Tetris Effect’s updated edition, Connected is coming to PlayStation next month after launching exclusive for Xbox – and it will feature cross-platform multiplayer.
Tetris Effect launched in 2018 and was exclusive to PlayStation 4. Then in 2020, an upgraded version of the game called Tetris Effect: Connected became an exclusive launch title for the Xbox Series X and S. This enhanced version of the game developed the base experience, bringing improved competitive and cooperative multiplayer to Tetris Effect. If you were holding out for the update’s release on other consoles, we have great news.
On the PlayStation Blog today, it was confirmed that Tetris Effect: Connected is coming to PlayStation, and will launch in late July. Those who already own Tetris Effect on PlayStation will be able to update their version of the game to Tetris Effect: Connected for free. It will also be playable on PlayStation 5 via backwards compatibility.
Tetris Effect: Connected on PlayStation will feature a number of new multiplayer modes where players can team up to take on boss opponents or compete in Zone Battles, where player’s avatars punch eachother as they clear lines. The game’s multiplayer modes will be cross-platform, meaning you can invite players from other console formats to your online games with a Room ID code. A Spectator Mode will allow users to watch intense Tetris showdowns too.
If you want to get a taste of Tetris Effect: Connected on PlayStation ahead of the update’s full release in late July, those who own Tetris Effect already will be able to download a beta version of the game in late June. The beta will be available starting June 23, 8pm Pacific.
You can check out our review of Tetris Effect here, which we scored an 8.5,, calling it “something you’ve likely never experienced.”
With their tight mechanics and tons of challengingly satisfying gameplay, developer Roll7’s OlliOlli titles have garnered a place in the hearts of skateboarding game fans. OlliOlli World very pointedly doesn’t fix what isn’t broken, and at first blush, it might just kind of feel like “more OlliOlli.” What’s notable about the third game in the series, however, is that it feels like it’s improving on Roll7’s ideas in every way, from art style to course design. In a sense, this may well be OlliOlli’s final form.
We got a chance to play about an hour of OlliOlli World with an early build of the game. Fans of the skating franchise should know that, despite the updated art style, bigger levels, and big Super Mario World-style overworld map, OlliOlli World is still pretty true to the earlier titles. Side-scrolling courses are filled with opportunities to do tons of different tricks as you jump, grind, and ramp through the level. Flicking and rolling combinations on the analog sticks, utilizing patterns similar to fighting games, allows you to do tricks, and building combinations amps up your score. That’s the underlying mechanical loop of the series, and here, OlliOlli’s DNA hasn’t really changed all that much.
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What Roll7 has done is improve on that DNA pretty significantly, though. Throughout the first two areas you can access, you’ll play through courses that feel very similar to the OlliOlli levels of the past two games. You skate from one side to the other, landing all the tricks you can to build your score by the end. But everything about each of these levels feels bigger and more involved, from their layouts and included elements, to the broader context of the game.
First, OlliOlli World brings a story to the franchise for the first time. You play a skater trying to distinguish yourself in Radlandia, a paradise for people of your type. You join up with a crew of like-minded skate folk who cheer you on, help you out, and eventually take you on a road trip across the island. Radlandia includes several biomes and a bunch of levels in each one, so it seems like there will be plenty to explore.
The fun thing about the addition of characters and story tidbits between runs is that they add a lot to OlliOlli World’s actual gameplay. On every course, you have records set by the other skaters in your group for you to surpass. Some of them provide you with distinct challenges, similar to the ones available in levels in the earlier OlliOlli games. And other times, you’ll find folks on the courses or in between them who can point you in the directions of new challenges and levels you wouldn’t be able to open otherwise.
Even the levels themselves offer options for exploration. While courses have you skating from left to right (or right to left) on a single track most of the time, you’ll often find places where you can shift up or down onto a new pathway. Sometimes, you’ll need to take these paths to complete certain challenges, but others will lead you to secrets and additional characters to talk with. And once you get the handle of a level, choosing which paths to take and when can allow you to boost up your score pretty significantly.
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OlliOlli has included plenty of challenges and additional objectives throughout the series, but they feel expanded on in OlliOlli World. In past games, you’ve been encouraged to find all of a certain object or hit tricks at certain points, and those kinds of objectives are here as well. There are also more that encourage you to pay attention to the levels and their backgrounds, to avoid characters and animals as they populate a track, and basically, to become a better, more engaged skater. Level design in the portion we played throws in new additions like billboards you can wall-skate into tricks, and half pipes that change your direction, which give you more opportunities to plan routes so you can complete the more varied-feeling challenges OlliOlli World offers.
It’s all basically similar to what fans have seen in past games, but improved. It also feels like Roll7 has made some tweaks to how OlliOlli World plays to make it a bit more approachable for new players. Landing tricks generally feels a bit easier than it has been previously, for example, with the requirement of timing a button press with hitting the ground to nab your points seemingly being removed. But there’s still quite a bit of challenge, it seems, and returning fans will be rewarded for knowing OlliOlli well. Spending the time to build up your stick-flicking skills to pull off tricks, and carefully timing for landing grinds and wall-rides, are still essential. It just feels like OlliOlli is providing a bigger world so you can relax into building up those skills, and giving you more ways to engage with it than just hitting the highest score you can.
And generally, OlliOlli World comes off as a place that’ll reward you for the time you put in there. Its bright, animated art style is a joy to behold, and there’s just enough story to give you a reason to wander around its weird environs and uncover new things off the beaten path. More than anything, though, OlliOlli World just feels good to play, in the same way that past games in the series have. Tricks are easy to pull off but difficult to master, skating is quick and rewarding, and while slams are plentiful, it’s easy to quickly restart a course and feel yourself getting better as you play it.
OlliOlli World feels like it’s full of little tweaks and smart additions to Roll7’s underlying ideas, and with a big world to skate through full of weird people to meet, it seems like skateboarding fans are going to find plenty of places to lay down tricks and explore.
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Apple has released the first trailer for the upcoming Will Ferrell/Paul Rudd TV series The Shrink Next Door, showing off the two comedic actors in their latest project.
The Shrink Next Door is based on the real-life story of a man and his therapist and the journey they have together. Ferrell plays Marty, while Rudd portrays Dr. Ike. “When he first meets Dr. Ike, Marty just wants to get better at boundaries. Over 30 years, he’ll learn all about them–and what happens when they get crossed,” reads a line from Apple’s description.
The trailer shows off some of what to expect in what looks to be an emotional, heartfelt story that may also go to some dark places. In one sequence, we see Ferrell’s character using a shovel to burying something or someone in his lawn. Here’s the trailer:
The Shrink Next Door premieres November 12 on Apple TV+. In addition to Ferrell and Rudd, the show features WandaVision breakout star Kathryn Hahn.
After announcing that Cyberpunk 2077 will return to the PlayStation Store on June 21, developer CD Projekt Red has updated the game with a series of further improvements.
Update 1.23 for Cyberpunk 2077 is out now across console, PC, and Stadia, and it fixes dozens of bugs across the game. A bug that could cause some Arasaka guards to clip through doors is now fixed, while the patch also fixes a problem that made an Arasaka officer’s body inaccessible, which in turn prevented players from progressing.
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The patch notes also mention fixes for Johnny’s spectral appearance in a number of quests, while rocks in the Badlands should now look better. Additionally, instances of clipping for NPC clothing have been addressed with the 1.23 patch.
Xbox Series X|S owners can now update their consoles with the latest software from Microsoft. While the update doesn’t include many revolutionary changes for all players, it does add new accessibility options in the form of speech-to-text and text-to-speech.
After downloading this update, players will be able to turn on speech-to-text and text-to-speech via the settings menu. From there, head to the ease of access menu and then to game and chat transcription. Speech-to-text will convert all the words spoken by party members into text that’s displayed in a small overlay placed on top of whatever game you’re playing.
Text-to-speech on the other hand will let players type into a party text chat and have their words be read aloud to other players by a synthetic voice. Both options can be accessed while in a party by heading to the options menu there and then to the configure ease of access settings menu.
Xbox App users will also notice an update today. According to a news post from Xbox, the app is becoming its own social network. Players will start seeing posts from games that can be liked, shared, or commented on. “Stories” are also coming to the Xbox mobile app, although it’s not clear when.
While not listed in Xbox’s news post, some games are also being optimized with the June Xbox Update. According to Jason Ronald, the director of program management at Xbox, the update will also fix “frame rate issues in Alien: Isolation and Yakuza 3 when an external HDD was connected.” While Yakuza 3’s new potential frame rate isn’t detailed, Ronald said that Alien: Isolation should run at 60fps with the fps boost option enabled on both the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.
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Seven months after it was made available to Xbox Series X players, Call of Duty: Warzone now officially supports 120 FPS on PS5.
This bit of news was discovered within June 16’s Call of Duty: Warzone patch notes, and it reminds players that an HDMI 2.1 cord is required for your PS5 to fully take advantage of 120 FPS.
To ensure your PS5 is achieving 120 FPS on Call of Duty: Warzone, all players need to do is to go to the PS5 system settings, hit Screen and Video, select Video Output, set Enable 120Hz Output to Automatic, go back to settings and go to Saved Data and Game/App Settings, and then change Game Presets to Performance Mode.
As reported by Eurogamer, Infinity Ward added 120 FPS support for Call of Duty: Warzone on only Xbox Series X in November 2020, but it wasn’t even mentioned in that week’s patch notes. There were no comments made by either Activision or Infinity Ward on that decision, but it appears PS5 players are finally able to enjoy this higher frame rate.
Video games with violent content may have dominated E3’s headlines this year, but a new study from GamesIndustry.Biz revealed that the number of non-violent titles on offer saw a huge increase in 2021. According to the study, which looked at 349 video games showcased across 15 events and applied a set list of rules to determine what a non-violent game was, 115 games met the required criteria or around 33% of games in total.
Last week’s Wholesome Direct unsurprisingly accounted for more than half of these games, while other shows like Devolver Digital, Future Games Show, and Nintendo added to the list. For the sake of comparison, E3 2019 had just 41 non-violent games on offer, 17 of which came from major publishers through the likes of ID@Xbox or Square Enix Collective.
Xbox had 13% of its games classified as non-violent in the study, down from 24% in 2019, but it’s also worth noting that it had fewer games to show off this year and no ID@Xbox montage to help pad its numbers out. Ubisoft was down from 31% of its games being non-violent in 2019 to just 10% in 2021, with Riders Republic, Rocksmith+, Just Dance 2022, and the new Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Discovery Tour presenting softer options.
As for Square Enix, Koch Media, Capcom, and Gearbox Entertainment? All three companies had solo presentations, without a single non-violent game to be found among them.
For even more wholesome content, don’t forget to check out GameSpot’s Play For All coverage that will highlight upcoming games, trailer, and a few panels with friends.
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16-year Ubisoft Massive developer David Polfeldt, who most recently served as the managing director at the company, is stepping down from the company on July 1 to take a sabbatical. He will return to Ubisoft in a “strategic role” later on.
A staff memo obtained by Axios from Ubisoft Studios boss Virginie Haas said Polfeldt told management he planned to leave back in Fall 2020. He said at the time that he was “ready for a new challenge,” and now he’s leaving Ubisoft for a six-month sabbatical.
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Ubisoft has already found a replacement for Polfeldt who will begin in October. However, Haas said this person could not be named yet for legal reasons with their existing employer, which means Ubisoft is hiring an outside person for the job.
“We have already appointed David’s successor and look forward to sharing more details at a later date,” a spokesperson said.
Ubisoft has had several allegations of misconduct over the last year, but Polfeldt was not connected to them. GameSpot has contacted Polfeldt in an attempt to get more information regarding his temporary exit from the company.
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Love Fortnite and have artistic talent? If you answered “yes” to both questions, then there’s a chance you could have one of your designs turned into a real Fortnite in-game outfit this December. Fortnite: Concept Royale is the new competition offering glory and even some cash to community members with the best designs.
In order to enter for a chance to win, you need to post your design on either Twitter or Instagram with the #ConceptRoyaleContest hashtag, and Epic Games will choose its two favorite concepts for the full game. You have until July 11 at 11:59 ET to submit and are limited to only one entry, but entrants only need to be 13 in order to participate–the $2,500 cash price is pretty impressive for a kid.
Get the creative juices flowing, Concept Royale is on!
Submit your most festive, frosty, and fun Outfit concept to Twitter or Instagram using #ConceptRoyaleContest for a chance to have your art immortalized in-game. Enter by July 12.
Naturally, your artwork must be original, and it cannot infringe on copyrighted material. It should be winter-themed, appropriate for the game, and in addition to drawings, you can also submit 3D models, cosplays, sculptures, or other visual art. You can include logos that Epic Games created itself for Fortnite, so if you wanted to make a twist on one of the original Fortnite characters for your outfit, that should be fair game.
Fortnite began Season 7 a few weeks ago, and it’s focused on aliens and UFOs invading the battle royale game. As usual, things are getting progressively weirder, and you can check out the Fortnite Season 7 Week 2 challenges for a rundown of what you have to do for XP this week.
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Call of Duty: Warzone developer Raven Software is planning what sounds like a substantial update to the battle royale game that will increase the time it takes to take down opponents. In a blog post, Raven said it will release “sweeping balance changes” across the spectrum of weapons to allow for people to not die so quickly.
With the updates applied, Raven said it believes the average time-to-kill in Warzone should increase by about 60 to 100 milliseconds. That doesn’t sound like much, but every fraction of a second makes a difference in a twitch-based shooter like Warzone.
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Explaining the forthcoming changes, Raven said it wants to give players the opportunity to make action movie-style escapes against seemingly impossible odds, and currently that is less likely to happen given the existing time-to-kill averages.
“At a high level, Warzone is a game about engagements. The more time we allot to mechanical and strategic expression within engagements, the higher the ‘skill ceiling’ and the longer our personal journey of mastery,” Raven said. “We believe the frequency of those engagements and how we navigate them heavily contributes to the overall level of fun. We want to enable more escapes from impossible situations, moments of finesse, epic outplays, and opportunities to flex exquisite marksmanship.”
It added: “Due to some Weapons being far more lethal than others in their class, we feel a reduction in the efficacy of those outliers is necessary. We expect these changes will bring the average Time to Kill up by approximately 60 to 100 milliseconds. These changes will not only increase the overall capacity for skill expression, but should also introduce some Weapons into viability that have not yet had a chance to shine.”
You can see a snapshot of the forthcoming changes below, while a more detailed breakdown of the balance updates can be found on Raven’s website.
Warzone’s big Season 4 update is out now, ushering in a new event, new weapons, a new vehicle, and more for the battle royale game. Check out the full Warzone Season 4 patch notes to learn more.
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