Author: Trafficblast

Bryce Dallas Howard (Jurassic World) and Seth Gabel (Salem) will appear in the upcoming video game Maquette, it has been announced. The pair will lend their voices to the couple, Kenzie and Michael, who provide players with details and instructions but are never seen.

Maquette is a first-person puzzle game developed by Graceful Decay and published by Annapurna Interactive, the gaming division of the film studio.

“This is about a relationship that ultimately doesn’t work out,” Howard told The Hollywood Reporter. “But it’s not a tragedy in any way, shape or form.” I think there’s something really nuanced about that that I really appreciated.”

Due to COVID-19, Howard recorded her dialogue from her New York home, in her garage over the course of one day. You can hear Howard and Gabel perform some voice lines and get a closer look at the game in the cast announcement video above.

As for the gameplay, Maquette is a recursive puzzle game set in a world where every object is both incredibly small and absolutely massive in size with a type of MC Escher feel.

“Head to the center of the world and you’ll feel like a giant, towering over buildings and walls. But venture further out, and start to feel small as things get larger and larger–to the point where cracks in the ground become chasms,” reads a line from the description.

The plot involves everyday problems in a modern-day love story where small issues can morph into inescapable challenges, and that’s where Howard and Gabel come in.

Maquette launches on March 2 for PS4, PS5, and PC.

After Elon Musk tweeted about his love for Halo, Xbox marketing boss Aaron Greenberg followed up to suggest a potential collaboration between Tesla and Halo.

Greenberg said on Twitter, “Sure feels like a Tesla x Halo collab needs to happen at some point!?” he included hashtags for Tesla’s Cybertruck and Halo’s iconic Warthog vehicle. In another tweet, Greenberg stressed that this is only an idea at this stage.

“If you like the idea, speak up and maybe something in the future could happen–who knows!?” he said.

Tesla’s Cybertruck was also the subject of a social media campaign for Cyberpunk 2077, with people seeing an obvious opportunity for the two brands to collide. However, it hasn’t happened yet, if it ever will.

With Halo Infinite releasing in Fall 2021, we expect Microsoft’s marketing machine to kick into full gear over the coming months, but whether or not a Tesla x Halo collaboration is part of it remains to be seen.

For what it’s worth, Greenberg also said on Twitter that if people make enough noise, Microsoft might release an actual Xbox Series X mini-fridge, but that hasn’t happened yet either. Here’s to hoping it does.

In other news, Tesla just invested $1.5 billion into bitcoin, leading to a rally in the price to bring it to record levels.

The developers of Fortnite love to celebrate the passing of the seasons, and Valentine’s Day is no exception. The game’s Hearts Wild event is now live, and it has a variety of fun Valentine’s Day-themed activities for players to sink their teeth into, including the return of papercraft, some Creator Challenges, and even a new tournament.

If you’re trying to get your hands on the Lovely Outfit when it releases in the Item Shop, you have a chance to get it ahead of time. Players can grab a Duos partner and fight in the Hearts Wild Cup on February 9, with the best players in each region receiving the Lovely Outfit and Heartblast Back Bling. You have to have two-factor authentication enabled to participate though, so make sure you take care of that beforehand.

The event also brings new Creator Challenges to the game, with exclusive prizes for the teams that earn the most points. More details on that will be coming at a later date. Hearts Wild features the return of Fortnite’s papercraft, which allows players to download paper materials to build cosplay of their favorite characters. Additionally, the Welcome Hub has been festooned with flowers for the event, so check that out.

As usual, this new event brings new Quests to the game. These challenges are themed around helping Fishstick get a date for Valentine’s, and they go live on February 11. If you’re looking for help with these week’s challenges, check out our Season 5, Week 10 challenge guide. Fortnite developer Epic Games recently said that the company has no plans to go public with an IPO, though the company may do so in the future. A leak suggests that Flash might be coming to Fortnite soon, though that hasn’t been confirmed.

Rewards for Fortnite Hearts Wild Creator Challenges

• First place: Breathless Blades Pickaxe, Shufflly Shapes Wrap, Reel Love Spray, Perfect Match Emoticon, & Hearts Wild Team Battles Banner
• Second place: Shufflly Shapes Wrap, Reel Love Spray, Perfect Match Emoticon, & Hearts Wild Team Battles Banner
• Third place: Reel Love Spray, Perfect Match Emoticon, & Hearts Wild Team Battles Banner
• Fourth place: Perfect Match Emoticon & Hearts Wild Team Battles Banner
• Fifth place: Hearts Wild Team Battles Banner

Mainland Europe saw a massive jump in not only video game sales in 2020, but also digital downloads of various titles. According to sales tracker GSD, which tracks both physical and digital sales of video games, 123.7 million sales were logged in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Benelux, France, Iberia, Nordics, and Poland alone, a 19% jump when compared to 2019’s numbers according to the report via GamesIndustry.Biz.

Of those games sold by tracked publishers, 58.7 million of them were downloaded and accounted for a 47% rise in sales when compared to 2019. Even with lockdown restrictions in place due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the 65 million boxed games sold resulted in a 0.8% increase across those markets.

It’s worth noting though that those particular sales numbers don’t include Nintendo, Bethesda, and CD Projekt Red games, as those publishers do not share digital game sale numbers with the GSD.

Looking at the top games sold in those markets, football was unsurprisingly the best-selling title as FIFA 21 took the top spot in countries such as Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. The only exception here was Finland, where NHL 21 reigned supreme.

What was a surprise though was Grand Theft Auto 5 taking the number two spot and several other older games also landed in the top ten. While digital download data wasn’t available, Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons still secured the number three position on GSD’s top 20, which had the knock-on effect of causing a 57% surge in strategy game sales.

GSD Annual 2020 Top 20 Video Games (Digital + Physical)

1. FIFA 21
2. Grand Theft Auto 5
3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
4. FIFA 20
5. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
6. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe
7. The Last of Us Part 2
8. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
9. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
10. Red Dead Redemption 2
11. NBA 2K20
12. Super Mario 3D All-Stars
13. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege
14. Cyberpunk 2077
15. Minecraft: Switch Edition
16. Ghost of Tsushima
17. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
18. Ring Fit Adventure
19. Just Dance 2020
20. Super Mario Party

As for the actual devices that these games were played on, Nintendo’s Switch console was the best-selling console of the year by a comfortable margin as it outsold the PS4–which took second place– at a rate of three-to-one.

According to data taken from Benelux, France, Switzerland, Nordics, Spain, and Italy, there was a 1.9% drop in sales but 5.59 million consoles were sold in total. Revenue from these devices grew by 12% to €1.7 billion.

Sony’s DualShock 4 controller was the best-selling accessory, followed by the Switch’s Joy-Con controllers in second place, and Xbox controllers for both the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S consoles. With €820 million in revenue generated, the accessories market saw a 14% rise when compared to 2019.

We may get some news regarding Final Fantasy 7 Remake this weekend, according to the game’s co-director. Motomu Toriyama said that an upcoming orchestral concert in Japan will include a “special program” with some of its own reveals.

Toriyama shared the news on the Square Enix Music Twitter account. The FF7R Orchestra Concert will take place on February 13 at 5 PM in Japan, or 3 AM ET / 12 AM PT.

“In addition to the performance we have a special program planned as well,” he said, according to a fan translation. “There will be a few things about FF7R that will be revealed only during this concert. I will also take part in this program, so please tune in!”

Given that the second part is still early in development, having just entered full production in the middle of last year, it’s unlikely we’ll see news regarding the sequel. We know that it was a timed exclusive on PS4, which means it could go to PC and Xbox as early as March. That would make the timing right on an announcement soon. Of course, this could just be announcing some kind of tie-in or FF7 merch.

FF7R was named one of GameSpot’s Best Games of 2020, and is one of relatively few games to receive a 10/10 “Essential” score in GameSpot’s review.

Terraria developer Andrew Spinks announced the cancellation of the 2D sandbox game’s Stadia port on his personal Twitter. The reason can be attributed to Spinks’ frustration with being mysteriously locked out from his Google account, and Google’s lack of responsiveness over the issue.

In a Twitter thread, Spinks described his three week long lockout from services associated with his account, such as Google Play, YouTube, and Gmail. He firmly maintained that he “absolutely hasn’t done anything to violate [the] terms of service,” and considered the “bridge burned” with Google.

“My company will no longer support any of your platforms moving forward,” he concluded. “I will not be involved with a corporation that values their customers and partners so little. Doing business with you is a liability.”

Spinks’ declaration comes on the heels of prior issues with YouTube, which is owned by Google. In January, the official Terraria account tagged YouTube on Twitter and asked for help regarding Terraria’s disabled official YouTube account. In a follow-up response to the situation, the Terraria team expressed their disappointment over the continuing lack of help in getting their YouTube account back up.

In his Terraria review for GameSpot, Tom Mc Shea rated it 9/10. He praised the game for its “empowering sense of discovery” and its ability to “continually excite your imagination with the endless secrets that await.”

Terraria is available on Android, iOS, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.

The notoriously brutal survival game Rust has gotten a little bit softer, with the addition of a new game mode that lets you take it easy. Well, easier. The new mode has a number of changes aimed at more casual players, either to entice more players to join or just let the existing player base relax once in a while.

As detailed in the announcement, the changes make death a little less punishing, and help make you less of a target. When you’re killed, you can reclaim half of your inventory either where you died or at a Reclaim terminal. (Items left there will expire after two hours). You can only view the inventory contents of wounded players. You can also spawn at the Bandit Town or any Outpost safezones, and the maximum team size in Softcore mode is four players.

There will be 10 servers to launch with the update and run the Softcore mode, but developer Facepunch assures players that the majority of servers will continue running the standard vanilla Rust experience.

And speaking of vanilla Rust, the latest update adds some new features for it as well. Marketplaces have been added to Bandit Camp and Outpost monuments, which let you order items from vending machines and have them remote delivered via drone. But like any delivery service, you’ll need to pay a fee for the convenience–in this case 20 scrap. You’ll also need to wait to receive your items, which can take up to five minutes. Then you’ll need to claim the items within 10 minutes.

Facepunch says the goal is to make trading safer and encourage more of it, and to that end, the drones are invincible. No shooting them out of the sky to loot their sweet contents. That Facepunch immediately recognized this was necessary should say something about how how not-soft the usual experience actually is.

BioWare’s classic sci-fi adventure is due for a new lease on life when Mass Effect Legendary Edition launches in May, but what effect will this version have on existing and upcoming mods for the original trilogy? That’s the question that Mass Effect Legendary Edition project director Mac Walters answered on Twitter, promising that something was going on behind the scenes and that BioWare had reached out to the modding community.

“We’ve have been in touch with a few in the modding community to learn how best to a) update everyone on changes that will impact existing mods, and b) set the modding community up for success going forward. It’s ongoing, and we’ll discuss in more detail by launch,” Walters tweeted.

The question came in response to a conversation involving Orikon, a modder whose Priority Earth Overhaul mod attempted to improve on Mass Effect 3’s final level by including a vast array of restored cut content, new gameplay elements, and various improvements, ranging from bug fixes all the way to entirely new cutscenes.

Orikon is currently working on new Mass Effect mods and has said that this news hasn’t changed their plans. Whether any of these mods will be technically compatible with the Legendary Edition, also remains to be seen. Mass Effect Legendary Edition is out on May 14 and includes various tweaks to the original game to bring it up to speed with its first two sequels, such as improved aiming and driving.

The entire package includes almost all of the DLC, but don’t expect to see the Pinnacle Station DLC thanks to its source code being corrupted, Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer, or camera angles focused on Miranda’s butt. For even more details, check out everything we know about Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.

The game that makes the process of moving house actually fun–Moving Out–will continue to grow with a new expansion coming this month.

The “Movers In Paradise” DLC launches on February 25 and it includes 14 new story levels, four new move characters, and 10 new arcade levels. As its name suggests, Movers In Paradise takes players to some lovely tropical locations where they’ll need to move more stuff. Take a look at the announcement trailer below:

The DLC will be available on all platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. It’s not immediately clear if this is a free or a paid expansion pack.

Moving Out is developed by Australian studio SMG and Swedish company DEVM Games, with Worms company Team 17 handling the publishing.

The latest update before this one was the free “Moving In” expansion that turned the game on its head and challenged players to move furniture back in to a house.

Moving Out is a wacky, physics-based couch cooperative moving simulator in the same vein as Overcooked. It launched in April 2020 and ended up taking home the Game of the Year award during last year’s Australian Game Developer Awards. The game is funded in part by Film Victoria, the branch of the local government in Australia that gives grants to film, TV, and other media projects.