Month: December 2020

Yakuza: Like a Dragon is potentially on many shortlists for 2020’s Game of the Year, and today you can pick it up for nearly half off its launch price.

At both Best Buy and Amazon, this soft reboot of the Yakuza franchise is going for $35, giving you few excuses not to dive head-first into the adventures of protagonist Ichiban and company.

Both versions, be it Xbox One and PS4, feature free upgrades to their respective next-generation versions. You can upgrade to the Xbox Series X and Series S version as soon as you purchase the game, but you’ll need to wait until March 2021 for the PlayStation 5 version to become available.

The big change that Like a Dragon introduces is turn-based combat, which transforms the game from its beat-em-up roots into something entirely new for the franchise. It still retains the charming characters and assortment of side activities to get lost in, so you should feel at home if you’ve enjoyed the Yakuza series in the past.

Even if you haven’t, Like a Dragon’s new protagonist and fresh story make it a great starting point, too. In our Yakuza: Like a Dragon review, editor Michael Higham wrote, “Yakuza: Like a Dragon is a passing of the torch, and a fantastic entry in a beloved franchise that proves that it’s in good hands with Kasuga Ichiban.”

Bandai Namco revealed a new trailer and screenshots for its soccer game Captain Tsubasa: Rise Of New Champions this week, highlighting new characters who’ll be added to the game’s roster.

Based on the classic manga and anime series created by Yōichi Takahashi, the first DLC for the game will add Swedish nobleman Stevan Levin, Mexican ace goalkeeper Ricardo Espadas, and martial arts striker Singprasert Bunnaak from Thailand.

Each character has their own set of flashy special moves, such as Bunnaak’s Muay Thai-influenced kicks that can send a soccer ball hurtling at dangerous speeds or Espada’s unbreakable defense in the goalkeeper’s pit.

An upcoming patch will also add a new episode for the New Hero campaign, in which players can join the Otomo Middle School soccer team in a revenge match against their rivals, Nankatsu Middle School.

A new assist mode is also being added, while Versus and Online Versus mode will receive new balance changes.

Back in September, the Xbox Game Pass Twitter account playfully teased adding the brutal first-person shooter Doom Eternal to its catalog. While console Game Pass players have had access to the sequel since October, PC Game Pass users have been waiting for its release for months. Now, we know that the game will come to the PC service on December 3.

To be clear, Doom Eternal on Game Pass is the base campaign, meaning it does not include the game’s DLC episodes, including the already-released The Ancient Gods, Part 1. According to director Marty Stratton, Part 2 will come at some point between now and March 2021, so keep an eye out for that.

Considering that Microsoft bought Bethesda recently, the publisher of these new Doom games, it makes sense that this high-profile sequel will come to Microsoft’s flagship games service. (The software giant claims the purchase isn’t about exclusivity, but we’ll have to see about that.) In GameSpot’s Doom Eternal review, our critic Phil Hornshaw called the game an intelligently-designed follow-up to one of the most intense shooters in years.

“Though it can take a bit to get the hang of it, the intricacies of Doom Eternal’s combat, combined with its enhanced mobility and option-heavy level design, create a ton of white-knuckle moments that elevate everything that made Doom 2016 work so well,” he wrote. “Its combat is just as quick and chaotic, but requires you to constantly analyze everything that’s happening in order to come out victorious. Once you get the hang of the rhythm of Doom Eternal, it’ll make you feel like a demon-slaying savant.”

Nintendo’s Super Mario 35th anniversary celebration continues this week with a new event in Tetris 99. The online puzzler’s 18th Maximus Cup kicks off on December 3, and this time around, players will have a chance to unlock a theme based on the classic SNES collection Super Mario All-Stars.

Like previous Maximus Cups, this week’s event is a point-based competition. Players will earn a different amount of points depending on how well they place in a round. If you can amass at least 100 points before the Maximus Cup ends, you’ll unlock the Super Mario All-Stars theme for the game. You can get a glimpse at that theme in action below.

The Maximus Cup runs until 10:59 PM PT on December 7 (1:59 AM ET on December 8). As usual, you’ll need to have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription to participate in the event. An individual membership costs $4 for one month, $8 for three months, and $20 for one year, while an annual Family Plan costs $35 and covers up to eight Nintendo Accounts.

If this week’s Maximus Cup puts you in the mood to play some classic Mario games, the original Super Mario All-Stars was added to Switch Online’s SNES library earlier this year. Nintendo also released a 3D collection called Super Mario 3D All-Stars. That, however, will only be on sale until March 31, 2021.

Nintendo still has a few other crossovers planned as part of its Super Mario 35th anniversary festivities. In January, Splatoon 2 is holding a Mario-themed Splatfest, while Animal Crossing: New Horizons is getting a line of Super Mario furniture in March.

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Ernest Cline’s 2011 bestseller Ready Player One introduced readers to the OASIS, a VR wonderland where players, through their avatars, could live, work, and play all day, every day. After James Halliday, the OASIS’ creator, passes away, he leaves behind one hell of a quest for the denizens of his virtual world: find his hidden Easter egg, win control of the OASIS itself and become a multi-billionaire in the process. Ready Player Two reuses the broad strokes of that plot to comment on artificial intelligence, how we interface with technology, and hero worship, but becomes so mired in these incomplete explorations that it loses sight of what made Ready Player One special in the first place.

Ready Player Two opens with a prologue that picks up right after protagonist Wade Watts/Parzival wins Halliday’s hunt, immediately sidestepping the happy ending when Wade discovers another secret Halliday left behind: the OASIS Neural Interface (ONI) headset. Where players are used to experiencing the OASIS through VR headsets and haptic peripherals, an ONI headset delivers the OASIS straight into the brain, opening the door to experiencing the virtual world in a whole new way. Just don’t use it for more than 12 hours or the thing’ll fry your brain and kill you! That definitely won’t be a problem later on! The decision to release the ONI to the public creates a rift between Wade and Samantha/Art3mis, making running Gregarious Simulation Systems together with their friends Aech and Shoto quite awkward over the next three years. On top of that, the ONI’s release has triggered a second hunt left behind by Halliday for an artifact called the Siren’s Soul, which Wade is meant to collect.

It doesn’t take long for OASIS users to become completely addicted to this new way of experiencing the digital world, Wade included. The ONI is capable of letting users record and vicariously experience other users’ lives, both in and out of the OASIS. Wade righteously opines that this new tech has opened the door to new levels of global empathy by letting users step into each others’ shoes, but the argument feels like it’s on shaky ground when the #1 ONI recording worldwide is a 50-person orgy and GSS has to employ a team just to monitor illegal, illicit ONI uploads. That potential problem of escalation is completely ignored as Wade hunts for the Siren’s Soul.

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It was a huge swing to center the plot around another Easter egg quest and ultimately, it’s a diminished return. The first had a clear prize that the entire world was fighting for, and in an impoverished future, control of the OASIS is quite the golden ticket. Not only that, but the hunt was rooted in Wade’s enthusiasm for Halliday and the affinity for pop culture they both shared. Wade’s search for the Siren’s Soul, on the other hand, suffers from the mystique that surrounds the Macguffin’s nature. We spend much of the novel not knowing what Wade’s fighting for, but we at least know why: the villain’s using that pesky 12-hour ONI usage limit as a ticking time bomb of a bargaining chip to get Wade to collect the artifact for them, an exchange with some seriously uncomfortable implications once you find out what the Siren’s Soul actually is.

While just as fantastical as ever, the OASIS proves to be a more exhausting setting this time around. The first novel featured a healthy back-and-forth between the real and virtual worlds, giving us a lot more perspective on how the events in the OASIS were affecting the outside world. Due to the nature of the villain’s plot, and the fact that Wade sadly remains the only POV character in the book, nearly all of the action is locked into the OASIS this time around. That feels like a missed opportunity on two fronts. Not only are the real-world stakes of Wade’s quest massive and worth checking in on with more depth and regularity than they are, Wade continues to be kind of a tough guy to root for and giving us a break from his perspective in favor of, say, Samantha’s may have been a nice change of pace. Too often, it feels like Wade hasn’t carried forward any of the lessons about humility and connection he learned in his first adventure. A lot of his faults were more forgivable last time because he was an outsider, a poor kid with a lot to learn about the world and other people. But after that kid’s had a chance to learn those lessons and become one of the wealthiest people on Earth, you’re less inclined to cut him some slack, especially given how often he demonstrates a complete lack of self-awareness.

As Wade himself serves as a constant reminder of, Ready Player Two has a rocky relationship with hero worship. James Halliday’s failings in life take more of the spotlight this time around, and the benefits of his works increasingly feel like they aren’t worth the trouble. The wonders the next-level applications his technology are opening the door to here seem to outweigh the responsibility Halliday has for the damage they could (and do) result in for Wade and his friends. This feels frustratingly shortsighted, considering the expanded consciousness that Halliday has pioneered in his virtual world hardly seems entirely ethical, or even safe. Wade has become a hero to many (but a villain to more) in his own right, and new ally Lohengrin’s fanboy obsession with him, kneeling and calling him “sir” and all, edges the book into self-parody at times, and Wade just going along with it makes it feel like unintentional self-parody.

If you loved Ready Player One for its myriad pop culture references, you’ll be happy to hear they recur here in the sequel, and this time around end up feeling less egregious. Because this second hunt is pretty much entirely for Wade, much of the elitism that came with competing Gunters sparring with each other over minutiae and judging those they believed to be poseurs is gone. There are plenty of new worlds centered on fan-favorite movies, music, and literature for Wade and his friends to traverse, and the inside jokes and clear reverence toward the material keep Ready Player Two from feeling like a total misfire.

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Developer PUBG Corporation, the team responsible for the battle royale PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, has merged with a subsidiary of the PUBG brand to form a brand-new studio.

Called PUBG Studio, the team is composed of the PUBG Corporation and Krafton Inc. subsidiaries. The studio will now focus exclusively on the development of its main properties, particularly PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and its mobile counterpart, PUBG Mobile. PUBG Studio is also in charge of expanding the PUBG property in various fields, including esports.

In addition to the main merger, Krafton Inc. announced that two other subsidiaries, Delusion Studio (Castle Burn) and PNIX Inc. (Archery King, Bowling King), have consolidated into the new mobile game studio RisingWings Inc. Though RisingWings’ focus is centered on casual and mobile titles, the studio will also provide global support for existing games such as Golf King: Wolf Tour and MiniGolf King while working on other projects set to release in early 2021.

With the latest consolidations, there are now four studios that live under Krafton: Bluehole, which is focused on MMORPGs like TERA; PUBG Studio; RisingWings; and Striking Distance Studios, a AAA developer helmed by Sledgehammer Games co-founder Glen Schofield that is working on a narrative-driven PUBG experience.

Krafton Inc. is a South Korean-based holding company founded by Bluehole in November 2018 in order to unify the various brands that exist under or are related to PUBG.

Microsoft Flight Simulator will receive free virtual reality support in its next update on December 22. VR support was first announced in July, with developer Asobo originally aiming to time the release of that content with the launch of HP’s Reverb G2 headset and support for other devices coming at a later date.

Those plans have changed, as executive producer Martial Bossard confirmed in a Twitch Q&A that VR support will arrive for all PC headsets in Sim Update 2.

“It will be open to all devices,” executive producer Martial Bossard said in the stream. “Oculus family, Valve family – every family of headset is going to be supported.”

VR will be used in both gameplay and menu navigation so that the experience can be seamless and won’t require users to remove their headsets during play. Beyond the addition of VR, there’s a lot more content scheduled for Microsoft Flight Simulator in 2021 and beyond.

World Update 3 will launch on January 28 and add new landmarks, bush trips, and between 50-60 points of interest to the United Kingdom, replay functionality, multiple-screen setups, and even flyable helicopters.

In our Microsoft Flight Simulator review, critic Edmond Tran described the game is a “spectacular technical achievement and a deeply inspiring experience filled with glorious possibilities.”