I’ve got a real good news/bad news situation for you, but brace yourself because – if you’re most people who read this site – the bad news is going to blow away all the good. Ready? The good news is Sega has revealed it is bringing Rent-A-Hero back. The bad news is that it’s going to incorporate NFTs.

Yes, Sega is partnering with a Korean company, Line, and more specifically Line Next, “LINE’s venture dedicated to developing and expanding the NFT ecosystem.” We don’t have a lot of information about it aside from a tweet and press release from the company (spotted by Time Extension). Mostly we know that it’s going by the name of Rent A Hero Z and SEGA created a theme song for the project Master Hiro and Takenobu Mitsuyoshi.

If you’re not savvy, Rent A Hero is a Japan-only Mega Drive/Genesis RPG. It was later remade on Dreamcast (later ported to Xbox) as Rent A Hero No. 1, also only released in Japan. If you’ve never heard of it, that’s understandable. However, even over here in North America where we never got an official release, it’s a beloved property. 

I think this announcement is an important indication of Sega making good on its strategy of prioritizing live service and Web3 titles and leveraging its existing properties to do it. I was very skeptical when they announced the return of games like Crazy Taxi and Shinobi. While Shinobi seems like a faithful new entry, the new Crazy Taxi looks to be poising itself as a multiplayer game, and is, in all likelihood, going to be liveservice with cosmetic microtransactions. And that’s being optimistic. It could easily also have Web3 elements on top of that.

It’s great to see Sega return to classic licenses, but their goals eliminate all of my enthusiasm. I’ve wanted a new Crazy Taxi for a long time, but if it’s a GaaS, I’m out.

No release date or platforms have been announced for Rent A Hero Z. More is expected to be revealed at the Tokyo Game Show.

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Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii may be an unexpected spinoff for the Like a Dragon/Yakuza series, but it’s at least an interesting one. It will follow Goro Majima as he fights his way into possession of a pirate ship and becomes captain. Here’s what we know about the game, including its release date.

When does Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii release?

Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii will be setting sail on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on February 27, 2025.

What locations have been announced?

True to its name, Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii takes place in the area of Hawaii, USA. The trailer starts with Majima washing up on the shore of Rich Island, supposedly near Hawaii. Other places mentioned are Nele Island and Madlantis. Finally, it appears as though Infinite Wealth’s location of Honolulu, Hawaii will also be visited. Whether the seas between the islands are explorable, or if travel is done via map screen is, at this time, unknown. Here’s what I just said as a list:

• Rich Island
• Nele Island
• Madlantis
• Honolulu

What characters are returning in Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii

While Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is a spin-off, it centers around one of the series’ central characters, Goro Majima. Sega has also provided a list of other characters, so here are the ones that have been named.

• Goro Majima
• Noah Rich
• Jason Rich
• Masaru Fujita
• Teruhiko Shigata
• Rodrigez
• Mortimer
• Goro (Noah’s little friend and also a tiger cub)

The post Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii release date, locations, and characters appeared first on Destructoid.

I don’t know what’s real anymore. Sega and Ryu ga Gotoku Studio have announced that the next game in the Like a Dragon/Yakuza series will be Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. The twist is that this one looks like some sort of fever dream where Majima becomes a pirate.

To be fair, this isn’t the first time that the series has gone deep into left field. Yakuza Dead Souls had the cast fighting zombies, after all. And in order to keep development time and costs down, the company frequently reuses old settings in new ways. Perhaps they were mulling over what else they could do with their massive Hawaii map and somehow decided on this.

The story shows Majima waking up on the beach of Rich Island with no memory of what happened. One thing leads to another, and he just kind of beats up the right people and winds up with a pirate ship. He and his crew decide that they’re going to search for a legendary treasure, which I’m sure is what most people would do if they found themselves in possession of an antique warship. There is also a pirate city called “Madlantis,” so how awesome is that? The trailer is a whopping 7 minutes long and covers all the important parts.

There are parts of Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii that seem familiar. For example, the bike courier mission from Infinite Wealth shows up in the trailer. The combat seems to be the classic real-time beat-’em-up style rather than the turn-based of the more recent core titles, and you can switch between “Mad Dog” and “Sea Dog” fighting styles.

I was wondering what ife at sea is like, and apparently, there are “exhilarating real-time cannon battles.” It sounds like you battle the enemy ship until it’s ready to board. The marketing information does mention that you “explore the open sea,” but whether that’s a map system or actual ship steering isn’t entirely clear.

Yeah, didn’t see that coming, but I’m on board. Get it? Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii will release for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on February 27, 2025. As Sega commonly does, there is a rather sizeable Deluxe Edition with included DLC available.

The post Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii casts Majima as a pirate and I’m speechless appeared first on Destructoid.

Do you have room in that brain of yours for some temporarily useful information? Do you want to learn about the household threats that go unseen? If so, Home Safety Hotline has the job for you.

Originally released earlier this year, it’s now being released on consoles. Being an OS sim, it’s always a weird fit on a controller, but I needed the excuse to circle back to it for review, so I’ll take it.

Home Safety Hotline (PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch [Reviewed])
Developer: Night Signal Entertainment
Publisher: Torture Star Video
Released: September 20, 2024
MSRP: $19.99

Home Safety Hotline has you logging in for the first time as an employee of the titular company. The company provides information and support for home owners, giving them assistance in times of need, whether that’s because they have cockroaches or their house is on fire.

You’re given a list of common problems and take calls from clients. They’ll give you a description of the issue they’re having, and you need to identify what’s going on and provide them with the correct information by simply selecting it. It progresses through the days of the week, and each day provides your list with additional problems. You need to be as accurate as possible, otherwise you’ll be fired.

While this starts off with mundane problems like black mold, supernatural encounters begin creeping in. Things get weirder and weirder as you go. You’ll still get the odd person calling in about something like termites just to throw you off, but often, they’ve been referred to you because you’re the experts in dealing with the supernatural. In this, Home Safety Hotline walks the line of horror and humor.

It’s a very simple, straightforward concept. You simply get a description and pick the answer. For Home Safety Hotline, it’s all in the presentation. It’s presented like a Windows 95 program, with the date reading 1996. It’s not exactly analog horror, but it’s the same idea.

The calls run the gamut. You get customers who had a bad experience previously and are now irate, ones who are confused that they were told to call you, and then there are some that are tragic. “How do you tell someone their dog is dead?” my husband asked me as he watched over my shoulder. “By email,” I replied.

But the clients can be misleading. While for some, the answer is obvious, others will deliberately contain information to throw you off. There are also moments where your database has technical difficulties, and you can’t double-check information in a possible answer. If you get one wrong, you aren’t immediately notified, even if that was your last chance. It comes a few calls later, where you’ll be reprimanded by your supervisor or contacted by a now-pissed, unsatisfied customer. It may just be a quiz in the end, but these are the small ways that Home Safety Hotline keeps things compelling.

The downside to this is that the calls are always the same, and always in the same order. As far as I know, there are no random elements to the main story mode. If you get fired, you just repeat that day over, so it’s just listening to the same calls and adjusting your answers to finally make the grade. There’s no replay value in that sense, but some of the things that get unlocked after completing it make up for this.

My main issue with Home Safety Hotline is that it just doesn’t feel optimal on console. With its OS interface and scroll bars, it was made with mouse controls in mind. Functions on the screen are mapped to buttons, so it works reasonably well, but it loses some of its authentic feel. Scrolling, in particular, kind of sucks. 

To get through a lot of menus, you just use the d-pad to scroll, but it moves one press at a time. If you want to get from the top to the bottom of the list, you can only get there by pressing down over and over again. There are also visible problems with scrolling through menus. The information pane jumps the first time it hits the bottom of the visible area, and once your email inbox fills up, it won’t scroll down to whatever’s off-screen. I spoke to Mr. Puppy Combo (head honcho of Torture Star Video, the publisher), and he let me know that a patch is on the way, but whether or not it will fix these issues, I can’t confirm.

It’s not the end of the world, but it did bother me. For anyone who only has the option of playing it on console or simply wants a Switch version they can play on the toilet, then it fits that need.

Aside from that, I enjoyed Home Safety Hotline. The main story runs at 2-3 hours, but it also includes its first DLC, Seasonal Worker, which adds 60-90 minutes of runtime. Alongside that, there are some neat bonuses once you finish. Truthfully, I’m not sure the concept could get much farther than that, so it’s good that it doesn’t overstay its welcome and instead just provides extra if you haven’t had your fill.

I’m sure I’ve said this multiple times, but it is a very simple premise that boils down to a quiz with associated research, but it presents it with love and pizzazz. It’s very much greater than the sum of its parts. With its mix of the weird and mundane, it has a winning personality. It probably won’t blow you away, and the console version is perhaps not the most optimal way to play it, but it’s an enjoyable day job.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Home Safety Hotline appeared first on Destructoid.

Have you ever played a game that delivers on its core concept so thoroughly that you don’t think it could possibly be improved? It doesn’t necessarily have to be the most compelling concept; it could be quite mundane, but it convinces you that no matter how much budget could get thrown at the idea, there’s no way to top it. That’s Parking Garage Rally Circuit.

I’m not trying to tell you that this is the best racing game of all time. I rarely speak in such enthusiastic hyperbole. However, I will say, with some confidence, that Parking Garage Rally Circuit is the absolute best Sega Saturn-style parking garage drift racing game ever released.

Parking Garage Rally Circuit (PC [Reviewed])
Developer: Walaber Entertainment LLC
Publisher: Walaber Entertainment LLC
Released: September 20, 2024
MSRP: TBA

Parking Garage Rally Circuit is what I’d describe if you asked me to guess the synopsis of The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift based on what I remember from the trailer I saw back in high school. The only image I have of that movie is cars drifting up a ramp in a parking garage. I’m not even sure if I’m remembering that correctly.

I love drifting. Or, at least, I love arcade-style drifting. I mostly judge racing games entirely by how well the drifting in them feels. But as much as I love drifting, I love retro hardware more. More specifically, I’m passionate about people’s passion for older hardware. I love to hear people talk enthusiastically about old consoles and computers, even the crappiest ones imaginable. I love it more when people try to represent it as authentically as possible.

One of the first things that greet you upon starting up Parking Garage Rally Circuit is a number of graphical preset options presented like different versions of the game, such as the original hardware or PC port. While this essentially just changes options like scanlines, aspect ratio, and draw distance, it puts those things in the context of the time period. If you don’t care for authenticity and want to be boring, you can individually tweak settings to your liking.

However, even if you widen your screen, you’re not going to fully lose the aesthetic of chunky polygons, fake transparency, pixelated textures, and a selection of ridiculous ska tunes. Parking Garage Rally Circuit is really committed to mid-‘90s racing games. It’s not Sega Rally Championship – it’s not trying to be – but it looks the part.

But looking the part is one thing. Racing games need to play well. It’s not really the sort of genre that can get by on artistic intent. Unless it’s Road Trip on PS2. Thankfully, Parking Garage Rally Circuit is like butter.

As I mentioned, I’m a bit of a drift queen. In video games, anyway. I don’t even have my license in reality. However, I was able to get a feel for Parking Garage Rally Circuit very quickly and was drifting up parking garage ramps like that Tokyo Drift trailer in no time at all.

As the name implies, each of its 8 tracks are set inside parking garages. Sort of. I think the last level is technically a ferry, but I digress. You might wonder how much variety you could possibly get from that theme. As it turns out, it’s a lot. Each parking garage is in a different city and range from simple two-story structures to sprawling complexes. Hazards like snowplows and falling boulders mix up the tight cornering, and hazardous jumps across towering structures keep you concentrated on your steering.

You don’t race against live competitors, just their ghosts. That is to say, it’s a time trial, with your goal being to reach the top time. As much as I like running people off the road, I’m not sure a grid would really work in such tight environments. The challenge of carefully drifting through extremely narrow turns is enough to keep you focused. If you’re feeling competitive, there is multiplayer, but, again, it’s all ghosts.

The only real downside I can point to in Parking Garage Rally Circuit is its brevity. There are eight tracks, and after you get a medal on each one of them in a class, you are provided with a new car with different performance and pushed through the tracks again with slight variations. It’s decent on paper, but it only took me a little under two hours to clear. I had a healthy pile of gold under my belt, but still more to clear. Your mileage will vary.

On the other hand, there are also secret cheat codes buried in the game. I’m told there are 10 of them, but I was only provided with two. I was not able to guess any others, but they’re supposed to be discovered and proliferated by the community. These unlock “secret cars, tracks, or gameplay modifiers.”

Despite its brevity, Parking Garage Rally Circuit packs a huge punch. It’s not just its perfectly emulated retro aesthetic or its near-flawless execution of its central concept, either. It’s just so damned happy to be here. You can feel the passion behind it, and that energy is felt in all its facets. It knows what it is, and it’s laser-focused on presenting it in the most finely-tuned way possible. I cannot fathom any game topping it in the niche of racing games contained entirely within parking garages. I’m not really sure what the best way to wrap up this review is, so let’s try this: Parking Garage Rally Circuit is miles more fun than parallel parking.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Parking Garage Rally Circuit appeared first on Destructoid.

Party for Introverts has announced that their narrative vampire adventure, Cabernet, will arrive on October 24. It will be released on Steam.

In Cabernet, you play as a newly turned vampire who has to incorporate themselves into a bunch of aristocrats. They call it a narrative RPG, but I think they mean it’s more of a social RPG in the sense that you get to put points into four categories of snobbery and can leverage them in conversation. There are also transformations, and you can eat the rich. It’s pretty rad.

I previewed Cabernet over a year ago, and I dug it. It nails the worldbuilding, and the conversation system is pretty boss. My biggest concern was that this sort of game is deceptively ambitious. It takes a lot of planning to make a “choices matter” of this complexity. When you show a slice of the first hour-or-so of a game like this, it hasn’t even left the runway. After that, it becomes more sprawling and entangled, and it can be difficult to manage.

That doesn’t mean that it can’t be done, and Cabernet hasn’t actually given me a reason to believe it won’t. I’ve been surprised by a few games recently that have similarly taken on difficult formulas with success, so I’m hoping this will be another case of that.

We’ll all find out when Cabernet launches on PC October 24, 2024.

The post Vampire social RPG Cabernet uncorks the bottle this October appeared first on Destructoid.

After 10 years, Elder Scrolls Online is still going strong. It will remind you of that like clockwork, as each year it kicks off events both new and old. Hopefully, we can help you manage your schedule.

Below is an outline of events scheduled for ESO both tentative and concrete. Some have passed, some haven’t been announced, some have, and others we can predict because they’re annual. Here is all the details on what’s happening in Tamriel.

Ongoing events in 2024

• Anniversary Spotlight: Dungeon Runners, Rise Up (September 1 - September 30)
• Undaunted Celebration (September 12 - September 24)

Upcoming events in 2024

• Fallen Leaves of West Weald (September 26-October 8)

Expired

• Update 43 PC/Mac Launch (August 19)
• Battlegrounds Crazy King Mini Event (August 15–August 20)
• Gilded Glory Mini Event (August 8–August 13)
• Portals of Oblivion 10th Anniversary Spotlight (August 5-September 3)
• Vvardenfell & Clockwork City 10th Anniversary Spotlight (July 2-August 15)
• New Life Festival (December 21, 2023-January 9)
• Guilds and Glory Celebration (January 18-30)
• Chaosball Battleground Weekend (February 8-13)
• Crafter's Celebration 2024 (February 15-20)
• Whitestrake’s Mayhem (February 22-March 5)
• Crazy King Battleground Weekend (March 14-19)
• Jester’s Festival (March 28-April 4)
• Anniversary Jubilee (April 4-25)
• Gilded Glory (May 2-7)
• Explorer's Celebration (May 23-28)
• Zeal of Zenithar (6/20 - 7/2)
• Chaos Ball Weekend (July 11-July 16)
• Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road launch (June 3 PC, June 18 consoles)
• 100% XP Boost Mini-Event (July 18-July 23)
• Whitestrake’s Mayhem In-Game Event (July 25-August 6)

ESO Annual Events

Other frequent events, what to expect

Beyond annual holiday events, ESO has frequent events to fill in the gaps. While the dates on these often change, some of them are rather predictable. Here is what you can expect to be doing between the holidays.

Anniversary Spotlight: Dungeon Runners, Rise Up

This is September's 10th anniversary spotlight and focuses on dungeons. Perhaps most importantly, logging in two and three days in the month will net you two of the dungeon DLCs: Fang Lair and Scalecaller Peak, respectively. Also, getting the “Fang Lair Vanquisher” and “Scalecaller Peak Vanquisher” can net you the Dungeon Explorer outfit. Also, if you manage the “Returned Undaunted” achievement by completing 10 Undaunted Pledges, you can get the Thurvokun Arms Pack. Both are available for free from the Crown Store if you've earned the achievements.

Vvardenfell & Clockwork City 10th Anniversary Spotlight

This isn't a repeating event, but it's important to know what it's about. As it mentions, it focuses on the Vvardenfell region and Clockwork City DLC. Perhaps the most important part of this is that you can get the Clockwork City DLC for free if you log in twice during the month of July. You can also get a special recall action if you complete the Vvardenfell main storyline and get the Champion of Vivec achievement. Lastly, endeavours during this period are centered around the spotlit regions. If you're nostalgic for Morrowind, it's a good time.

Portals of Oblivion 10th Anniversary Spotlight

Portals of Oblivion's 10th Anniversary is similar to the Vvardenfell & Clockwork City spotlight. Except that instead of gaining DLC for free for logging in twice in the month, you get Flame Atronach Senche-Jaguar pet. That's a bit of a bummer, but it's still free stuff. Also, if you have the Blackwood Portal Punisher or Deadlands Portal Punisher achievement from completing 10 Oblivion portals in the Blackwood or Deadland regions, you'll get the Flame Atronach Pony Guar pet.

Whitestrake's Mayhem

This is entirely a PVP-focused event. By completing daily quests in Battleground, Cyrodiil's ongoing war, or the Imperial City, you can gain event tickets to spend on special items at the Impressario. There is usually always a 100% XP increase for PVP, and you can also get more Tel Var and Alliance Points. If you're shy about playing competitively, it's a good time to dip your toes.

Zeal of Zenithar

According to Zenimax, the Zeal of Zenithar event has "traders, crafters, and workers of Tamriel come together to celebrate all things commerce during this sure-to-be-profitable event." The event honors its namesake divine by reducing prices at vendors and increasing inspiration provided by crafting. You can also visit the Shrine of Zenithar in Belkarth for daily quests. They're provided by Fasaria. You'll also get reward parcels for completing crafting writs and teaming up with your guild to tackle dungeons and world bosses. On top of this -- and this feels kind of contrary to the standards of Zenithar -- you can get reward parcels by practicing your thievery.

Mid-new expansion themed event (Fallen Leaves of West Weald)

For the last several years, Zenimax has released a new expansion around the start of summer. That’s also happening this year with Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road on June 3 (June 18 for consoles). Usually, a few months after the launch of a new expansion, there’s an event specifically for people who own the expansion. On top of that, the price of the expansion is slashed to try and tempt other people to join.

And, sure enough, there's a mid-year event based on the new expansion: Fallen Leaves of West Weald, which runs September 26 to October 8. In order to take part in the festivities, you need the Gold Road expansion. If you don't have it, usually these events come alongside a sale on the new expansion. That hasn't been announced, but it would break from tradition if they don't.

This time, beyond just rewarding you for question in the West Weald zone, the community is also going to be working toward additional rewards. For completing a new daily quest that involves finding Ayleid artifacts, they'll get some free items. For simply questing, the community can unlock days of an Explorer's Celebration (see below).

You'll also get "Fallen Leaves Coffer" for questing during this time. They contain all kinds of things, including style pieces. For the complete list, you can check out the news page.

Explorer’s Celebrations

Explorer’s Celebrations in ESO are pretty straightforward. There are no event tickets to earn but gold, experience, and resources are increased. It’s a good time to use any scrolls that enhance these effects further.

Crafter’s Celebrations

The first Crafter’s Celebration happened this year (2024) in ESO. Because of its similarities to the Explorer’s Celebration, it seems like something that is going to be an annual occurrence. Like the Explorer’s Celebration, there are no event tickets or quests to complete. Instead, you gain extra rewards for doing anything related to crafting. This not only means crafting itself will provide you with more inspiration, but you’ll also receive more resources and upgrade materials.

The post Every scheduled ESO event, ongoing and scheduled for 2024 appeared first on Destructoid.

Hi again! I’m here to remind you that Destructoid has a whiz new newsletter: the Destructoid Changelog Newsletter. It’s a little bundle of something that gets dropped in your email inbox every Friday. You can get it in your Friday, just by typing your email in a box.

Each newsletter comes with a recap of all the most interesting/weird articles of the week. Plus, I – a human with typing fingers – will tell you about what neat game I’ve been playing that week. Lately, I’ve been playing games associated with Love-de-Lic veteran Yoshiro Kimura. Will I be continuing that trend? No! I’ll be upfront; this time, it’s not a Yoshiro Kimura game.

Also, we’ve got some news. We’re launching a special monthly issue this month. It will hit the last Monday of the month (September 30, in this case) for anyone who has been able to convince a friend to sign up through our referral link that is included in a vanilla weekly newsletter. Refer one person (using that link or URL, I have to stress this), and you’ll start receiving the monthly edition. This month, it’s an interview with indie developer TheCatamites, the person behind Anthology of the Killer, a bizarre horror title I gave high marks to back in June. Even if you don’t know who they are, I promise it’s a fun interview.

But wait, there’s more! The people behind-the-scenes of the newsletter have informed me that you can now access back issues at this site. If you just signed up, this will let you go back and see what you missed. If you’re not signed up but are interested, you can read part of it. It’s usually just the bespoke intro rambling, which suggests to me that I should start writing more interesting intros.

Wow! So many benefits! And if you decide you don’t like it, you can always unsubscribe. I’ll pretend I didn’t notice, so you’ll only notice whiffs of awkward tension between us.

The post Spice up your Fridays with the Destructoid Changelog Newsletter appeared first on Destructoid.

As an existing fan of the Two Point games, I’m very excited for Two Point Museum. It’s nice to have a release date, but Sega and Two Point Studios have announced that the release date is set for March 4th, 2025. That's sort of far off. Maybe if I freeze myself…

I didn’t know this even existed until last month, but already the wait has been too long. I yearn for the hapless puppet inhabitants of Two Point County. The upcoming game has you managing a museum, and while it certainly has a lot that harkens back to Two Point Hospital and Two Point Campus, a lot has been changed to make it a fresh experience. I briefly got to touch it, but that has done little to settle my brain.

If you’re not familiar, Two Point Museum is a management game where you’re tasked with running museums. You send out explorers to gather/dig up/steal artifacts and then display them in a way that will convince patrons to empty their pockets into the donation bins.

Sega has also announced that preorders will be open starting today, and you’ll get some exclusive items for plunking down money in advance. It’s Sonic the Hedgehog-themed stuff, including Sonic and Shadow outfits for your staff, plushies for your gift shop, and wallpaper, flooring, and statues if your museum needs that touch of marketing. That might all sound weird, but Hospital and Campus both had this sort of product placement. I think someone on staff is a fan since they worked in a Crazy Taxi 3 arcade machine in Campus, for some reason.

There’s also a deluxe “Explorers Edition” which sounds totally Sega. Purchasing that gives you 5 days early access, an exclusive map location, a “pop up challenge museum,” explorer items and cosmetics, and 5000 Kudosh (secondary currency in the game). That sucks, but this is pretty common for Sega deluxe editions.

Regardless of your purchasing decision, Two Point Museum is out on March 4, 2025 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. 

The post Two Point Museum is out in March and that’s not soon enough appeared first on Destructoid.

Zombies are one thing, but when the Special Forces show up in Dead Rising, it’s a whole ‘nother ball game. It doesn’t matter how well-armed you are; they will shoot back. More frustratingly, they’re armored. So, what is the best way to defeat them?

The Spec Ops soldiers are a heavy presence on the fourth day: Overtime Mode. They arrive at the Willamette Mall and immediately start gunning everything down indiscriminately. On the plus side, they do a lot to thin the hordes of zombies, but they’re also a lot more dangerous. They largely travel in pairs, and they can easily be identified by their flashlights and laser pointers. They’ll also loudly proclaim that they’ve spotted you, so it’s hard not to know when one is nearby.

They’re all armed. Most of them carry automatic assault rifles, while some go as far as packing a rocket launcher. Again, this comes with the advantage that you can take their weapons, which are very effective against zombies. However, they’re armored. It takes quite a number of bullets to take them down, and headshots don’t work against their helmet. It can still be an effective strategy to just unload on them until they drop, but not the faster, and it leaves you open to attacks from elsewhere.

How to one-hit kill Spec Ops soldiers in Dead Rising

There is a way to instantly kill Spec Ops soldiers in Dead Rising: Deluxe Remaster, and it isn’t very hard. It won’t take any uses off of your weapon, and it can be done quickly.

By the fourth day, you should have significantly leveled up Frank. If you’re above level 20, you probably have the “Lift Up” skill, and if you’re above level 26, it’s possible you have “Suplex.” Both of these skills are used similarly, and both will eliminate soldiers with one hit. They’re also performed rather easily. You hold RB and press X next to the soldier on Xbox controllers and R1 and Square on PlayStation. The difference is that Lift Up is done when the soldier is facing you, while for Suplex, you need to get behind them. Suplex is a single move, however, whereas Lift up is the action of first picking the soldier up, then another to throw them.

To get close to the soldier, make use of your roll. Keep moving and zigzag while rolling, and you should be able to close the distance rather quickly. Once you’re next to them, the soldier is helpless. If you’re lucky, you can simply walk up behind them and grab them before they notice you. You don’t even have to be careful about it; their situational awareness is not very impressive.

There are other skills that Frank learns, such as Face Crusher and Disembowel that are just as effective, but you don’t learn them until later on at levels you might not even reach until New Game+.

The post What is the best way to defeat Special Forces in Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster appeared first on Destructoid.

Once Human has a rather large world, and it can be tiring to keep crossing it on foot (or on wheels), so the fast travel teleportation system is a must. However, you may encounter times when you get the message “Start Point Locked.” This is what it means and how to fix it.

You simply need to understand how the fast travel system works in Once Human. You can unlock points to teleport to by activating teleportation towers out in the world. You are also able to teleport to your home base. What is important to remember here is that you can’t just teleport to any available point from anywhere you’re standing. You can only do that at your home base.

If you are simply standing out in the middle of nowhere, you can fast-travel to your home base, but you’re not going to be able to teleport to a teleportation tower. That’s when you’ll see “Start Point Locked.” It is the worst wording possible for the problem. It’s not “Start Point Unsuitable,” which gives you more of an idea that this is a situational issue; it’s “Start Point Locked,” which suggests it's a temporary problem solved by manual intervention. It could even be "Cannot teleport from present location," but here we are.

To fix the “Starting Point Locked” issue, you just need to go to a teleportation tower and use that to teleport to the point where you need to go. You can also go to your home base and teleport from there. The important thing is that you can’t teleport from anywhere. So check your feet before you try to move your seat.

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Nintendo has dropped four new games into the Nintendo Switch Online SNES catalog. It’s quite a surprising lineup, especially if you’re digging the Japanese games on the service.

The one that I assume the most people reading this will recognize is Battletoads and Double Dragon (or just Battletoads Double Dragon; the logo isn’t clear). It’s another early Rare game for the pile. As the name implies, it crosses over Technos’ Double Dragon with Rare’s Battletoads. It was developed by Rare with very little input from Technos, but they sort of tried to find a mid-point between the two series. I did a full write-up of it a while ago, but I think this summarizes it: “It’s not a great Battletoads title (if one happens to exist), and it’s not a very good Double Dragon game, but there are enough appreciable factors here to keep it from being a bad game.”

The other three games are Japan-only titles. There’s an SNES port of Big Run, a raster racing game that was originally released in arcades in 1989. It’s based on the Paris-Dakar Rally event. By many accounts, it’s not great, but I have a soft spot for raster racers. There’s also a falling block puzzle game called Cosmo Gang: The Puzzle. It’s a cute falling blocks-style puzzle game It was also originally an arcade game (1992). I have less context with this one, but the trailer makes it look cute.

Finally, there is Kunio-kun no Dodgeball da yo: Zen’in Shūgō! This is sort of one of Super Dodgeball’s sequels. As a Kunio/Nekketsu/River City/Downtown fan, I actually have the Super Famicom cartridge for this. It’s… Like, it’s Super Dodgeball but on more powerful hardware. As such, it’s still fun, but the single-player is massively unbalanced. You assign skill points to your team, and it’s incredibly easy to overpower your team. On the plus side, it’s four-player, and if I remember correctly, you can play the main campaign coop.

These four games are now available on the Nintendo Switch Online Super Nintendo app.

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Capcom has released a fresh update for Dragon’s Dogma 2. In addition to some pretty healthy tweaks, they’ve also thrown in a casual mode in case you want a softer journey.

Actually, taking a look at casual mode, it doesn’t seem massively easier. Here are the defining features, as per the patch notes:

• Reduced inn fees for staying at an inn.
• Reduced price of Ferrystones.
• More difficult for weight carried to become "Heavy" or "Very Heavy."
• Less Stamina expended when dashing outside of battle.
• Loss gauge will not increase when selecting "Load from Last Save" after the Arisen dies.
• Pawns will recover from dragonsplague without a "devastating calamity" occurring, even if the symptoms progress to a terminal stage.

That’s not nothing, but some of the tweaks are weirdly specific. It’s easier, but it’s not exactly dumbing things down to an unreasonable level. I wonder if there are less specific changes they aren’t telling us upfront, like a change in damage given/taken.

Speaking of oddly specific, the rest of the patch notes seem like that. A port crystal being added to Bakbattahl seems like the most exciting addition, since it will be a massive convenience. Aside from that, there are things like new idle animations and new items that can be traded with the Dragonforged. It’s nothing spectacular outside the new difficulty.

There are a lot of balance changes to vocations, as well. It’s a lot to take in, so I’m going to direct you to the patch notes again for the specific details. There are also a tonne of bug fixes. I didn’t notice very many issues when I played it back around its release, but this looks like a lot.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC. The described patch is available today.

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EA has announced that the next game in the skate. series is scheduled to drop into Early Access in 2025. This will be the first entry in the series since skate. 3 in 2010. Shortly after, EA laid off most of the developer’s staff and shut down the studio. Last we heard, Deran Chung and Chris Parry who worked on the original run of games, are part of the team handling the new skate.

I haven’t really been keeping up with the development of the new skate. (which is apparently just called skate.). I think I lost interest when it was announced that it would be free-to-play and multiplayer focused. Actually, repeating that still sticks in my craw since my wish for a new skate. game did not include GaaS.

If you’re down for that sort of thing, EA has been holding playtests since 2022 to collect player feedback. The developer has said that there will be no loot boxes, no maps locked behind paywalls, and no pay-to-win. So, that’s maybe comforting, but that still leaves cosmetics as microtransactions. We’ll have to wait and see.

I loved the skate. series. I love Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, as well, but they’re two completely different approaches to skateboarding. skate. feels a lot more authentic. You try and find the perfect line to build the most gnar gnar combo possible. The stick-flicking controls gave everything a more tactile feel.

But really, I have no interest in a live service multi-player game. Thankfully, I still have the original three games on PS3, so I can always turn to them. They’ve aged well.

skate. is coming to early access on 2025. More details to come.

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Cruelty Squad’s aesthetic sure was a thing. It presents this tone evocative of a K-Mart bargain bin that has awoken with an appetite for human flesh. A lot of that was its insulting visuals, but it was backed by the most uncomfortably bizarre music. Well, you can just listen to that music if you want. If you want.

That’s because the Cruelty Squad soundtrack has penetrated streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. I’m listening to it right now and have been transported back to a particular pocket of Web 1.0 where teenagers attempted to recreate video game music while chewing on their grandmother’s prescription drugs. It haunts me. It’s both nostalgic and agonizing. I feel like I could end this article just by typing out the screams inside of me. But I won’t. Here’s what I said about it in my coronavirus-trapped 2021 review:

“It’s this mix of low-quality MIDI and uncomfortable sounds. Disturbing is probably the best way to describe it. Even at its most musical, it tends to clash with the murder on screen. Sounds just creep into the background, and it’s hard to be sure if they’re part of the music or something in the environment is about to jump you.”

Does that sound like something your kids would listen to? Is this what passes for music these days? It’s 27 tracks and 49 minutes long. What’s the opposite of meditation? That’s what this is. Listen to such hits as, uh, “Combat Cocktail” which begins with what sounds like someone chewing on a live eel; a sound that bleeds into the background to support the percussion. It's the perfect way to let your guests know that it's time to leave.

Gosh, this is great. This is music to work to. I’m so glad that Consumer Softproducts sold out to Big Streaming. Now I can feel uncomfortable while cooking or organizing my collection of toenail clippings. Listen to the Cruelty Squad OST on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and maybe other places where music is streamed.

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Tick Tock Interactive has announced that their shortform anthology, Miniatures, is releasing on November 14th. It’s coming to Switch, PC, and Mobile (iOS).

Miniatures defines itself as an “arthouse experience” which is maybe why I’m having so much trouble explaining it. You can watch the release date trailer. It presents an unsettling but serene tone as things happen. Here, I’ll tell you what the press release says:

“Explore, interact, and watch the world shift. In this peculiar, artist-led experience, reconnect with the wonder, magic, and loneliness of childhood through four handcrafted, visually captivating stories based on the strange objects found in an old wooden box. Open the box and open your mind - who knows what curious things you’ll discover in there?”

Discover where? In the box or my mind? Because I’ve seen what’s in my mind, and it’s no vacation home. The box seems to contain puzzles. The game part of Miniatures has you “build unusual objects, inspect curious items, and untangle the threads of lost memories.”

While it’s not necessary, the press release also mentions that playing on a touchscreen (Switch, Steam Deck, iOS) adds “an additional tactile dimension.” Touch screen and I have never been on good terms, but have at it. The game itself looks interesting, though. I like loneliness, and my childhood was a safely mundane experience that, in retrospect, that’s way preferable to adulthood.

Miniatures launches on Switch, PC, and iOS November 14th.

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Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida recently did an interview with PC Gamer. During this interview, he was asked about mods now that the game is on PC. His response is almost adorable in its naivety.

"If we said 'It'd be great if someone made xyz,' it might come across as a request, so I'll avoid mentioning any specifics here!" Yoshida told PC Gamer. "The only thing I will say is that we definitely don't want to say anything offensive or inappropriate, so please don't make or install anything like that."

Aw. The guy must have never visited nexusmods.com, which, even then, is pretty tame compared to what you can find if you dig deeper. Modders care little about your carefully tuned design, art style, or ESRB rating. They definitely don’t care about your sensibilities. Though, to be clear, I’m referring to modders as a unit, since individually, I’m sure most are perfectly fine.

But while there are fun mods that turn dragons in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim into “Macho Man” Randy Savage, there are plenty that just turn every female character into anime girls with big titties. Like, sure, maybe porcelain-skinned women in metal bikinis clash with the rest of the game, but some people have different priorities. And, again, I’m just referring to the stuff you can find easily at a centralized database, if you ever want to lose the last shreds of your hope for humanity, just try looking for a sketchy site of sexualized Sims 4 mods. I’m not kink-shaming; I’m just concerned.

As for Final Fantasy XVI, I’m not sure what needs to be done, but I doubt UI overhauls are where it’s going to stop. It’s cute for someone to ask modders to keep it clean, but I think that might just be like dropping a steak in a swarm of sharks; you’re just going to make them hungry for meat. It’s practically a challenge. Just you watch; someone will release a mod featuring Naoki Yoshida in a metal bikini. Or worse.

Final Fantasy XVI is available on PS5 right now and is coming to PC on September 17. Now, keep it clean.

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Paradox and Colossal Order released an updated roadmap for future Cities: Skylines 2 updates. It’s not all bad news, but it does show the game’s content updates and DLC getting pushed back as it makes its way to rehabilitation.

Specifically, there are two sets of DLC that are affected. The creator packs, Modern Architecture and Urban Promenades, were originally supposed to launch Q2 2024, but are now planned for Q4. As for the Bridges and Ports “expansion,” that has been pushed back to Q2 2025. In the meantime, they’re working on bug fixes and smaller patches like the Detailers Patch 2 which throws in some additional assets.

The roadmap also mentions a few outstanding things being worked on. They mention the asset editor is still being worked on with the modding beta team. They also acknowledge the console versions of the game, but say they have nothing new to add. It’s still being worked on, and they still don’t have a new date.

When Cities: Skylines 2 launched last year, it was in an abysmal state. Colossal Order has since been working on it to get it into shape. The Economy 2.0 update, which revamped a lot of its underlying systems, was a good step in the right direction. However, I recently put a bunch more time into the game, starting a new city and building it up to a Megalopolis, but I’m still not loving it. Colossal Order says they’re listening to feedback, and considering what changes need to be made. Some feel that the game is too challenging in the early stage of city development. I didn’t, but that’s just me.

I did have other problems, however. It still has a number of bugs. The simulation slows down as your population increases to the point where it becomes essentially unplayable (this is at a point way later in the game, depending on your computer’s hardware). I also find it visually bland. Cities: Skylines had a quirky, almost toylike quality to it, and while the sequel just feels generic. Even after years of development, I’m not sure I’ll look at it as favorably as I did the first game.

Cities: Skylines 2 is currently available for PC. Modern Architecture and Urban Promenades creator packs arrive in Q4 2024. The Bridges and Ports expansion arrives Q2 2025. Console versions are still pending a release window.

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As reported by Eurogamer, Hideaki Nishino, the CEO of PlayStation’s “Platform Business Group,” has stated in an interview with Nikkei that consoles will remain a part of the company’s “core” of their business but says that additional platforms like PC will help it increase its share of the game market.

I mean, he would say that, since his job is managing that division and promoting its hardware. However, it has been a bit harder to justify or get excited by new consoles from Sony or Microsoft recently, often because those games can be found elsewhere. However, keeping this in mind, Nishino states (according to Eurogamer’s translation), “PCs are difficult to set up, but with PlayStation, once you turn it on, you can experience the content you bought straight away."

Kind of! Consoles have certainly strayed away from just jamming a game in and playing it “straight away.” Usually, when I get a game on console, I expect that it’s going to spend some time installing and updating. If you buy digitally, you’ll be spending some time waiting for it to download, and if your internet isn’t speed-of-light, that can take quite a while. But I see his point, and it isn't a novel one. PCs take some knowledge and maintenance. It’s easier to explain to my parents how to get a game on their Switch than it is to help them update their GPU drivers. To say otherwise would be disingenuous, even if things seem to be converging.

So, on one hand, bringing their games to PC might get purchases from gamers who don’t care to own a console. On the other hand, some gamers who would have bought a PlayStation for exclusives no longer have a reason to. At the same time, console architecture is becoming less proprietary as the years go on, so porting is less of an issue and not necessarily a major cost.

As it is right now, I still own a PS5, but it’s nowhere near as indispensable as my Switch. I don’t mind exclusivity, and I feel a library with a unique personality lends meaning to a console. That’s maybe not important to everyone, but as someone who eats video games every day, I like them to taste a bit different.

At the very least, this means that there are still plans to continue the PlayStation lineage. Just last week, we received news that the PlayStation 5 Pro is on the horizon, offering minor performance gains for a dizzyingly high price tag. At this point, I don’t see the PlayStation 6 announcement coming for a few years, and I’m not convinced it will be able to justify the price all that well later. I guess what I’m saying is: if Sony wants consoles to remain a “core” part of their business, they should probably have more convincing reasons.

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Did you check out the Grand Festival in Splatoon 3? It lived up to its name. While it essentially felt like a normal Splatfest, it centered around a big concert where you could watch the three major bands of the game perform. It was pretty incredible.

Well, as we pick ourselves up out of the dirt and recover from our hangover, Nintendo announced that the Grand Festival marks the end of regular updates for the game. This means that the only updates we see going forward will be patches, and it’s unlikely that new weapons or arenas will be dropped in. This is exactly how “Final Fest” went down in 2019 for Splatoon 2. It was then roughly three years until Splatoon 3 released.

However, Nintendo (by way of the official Splatoon Twitter account), states that Splatoween, Frosty Fest, Spring Fest, and Summer Nights will still continue at their normal times. Also, Big Run (thank goodness), so it’s not like the game is dead dead. It’s just kind of on life support. Or not even that; it’s just coasting.

The end of support has led some to speculate that Splatoon 4 is in the works for the successor to the Switch. I don’t have as much information as anyone else speculating (that is to say, none), but it seems reasonable. When the Switch was preparing to launch, Splatoon 2 was featured heavily in its marketing. Whether or not it’s a launch window game, I doubt that this is the last update we’ve seen for the series.

That kind of means we’ll be going back to Splatoon’s live-service starting point. That means a dearth of content compared to Splatoon 3 at launch, as it slowly gets built up again as a way of retaining its player base. Maybe the strategy will change, however, but I’m not currently betting on it.

In the meantime, Past won Grand Festival against Present and Future. I was on team Present because my therapist always told me that’s where I should focus. Clearly, she was wrong. If you missed the concerts at Grand Festival, apparently, the new Amiibos for Squid Sisters, Off the Hook, and Deep Cuts will allow you to revisit the venue. I recommend it, and will be adding them to cart soon.

Splatoon 3 is available on Switch.

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Cancel your social obligations; the second season of Castlevania Nocturne is scheduled to arrive on Netflix on January 2025. This continues the story of Richter Belmont and his gang of monster mashers.

According to the description for the trailer: “Now joined by the legendary Alucard, Richter Belmont and his band of vampire hunters are in a desperate race against time. Erzsebet Báthory, the Vampire Messiah, who already seems invincible, seeks the full power of the goddess Sekhmet so she can plunge the world into endless darkness and terror.”

I haven’t watched the first season of Castlevania Nocturne because I didn’t finish the first Castlevania series. Which is weird, because I’m a massive fan of the Castlevania games. Well, it’s not so weird. I don’t watch much TV. I play video games, and I write. I did watch the first season and then part of the second, but I never made it to the end. Hm. I probably should.

Anyway, from the looks of the trailer, we’re not in Symphony of the Night territory yet. In fact, it would seem that Dracula has yet to make an appearance. Maybe the showrunners are shaking things up and trying to prove that Dracula isn’t necessary to tell a good Castlevania story. It’s happened a few times in the games. Technically. But also, I already said I didn’t watch the first season of Castlevania Nocturne, so don’t listen to what I say. Well, aside from the date of the second season. That’s based on information from Netflix, so you’re not relying on me for that one.

Castlevania Nocturne season 2 will be released sometime in January 2025.

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Iron Studio has released an update for Pacific Drive that should help anyone who felt the Olympic Exclusion Zone was a bit too unfriendly. The “Drive Your Way” update adds a slew of difficulty settings to fine-tune your experience, along with some other goodies.

Difficulty settings are always a good thing. Personally, I like playing at the default or mid-range settings (yes, even when reviewing a game), but I’m not going to fault someone for picking “I’m too young to die.” At the same time, if you’re a “Nightmare” sort of person, then you can also lift the difficulty for a harder experience.

I’ll give you the list of difficulty options, and then I’ll talk some more about what else is in the patch. Here they are:

• Pacific Drive - The standard Pacific Drive experience - a Pacific Drive through the Olympic Peninsula.
• Scenic Tour - Crafting requirements, resource consumption, driving difficulty, hazards, dangers, storms, and damage are all lowered or disabled. The player cannot die. A scenic route through the story of Pacific Drive.
• Joyride - The same gameplay and tension as Pacific Drive, but gathering, crafting, and research requirements are all lowered. Damage and failure penalties are minimal.
• A Sunday Drive - Focus on the Olympic Peninsula with minimal interruptions
• Nuclear Journey - Every map will be filled with low dose radiation that is harmful to the player. Storms are faster and stronger, hazards and damage are more plentiful. An unpredictable, irradiated journey that only the car can protect you from.
• Mechanic's Road Trip - Terrain and the status of the car impact driving more. Items to repair the car are more costly to craft, and can't be crafted on a run. A challenging drive and susceptible car will provide a test of your forethought, problem solving, and automobile experience.
• Olympic Gauntlet - All aspects of the game are much harder - An extreme gauntlet to challenge the most dedicated Breachers.
• Iron Wagon - All aspects of the game are much harder, and failing a run will delete your save file. An extreme gauntlet to challenge the most dedicated Breachers, with no room for failure.

Beyond that, there are some new cosmetic options. This is mainly the ability to paint the wheels and bumpers. However, there’s a new antenna topper and dangly thing. If that’s not enough for you, a new cosmetic DLC pack is available on the storefront.

Lastly, you can now add custom songs on the PC version. This is probably the most exciting part for me – or would be if I was planning a replay. When I played through it for review, I kept getting the same five or six songs on repeat. They weren’t bad songs, but I hate listening to the same thing over and over because it drills into my head. The credits listed, like, a hundred songs, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t hear a lot of them because every time I flicked on the radio, it was “Doctor Juice.”

There are a lot of people who love Pacific Drive, and I feel kind of isolated in the fact that I didn’t click with it. It’s enough that it’s one of those situations where I know everyone has their opinion, and that’s one of the few redeeming qualities of humans, but I’m so far away from some that I can’t help but raise an eyebrow. It wasn’t the difficulty I had a problem with, it just felt substantially padded and inconsistent. I dig the concept, and I love some of the things they did with it, but when I pulled up to the end credits, I was just so aggravated.

Anyway, try it yourself, you might like it. Pacific Drive is available for PC and PS5. The Drive Your Way update releases today.

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It’s hard to really figure out what Starstruck: Hands of Time is about based on trailers or screenshots. Half of it is a rhythm game. Half of it is an adventure. The other half is about smashing things as a giant hand. Actually having played through it, I still don’t really know what it’s about.

Starstruck: Hands of Time (PC [Reviewed])
Developer: Createdelic, LLC
Publisher: Createdelic, LLC
Released: September 16, 2024
MSRP: $19.99

Starstruck has you sent back from the future to try and prevent a somewhat-unexplained apocalypse. Your robot companion hones in on a pair of humans, both aspiring musicians. One is Edwin, who lives in the shadow of Dawn. The other is Dawn, who lives in the shadow of her brother.

Finally, there’s your hand, which you use to interfere with the flow of time. Do you remember that Simpsons Halloween special where Homer travels back in time and, while he initially tries not to affect the future, eventually gets frustrated and just starts smashing things? That’s what you’re doing with your hand. Initially, your computerized companion says something about not creating a paradox before realizing that, wait, you’re actually trying to create a paradox, so you might as well smash everything.

It’s fun. It’s barely necessary in terms of narrative, but just being able to lay waste to the environment is fun in a Katamari way. It even challenges you to destroy as much as possible and locate hidden things in the environment, which encourages you to just replay these segments. Messing with the timestream could have been depicted in a number of ways, and this is such a great way to do it.

The most immediately striking thing about Starstruck is its art style. Most things are presented as a diorama that mixes mundane objects, disparate toys, and plasticine figures. But it gets even better than that, as it also incorporates video elements, laying them behind the player-controlled models, which gives them a surreal effect.

There is some unevenness to the art style, but it makes good use of it. I think that, at least once, it uses the fact that you can’t really tell why something looks the way it does to later reveal what it represents.

When I played the demo of Starstruck: Hands of Time a couple months back, I was deep into packing for a move. Now that I have room to breathe without inhaling cardboard, I got out my Rock Band 4 Fender Jaguar. It made me want to play Rock Band 4 more than anything, but it also improved the feeling of the game. Sort of.

There’s no strumming. You just press the fret buttons in time with the prompts. I’m not sure how much you know about playing a guitar, but it’s very much not that. You lift and press the strum bar to move to the higher and lower pitches. It’s kind of awkward, especially at higher difficulties where you’re pressing chords, er, multiple buttons at once. It’s still fun to play, regardless of whether you’re on keyboard (that is, a computer keyboard, not the piano type) or a Rock Band/Guitar Hero guitar.

Speaking of which, it looks like the Guitar Hero 2 (360 version) Xplorer guitar gets recognized by the game and bound automatically. For my Fender Jaguar, I had to bind the buttons, but it wasn’t difficult and worked fine.

I was actually excited every chance I got to pull out the guitar, which, thankfully, comes up rather frequently. It’s a major part of gameplay. I said in my write-up of the demo that I hated the music, but thankfully, it turned out to only be that one song that I didn’t like. I mean, I still didn’t like the lyrics much whenever they came up, but the soundtrack, in general, is really enjoyable. You can play the songs separate from the story, and I would totally do that.

The adventure aspect of the Starstruck, on the other hand, is a smidge weak. I wasn’t looking for things to rub on other things, but there isn’t a tonne to really do in the world. There are guitars that you can find and equip for visual reasons, and there are optional songs to take part in (at least one, that I recall), but not a whole lot. And I think there’s a bit of a missed opportunity to get more intimate with the game world.

Which actually leads me to my main issue with Starstruck: its story isn’t entirely well told. I really want to temper my words, because I want to be clear that it isn’t bad. It has a lot of value and inventiveness. It’s just that it seems unfocused. So much so that, when all is said and done, I’m not sure what the core message is supposed to be. Was there just one? If not, then the other themes get diluted, and nothing gets full closure.

There’s symbolism like the heavy presence of ouroboros, the illusion of immortality through art, and being true to yourself. It brings up so much and explains so little. It spins its tires on plagiarism and by the end of it, I wasn’t sure if it was saying that it’s bad or unavoidable. Or maybe I’m not supposed to focus on that. Maybe it’s about the fact that you need to be yourself, because becoming famous by simply copying someone already successful will leave you feeling hollow. Or that all your heroes live in the shadow of someone else. Or maybe it’s both, as well as some sort of statement on the difference of fame and infamy.

The fact that it doesn’t really punctuate itself might have a lot to do with the fact that the narrative can’t tell if it’s more interested in the characters or the message. The characters themselves are all unique, and their problems are clearly stated, but you don’t live with them. You don’t really spend enough time with their issues to get a good understanding of their problems. I’m curious about Edwin’s TV-addicted parents. You see Lucy’s problem demonstrated, but the depths of her despair was a complete mystery to me. Likewise, I don’t understand the antagonist. I don’t get their motivations or their, er, status.

Not understanding or not being able to fully grok the point could just be me. I feel I’m typically receptive enough to recognize artistic intent, but I can’t possibly say how others will connect or interpret it. However, I still think that better attention to the characters would have paid off massively.

With that said, it’s told with enough visual and verbal flair that it doesn’t significantly matter. Starstruck knows how to set a scene effectively, so regardless of whether you fully understand the subtext, it’s easy enough to follow the grander plot and be entertained by its storytelling.

I’ve played and reviewed a lot of games this month, and there was a point where I felt breathless beneath a pile of them. However, the one I wanted to play most after starting it was Starstruck: Hands of Time, but it was also the one I needed to push down in priorities since I had more urgent deadlines. I think it says something that I had to restrain myself from playing it too soon.

It wound up being 4 hours for me, and that includes a bit of time I spent just playing the songs, searching for guitars, and repeating the smashy sections. There are multiple endings, but they are based mostly on decisions you make toward the end of the game, rather than any sort of branching narrative.

It wasn’t until the last act of the game that the fires of my enthusiasm met with a damp log. It wasn’t enough to put me out entirely, but it did take down the heat. Starstruck sets itself up for a homerun and winds up just making it to fourth base. It filled out the paperwork correctly, but forgot to sign and date the bottom. Uh, what I’m saying is that with a bit more time dedicated to its storytelling, it could have been the complete package. As it stands, you might be impressed by its personality, but you won’t necessarily be starstruck.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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8BitDo has added to its lineup of wireless mod kits and receivers with ones for Nintendo’s GameCube. With them, you can turn any normal GameCube controller into a wireless one. Or you can connect a third-party controller wirelessly to the GameCube, if you’re into that sort of thing.

8BitDo has these sorts of things for a lot of consoles. Essentially, the mod kits are controller guts that you transplant into a normal wired GameCube controller, guts for guts. The new guts have Bluetooth in them, which means you can then connect the controller to your PC or, I don’t know, other things people connect Bluetooth controllers. You could connect it via a PS1 receiver to play PS1 games, if you’re really perverse.

Transplanting is a solderless process. I’d say that it’s “easy,” but have you ever taken apart a GameCube controller? It’s not as bad as, say, a Dualsense, but it can be finicky getting the thing back together. It's simple, but it takes some patience, I should probably say.

If you manage it, you’ll not only have a fancy new Bluetooth controller, but it also comes with Hall Effect joysticks and a “trigger pack.” I’m really not sure what the “trigger pack” is. It might just be what they call the triggers that come with it. They don’t say if they’re different in any way. I think if it makes it so they don’t make a sound like your M1 Garand needs reloading every time you press it fully, that’s a good selling point right there. I’m just going to assume you’ve played enough WW2 FPS games to understand that reference.

The receiver, on the other hand, just plugs into the GameCube controller port. Like a Wavebird receiver. Except, you can pair most Bluetooth controllers to it. For example, an arcade stick. Or a wireless modded PS1 controller, if you’re really perverse. You don’t need the GameCube mod kit to make use of the receiver, is what I’m saying.

I’m not sure I’m going to bite. I have a pair of Wavebirds, and I mostly use the GameCube controllers they reissued for Super Smash Bros. Wii U. They have stupidly long cords, so they can reach into the next room if I need them to. Though, I do have some GCN controllers that could use replacement guts. My spice controller has seen better days.

The 8BitDo GCN Wireless Receiver is available now. No, wait, it’s sold out. Well, it will be available when they restock. The GCN Mod Kit, on the other hand, is available for preorder and will ship on September 25.

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CEO of Evening Star (creators of Penny’s Big Breakaway), Dave Padilla, has announced that the studio has had to part ways with six of its employees. This adds to a growing tally of game developers who have lost their jobs throughout the year.

In a statement, Padilla says that Evening Star “has been swept up in the same turbulence that has affected so many of our peers in the games industry for the last year and a half.” It goes on to say that, “Despite our best efforts to secure another project to keep our team together, we are in the unfortunate situation of having to lay off some of the folks that have worked with us for the last few years on Penny's Big Breakaway.”

The Linkedin statement lists the six employees affected and recommends to other employers that they hire them, stating that they’re “best in class developers who shipped a critically beloved console title.” The list includes two artists, an engineer, two designers, and a producer.

We’ve seen a lot of crass and heartless layoffs over the past couple of years, and while we don’t know and can’t speculate on exactly how these went down, from the outside, it just seems regrettable. The statement says that, following the release of Penny’s Big Breakaway, Evening Star has had trouble finding a publisher to fund their next project. 

This is actually a rather common problem among developers that has resulted in some studios closed outright. It has been a problem, especially recently, since a lot of the investments made during the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns dried up. Hopefully, things will get turned around soon.

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Capcom is digging back into its vault and finally unearthing one of its most asked-after classics, packaging its pixel-era Marvel crossovers into a single game with the Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection. It's a compilation that would, indeed, like to take you for a ride.

While this collection is probably most notable for making Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 conveniently playable, it's also a tour through a fascinating, arguably foundational, era of Capcom's brawler development. So, to tackle its disparate parts, we've put two reviewers on the case. First off, I—Eric—will dig into the multiplayer fighting game aspect, from X-Men: Children of the Atom up through Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. Then Zoey will weigh in with expert knowledge on The Punisher, the side-scrolling beat 'em up packaged in with the bunch.

Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics (PC, Switch, PS4, PS5)
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Released: September 11, 2024
MSRP: $49.99

Wanna learn how to do an infinite?

It’s still a little surreal to see Capcom’s Marvel crossovers playable on a modern platform. Once Arcade1Up put out its Marvel cab, it felt inevitable that some kind of port would follow. But even for preservation’s sake alone, this collection is a big deal.

When the collection bears the name “Marvel Vs. Capcom” on the title, you know what the focus is. Everything here centers on Capcom’s legendary series of crossovers, starting with a few core Marvel games and building into Marvel Vs. Capcom 2.

Seeing these games in sequence like this really helps illustrate how Capcom built these characters and concepts up over time. You can see the first iterations of Cyclops and Wolverine duking it out and how those fighters shifted over the years from X-Men: Children of the Atom all the way through to MvC2.

Laying out the lineage like this is a nice touch, and thankfully, it’s pretty easy to play through a few rounds on every game. Though the lobby system is a little finicky for my taste, it certainly functions just fine, and the netcode felt solid in the matches I ran with someone across the States from me. Playing a first-to-three in Marvel Super Heroes and then swapping over to an X-Men or MvC is pretty smooth, making it easy to jump around through Capcom’s development timeline.

While the history is nice to see, there are obvious standouts. X-Men Vs. Street Fighter is a personal favorite of mine, and it’s been done well here. The original Marvel Vs. Capcom holds up well, too, and it’s neat to see how the tag and assist systems evolved in these crossover fighters over time.

Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is the star of the show, though. It’s been years since I spent hours trying to climb in the Xbox 360 port, and many more since I first put a quarter in an MvC cab, so I do think it’s important to stress: Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is one hell of a game.

I mean this in a few ways, too, because as fun as it is to play so many characters that feel so powerful, the line can quickly veer into something busted. It’s a rite of passage to go online in MvC2 and get bowled over by an Iron Man infinite or someone running a classic composition of god-tier fighters.

All the nastiness is here in spades, and for the sickos who want that, I think they’ll find it. Even as a critic, I’d still recommend the absolute MvC diehards check out in-depth reports from the likes of Justin Wong to see whether the granular details have translated well. But for someone like me, a casual MvC fan who just wants to play my favorite version of Jill Valentine and fight my friends, it’s a solid offering.

A few modernizations could help onboard newcomers, like the increasingly popular one-button specials option. It’s nice to see a good training mode in here, too. All of this points to a collection that could revitalize competitive interest in MvC; while the diehards have been using alternative methods for some time, this is another point where putting these games on a modern platform helps out.

Sadly, even modernization doesn't help all of these games shine as brightly as others. The aforementioned standouts are there, and I'm pretty sure if you're buying this collection, you're buying it for Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. Everything else is gravy on top. But after a handful of rounds in some of the other games, I felt fine not running more, especially when they had fewer character options compared to the massive MvC2 lineup.

Ultimately, this collection feels like a time capsule of Capcom history. Putting all these games together clearly illustrates the through-lines, showing how Capcom and Marvel built a working relationship over years of fighting game crossovers. In that respect, it might feel a little lacking in variety. Rather than a smorgasbord of differing styles, it’s focused on a lineage, the way previous collections like the Street Fighter 30th laid out decades of iteration on a core concept.

But it’s this focused encapsulation that makes this collection so endearing for me. So much artwork and music has been packed in, alongside options that make it easy to tinker, train, or just experience the explosive wonders of MvC2 for the first time. I think if you’re a fan of fighting game history, this collection is a no-brainer. I wouldn’t recommend it to someone looking to “get into” fighting games, but I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who gets rosily nostalgic every time they hear “I wanna take you for a ride” ring out through their speakers. - Eric Van Allen

It's punishin' time

It’s always a cause for celebration when a licensed game somehow gets rereleased in modern times. While the Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection centers around the mashup titles, The Punisher sits at the beat-’em-up lunchroom table alone. A surprising addition, but one that deserves attention.

Without thinking too hard about it, Capcom was the best when it came to belt-scrolling brawlers. 1994 was a good year to be a fan, as that was when Alien vs. Predator and The Punisher were released. While AvP is probably the better game overall, The Punisher is no slouch.

You can play as either The Punisher or Nick Fury. I have no idea why Nick Fury is here, aside from the fact that he’s one of the few Marvel characters who will use a gun. I thought it would be explained in the opening demo, but it isn’t. I’m not sure why a government agent would join a vigilante in a full assault against an organized crime family. If that sort of thing was allowed, they probably could have just killed the Kingpin a long time ago.

Anyway, that’s all The Punisher is. It starts off by having you beat up thugs in a casino. Then you just follow the trail of thugs until you get to The Kingpin. You go through various crime-y locations, such as a bus, a mansion, a waterfront warehouse, and an underground grow-op. There are bosses at the end of each. You know the drill.

Perhaps the biggest twist to the beat-’em-up brawler that The Punisher brings is that if a thug pulls a gun on Mr. Punisher or Mr. Fury, they’ll pull out their pistols and respond in kind. That sounds like they were trying to say that they only shoot thugs in self-defense, but you can later pick up Uzis and assault rifles and kill indiscriminately. I guess it doesn’t count when you’re using guns you pick up off the ground: It’s the five-second rule for murder.

Overall, The Punisher is a solid brawler. The art style is one of the best parts, especially for the perpetually seething Punisher. You can practically see the veins popping out of his head. The levels feel kind of short, but the entire game clocks in at just over 40 minutes. When you get tired of the smorgasbord of fighting games that make up the rest of the collection, it makes a pretty great palette cleanser. 

Or maybe you’re just tired of kicking the crap out of your friend and want to team up for a change. You can briefly immerse yourself in the camaraderie between Mr. Punisher and Mr. Fury a few years before Mr. Punisher shoots Mr. Fury in the back. - Zoey Handley

Gather ye stones

On the whole, the Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection does exactly what it sets out to do: take these classic crossovers, apply some modernizations, gather up some historical assets, and package them all neatly together.

It's not the most wide-ranging appeal, but for those within that niche, it's hard to find too many complaints. There's rollback netcode, some fantastic games, and a Punisher beat 'em up for when you'd rather co-op than fight. If you're a nostalgic fan of the originals or someone curious about one of the most storied games in fighting history, this collection makes it easy to take a ride back in time.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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The sudden staff exodus at Annapurna Interactive caught most of us by surprise. We’re still sort of watching to see what the fallout is going to be. But whatever the outcome is, it’s thankfully not going to have an effect on Control 2, according to Thomas Puha, communication direct at Remedy.

The worry comes from a previous announcement by the company that they are partnering with Annapurna Pictures to fund the sequel to 2019’s Control. The deal saw Annapurna Picture gain the rights to produce film or TV based on Control and Alan Wake in return for funding 50% of the development budget of Remedy’s Control 2.

As Puha points out, this deal was with Annapurna Pictures. And again, while we’re still waiting to hear what the ultimate outcome will be after the exodus of most of Annapurna Interactive’s staff, Puha is suggesting that it won’t affect Annapurna Pictures. Moreover, Remedy is self-publishing Control 2, so the fate of its release is tied to Remedy itself.

This should come as some relief for fans. Annapurna Interactive’s entire gaming division staff resigned following a failure of negotiations with the company’s founder, Megan Ellison, to spin the gaming division off to its own company. I’m still kind of processing the event myself because that’s an incredible failure of leadership. It remains to be seen if a completely new staff will be brought in or if the publisher will cease operation.  In the meantime, Ellison says, “Our top priority is continuing to support our developer and publishing partners during this transition.”

Coming so soon after Humble Games “restructured” by laying off the entire staff and Adult Swim Games abruptly shutting down, it’s been an awful time for small-budget publishers and developers who rely on them. Oh, gosh. This has all been in 2024. What a year.

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If you were growing out your feet hair in preparation for Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game [sic], then you may want to shave them, lest they become dreadlocked. Private Division has announced that it has been delayed to 2025.

To be fair, the only release window we had previously was 2024. If we want to be technical, maybe they had an internal launch date of December 31, 2024, and now they’ve moved it to January 1st, 2025. We don’t know! Maybe the delay is only big in our minds.

Sorry, I got on a tangent there. Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game – yes, I’m writing that out every time. It’s ridiculous even without the fat ™ after “rings – is a game about being a hobbit and living in the Shire. After all, who doesn’t dream of living in the Shire? The rest of the story might be gloomy and adventuresome, but the Shire is cozier than a pillow fort. Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game takes you there and has you fish and garden so you can share food with your neighbors. I’m not even a big The Lord of the Rings fan, and I love the idea.

While the game may be delayed, Private Division suggests tuning into their “A Hobbit Day Showcase” for another look at the game on September 22. I’m sure watching someone else enjoy the game will really make the wait that much easier.

Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game is coming to Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC sometime in 2025.

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The Evercade line of consoles and handhelds have been gaining a number of 3D games as of late, including ones initially released on the PS1 and N64. However, there hasn’t been a way to actually play them using a controller designed for 3D navigation, i.e., ones with analog sticks. That’s about to change as the Evercade VS’ latest update adds support for analog controllers.

I’ll be honest with you, I don’t own an Evercade VS, so my relief is strictly vicarious. I can’t imagine playing Glover or Legacy of Kane using strictly digital controls. It can be done, the company assures, which I’m sure most handheld owners already know. I believe it, I just wouldn’t prefer it. They admit that it was a “hotly requested feature.”

I’ll copy+paste the list of games that support analog from Evercade’s site:

• Worms Armageddon (Worms Collection 1)
• Speedball 2100 (The Bitmap Brothers Collection 1)
• 40 Winks (Piko Interactive Collection 3)
• Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes (Duke Nukem Collection 2)
• Duke Nukem: Time to Kill (Duke Nukem Collection 2)
• Glover (Piko Interactive Collection 4)
• Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft (Tomb Raider Collection 1)
• Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (Legacy of Kain Collection)

They note that this feature is still in beta, so they’ll try and improve it over time. In the meantime, Time Extension notes that it supports Xbox, PlayStation, and 8BitDo pads. The company does note that they're not planning on producing any official Evercade analog controllers, so it's strictly BYOB right now.

On top of this rather important feature, they are adding a cartridge eject feature, in case you’re not brave enough to hotswap. There’s also a turbo-fire function that is being added in beta. On one hand, I’m not sure why that wasn’t already a feature, but also, I guess I don’t just normally expect a turbo-fire. So, it’s nice to have, especially if you play any of the platform’s numerous scrolling shoot-’em-ups and are willing to sacrifice your pride to save your thumbs.

This update is available for Evercade VS systems today.

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Everything coming to Final Fantasy XIV typically makes its debut in FFXIV's Letter from the Producer LIVE streams, providing first looks at upcoming seasonal events, collaborations, or even expansion details. A Live Letter broadcast always precedes new patch launches, revealing dates and trailers, and they usually run for quite some time.

If you keep an eye on Final Fantasy XIV's Lodestone feed, you can get the heads up for new streams scheduled. However, we've got the details below on when FFXIV will host its next Live Letter, resources for the last ones, and what you can expect.

FFXIV Live Letter schedule, timezones, and countdown

The next FFXIV Letter from the Producer LIVE airs during Tokyo Game Show 2024 on Saturday, September 28 at 10:50 p.m. PDT as part of the Square Enix Lineup.

FFXIV Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LXXXIII (83) hit our last estimated within September, and debuts as the first event of its kind since the MMO launched its Dawntrail expansion. However, don't assume this date means radio silence from Yoshida and his team until then. Expect Lodestone updates and communication through official social channels detailing hotfixes, patches, and any FFXIV downtime.

• FFXIV Live Letter 83 Timezones: PDT to EST, BST, and more

  • September 28 at 10:50 p.m. PDT
  • September 29 at 12:50 a.m. CDT
  • September 29 at 1:50 a.m. EDT
  • September 29 at 6:50 a.m. BST
  • September 29 at 2:50 p.m. JST

Where to watch the next FFXIV Live Letter

FFXIV Live Letter 83 can be viewed on the following channels:

• YouTube
• Niconico
• Twitch

What to expect from FFXIV Live Letter 83

This upcoming Live Letter will only be available in Japanese, but Square Enix should have presentation slides available in English. Regardless of your familiarity, we still know plenty of what to expect from the upcoming livestream as fans can look forward to details around Shade's Triangle, Cosmic Exploration, the Future's Rewritten Ultimate Raids, MSQ updates, and more.

Catch up on the most recent FFXIV Live Letter (82)

For those keeping track, this is Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LXXXII (82). During the last broadcast on May 16, director and producer Naoki Yoshida delivered a nearly 5-hour-long presentation on upcoming changes and additions launching with Dawntrail. This included details on reworks and updates to all of the MMO's older Jobs, plus peeks at the two new ones, Viper and Pictomancer.

Yoshida also noted the media tour was quickly approaching at the end of May, and that we'd see more from Dawntrail as those articles and impressions go live — something to hold us over on the road to FFXIV Version 7.0. As for what you can expect at the next Live Letter, we'll likely see a few things like the launch trailer, a closer look at new zones, and more progress on the graphics update.

Upcoming FFXIV Live Letter streams

• Letter from the Producer LIVE LXXXIII (83)

Previous FFXIV Live Letters

• Letter from the Producer LIVE LXXXII (82) (June 14, 2024)
• Letter from the Producer LIVE LXXXI (May 16, 2024)

  • Official Digest, recapping benchmark, graphic updates, Dawntrail Jobs

• Letter from the Producer LIVE LXXX (April 12, 2024)
• Letter from the Producer LIVE LXXIX (September 23, 2023)

FFXIV Live Letter language and translation resources

While the streams are created in Japanese, for FFXIV's Letter from the Producer LIVE LXXXI stream, Square Enix has said that it will feature a live Japanese to English interpreter.

This is common with the Live Letter streams but not guaranteed. For when they don't, or just if you missed the stream, Square Enix releases a digest of the Live Letter on the official forums. These summarize all the information in English.

There's no shortage of talented fan initiatives, either, as the FFXIV subreddit maintains a Discord channel of live interpretations in an unofficial capacity. After the stream, fan translators typically round up or clarify those points, too, giving eager players a resource that's typically faster than waiting for the official Lodestone post.

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