Ahead of Tales of Arise, the long-running Tales RPG series continues this year in Tales of Crestoria. The theme of this Tales game is sin and crime, featuring a roster of characters who are all considered the villains of their world.
In Tales of Crestoria, you play as Kanata, who lives in a world where everyone must wear a vision orb. Via vision orbs, citizens are judged by their peers with final judgment for a crime decided by popular vote. When Kanata commits a crime to save Misella, a girl he loves, and she, in turn, commits one to save him, they are each issued the harsh label of transgressor. They escape punishment and then run into the man known as the world’s most infamous transgressor, who advises them that they can either own their sin or let it own them. Through sin, the two discover a power greater than they’ve ever known, one that could change the world.
Tales of Crestoria is scheduled to come to mobile devices in 2019.
The hotly-anticipated Shenmue III going Epic exclusive has caused a stir amongst PC Kickstarter backers. Developer Ys Net provided an update on the switch, but the studio is still assuaging concerns. Refunds are now being offered to Kickstarter backers who choose to rescind their investment, and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney confirmed the company will take responsibility to avoid impacting Shenmue III’s development budget.
Sweeney took to Twitter to deliver the statement, saying in a tweet, “Epic is funding the cost of all Kickstarter refunds resulting from Shenmue III’s move to the Epic Games store.” He notes that this decision is to ensure Ys Net’s development budget remains unaffected by refunds.
Epic is funding the cost of all Kickstarter refunds resulting from Shenmue III’s move to the Epic Games store, so that refunds won’t reduce Ys Net’s development funding. https://t.co/mSGdbzYPJ5
In a follow-up tweet, Sweeney said that when any other game goes Epic exclusive after offering rewards on separate PC platforms, “We’ll either coordinate with colleagues at the other stores to ensure key availability in advance, or guarantee refunds at announcement time.” It’s worth noting that Sweeney is talking specifically about crowdfunded projects here.
The options available for Shenmue III Kickstarter backers include a PC physical package, a digital Epic Games Store game key, a PS4 disc, or a PSN code voucher. The PC physical version doesn’t actually contain the game on the disc, though; instead it comes with an Epic Games Store installer and a digital Epic Games Store game key. The Steam version will be made available to those who opt for it but will be delivered “one year later.”
Week 9’s challenges are now live in Fortnite, giving you another chance to level your Battle Pass up and unlock more Season 9 rewards. Each task you clear will reward you with Battle Stars, but if you manage to finish all seven from a given week, you’ll also complete one of this season’s Utopia challenges, which will unlock a special loading screen that leads you to a free item hidden somewhere around the game’s map.
Every odd-numbered Utopia challenge you complete will give you a chance to find a hidden Battle Star, which will level your Battle Pass up by one full tier when collected. Sure enough, that’s the reward that awaits if you complete nine weeks’ worth of Season 9 challenges. But first, you’ll need to find it. Fortunately, this week’s Battle Star is fairly easy to locate.
Once you’ve completed enough challenges, you’ll unlock the loading screen pictured below. This one shows off Brite Bomber, wearing her beachwear from the ongoing 14 Days of Summer event, in a skate park. Look closely at the bottom right of the image, however, and you’ll see a drawing of a Battle Star scrawled onto the ramp. That’s the clue that’ll lead you to the item.
The Battle Star is depicted above a car that’s surrounded by velvet ropes, and there happens to be just such a car inside Mega Mall, so that’s where you’ll need to go to collect it. Make your way to the area and the car will be easy to spot; walk in through the main entrance, then go into the room to the left of the fountain. Once you find the car, the Battle Star will appear above it when you approach, just as pictured. Collect it and finish the match to level your Battle Pass up. If you need more help finding it, we’ve marked the Battle Star’s location on the map below; you can also watch us collect it in the video at the top of this guide.
Battle Stars aren’t the only bonus you can collect for completing Utopia challenges. Each even-numbered one you clear will lead you to a free Fortbyte. Those can be picked up by anyone who has a Season 9 Battle Pass, whether or not you’ve actually completed their corresponding mission. However, you’ll only be able to find these free Battle Stars if you’ve finished the requisite challenges; they won’t appear in the game otherwise, so you can’t simply go to the right location and expect to find them if you haven’t done the necessary work.
Have you run out of things to watch on your streaming services? Aside from weekly Netflix releases, services like Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Shudder are putting out new content almost every single day. This week, there are a few selections that may be up your alley.
Over on Amazon, you can look forward to these movies. On Sunday, the 2017 courtroom drama Marshall arrived. It stars Chadwick Boseman as Thurgood Marshall, who was the first African-American Supreme Court Justice. The movie follows Marshall’s early career as a lawyer for the NAACP. It was directed by Reginald Hudlin, who had an amazing run as the writer on the Marvel Comics series Black Panther.
Headed to Hulu this Friday is the Casey Affleck mystery drama Gone Baby Gone. Directed by Ben Affleck, the movie is about detectives from Boston who are investigating the kidnapping of a young girl. However, as they get deeper into the crime, things become more and more complicated.
And over on Shudder, AMC’s horror-themed streaming service, you can check out Stake Land and Stake Land II, which both land Monday. Both movies take place in a dystopian future where the government has collapsed and a vampiric plague has swept the nation. The first film follows a hunter and his protégé’s journey to Canada, now called New Eden. The sequel follows the protégé as he finds himself in America’s Badlands.
Below, you’ll find everything arriving on these services for each day of the week.
Sunday, July 7
Amazon
Marshall (2017)
Hulu
The Real Housewives of Orange County: Complete Season 13 (Bravo)
Monday, July 8
Shudder
Stake Land (2010, Jim Mickle)
Stake Land II a.k.a. The Stakelander (2016, Dan Berk, Robert Olsen)
At Anime Expo 2019, AI: The Somnium Files director and writer Kotaro Uchikoshi sat down with GameSpot to talk about the upcoming mystery-driven adventure game. The title of the game, Uchikoshi explains, is actually a bit of clever wordplay and hints towards the overall theme of the story.
AI: The Somnium Files sees you play as detective Kaname Date who has an artificial eye that houses his AI companion, Aiba. Date’s eye gives him several abilities, such as X-ray vision, and Aiba provides assistance for more technical challenges. During difficult investigations, Date can use a machine called the Psync Device through Aiba, allowing them to enter the memories or dreams of suspects or witnesses. The visual representation of people’s minds is called their somnium, and solving the mental locks in the space allow Date and Aiba to travel deeper into a person’s subconscious and extract vital information. AI: The Somnium Files’ story begins with Date and Aiba trying to figure out the identity of someone who’s been gouging out people’s eyes.
Click To Unmute
AI: The Somnium Files – Official Gameplay Trailer
Top New Game Releases On Switch, PS4, Xbox One, And PC This Week — July 7-13, 2019
The “AI” in AI: The Somnium Files is actually Japanese, making it pronounced like “eye.” In Japanese, Uchikoshi explains, “ai” means “love.” Thus AI: The Somnium Files is simultaneously in reference to the game’s themes of finding life in artificial intelligence, the importance of the human eye, figuring out one’s self (like “I”), and defining what love is. Though the game touches on all of these, it’s that last one that Uchikoshi is focusing on in this game.
“There are many different aspects of love,” Uchikoshi said. “There’s family love, two strangers loving each other, there’s love between partners, there’s love between friends, and amongst all these different types of love there are twists as well.” In AI: The Somnium Files, there are several different types of relationships that will evolve and change. Date and Aiba are partners, for example, but Date is also a sort of adoptive father to the daughter of one of his best friends. Iris, a YouTube star who’s one of the victims that loses an eye, is idolized by one of her fans, Ota, and cared for by her lonely, single mother Hitomi.
“Love is a big theme for me,” Uchikoshi joked, “because when I go home my wife treats me like dirt and makes me lick her toes, and wash the bathroom, and she makes me do everything, treats me like trash. I feel like I’m a little kid at an orphanage that just wants to be in a family that shows me love, and that’s why that ai, love, is one of the important themes for this game.”
Uchikoshi hopes players come to their own conclusions when it comes to defining the truth behind love. As such, AI: The Somnium Files has several different endings. “There is no wrong answer, the choices that you make will become the story’s reality, its truth,” he said. “What happens is, you make a choice, and it will steer you towards a certain ending, but if you make a different choice it can suddenly steer you in a completely different direction. But each of those endings is right and true, and none of it is technically wrong.” When it comes to good and bad endings, Uchikoshi clarified that it will be up to the player to define what they believe to be morally right and wrong. What someone may think is a good ending could be perceived as a bad one by someone else. Uchikoshi did not want to divulge how many endings there are in AI: The Somnium Files, but he did confirm that each one does “go in different directions.”
The choices in the story will all occur when you’re invading a character’s somnium and trying to piece together exactly what happened. When in someone’s somnium, you have exactly six minutes to solve as many mental blocks as you can, discover new evidence, and come to your own conclusion. Each action you take will cost you, so you’ll need to deduce how to overcome mental blocks as quickly as you can. You won’t fail the game if you can’t find enough evidence to make any conclusions within the six-minute time limit though, as failing to discover something will simply reset you back to the start of the somnium.
AI: The Somnium Files is scheduled to come to PS4, PC, and Nintendo Switch on September 17. If you’re looking for more info on the game, we interviewed both Uchikoshi and A-set (the virtual YouTube idol featured in AI: The Somnium Files) at GDC 2019.
After having many years of success in Japan, the Granblue Fantasy game series is finally making its way to the west with the release of Granblue Fantasy Versus, a fighting game based within the world of the RPG franchise. Granblue Fantasy takes place in a kingdom of magic, following the adventures of The Captain whose encounter with the mysterious Lyria leads to their two souls being merged. The two set out for the island of Estalucia in order to escape the Erste Empire that wants to imprison Lyria and abuse her powerful abilities. On their quest, they are joined by The Captain’s friend Vyrn, a lizard-like creature who’s adamant he’s a dragon, and Katalina Alize, a former Erste Empire lieutenant who betrayed her country after learning what it wanted with Lyria.
During Anime Expo 2019, Granblue Fantasy creative director Tetsuya Fukuhara sat down with GameSpot to discuss the reasoning for Cygames introducing Granblue Fantasy games to English-speaking countries via a fighting game as opposed to the popular mobile RPG. “We have this assumption that in the western countries, there’s a very solid fanbase for fighting games,” Fukuhara said. He went on to explain that Granblue Fantasy has been around for over five years already, and throwing western players straight into that ongoing RPG narrative might have been too tricky to attract new players.
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Granblue Fantasy: Versus – Closed Beta Test Gameplay: Daigo Vs. Fuudo!
Top New Game Releases On Switch, PS4, Xbox One, And PC This Week — July 7-13, 2019
Versus is designed with a simple, fairly standalone story that introduces the main cast of characters and establishes their relationships with one another. The original Granblue Fantasy game–which is coming to the west after Versus as Granblue Fantasy Mobile–also didn’t seem like the right pick for a debut title given the smaller mobile market in western countries, Fukuhara explained. He said Versus, as a console game, made more sense.
As such, Granblue Fantasy Versus is designed with accessibility in mind. The game is developed by Arc System Works, the same studio behind 2018’s Dragon Ball FighterZ and BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, and features a simplified version of those two games’ mechanics. “Dragon Ball FighterZ, BlazeBlue: Cross Tag Battle, and Granblue Fantasy Versus have a shared DNA with how combos activate,” Fukuhara said. “Those mechanics have a good reception within the fighting game community. That said, compared to FighterZ and Cross Tag Battle, we are designing Versus to be even more beginner-friendly and making a lot of the mechanics implemented in those two titles more simple to grasp. Versus has shorter combos, for example, and you’re able to activate special skills with one button,” Fukuhara continued.
“We don’t want Versus to be labeled as just a beginner’s fighting game, though. There is some depth for those seeking a higher level of competition. One feature that contributes to that is a cooldown timer for each skill, so you can’t spam the same special attack continuously. That’s a strategy that isn’t implemented in [FighterZ and Cross Tag Battle]: knowing that if one skill is in cooldown, you’ve limited your opponent’s next action.”
In designing Versus’ characters, the team picked the main fighting game archetypes from other popular franchises first and then tried to fit Granblue Fantasy’s most important characters into these types of fighters. “There are very typical fighting styles that you want to put into the initial roster,” Fukuhara said. “Like characters that grab and throw their opponent. Fast characters. Slashing characters. Characters that are good in mid-distance,” Fukuhara continued.
“We’re not too worried about implementing characters that wield the same weapon because we do have a clear concept for each character. For example, of the characters already announced to be in the game, there are four sword-wielding characters. However, Charlotta has a small figure and wields a huge sword. Lancelot has dual blades and each of them more closely resembles a dagger. Katalina has a rapier. Both in visuals and in the way they fight, there’s a clear distinction.”
With the game’s release approaching, the team is already looking ahead to post-launch content. After working on a mobile game for years, Fukuhara knows the importance of maintaining a player base after a title launch. “The original mobile game is already five years old and we haven’t lost any hype towards future updates,” he said. “We know what our fans love. We are confident that we can continuously give them this same hype for Versus through downloadable content. Not just adding characters, there’s a lot of things we can do. Versus is going to be an esport title as well.”
Despite feeling some pressure in ensuring Versus succeeds, Fukuhara is adamant that the game’s goal is to introduce western audiences to Granblue Fantasy. In that regard, everything special about the RPG has been implemented in some capacity. “The first thing we definitely needed to have in Versus was quality graphics, including detailed backgrounds,” Fukuhara said. “Also the music and the sound system. Those two aspects needed to be of the highest quality.” The aforementioned music is especially good. Some of it, Fukuhara explains, is from the mobile RPG, but new songs have been composed for Versus’ story, including character themes.
“There are also beloved characters from the original franchise,” Fukuhara continued. “There’s pre-battle banter for each character. Aside from that, being able to activate skills is something similar to what is done in the mobile RPG. Having that same feeling of activating skills but within a fighting game format is something that we wanted to do.”
As a final remark, Fukuhara teased, “Also, there’s something very, very important that gives that Granblue Fantasy feel to Versus, but the details will be announced in the future.” Those details, along with the release date for Versus, are expected to be revealed on August 3 during Granblue Fest.
Granblue Fantasy Versus is scheduled to launch on PlayStation 4 in 2019.
Rocksteady Studios’ critically acclaimed Batman: Arkham series will be re-released for a second time as “Batman Arkham Collection.” A listing for a physical version of the compilation appeared on Amazon UK, where it is available for pre-order on PS4 and Xbox One, with a September 6 release date attached. Although an official announcement hasn’t been made by publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Rocksteady’s marketing manager has discussed the collection, indicating it is real.
The launch of the collection will also mark the first time that the Earth-2 Dark Knight skin will be available outside of North America. Previously, this was exclusively available to attendees of E3 2015 and through a Mountain Dew promotion. According to Rocksteady’s marketing manager, Gaz Deaves, the Earth-2 Dark Knight skin will also be released as a free download for everyone that owns Arkham Knight on PS4 “early next year.”
Batman: Arkham Asylum and City were remastered for the Return to Arkham, and it’s these versions of the game that will be included in the new Arkham Collection. Knight was released for current-generation consoles, so it has all the bells and whistles that you’d expect from a modern game. Alongside the core games, all post-launch DLC will be included.
Deaves has said that Arkham Knight and its DLC will be included as a download code in the package, which indicates that Asylum and City will be the disc versions. The PS4-exclusive Scarecrow missions and skins will remain as such. The new collection will have the same trophy list on PS4 as the Return to Arkham versions of Asylum and City, and the standalone version of Knight, so there’s no opportunity to double up on achievements.
GameSpot’s Arkham Asylum review said: “everything about this game–the impressive visuals, stirring soundtrack, superb voice acting, fiendish puzzles, hard-hitting combat–feels like it has been lovingly crafted by a development team that’s both knowledgeable and passionate about the source material.”
Our Arkham City review was just as glowing: “From the speedy exhilaration of soaring high above the streets to the atmospheric thrill of discovering long-forgotten secrets in the tunnels below Gotham, this is an unforgettable adventure that will keep you coming back to the cape and cowl long after you’ve seen the credits roll.”
In our Arkham Knight review, we said, “Rather than escape the pull of the games that spawned it, The Bat’s newest adventure refines the fundamentals; it is a safe but satisfying return to the world’s most tormented megalopolis.”
Super Mario Maker 2 has built on its early success by finishing top of the UK all-format sales chart once again. The Nintendo Switch exclusive keeps its place atop the physical chart despite strong competition from Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled, according to sales monitor Chart-Track.
The CTR remaster still manages a podium finish at No.2 in its third week on sale. F1 2019, meanwhile, maintains its No.3 spot for the week ending July 6.
Super Mario Maker 2 is another great addition to the Switch’s library of exclusive games, according to our critic, Peter Brown. “The Mario series is worth all the admiration it gets, and Super Mario Maker 2 is an excellent tool for picking it apart by pushing its enemies, mechanisms, and Mario, to their limit,” he said. “I’ve yet to make a stage of my own that I think is worthy of sending out to other players, but I’m committed to getting there. Whether exploring the full potential of a single element or throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, I’ve got the itch to join the creator’s club.
“Mario Maker 2 makes the learning process intuitive and enjoyable. Most importantly, it’s enabled designers amateur and professional alike to share their creativity with the world. The community is off to a great start, and thankfully, the fun has only just begun.” You can read more in our full Super Mario Maker 2 review.
You can read the full top 10 sales chart for this week below, courtesy of UKIE and GfK Chart-Track. Note this table does not include digital sales data, and so should not be considered representative of all UK game sales.
Remedy Entertainment, purveyor of consistently excellent action games, is back. The creator of Max Payne, Alan Wake and Quantum Break returns on August 27 with Control, and we’ll be running an IGN First on the game all this month.
So let’s begin at the beginning, shall we? In the video above, you’ll get a look at the game’s opening sequence, introducing heroine Jesse Faden as she enters the mysterious Federal Bureau of Control for the first time, and quickly discovers that things have gone very wrong indeed. It’s a quiet, strange, beautiful intro, and one that introduces many of the game’s main characters.
In fact, if you’re a Remedy fan, you might spot some familiar faces and hear some familiar voices in here: Jesse is played by Courtney Hope (Beth Wilder in Quantum Break); Max Payne himself, James McCaffrey takes on the role of the ill-fated Director Trench; and Matthew Porretta, the voice of Alan Wake, appears as Head of Research Dr. Casper Darling. Control director Mikael Kasurinen tells me that, in some ways, this feels like a culmination of all of Remedy’s work up until this point, and the cast lives up to that assertion.
