Just Cause developers Avalanche have become home to the latest union in the games industry, with over 100 staff at the Swedish studio set to be covered by a new agreement formed with local labour unions.
Bandai Namco’s new trailer for Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama’s desert wasteland manga, Sand Land, committed what could possibly be the most intellectual marketing song choice of 2024 by having it accompanied by the iconic 2001 dance hit, Darude’s Sandstorm. While folks rightfully lost their minds at the trailer’s apropos song choice, eagle-eyed Dragon Ball Z fans spotted a clue toward a Dragon Ball Z crossover.
At the end of the Sand Land Sandstorm trailer, characters Beelzebub, Thief, and Sheriff Rao are sucked into an underwater current. When the trailer fades back in, Beelzebub appears, seemingly teleported from his arid desert to the wasteland of another word. Folks in the Sand Land Sandstorm YouTube trailer comment section were quick to pick up how the wasteland looks an awful lot like an iconic locale from Dragon Ball Z.
While Dragon Ball Z has a slew of non-descript barren locations its warriors famously use to fight fearsome villains (like the rocky Gizard Wasteland), the wasteland at the end of the Sand Land trailer appears to be Break Wasteland. Break Wasteland, like the aforementioned battleground of Goku and Vegeta’s first fight, is significant because it served the region where Piccolo trained Gohan in the Saiyan arc.
Here’s what the image in Sand Land looks like.
And here’s the environment in Dragon Ball Z, as shown in Dragon Ball FighterZ.
The biggest question on every Dragon Ball fan’s mind is whether or not this stinger trailer moment is Bandai Namco teasing a crossover event with Dragon Ball Z in Sand Land to honor Toriyama’s passing in March. While there’s no official word on whether Toriyama’s wasteland tale will see a collaboration of sorts with his shonen battle epic, it would be perfectly in line for Bandai Namco to host a crossover event between Toriyama’s characters in Sand Land.
Toriyama’s creations have a track record of making guest appearances in his more contemporry works. The most infamous anime crossover is Dr. Slump’s Arale three appearances in Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Super. Her first two appearances saw the android assist Goku in trouncing Toa Pai Pai and General Blue in Dragon Ball. Her third guest appearnce saw her overpower Vegeta in Dragon Ball Super.
Seeing as how the Break Wasteland is tied to Piccolo and Gohan, it would be safe to theorize the Demon King and his young Saiyan apprentace might join forcess with Sand Land’s Fiend Prince when the game launches on April 26 on Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC.
Isaiah Colbert is a freelance writer at IGN.
The former president of Blizzard has suggested that players should have the option to tip developers after finishing a game. That’s on top of paying $70 for the game in the first place, mind.
Fallout: London, the Fallout 4 mod set in a post-apocalyptic English capital that’s large enough to effectively be its own game, has been hit by an indefinite delay just two weeks from its planned release date. The reason? Fallout 4’s long-in-the-works next-gen update is now due to drop just two days after London’s planned launch date, which its fan devs say will “simply break” the ambitious project.
Every Kirby game ranked.
We’re republishing this today to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Kirby and the Amazing Mirror on GBA, which you can also play on Nintendo Switch Online via the Expansion Pack!
Kirby — one of the most famous faces (with little podgy arms and feet attached) in Nintendo’s stable of stars — has been wowing players with his impressive abilities and sheer versatility for over 30 years now. Created by Smash Bros. boss Masahiro Sakurai, the pink one built up a very impressive library of games across a variety of genres since his 1992 Game Boy debut, Kirby’s Dream Land.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
We’ve teased it a few times in our monthly Community Updates, but the time is officially upon us. Starting today, all Xbox Insider release notes will be migrating from our blog here on the Xbox Wire to the Xbox Support website! This change has been in the works for some time, and we’re so excited to finally be launching. Not only will this shift be a more cohesive user experience by having all Xbox ecosystem release notes in one place, but it will also free up space to allow us to produce more (different! new!) content on the blog itself. We have big plans for the coming months, so stay tuned for more info!
But what does this mean for all of you Xbox Insiders? Well, you can still expect the same fantastic preview update coverage for both console and PC, just in a different place. The individual release notes will be familiar territory for those that watch our social media, but they’ve been given a slightly new look.
We’ve also made sure that the release notes are categorized in an easy-to-navigate, historical point of record, that makes finding older version information much easier. It all starts with the new Xbox Insider Home.
From this hub, you can find links to both the console release notes directory, as well as for PC. Let’s take a quick look at the console flow, called: Xbox Update Preview.
Upon clicking in, you’ll be met with the “Console Browse” page that allows you to select which preview ring you’d like to look up. We’ve got the invite, so let’s pick Alpha. (Note: PC Gaming Preview doesn’t have the same ring system that console does (…for now), so PC users will proceed directly to the next page type.)
On each ring page, you will find a few notes about the ring itself and some helpful links for reporting any issues to our Xbox Insider team. You’ll also find the historical list of all release notes dating back to the beginning of 2024. Let’s click into last week’s update. (Note: A few rings will be missing some pre-April release notes at launch. These will be uploaded in the next few weeks.)
We’ve made it full circle. If you want to go back to any of the previous pages we’ve mentioned so far, you can quickly navigate there using the “Related topics” section on the right-hand side of the screen.
We hope that you enjoy this new release notes experience on the Xbox Support website. It’s the first of a few different improvements we have in the pipeline to deliver robust, informative updates to our Xbox Insiders. If you have any thoughts, comments, or suggestions, feel free to let us know over @xboxinsiders on Twitter/X; or, pop by r/XboxInsiders.
The post Xbox Insider Release Notes Have a New Home! appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Five years after LawBreakers shut down, we’re getting to play the gravity-defying multiplayer FPS again thanks to fans. LawBreakers was the first game from Boss Key Productions, a studio co-founded by Gears Of Wars lead designer Cliff Bleszinski, and it had delightful ultraviolence beneath its uninspiring genric look. Alas, it did not sell well. Boss Key closed less than a year after launch, and the game soon followed. But after years of work, a group of fans this weekend successfully ran the first public test for a workaround to play the game again. While there’s no clear launch plan yet, more playtesting will follow.
Content Warning publisher Landfall Games has announced the viral Steam hit has sold an impressive one million copies even after its eye-catching free launch period.
Landfall released Content Warning for free for the first 24 hours, signaling that it planned to charge for the game after the launch period. The Lethal Company-style co-op survival horror saw an impressive peak concurrent player number of 204,439 on Valve’s platform off the back of the promotion, but some questioned whether it would prove successful in the long run.
Clearly, the launch strategy has paid off. In a statement published on X/Twitter, Landfall Games said Content Warning has now sold one million copies on top of the 6.6 million players who downloaded the game for free. “Thank you all so much for liking our scary Iill game,” the publisher added.
It’s a remarkable success for Content Warning, which was developed by just a handful of people and released on April 1 as part of Landfall’s tradition of releasing a game on April Fools’ Day. Take a look at IGN’s Guides for all the info we’ve gathered so far on the monsters, useful items available to purchase, and our tips and tricks for maximum views.
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.
As MMORPG Final Fantasy 14‘s upcoming Dawntrail expansion gets ever closer, Squeenix have released a benchmarking tool that lets you see how your rig might handle its graphical update. Not only that, but it also lets you sample the new female Hrothgar playable race. So far, folks seem to be happy with the tool and the catmoms.
With Dawntrail set to launch on July 2nd, Squeenix’s benchmark tool lets you see how your PC will get on with said dawns and trails. Once you’ve got it downloaded, it’ll essentially take you through a trailer showcasing some of its new South American-inspired environments. Lovely palm trees, splashes of colour, some bits showing off the new Viper (dual-wielding blade person) and Pictomancer (ranged magic person) Jobs. You can see the trailer for yourself, which I’ve embedded above.
The tool also contains a character creator, which lets you see some of the improvements the devs have made to the little details, like beards and lips and eyes. Some seem really happy with the change, in particular darker skin tones getting some much needed tuning. Most seem pleased with the female Hrothgar’s design. Others aren’t so keen on fangs being removed for female Keepers Of The Moon Miqo’te. Teeth are a contentious topic.
If you’re watching the Fallout TV show as a fan of the video games, you might be wondering what XP level Lucy would end up with, based on all the events of the series.
It’s a question that has popped up on social media ever since the Fallout TV show made its debut on Prime Video and fans worked their way through to the end of season one. Some are now having fun trying to offer an answer, applying the levelling system from Fallout 3 to what we see Lucy get up to during the show.
We won’t spoil the show at this point, but it’s worth pointing out that it revolves around vault dweller Lucy MacLean venturing out into the wasteland for the first time in a scene reminiscent of the Bethesda’s trademark ‘stepping out into an open world’ set piece.
Warning: spoilers for the Fallout TV show now follow:
If the eight episodes of the Fallout TV show were a Fallout video game, what amount of XP might Lucy have accumulated? X/Twitter user Many A True Nerd has some theories. At the start of the show, Lucy mentions her proficiency with repair, science, and speech skills. There are subsequent signs that suggest Lucy is playing Fallout on one of the easier difficulties (that bear went down with one shot from a pistol!), but also on Survival Mode, given the problems she has with water.
Ok, let’s run some data here;
The Fallout TV series presumably runs by Bethesda rules, and thus we can reasonably assume the ratio of XP-from-combat to XP-from-quests is going to skew heavily towards combat. This works against Lucy’s levelling speed. https://t.co/JN3WewswPv
— Many A True Nerd (@ManyATrueNerd) April 14, 2024
But what do we see Lucy actually do in the show that would earn XP? Not much combat (she shoots a few radroaches at one point, but talks her way out of most situations). She leaves the Vault, discovers Filly, escorts Wilzig, then goes off on a few side quests. One of these involves taking down an organ harvesting organization (potentially the biggest source of XP), and another involves shenanigans in a separate Vault.
Here’s Many A True Nerd’s verdict: “Overall, four quests representing the main plot, and two side quests, plus extremely limited combat, though technically she probably receives XP for Maximus’ kills when he’s an active companion. There’s also XP for location discovery, but it feels like she didn’t explore that much.
“Even allowing for bonus survival mode XP, it’s hard to see her having more than 4,000 – 5,000 XP across the entire journey, with probably an extra 1,000 tossed in for Main Quest completion. That would put her about Level 8, and I feel like I’m being generous.”
Helpfully, we know Lucy’s S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats, and those of other major characters, courtesy of Fallout Shelter, which recently added characters from the TV show into the game. Based on this, we know Lucy’s character sheet:
Most seem to agree this is a fair representation of Lucy in the show, especially that Luck stat. Perhaps Charisma could be a little higher. If you’re wondering, here are how other characters look, courtesy of Fallout Shelter:
If you’re looking for more on the Fallout TV show, IGN has rounded up 111 details in the Fallout show that have been pulled straight from the games, leading to a season finale that sets up a new adventure in a beloved setting.
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.
