criticism in Canada for including a Cree leader in Civilization 6.
In 2018, a prominent Cree leader complaining that it “perpetuates this myth that First Nations had similar values that the colonial culture has, and that is one of conquering other peoples and accessing their land. That is totally not in concert with our traditional ways and world view.”
Meier talked about the early Civilization games’ inclusion of Indigenous leaders such as Montezuma of the Aztecs, as well as the likes of Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. “We never realized people would take it as seriously as they do,” Meier said. “We always kind of felt, ‘Here’s a way that you can change history.’ Maybe we can make Stalin a good guy. But that might have been stretching things a little too far.
“We learned a lot as time went on. It is now a badge of honor for a nation to be included in Civilization. We’ve been lobbied by different countries, et cetera.”
In Civilization 7, Tecumseh specializes in diplomacy and defense. His unique ability, Nicaakiyakoolaakwe, increases food, production, and combat strength based on the number of allied city-states. Shawnee as a civ excel at utilizing natural resources. Their unique ability, Nepekifaki, gives more food for settlements built on river tiles but slightly reduces food for any cities not built on rivers. Its associated wonder is the Serpent Mound.
The Shawnee civilization is part of the Tecumseh and Shawnee Pack DLC, which is included in the Deluxe and Founders Editions of Civilization 7. It is not included in the Standard Edition of Civilization 7, but is available as a bonus offer for pre-orders of the Standard Edition until February 11, 2025, and will be available for separate purchase thereafter.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
