Category: Video Games

Fallout London’s Robot Speaker of the House Played by UK’s Actual Former Speaker of the House

Expansion-sized Fallout 4 mod Fallout London has already secured the likes of Baldur’s Gate 3’s Neil Newbon for its voice cast but now has announced that, bizarrely, former UK Speaker of the House John Bercow will star, too.

As reported by VG247, Fallout London project lead Dean Carter revealed in Fallout London’s Discord that its post-apocalyptic version of the UK capital will still have a Speaker of the House (the member of parliament who chairs debates between political parties), and in true Fallout fashion the position is now held by a robot.

But who’s voicing that robot? Bercow, of course, who served as Speaker of the House from 2009 to 2019.

“Imagine being Fallout London and feeling so lucky having all the talented voice actors on the team, but then boosting it further with the fact that we have [two] Doctor Who actors as VAs… then Neil Newbon messages us and also wants a role,” Carter said in the post. “But the cherry on the top? Who better to represent our mod’s version of the Speaker of the House, than a robot version voiced by John Bercow himself?”

The role will seemingly be Bercow’s first foray into voice acting but those looking forward to it shouldn’t have too long to wait. Developer Team FOLON declared earlier in July that “the end is in sight” for the highly anticipated mod.

Fallout: London was previously due to arrive on April 23, 2024 but actual Fallout developer Bethesda announced a surprise update for Fallout 4, which the mod developer feared would impact its release.

Carter later lamented how Bethesda, which has made clear it’s aware of Fallout: London, failed to inform Team FOLON of its plans. “That has, for lack of a better term, sort of screwed us over, somewhat,” Carter said. Meanwhile, GOG has confirmed to VG247 that Fallout London won’t be playable via Epic Games Store-bought copies of Fallout 4 at launch because the storefront doesn’t support update rollbacks.

Fallout London is one of the most high-profile mods in development and will let players engage with everything from “stuffy parliamentary aristocrats to a resurrection of the Knights of the Round Table to an uncompromising cult of revolutionaries.”

Bethesda development chief Todd Howard has confirmed Fallout 5 will arrive after the Elder Scrolls 6, which is still years away itself, though massively multiplayer online game Fallout 76 continues to be updated.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Mortal Kombat 1 DLC Character Takeda Gets Proper Gameplay Reveal Ahead of Year 2 Reveal at Comic-Con

Mortal Kombat 1 developer NetherRealm has released a gameplay trailer for final Year 1 DLC character Takeda ahead of his July 23 release date alongside Kameo character Ferra.

Takeda is one of the so-called Kombat Kids alongside Cassie Cage, Kung Jin, and Jacqui Briggs. The gameplay video, below, shows off a number of Takeda’s moves and combos, which revolve around his trademark bladed whips, as well as pre-fight interactions (Johnny Cage, for example, wants him to star in a superteam action movie).

It ends with a look at his fatality, which, as you’d expect from Mortal Kombat, is not for the faint of heart. Here Takeda wraps his hapless victim tightly in his bladed whips before slowly retracting them. Now that’s got to hurt.

Takeda is the last of the six Kombat Pack 1 DLC characters to come out, and joins Omni-Man from Invincible, Quan Chi, Peacemaker from the DCU, Ermac, and Homelander from The Boys. Dataminers have already unearthed evidence to suggest the next six DLC characters coming to the gory fighting game as part of Kombat Pack 2.

The gameplay video does not feature Ferra, however. Ferra is the small fighter who sat atop the hulking Torr as part of the combined Ferra & Torr character from Mortal Kombat X, and was set to hit Mortal Kombat 1 in Kameo form in June but was delayed to launch alongside Takeda on July 23.

Speaking of Kombat Pack 2, NetherRealm has confirmed plans to reveal the future of Mortal Kombat 1 during San Diego Comic-Con 2024, in a panel set for 2pm Pacific / 5pm Eastern / 10pm UK on Friday, July 26. Year 2 plans may include what Boon has already teased is set for Mortal Kombat 1, such as story DLC and “a big surprise after that.” Meanwhile, the Mortal Kombat 2 movie is due out October 24, 2025.

Takeda is available from July 23 to Mortal Kombat 1 Premium Edition or Kombat Pack 1 owners. The character is then available to buy a week later.

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.

Review: Darkest Dungeon II (Switch) – An Uncompromising Sequel That Isn’t Afraid To Try New Things

Prepare to die.

Upon booting it up for the very first time, Darkest Dungeon 2 greets you with a message that plainly informs you that you’re going to fail… a lot… while trying to overcome its many challenges. It does this not to discourage you, but to set expectations. Keeping with the precedent set by the first Darkest Dungeon, this sequel is the kind of game that doesn’t pull its punches as you work to achieve mastery over its various systems. Many may be put off by developer Red Hook Studios’ uncompromising approach to difficulty, but those who stick it out will find that Darkest Dungeon 2 offers some of the most rewarding experiences one can find in a roguelike RPG adventure. Perhaps most importantly, this new entry also isn’t afraid to try some new things that set it noticeably apart from its predecessor.

Getting its first full release on PC back in May 2023 following 18 months of Early Access, Darkest Dungeon 2 takes place in a grim, Lovecraftian world overrun by all manner of undead creatures and eldritch abominations after an academic named The Scholar messed around with an ancient relic called the Iron Crown. All the horrors stem from a mountain looming ominously in the distance, and you’re thus tasked with assembling a team of four adventurers and using their combat and survival skills to help you carry a flame called Hope aboard a stagecoach to the mountain, where you will confront the source of the evil and hopefully rid the land of it for good.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Finding your flow in Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus, out July 17

Hi PlayStation community—I’m Chris Stair, the creative director of Squid Shock Studios, and I’m excited to have an opportunity to share some insights into our first game, Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus, a hand-drawn action-platformer coming out on PlayStation 5 on July 17.


Finding your flow in Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus, out July 17

Some of the big inspirations for Bō are the 2D action-exploration games I grew up playing. I love the wonder and mystery that comes with exploration, the thrill of finding new abilities, and the sense of satisfaction when you figure out how to use those skills you’d found to uncover a secret path.

Some of my favorite games in the genre also have really memorable traversal: bombing yourself up a wall, launching yourself off enemies, or just backwards dashing through a castle hall. In Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus, we wanted to create a movement and combat system with its own distinctive, rewarding rhythm—something that can make you feel like you’ve entered a “flow” state when everything comes together—and wanted to talk a bit more about that with you today.

Get the flow going

Bō isn’t capable of doing a double jump by default, so one technique you’ll need to learn early on is what we call the Bump. When Bō strikes an object or an enemy with the Equinox Staff while airborne, you’ll glow teal, giving you the ability to do a mid-air jump. If you strike something again after that second jump, you’ll glow again and can do a third jump, and so on.

You’ll frequently combine this with Bō’s Pogo move to get even more airtime. If you press down and strike an object while you’re on the descent, you’ll not only immediately bounce up and get some height, but you’ll reset your jump ability too, enabling you to perform another mid-air leap right afterward.

And as long as there are objects or monsters in the environment to hit, you can keep Bumping and Pogoing basically indefinitely, staying airborne for as long as you can keep up the rhythm. It becomes a little game of its own.

Eventually, you’ll discover other traversal abilities that let you dash or smash downward forcefully through the air. We hope that as you play and get familiar with your abilities, you’ll start to see opportunities throughout the game for all of these things to work together—enemy spawns during a boss battle, seemingly incidental environmental objects, curious platform placement—and get into a really rewarding groove.

Trouble brewing 

These abilities aren’t just for movement; they power your combat skills, too. One critical component of the action is the mystic Tea Kettle you get early on from Asahi, a rabbit tentaihana (a sprite-like being) who plays a central role in your entire journey.

When you strike enemies with your Equinox Staff, including when you Bump or Pogo, you’ll siphon their energy into the kettle and brew up some tea. You can then use that tea in a number of ways, such as restoring your health (if you can find a moment of peace) or summoning one of the Daruma Dolls you’ve collected, which unleash some of the game’s most powerful attacks.

The Daruma Dolls especially love hot tea. The hotter your tea is when you summon a Daruma, the more devastating their attack will be. And the way you heat up your tea kettle is, you probably guessed it, by staying airborne in combat as long as you can. So, we really tried to create a system where airborne agility and combat prowess are intertwined.

We designed Bō’s areas and encounters around this idea. Seemingly uncrossable chasms with an archipelago of enemies who serve as your path. Boss battles where you’re bouncing higher and higher off little foes, building momentum to blast the boss’s head with a potent Daruma Doll strike. All with the goal of making it fairly simple to learn, but challenging and rewarding to master.

The boiling point

While we drew a lot of inspiration from 2D action-exploration games, the world and gameplay also draw a lot from Japanese folklore and traditions. The character of Bō is in part inspired by stories of Princess Kaguya and Momotaro. Many of the yokai and monsters that Bō battles represent our own creative twists on classic folktales, like your confrontation with the massive Hashihime who guards the bridge in Bō’s world. Bō powers up the Daruma Dolls by finding ink to draw additional eyes, which in our real world is linked to achieving goals and good fortune. Bō can also collect and equip a wide range of Omamori, amulets that grant you bonuses to customize your gameplay.

There’s a lot more for you to explore and many more ways to find your flow for yourself, waiting in Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus. We hope you’ll check it out when the game arrives on PlayStation 5 on July 17.

Swery’s bloody gambling in Death Game Hotel won’t be his only multiplayer game, he says

Death Game Hotel came out last week – a comically gory game in which players play casino-style card games around a table and raise the stakes by betting their own limbs. It’s a VR game, which is a break from the norm for White Owls, the studio run by Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro (then again, what is their “norm”?). It’s also got a big multiplayer component, with lots of jovial bubble-popping and chicken-squeezing between the comedy blood spurts. And this taste of multiplayer mischief has Swery’s head percolating. This game won’t be his last dipped toe in the multiplayer ocean, he told us.

“In the future,” said Swery, “I would like to leverage this experience to challenge myself with something new in the online multiplayer realm (something you probably haven’t even imagined yet).”

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Ubisoft Hasn’t Forgotten the Driver Series But It Has Cancelled the TV Adaptation

Ubisoft has cancelled the Driver TV adaptation but insisted it’s still working on projects related to the beloved racing series.

Speaking to Game File, Ubisoft confirmed it had cancelled the show, which was announced in 2021 as a collaboration with streaming service Binge and not heard from since, after dissolving film related subsidiary (named after Driver protagonist) Hotrod Tanner LLC.

“We are no longer moving forward with our partnership with Binge for a Driver series,” a Ubisoft spokesperson said. “We are actively working on other exciting projects related to the franchise and can’t wait to share more information in the future.”

We are actively working on other exciting projects related to the franchise.

Ubisoft hasn’t been particularly kind to the Driver franchise recently, having not released a mainline game since 2011’s Driver: San Francisco and Driver: Renegade 3D. A mobile game called Driver: Speedboat Paradise was released in 2014, but the franchise hasn’t made a peep since.

Fans were therefore surprised by the 2021 announcement of a Driver TV show that would “focus on undercover agent and ex-racecar driver John Tanner as he tries to take down a crime syndicate.”

No word on a franchise reboot came alongside it though, and Ubisoft’s latest comment that “exciting projects related to the franchise” still leaves all things Driver up in the air. The fact Ubisoft is still thinking about Driver may be enough for some fans, however.

In our 8/10 review of the last game, IGN said: “Driver: San Francisco has one game-changing, eyebrow-raising idea and it pulls it off with aplomb, infusing the OTT arcade racing with unparalleled variety and a ridiculous supernatural twist whilst staying true to its Seventies chase-movie roots.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Like a Dragon: Yakuza series actor sees Kiryu as a heroic character who’s “starved for love”

If there’s one series that can be relied upon to dole out 80-hour helpings of joy straight into my eager face at regularly scheduled intervals, it’s the RPG brawler stylings of Yakuza/Like A Dragon. One could, I believe, make a convincing argument for Yakuza 0 being – if not the best videogame ever made – then at least the most videogame. While this coming October’s Amazon series won’t be the first live action adaption of Yakuza, I am hopeful its episodic format will give its characters a bit more room to breathe. Or, according to Kiryu actor Ryoma Takeuchi in an interview with IGN, to find the love they’ve always longed for.

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Leaked BioShock 4 Image Tells Us Next to Nothing About the Game

An image of the next mainline BioShock has reportedly leaked online, although it reveals next to nothing about the game.

MP1ST published an image it had unearthed from the showreel of a visual effects artist who works for publisher 2K. IGN has asked 2K for comment.

According to the site, the image is taken from a 2021 showreel that depicts an early demo build of the game, so it’s already years out of date and probably doesn’t reflect what fans can expect to play when the next BioShock eventually comes out.

It includes the expected first-person shooter perspective from the previous BioShock games, as well as a basic user interface and what’s called a ‘Ricochet Shotgun.’ We see what looks like BioShock-style plasmid powers in icon form, triggered by controller bumper button presses. It’s hard to tell what these are meant to indicate, but one looks like an electricity bolt, which would be very BioShock. Another looks like a stopwatch, so perhaps there were, and still are, plans to be able to pause time during gameplay.

The character is facing what looks like a burning orb set atop a pedestal of some kind. Of note: the codename Parkside is displayed on the image, which tallies with a 2019 Kotaku report that revealed the same codename, and a recent Epic Game Store leak of video game codenames.

2K announced the upcoming BioShock sequel in 2019. It’s in development at 2K studio Cloud Chamber after initially being outsourced to Halo support studio Certain Affinity. 2K is yet to call the game BioShock 4, so it remains unclear whether it will be a sequel, a prequel, or something separate to what’s come before.

But we do know it’s set in what 2K has called a “new and fantastical world”, so don’t expect a return to Rapture or Columbia, the settings of BioShock 1 and 2, and Bioshock Infinite, respectively.

Original BioShock development chief Ken Levine is not involved. After Levine left Irrational Games and the studio was shut down he set up a new developer called Campfire Games, later named Ghost Story Games, to work on Judas.

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.

Sandbox sequel Supraworld gets loose release date, bringing its shrunken hero to early access this year

“Honey, I shrunk the first-person puzzler. Twice.” This is how I like to imagine the designer of Supraworld explaining the hijinks that unfold in his life. Supraworld, the sequel to toybox explorer Supraland, is going to hit early access this year, say developers Supra Games in an update post on Steam. These are happy words for anyone who enjoyed 2019’s dander among the sandcastles and erasers. A lot of games offer a “sandbox” but in Supraland, the entire world really did take place in exactly that – a sandbox out in a garden, full of toys. The sequel’s launch into early access “might be in october,” says the post. “We’ll see.”

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