Persona 5 Royal is an expanded version of Persona 5, meaning there’s a lot to the game. The original release was an achievement as an RPG and an evolution of the long-running franchise. It brought together an expressive art style, incredible soundtrack, bold narrative, and wonderful characters for what turned out to be a 100+ hour journey in rebelling against abusive authority figures. In the same vein as Persona 4 Golden and Persona 3 FES, P5R acts as a definitive version of the base game, but we’ll leave that to our review to determine that.
In the video above, reviewer Michael Higham talks about his experience after 50 hours with the game and how the new features and changes affect P5R so far. Given the length of the game (and Michael’s ever-growing workload), he’s taken the game’s advice of ‘take your time’ to heart. However, he still has time to evaluate the additions that come in those 50 hours. This includes the involvement of the new persona-user Kasumi Yoshizawa, the school counselor Takuto Maruki, and the way Confidant routes have changed slightly. As for combat and exploration, Mementos gets a few overhauls while palaces have been tweaked to accommodate some new elements like the grappling hook and Will Seeds. Additional mechanics like disaster shadows and persona traits shake up the combat for enjoyable twists that make things a bit more dynamic. All that and more is covered in this video.
We currently have an early review impressions feature on Persona 5 Royal to give you an in-depth look at this huge RPG and further examine its new systems. We previously talked to long-time localization manager from developer Atlus about how Persona has evolved over the years and how P5R has some tweaks to controversial dialogue. We’ll have guide content as we approach the launch of the game on March 31, and be sure to stay tuned for our full final review in the coming weeks.
Movie giant Warner Bros. has announced that the Harley Quinn spin-off Birds of Prey will be released earlier than expected for home video in the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.
Variety reports that the film will be released for home video on March 24. It will cost $20 USD to buy on a variety of stores, including Amazon and iTunes. A rental option will come in April.
This is a big change because Birds of Prey is still in theatres, and it’s happening in response to the coronavirus pandemic. With more and more people staying home instead of going out to a theatre–if they even can, considering hundreds of cinemas are closed–Warner Bros. is hoping to serve fans where they are: at home.
Birds of Prey director Cathy Yan said on Twitter, before this news was confirmed, that she was in favor of releasing the movie earlier on video-on-demand.
Birds of Prey is just the latest Warner Bros. project to shift plans due to the virus. Other Warner Bros. movies, including The Matrix 4, The Batman, Fantastic Beasts 3, and King Richard have all paused production and sent cast and crew home due to the outbreak. Another Warner Bros. movie, the untitled Elvis Presley movie from Baz Luhrmann, stopped filming after star Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson announced they had contracted COVID-19 while filming in Australia.
This move from Warner Bros. follows the news from film giant Universal, which announced that Trolls: World Tour would be available to buy on digital services the same day it was expected to come to theatres. Some of the company’s other movies that are still in theatres, including The Invisible Man, are coming to digital stores as soon as March 20 in response to the virus.
With theatres closed across the US and the world, movie studios are looking for ways to make up for what are expected to be gargantuan box office losses, and these moves are part of that.
Birds of Prey premiered in February and has made $199 million at the global box office, which includes $84 million from the US and $115 million from international markets. Its box office total is more than double its production budget before marketing expenses.
The final trailer for the Trials of Mana remake has dropped ahead of the game’s launch on April 24. Square Enix will also release a demo for the game this week, as Gematsu picked up on from the game’s Japanese twitter account.
Trials of Mana was first released in 1995 as Seiken Densetsu 3, the third game in the long-running Mana series. It wasn’t available to Western markets until the 2019 release of the Collection of Mana for Switch, when it became known as Trials of Mana in English.
The new remake will rebuild the game from the ground up, with new graphics, art style and reworked gameplay. The free demo for Trials of Mana will release on March 18 for PS4, Switch, and PC on Steam, consisting of the first section of the game where players will get to choose their party members and experience a boss battle.
According to Nintendo Life the Switch demo will only be available from the Japanese eShop, but will have English language support. As the Switch is region-free, players are able to set up a Japanese account and download the demo from any country.
Eager players will be able to use the demo to get a head start, as save data is able to be transferred to the full game when it launches on April 24 for Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC.
Microsoft has recently shared a lot of details about the Xbox Series X. This includes a fresh look at how the console’s use of hardware accelerated DirectX ray tracing makes next-gen games look even better. Starting off with a definition: ray racing is essentially a technological framework that allows for improved lighting, shadows, and reflections. It also helps create more realistic-sounding audio. In short, it’s a way for developers to create “more physically accurate worlds,” according to Microsoft.
Microsoft says the Xbox Series X is the first-ever console to feature this kind of ray tracing, and it’s made possible thanks to the console’s custom GPU made in collaboration with AMD.
Will Tuttle of the Xbox Wire witnessed ray tracing on the Xbox Series X first-hand with Minecraft. Tuttle said the advancements that ray tracing offers were immediately obvious. “Shadows cast from objects soften or harden depending on how far away from the object you are, while lava gives off a warm orange glow that dissipates over distance and reflects off of minecart rails,” Tuttle said. “Even the moon casts its own rays, streaming down through cracks in the walls and reflecting off particles in the air.”
Additionally, ray tracing in Minecraft allows light to pass through transparent objects in a game and pick up the surrounding color and display it in a way that looks realistic. Ray tracing can also have a dramatic impact on how water looks.
“With ray tracing on, water was now fully transparent and allowed light from the moon to pass through it to the player underneath and realistically reflect off the seaweed swaying in the current,” Tuttle said. “It was really an impressive demo that brought what hardware accelerated DirectX Ray tracing in Minecraft could deliver to life in a way I never imagined.”
Tuttle went on to say Minecraft’s use of ray tracing “fundamentally” changes how Minecraft feels. You can see how the visuals compare by using the image slider tool above.
YouTuber Austin Evans was also invited to Microsoft’s headquarters to see the Xbox Series X and learn more about it, including its use of ray tracing. You can skip to around 2:40 in the video below to see Evans play Minecraft on Xbox Series X and show off its new visuals.
Ray tracing is also coming to the PC version of Minecraft. Once released, players can select ray tracing from the in-game settings menu. Players, of course, will also need a GPU that’s good enough to support ray tracing, as well as the latest driver from Nvidia. More details about ray tracing for Minecraft’s PC version can be found on Nvidia’s website.
Production on James Cameron’s Avatar sequels has been halted in New Zealand due to concerns over the spread of COVID-19.
Speaking to The New Zealand Herald, producer Jon Landau confirmed that the crew had postponed production ahead of a block of shoots in Wellington’s Stone Street Studios, scheduled for April, while Wellington-based VFX company Weta Digital continues to work on the sequels amid the current hiatus.
“We’ve delayed it. We had plans to come down Friday night with a group of people and start back up and we made the decision to hold off and continue working here [Los Angeles], and come down there a little bit later than we’d planned,” Landau told the outlet. “We’re in the midst of a global crisis and this is not about the film industry. I think everybody needs to do now whatever we can do, as we say here, to flatten the [coronavirus] curve.”
Landau explained that he couldn’t give a timeframe for when filming in New Zealand would resume, but confirmed that he and Cameron would be reassessing the production schedule on a daily basis “because that’s how quickly things change.”
“We try and monitor all this and look at things and think about what is in the best interest of our crew. I call it our Avatar family. That is really paramount to us above anything,” he said, adding how it had now become a priority to get “as many minutes” of VFX work sent across to Weta Digital to enable the team to progress with their digital effects tasks while the main production is paused.
Ahead of the March 26 release of Borderlands 3‘s newest campaign DLC Guns, Love, and Tentacles: The Marriage of Wainwright & Hammerlock, Gearbox has released a video showing off the first 12 minutes of gameplay. Despite the name, there are definitely far more guns than there are love or tentacles, but presumably those will come in time.
The DLC will have players working with wedding planner Gaige to make sure the union of Sir Alistair Hammerlock and Wainwright Jakobs goes to plan despite the many dangers of ice planet Xylourgos.
Gearbox describes the expansion as a “cosmic horror rom-com”, and the few glimpses we get of The Lodge and its creepy bartender Mancubus are decidedly Lovecraftian. Players will also have the opportunity to explore the aptly named village of Cursehaven, and help the occultist townsfolk solve their eldritch problems.
Guns, Love, and Tentacles is the second of Borderlands 3’s four big post-game expansions, coming after last year’s Moxxi’s Heist of the Handsome Jackpot holiday DLC. Two more are scheduled for later in 2020, and all are included with the Season Pass or Super Deluxe Edition of the game.
Citing the fact that Universal Pictures has delayed the release of F9 until April 2021 (11 months later than originally scheduled), Codemasters has admitted “[t]iming for the launch of [Fast & Furious Crossroads] is now uncertain.”
“Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe is working closely with our partners at Universal Games and Digital Platforms regarding the F9 film’s newly announced theatrical release date of April 2021,” continues the Codemasters statement. “While not directly tied to the film, news and updates pertaining to the Fast & Furious Crossroads game will be shared once they become available.”
“The development team at Slightly Mad Studios and Codemasters will continue to finalise the Game as planned.”
Fast & Furious Crossroads was announced during The Game Awards in December 2019 by franchise stars Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez, who will also be playing their Fast characters Dom and Letty in the game itself. The project was first hinted at back in 2017.
With a number of big-name companies–from Google to Nvidia to Microsoft–trying to corner the emerging game streaming market, it’s not surprising that some competitors are already dropping out of the race. Samsung has announced that its PlayGalaxy Link PC-to-mobile streaming service will shut down as of March 27.
The announcement was so quiet that, despite being made on February 26, it’s only been picked up by gaming and tech outlets in the last 24 hours.
The announcement doesn’t provide much detail on why PlayGalaxy Link is being discontinued. “After many difficult discussions, PlayGalaxy Link will be ended on 27 March 2020 due to internal policy changes,” it reads. Ending the service “will allow our Development organization to more effectively focus its resources and add value to the next release of new product.”
The service launched in beta only four months ago, going largely under the radar compared to its competitors. Unlike its direct competitor SteamLink or Google’s similar Stadia project, Samsung PlayGalaxy Link only supported Galaxy-branded handsets.
However Samsung has recently announced a new partnership with Microsoft aimed to deliver a “premium cloud-based game streaming experience.” The partnership will have Samsung contributing to Microsoft’s xCloud gaming service, though it’s not yet clear what Samsung is working on in this arrangement.
The Game Developers Conference was postponed. E3 2020 was canceled. But Gamescom 2020 is still planning to go forward on schedule in August despite ongoing concerns around COVID-19 (coronavirus), organizers have confirmed.
The annual gaming show is held in Cologne, Germany every August. Just recently, the city of Cologne announced it was banning all major events with more than 1,000 participants, which would include Gamescom. This ban is scheduled to be lifted on April 10, so Gamescom is theoretically able to go forward.
The situation surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak, which is now classified as a global pandemic, changes on a daily basis, so it presents a challenge for event-planners. For now at least, the organizers of Gamescom are stressing that preparations for Gamescom 2020 are “continuing as planned.” If the event is canceled, all tickets will be refunded.
Even if Gamescom 2020 is able to go forward, whether or not publishers will want to send their teams to the show is another question.
Another issue at play here is that Gamescom is planning to expand to Singapore with a new show, Gamescom Asia, slated for October 2020. There have been no updates as of yet regarding what impact COVID-19 may have on that event.
Gamescom’s main show in Cologne is among the biggest in the world. A reported 373,000 people from more than 100 countries attended the show in 2019, making it many, many times larger than E3 in terms of attendance.
While E3 2020 may be officially canceled, a number of marquee attendees–including Microsoft and Nintendo–are still planning or considering the possibility of holding their own digital events.
Borderlands 3 has made its way to Steam, six months after the game’s PC launch on the Epic Games Store. The game has arrived complete with a 50% discount, but that’s not the only incentive to pick it up right now–early adopters of the Steam version will also get some shiny free weapon skins.
The Gold Weapon Skins Pack is available now until April 1 through Steam. As long as you redeem the free DLC before then, you’ll get these skins to keep, and you’ll be able to apply a golden skin or trinket to every gun in the game.
This offer is only valid for a limited time, and you need to own the game to redeem the skins.
Borderlands 3 will receive its next major piece of paid DLC, Guns, Love, And Tentacles, on March 26. There’s a third DLC campaign expansion coming, too, and it will feature dinosaurs and outlaws.
Borderlands fans also have a movie to look forward to, which will be helmed by Hostel director Eli Roth. It does not have a release date set as of yet.
