The new AMD Radeon RX 6000 has been revealed. If you want a closer look at it, you’ll have to boot up Fortnite. AMD tweeted out a code for Fortnite’s Creative mode, which you can use to visit the official AMD island and see a full render of the graphics card.
Speaking of Fortnite, it’s crossing over with Rocket League – which is going free-to-play next week. Rocket League’s F2P launch is next Wednesday, September 23rd. which is also the launch of Rocket League on the Epic Games Store. These launches are happening alongside a new Fortnite crossover event, called LlamaRama.
Finally, we’ve got a new update on the development of Undertale’s sequel, Deltarune. Toby Fox, lead developer on Undertale, has been hard at work on Chapter 2 of Deltarune, which he says is about 80% complete.
Starting today The Last of Us Part 2 for PS4 is discounted to its lowest price ever. If you own a PS4 and haven’t yet bought this game… now is the time. It’s one of the few games that scored a 10/10 here at IGN. In other deal news, you can score a pair of Apple AirPod Pro noise cancelling truly wireless headphones for under $200, a new 2020 model Dell RTX 2070 gaming laptop for under $1300, or a 5TB portable hard drive for under $100.
The PS5 is out within the year (at least, that’s what we assume) and yet preorder info has been scant. Fortunately for you, we have a preorder guide up with everything we know so far. As soon as we know exactly when preorders go up, we’ll make sure that you’ll have a chance to get your order in.
______________________________ Eric Song is IGN’s deal curator and spends roughly 1/4 of his income on stuff he posts. Check out his latest Daily Deals Article and subscribe to his IGN Deals Newsletter.
A studio comprised of former Witcher, Cyberpunk, and Dying Light developers has announced a new project for PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC, and it sounds interesting.
The Invincible is a first-person sci-fi FPS “thriller” from Polish studio Starward Industries that takes place in a retro-future landscape. You play as a space scientist on a hostile planet, and your job is to find the crew of your ship after they go missing. The game is inspired by the 1964 sci-fi novel by Polish author Stanisław Lem.
“You are a scientist onboard an interstellar scientific expedition, suddenly thrown into a life-or-death rescue mission. Landing on a planet Regis III you have to find the missing crew members using some advanced space equipment, whilst relying on your brains and instincts to survive on the planet which quickly occurs to be unwelcoming,” reads a line from the game’s official description. “Soon you’ll discover that Regis III holds terrifying secrets which are uncovered while you’re piecing together the fate of your crew. And as you delve deeper into the mystery, you realise that perhaps you are not alone, and that some places like this planet are better left untouched. But it’s too late to turn back.”
The Invincible promises “immersive gameplay” and a non-linear story that you can affect with personal choices and relationships. The game is built using the Unreal Engine.
The Invincible is scheduled for release on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC in 2021. No gameplay footage has been released yet, but you can see some screenshots above and listen to some of the game’s music in the video here.
Starward Industries is staffed by a number of developers who worked on other games made in Poland such as The Witcher, Cyberpunk 2077, and Dying Light. CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 is launching in November.
Junji Ito, the acclaimed manga artist and writer whose works include Uzumaki, Gyo, and Tomie, was once attached to Silent Hills, the game that was teased with the PS4 P.T. demo. Silent Hills was being worked on by Metal Gear Solid’s Hideo Kojima, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, and actor Norman Reedus before it was tragically cancelled, and now Ito has shed some more light on his tie to the project.
Speaking to Polygon, Ito has spoken about his one meeting with Kojima and del Toro, and the nervousness he experienced during it. “Hideo Kojima-san contacted me about a Silent Hill sequel that he was in the beginning stages of working on, but the project was cancelled before before I got too involved,” he recalls. “Apparently the first person he spoke to was the director Guillermo del Toro, and as the two of them discussed the project, my name came up.”
Ito says that he’s “not too familiar with video games,” but that he had a meeting with the two men. While del Toro discussed his ideas, Ito had never played a Silent Hill game: “I just sat there feeling anxious the entire time,” he recalls.
“At the end of the meeting I took some illustrations of monsters I had drawn before that I had printed out and handed them over to the two directors for reference,” Ito says, noting that the three of them never met again. However, he’s not ruling out a future collaboration. “If Kojima-san contacts me again, I’d love to contribute as much as I’m able to,” he says.
The set-up for Vampire: The Masquerade – Shadows of New York, the second V:TM visual novel following last year’s Coteries of New York, is irresistible. The protagonist, Julia, is a newly turned vampire whose life as a struggling freelance investigative journalist is now thankfully behind her. But instead of living a glamorous, exciting vampire existence, she essentially becomes a glorified immigration officer, overseeing vampire movement in and out of New York. It’s a rather drab existence until her background as a journalist gifts her an opportunity to head up an investigation concerning the locked-room murder of a high-profile vampire, and her future within New York’s vampiric society will depend on whether she’s able to solve the crime.
In practice, Shadows of New York is less exciting than this premise indicates. There’s a murder, yes, and Julia has to solve it. But you, the player, are barely involved. This is a five-hour visual novel that’s very low on meaningful choice and consequence, and while there will be some differences and unique elements to different playthroughs, your impact on the investigation is negligible. But even though it’s light on player input, Shadows of New York is an entertaining visual novel for the most part, with an interesting central character, solid script, and strong presentation.
Shadows of New York is somewhere between a self-contained spin-off and a direct sequel to Coteries of New York. Julia and a few other characters are new, but most of the main cast carries over directly from that first game, including the murder victim. The main thrust of Shadows of New York’s story involves meeting with the four characters who you could choose to serve in the first game’s titular coterie, all of whom have some insight into the case and what happened… kind of. In truth, the investigation into the murder never really coheres into a satisfying whodunnit–you spend most of your time reading text that’s projected over animated backgrounds and character portraits, and occasionally you get to make a choice about what Julie says or does next. However, these don’t lead to meaningful consequences, with most of the major reveals happening right near the end. None of them are particularly surprising either.
But while the murder plot fizzles, Shadows of New York is more successful as a story about a young vampire coming to terms with what she wants for herself. Julie’s an interesting character, a young woman with commitment issues and a short fuse, and a sense of morality and spirituality that clashes awkwardly against her newly undead status. Julie is a relatively complex figure, and while the choices the player can make for her are few, getting to know her better over the course of the game is rewarding. The game’s writing shines best when it’s trying to unpack what is inside Julie’s head, and the script does a good job of balancing Julie’s personality against the choices you can make with her, so that no choice ever feels hugely out of character.
Julie’s vampirism is played down compared to the protagonist in Coteries. Sometimes, the options you’ll be given take her powers into account–vampires in this world have super strength, stealth abilities, and some hypnotic powers–but because the story is mostly set a few months after she’s turned, you don’t see Julie coming to terms with her powers in the same way the first game’s protagonist did. Her powers don’t affect gameplay in a meaningful way very often, either. You can make the decision to feed occasionally, but it’s no longer a mechanic–in the first game, some options would be locked off if you didn’t keep your appetite for blood satiated, but that isn’t the case for Shadows of New York. Julia’s vampirism is more important to her characterisation than it is to the choices you make, but it can still, sometimes, feel like an afterthought.
At various points, you’ll get to choose which side story you go and experience next. These sections are largely inconsequential to the overall murder mystery, but can feature some nice insights into Julie’s life, and the vibe of the New York she inhabits. This does mean that you can’t experience everything in one playthrough, but Shadows doesn’t exactly branch extensively–if you play through the game twice, you can absolutely see everything. There are exactly five choices that really matter to the game’s story, dictating the “traits” Julie possesses, and the ending you get is dependent on the traits that Julie exhibits across those five two-option choices. One ending is much more satisfying than the other, but I ultimately didn’t feel like I’d had any real impact on the game’s events by the end.
Shadows of New York is set in early 2020, and it’s clear that the real-world COVID-19 pandemic affected the game’s writing–characters start referencing it midway through the game, and by the end it’s directly impacting the narrative, as Julie describes empty streets and characters discuss what this means for the city. This real-world accuracy feels slightly out of place in a tale about a vampire detective, and one of the game’s endings contains a brief acknowledgement of the fact that a character’s plan doesn’t really make sense in light of what’s happening, but it’s certainly interesting that the game doesn’t shy away from the very real shadow that has hung over New York (and much of the rest of the world) this year.
This isn’t the only element of the game that makes Shadows of New York feel like it was written over a short space of time, though. While the dialog flows well and feels true to each character, and Julie and some other characters are well-developed through the script, there are a lot of ideas and concepts that are rushed over. Strange details about characters are revealed casually and then immediately dropped, and numerous supernatural elements that are introduced don’t really play out in any interesting way, as though they’ve been forgotten. The in-game dictionary gives you full definitions of all the vampire and lore-specific terms that the characters use in their dialog, which is appreciated, but this also means that the player is bogged down with in-game jargon that needs to be kept in mind to totally understand what’s happening. Shadows of New York is obviously meant to be part of a larger Vampire: The Masquerade world and mythology, and if you’re not familiar with that RPG world, it feels like you’re missing out on some context.
Shadows of New York has dramatically increased the quality of its backgrounds from the first game, with more details and animated elements. They look excellent, and while there’s a lot of repetition (and many returning locations from the previous game), the strong art and great, distinctive character designs help to keep the game engaging. The soundtrack, composed by Polish artist Resina, really stands out, too. It’s equal parts gorgeous and menacing, and the brooding, moody tracks that play under all the game’s beautiful images set the tone beautifully. The music is used to great effect, setting the tone and making it easier to picture actions that are being described in the script but not depicted. Every time I loaded the game up, I’d take a moment to enjoy the tremendous main title theme before starting.
Don’t go into Shadows of New York expecting a choose-your-own-adventure mystery, no matter how much it looks like one. This is a casual dip into another world, a game with big ideas that it doesn’t quite follow through on pursuing, but which remains moderately compelling thanks to some strong writing, interesting characters, and gorgeous art. It’s far from the definitive Vampire: The Masquerade experience, but it’s worth spending at least one long, dark night with.
While Donkey Kong Country has been re-released many times, Donkey Kong Country 2–which many view as the best game in the SNES DKC trilogy–is harder to get your hands on these days. But for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers, that’s about to change–the Diddy-centric sequel headlines a strong September line-up of retro games.
On September 23, four new games will be added to Nintendo Switch Online. Here’s the full list.
SNES
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest
Mario’s Super Picross
The Peace Keepers
NES
S.C.A.T: Special Cybernetic Attack Team
In DKC 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest (like conquest, get it?), Diddy teams up with Dixie Kong, whose helicopter spin ability lets her float short distances, to rescue Donkey Kong from Kaptain K. Rool. There’s a lot of pirate theming going on in this classic from Rare, and the game’s levels are tough but fair. It’s a true classic–one of the SNES’s best games.
Mario’s Super Picross will be a welcome addition for picross fans, and it features two-person multiplayer, too. The game has actually never been released in the US, and if you’re not familiar with picross, you might struggle–but thankfully, Nintendo has released a helpful instructional video for how to get started and how to play.
The Peace Keepers is a scrolling beat ’em up, with character-specific super attacks and a story that changes depending on your choices. It’s part of a loose trilogy of games, following Rival Turf and Brawl Brothers.
The lone NES entry, S.C.A.T., is a challenging action shooter set in the year 2029 (which used to be the far-flung future). You need to take down an alien menace, and it looks pretty fun.
If you’ve downloaded the Japanese Super Famicom collection from the Japanese Eshop, you can access a new SNES Fire Emblem title. Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem will be added to the SNES collection in Japan.
You can play this game even if your Nintendo Switch Online account is not tied to your Japanese Eshop account; however, it’ll be difficult to play if you don’t speak Japanese, as Fire Emblem games are story and text heavy.
It’s a big month for retro classics on Nintendo Switch, with Super Mario 3D All-Stars releasing this week.
Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts’ new game, Star Citizen, was announced back in 2012, and–though parts of the game have been released–fans are still waiting for the final product. Roberts has now written an in-depth forum post that seeks to address concerns about the game’s development status and why the project is taking so long.
“This is the game I’ve dreamed of my whole life. Now I am in a position to realize it, I am not willing to compromise it’s potential because it is taking longer than I originally envisioned,” Roberts said. “What I will commit to, and what is an internal priority is to improve the current gameplay and quality of life as we go, as Star Citizen is already fun in many ways, even if more buggy and not as stable as I would like, and just finishing off and polishing the basics will make it play as well or better than most other games.”
Roberts went on to say that the gameplay elements for Star Citizen is “not a pipe dream,” and he doesn’t expect it to take 10-20 years to deliver. “I described systems we either have working, or are working on; we’ve even shown early versions of some of this like fire on Inside Star Citizen. I can’t promise you exactly what quarter it will come together but once the new Road Map web work is done you’ll be able to see the teams progress to achieving what I describe in real time,” he said.
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Star Citizen – Squadron 42: Behind the Scenes – Andy Serkis
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Although Star Citizen isn’t fully released yet, the alpha version is available, and it is very popular. Roberts said “tens of thousands” of people play it every day, and the peak userbase on an average day is about 30,000. During major in-game events, Star Citizen’s alpha has achieved 100,000 players in a single day, Roberts said.
“We are on track to have over one million unique players this year,” he said. “Star Citizen already has the main gameloops of a space sim; cargo hauling, commodity trading, mercenary, pirate, bounty hunting, and mining. Just spending time refining and finishing out these would make Star Citizen with all its detail and fidelity more engrossing than any ‘finished’ space sim you can play today.”
Roberts also used his forum post to speak about the current state of internet discourse and why he is frustrated by what he’s seeing online.
“My biggest disappointment with modern internet discourse is that there’s a significant amount of cynicism, especially in forum or Reddit debates, and a portion of people assume the worst,” he said. “If a feature is missing, late, or buggy it’s because the company or the developer lied and or / is incompetent as opposed to the fact that it just took longer and had more problems than the team thought it would when they originally set out to build it.”
Roberts went on to say that developers are usually themselves optimistic. While this enthusiasm might run the risk of a developer not anticipating a future issue, this is not a bad thing, Roberts said.
“Developers by their very nature are optimistic. You have to be to build things that haven’t ever been built before. Otherwise the sheer weight of what is needed to be done can crush you. But being optimistic or not foreseeing issues isn’t the same as lying or deliberately misleading people,” he said. “Everyone at Cloud Imperium Games is incredibly passionate about making Star Citizen the most immersive massively multiplayer first person universe sandbox, and everyone works very hard to deliver that. If we could deliver harder, faster, better we would.”
“We get just as frustrated with the time things take. We practice bottom up task estimation where the team implementing the feature breaks it down and gives their estimates of how long it will take them,” Roberts added. “Management doesn’t dictate timelines, we just set priorities for the teams as there are always a lot more things to do at any one time than we have people to do them. We are constantly reviewing and trying to improve our AGILE development process and how we estimate sprints. As the code, feature and content base grows there is more maintenance and support needed for the existing features and content, which can eat into the time a team has for new feature development, meaning you always have the push and pull of current quality of life in a release versus delivering new features and content. The same push and pull exists in the community as there is a strong desire for polished bug free gameplay now but also new features and content, often from the very same people.”
Roberts added that he hopes the Star Citizen community can do a better job at speaking to developers in a constructive manner instead of lashing out with ad hominems.
“If you want to encourage me or other developers to answer questions then it helps to not turn around and question people’s professionalism or make sweeping statements,” he said. “If someone did that to you in your job I am sure it would be irritating. I have a thicker skin than most of the developers at CIG, and realize that not everyone is speaking in their first language or realizes how they phrased things may not have been the best, but in general it is best to approach things with constructive criticism, leaving the ad hominems out. Just saying something sucks isn’t helpful. Explaining why it sucks for that user, and their ideas to potentially rectify it is helpful.”
“This won’t stop people from disagreeing with our priority calls or how long something takes, but at least it will share the overall picture and people can see exactly what everyone is working on at any moment and how long it is projected to take,” he said. “They will be able to see it change when it does for us and hopefully appreciate how many people are working really hard to make Star Citizen a game like no other.”
In addition to Star Citizen, an off-shoot FPS game called Squadron 42 is in the works with some very big names attached to star in it. The cast includes Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman, Liam Cunningham, Gillian Anderson, Andy Serkis, John Rhys-Davies, Henry Cavill, and Ben Mendelsohn, among many others.
Star Citizen is the most successful crowdfunding project in history. As of September 15, the public funding campaign has exceeded more than $313 million USD.
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Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout has been a huge success, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. In a feature interview with PC Gamer, Paul Croft, founder of developer Mediatonic, has spoken about the team’s history–and the many, many games that led up to Fall Guys.
As PC Gamer points out, Mediatonic had worked on about 130 games before Fall Guys, including many web and flash games–here’s an incomplete list. In fact, it’s not even the first game the studio released in 2020–that would be picross narrative game Murder By Numbers. Other games they’ve worked on include Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess, Foul Play, Hatoful Boyfriend, Gears Pop!, Fable Fortune. The studio has also worked with Disney, Nickelodeon, Sega, Adult Swim, and other companies on major brands.
Croft talks about the studio’s first big success, 2008’s Amateur Surgeon–which was, on some level, much bigger than even Fall Guys. “That was a sort of huge moment for us,” Croft says. “It exploded online with 100 million players and that was a sort of turning point for us in terms of moving towards creating our own games as opposed to creating or porting games for brands.”
“We went from making flash games to making games on Myspace, then to making Facebook games, and then slowly expanded from there to console platforms and iPhones,” Croft says, reflecting on the studio’s journey as social gaming began to bloom. “It was easier to pivot and change direction because we weren’t locked into a three or four-year development cycle and we could keep pace with things.”
Croft notes that the studio started as two people, and has now grown to over 200 employees across four studios.
Fall Guys was first pitched internally in 2018 during GDC, Croft says. “Jeff Tanton, who’s our creative director and responsible for pitches in the studio, put a call out to the design team, and as part of that and I’m pretty sure part of his brief was no battle royales,” he notes.
He also notes, sadly, that because of social distancing it’s been hard to celebrate the game’s success. “We haven’t been able to get together and celebrate as a team with a giant party,” Croft says. “It’s been all online, which is what we have to do for now, but I’m looking forward to the day where we can all get together properly and celebrate the game.”
Fall Guys has just released its mid-season update, which has added a new huge hammer–which is, of course, called Big Yeetus.
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