Category: Games

During Sony’s CES livestream, Sony revealed that Square Enix’s Project Athia will launch on PlayStation 5 in January 2022. The window was confirmed by way of a very small block of text on a PlayStation disclaimer image, which also confirmed dates for other upcoming PS5 titles. A release date for the game was previously unknown.

Project Athia was first announced as an exclusive title for the PS5 during Sony’s PS5 reveal event stream. The trailer played during the announcement revealed a protagonist leaping and exploring a fantasy world with menacing-looking enemies. Project Athia’s taglines suggest that the protagonist will endure something like a fish out of water trial: “In a world not her own, where resolve will be tested, truths will be questioned, and devotions will be doubted, she will rise.” Not much else is known about the game at this time.

Project Athia is being produced by Square Enix’s Luminous Productions, a subsidiary formed to develop AAA titles. Luminous Productions’ past titles include only Final Fantasy XV, and Project Athia is the studio’s first departure from a Final Fantasy installment.

Screenwriter Gary Whitta shared on Twitter that he led Project Athia’s writing team. The team consisted of “A-list writers” who’ve worked on “film, TV, games, and fantasy literature.” Whitta was one of the writers for Rogue One and was the screenwriter for The Book of Eli.

There are plenty of indie games to look forward to in 2021, and Sony has just confirmed that two PlayStation console exclusive indie titles are coming out sooner rather than later. You can expect to get your hands on both Solar Ash and Kena: Bridge of Spirits within the first half of 2021.

In a small text message seen during Sony Interactive Entertainment’s CES 2021 press conference, Sony revealed the release windows for several upcoming games. Both Solar Ash and Kena: Bridge of Spirits are listed, with the former scheduled to come out in June and the latter in March.

From developer Heart Machine, Solar Ash sees you play as a mysterious individual who can seemingly glide across practically anything, speeding through beautifully stylized worlds and just as quickly getting thrown into frantic bouts of combat. The game is scheduled to launch for PS4, PS5, and PC.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is the debut from Ember Lab–the same folks responsible for that incredibly spooky The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask animated film, Terrible Fate, back in 2016. In this action-platformer, you play as the titular Kena, a guide who guides the deceased to the spirit world, relying on the help of cute black creatures called the Rot. The game is scheduled to launch for PS4, PS5, and PC.

Sony’s CES 2021 presentation gave us a look at some of the new tech on the way from the company this year, including various PS5 titles. Although few details were shared during the stream, we did learn some updated release windows for a handful of upcoming games, including Ghostwire: Tokyo and Stray.

As noted in a disclaimer during the presentation, both Ghostwire and Stray are now slated to release for PS5 in October 2021. Both had previously been confirmed for this year, but this further narrows down their release window. No further information about the titles was revealed beyond that.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is the next project from Tango Gameworks, the studio founded by Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami. We’ve heard little about the game since last summer, when director Kenji Kimura spoke about how the title will take advantage of PS5’s DualSense controller and other hardware features.

“You need to experience it directly because this is very difficult to explain both verbally and in text, but the DualSense haptics and adaptive triggers felt so good that it made us, the developers, say, ‘Woah!’ because they allowed for us to feel and experience the various actions and attacks like never before,” Kimura said.

Stray, meanwhile, is about a stray cat living in a post-human cybercity. Little else has been revealed about the game so far, but it’s being developed by BlueTwelve Studio and published by Annapurna Interactive. You can check out Stray’s reveal trailer above.

During CES 2021, Sony outlined release dates for some upcoming PlayStation 5 titles, including GhostWire: Tokyo, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Project Athia, Solar Ash, and Stray. The company also confirmed that Capcom’s sci-fi title Pragmata has been pushed back to 2023.

Neither Sony nor Capcom have shared new footage of Pragmata during CES 2021. Originally slated to launch in 2022, Pragmata was unveiled in June 2020 with a trailer that didn’t reveal much. Questions around narrative, gameplay, characters, and the like have yet to be answered. However, it’s supposed to launch on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S in 2023.

Toward the end of Sony’s CES 2021 livestream, the company’s logo was punctuated by small-print text featuring other release date announcements. This includes Kena: Bridge of Spirits (which releases this March), Solar Ash (launching this June), GhostWire: Tokyo and Stray (which both drop this October) and Project Athia (coming out in January 2022).

In an update about new additions to the beta version of the game, Phasmophobia developer Kinetic Games revealed that “the ghost will now listen for player voices when hunting.” The biggest news for most Phasmophobia players, however, was that the game didn’t already include this feature.

In a subsequent reply, Kinetic confirmed that it was added to the game because “lots of people thought it was a feature” already. With the game already allowing for audio input for communicating both with other players and with the ghost, as well as antagonizing ghosts by calling out their name, it’s no surprise players believed that mic input would also lead a ghost to their location. The bad news is, if the ghosts weren’t using those clues before, they’re about to get even more deadly on a hunt.

Kinetic have elaborated that the update will be “based on how loud your mic is,” meaning players will still be able to safely whisper while being hunted. Another recent update also improved ghosts’ hunting behaviors, allowing ghosts to remember a player’s last known location and to search that area first.

The voice update is currently in the beta version of the game for testing, and will come to the live version of Phasmophobia some time in the future. Players can opt into the beta through their Steam client if they want to try out the new iteration of ghost hunts for themselves.

Phasmophobia was a surprise success of 2020, taking out the Best Debut Game at the 2020 Game Awards. It’s still going strong in 2021, showing up as one of the top five earning Steam games in the first full week of the year.

Longtime smartphone case maker OtterBox is entering the gaming space by partnering with Xbox to launch several products aimed at both console and mobile gamers alike. The primary product is a controller shell for Xbox controllers (there’s versions for both the Series X and Xbox One controller) that provides a bit of grip as well as protection against drops (or being smashed in a fit of rage).

 

Other products include a clip to hold your smartphone while gaming, a heat-dissipating phone case, a controller carrying case, and a smartphone screen-protector that functions as a privacy shield. The Mobile Gaming Clip attaches to Xbox controllers with or without the protective shell, and collapses to a relatively compact size when not in use. Meanwhile, the Gaming Glass Privacy Guard adds protection to your phone screen from both scratches and prying eyes. The privacy glass keeps everything clear for you while looking straight-on, but obscures the screen from anyone looking at an angle.

OtterBox’s gaming offerings will be available for pre-order on January 25, and should begin shipping in mid-February.

Note: this is a spoiler-free review of Batman: Soul of the Dragon, which releases in Digital HD on Tuesday, January 12 and on Blu-ray, DVD and 4K Ultra HD on Tuesday, January 26.

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Batman: Soul of the Dragon marks the 41st installment in the long-running DC Universe Movies line, and it’s also among the most unique. Rather than act as a direct adaptation of any particular DC Comics storyline, it loosely draws from the work of the late Denny O’Neil to give the DCU a ’70s martial arts movie makeover. If Warner Bros. had made a Batman movie in 1973 starring Bruce Lee, Steve McQueen, and Jim Kelly, it would have gone a little something like this. The resulting stew is every bit as fun and campy as it sounds, though, like many martial arts movies, the characters often take a backseat to the action.

Soul of the Dragon casts Grimm star David Giuntoli as the Dark Knight, who in this ’70s setting is a relative newcomer to the superhero game and struggling to balance the dueling sides of his life. Fate quickly reunites him with his old martial arts buddies Richard Dragon (Mark Dacascos), Lady Shiva (Kelly Hu) and Ben Turner (Michael Jai White), as the butt-kicking quartet takes on the terrorist organization Kobra and its ringleader Jeffrey Burr (Josh Keaton). Along the way, viewers are treated to extensive flashbacks to our heroes’ early years training in Nanda Parbat under the sly, watchful eye of O-Sensei (James Hong).

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Plot matters little here, which is just as well given how often DC’s animated movies have buckled under the constraints of the standard 70-minute running time. Soul of the Dragon wastes little time before the wandering hero Richard Dragon gets the old gang back together and begins battling endless armies of ninja warriors and demonic snake monsters. The flashbacks serve to flesh out the collective group dynamic and the various characters’ motivations, but the plot is about as straightforward as it gets in the DCU.

In terms of fun factor, Soul of the Dragon doesn’t disappoint. The film obviously borrows liberally from ’70s martial arts classics like Enter the Dragon. There’s also a whiff of the classic James Bond movies and their globetrotting international intrigue. Nor does the movie lose touch with the thoughtful, philosophical framework of O’Neil’s work on books like Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter. The whole thing plays like a loving throwback to a simpler time in action movie-making.

That retro influence is directly reflected in the animation and music. While Soul of the Dragon’s animation style doesn’t entirely escape the generic same-ness that hinders most of these projects, the vintage character designs and tech certainly help. So too does composer Joachim Horsley’s funk-heavy score. It’s a shame the stylish opening credits sequence isn’t more reflective of the movie’s visual style as a whole, but that’s always been where the relatively modest budgets of these direct-to-video projects have been most apparent.

The voice cast is almost uniformly great, fortunately. Giuntoli’s Batman is a bit too bland compared to his predecessors, though he does do a fine job of drawing a subtle distinction between the dark knight and his alter ego, projecting a greater aura of confidence whenever Bruce dons his cape and cowl. Dacascos is pitch-perfect as Richard Dragon, bringing a much-needed dose of warmth and humor to a character who’s written as very straightforward. Arrow veterans Hu and White are also inspired casting choices. Hu actually seems more at home with the deadly, aloof Lady Shiva than she did as China White, while White is allowed to explore very different sides of a character who always stood out on Arrow. The fact that White is technically reprising his Arrow role highlights the fact that this voice cast would probably work just as well in live-action. Who knows? Maybe that’ll even happen someday.

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Entertaining as it is, Soul of the Dragon isn’t without its storytelling problems. The simple, straightforward plot isn’t an issue so much as the uneven character development over the course of the film. Soul of the Dragon emphasizes the family nature of the Batman/Richard Dragon/Lady Shiva/Ben Turner quartet, but even with the flashbacks it never fleshes out their shared history to the extent it should. Dragon himself receives almost no development. His one defining character trait is “being really good at martial arts” in a movie where nearly every character fits that description. Again, Dacascos is able to make the most out of his limited material, but it’s a shame to see such a fascinating character tamped down to become a generic martial arts movie protagonist.

Perhaps the one real flaw of Batman: Soul of the Dragon is that it doesn’t really need Batman in the first place. That would certainly be truer to O’Neil’s Richard Dragon stories. Had the Dark Knight been excised from the plot, there would have been more room to focus on the remaining three characters and their respective origins. It certainly would have been nice to see more of Turner’s history that’s glossed over in a quick montage sequence. You can’t entirely fault DC here, as it’s obviously much, much easier to market a movie with Batman plastered front and center. Still, it would be nice if the DC Universe Movies line could finally get to a place where it’s not so wholly dependent on the Dark Knight or the Man of Steel.

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Since it rocketed to fame earlier this year, Phasmophobia’s brand of ghost hunting antics has terrified numerous players, in part due to the way the game handles audio. Apart from speaking to friends over crinkly radios, many players believed that your voice played a huge role in making ghosts appear, causing a ghost to hunt you if you taunted it enough.

Turns out that was never true…until now. Phasmophobia developer Kinetic Games announced a new update for the game’s beta build on Monday, which now allows the game’s cast of ghosts to listen for player voices when hunting, spurring them to search the locations where noise originates.

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“Lots of people thought it was a feature so it has been added,” Kinetic Games tweeted. “This is experimental so please let me know if there are any issues.”

Kinetic Games also shared that the new feature is based on how loud a player’s mic is, meaning you can still whisper while a ghost is hunting for your terrified fleshy body.

The new audio feature is sure to throw more boisterous players out of the frying pan and into the fire, and might play a significant role in Phasmophobia’s larger levels where players can put more distance between them and their ghostly target.

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During a January 8th update, Kinetic Games also added new features that make ghosts move to your last known position, meaning you’ll probably have to be a little craftier than hiding around the corner. Phasmophobia’s professional difficulty mode will also no longer tell you if a ghost responds to groups of players or isolated individuals.

Kinetic Games has also recently teased its new prison level, which promises to be one of its biggest ghost hunting grounds. If you’re stuck with a particular ghost, check out IGN’s Phasmophobia wiki for tips and guides.