Tetsuya Nomura, director of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, has hinted that Square Enix is considering revisiting other entries in the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7, which includes games like Before Crisis, Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus and the film Advent Children.
Reported by Famitsu (via translations provided by Gematsu), Nomura was participating in a Q&A session for The World Ends With You: Final Remix when a fan said “I want to play Before Crisis: Final Fantasy 7 again!”
Ubisoft has announced live-action adaptions for two of its games. The developer is working on scripts for a TV series based on Child of Light and a film about the event of Werewolves Within.
According to Variety, both adaptions are a part of Ubisoft’s Women’s Film and Television Fellowship, a program conceived in 2017 to “illuminate female voices within the entertainment industry.” Both adaptations are being written by two of the fellows, Mishna Wolff and Tasha Huo. After being selected, both women were offered the chance to pick one of Ubisoft’s games to transform into a movie or TV series. Wolff wanted to adapt Werewolves Within while Huo picked Child of Light.
“[The game] kept popping into my head,” Wolff said, in regards to her decision to adapt Werewolves Within. “It was just demanding I tell a story.” Huo knew she wanted to tackle Child of Light before even starting the fellowship. “We love that the game centers around Aurora discovering strength,” Huo said. “I love video games and I’m passionate about them, but you want people who have never heard of these games to fall in love with them.”
“We were so thrilled with the outcome of this fellowship, it is exactly what we wanted,” Ubisoft director of film Margaret Boykin said. “We were so lucky to work with these two women.” Ubisoft is also putting together an upcoming movie based on the Rabbids games, Tom Clancy’s The Division, and the Splinter Cell games. The developer is also working on a sequel for 2016’s Assassin’s Creed and movies about Watch Dogs and Far Cry.
Child of Light is a 2014 platformer RPG where players take control of a young, selfish princess named Aurora, who one night falls asleep and awakens in another world called Lemuria. After she befriends a firefly named Igniculus, Aurora is told to collect the stars, sun, and moon and return light to Lemuria. She meets an odd assortment of individuals on her quest, and together the group of misfits mature and grow together. In our Child of Light review, we gave the game an 8/10, congratulating it on its willingness to “explore the dull ache” of woe and enjoying its “interesting and engaging” combat.
Werewolves Within is a 2016 spin on the party game Mafia. A VR title, players sit around a campfire in a small town meeting. Some players are secretly werewolves while everyone else are ordinary townsfolk. The werewolves must keep their identity a secret to win, while the other players use clues to try and deduce who amongst them isn’t really human. In our Werewolves Within review, we gave the game a 7/10, describing its matches as “hair-raising, pulse-quickening experiences” but wishing there was more there to get players to “return to the game.”
While playing the first handful of hours of Red Dead Redemption 2, I was coming to terms with kinda sorta…hating it. Rockstar’s sprawling western just wasn’t for me. It was too plodding, too deliberate, too time-consuming, and too dull. So many of the game’s systems seemed designed deliberately to keep you from having fun while playing it. No matter how much I liked the original Red Dead Redemption–a game I’d fully completed in 2010, despite a lot of the same sorts of issues–I was getting ready to let the sequel ride off into the sunset that is deleting it off my PS4 hard drive.
Then I hit one of the game’s best scenes (at least, so far), and it significantly changed my mind.
It’s not exactly an easy task to get to that scene if you’re already at odds with the game’s pace. It comes in Chapter 2, after you have gone through quite a few tutorial missions, learning about brushing horses, tracking and hunting game through the wilderness, and improving camp. Red Dead 2’s story isn’t in any particular hurry to pull you along, but eventually you spend time with all of the Van der Linde gang’s characters, and hanging around with them starts to become the story in itself. One mission sees you and your comrades mounting a rescue mission to save Sean, an outlaw pal who was captured by bounty hunters off-screen in the earlier Blackwater job that happens before the game’s start.
It’s not the mission to save Sean that turned the corner for Red Dead 2. That’s another of those “fight a bunch of guys” missions common to video games, where you gun down a small army while ducking behind trees and random bits of wood to hide incoming fire. Red Dead 2’s gunplay isn’t especially engaging most of the time; leaving the game’s sticky aim assist on basically does the work for you, but turning it off makes picking out targets finicky and difficult. But the gang and I managed to clear out the bounty hunters holding Sean and secure his release, safe and sound.
One evening not long after rescuing Sean, I returned to camp to find everyone in good spirits. Dutch, the gang’s leader, declared Sean’s return a major victory, and before long, a full-blown party started. Scattered groups of people in the gang started pounding whiskey, singing, dancing, and conversing. The camp came alive as the characters cut loose and had a rare bit of fun.
The party scene is, so far, my favorite thing that’s happened in Red Dead 2. You can wander around, sitting by campfires and joining in as other members of the gang sing songs, to which protagonist Arthur doesn’t always know all the words. You can ask one of the women of the gang for a dance, and somewhat clumsily sway with her, or offer a quick dip. You can listen to a variety of interactions, including Sean drunkenly trying to convince one of the camp’s women, Karen, that he’s in love with her–and then to their tryst in a tent, where both break down in whiskey driven tears. It’s a moment that’s both heartfelt and hilarious, especially when Sean stumbles back out of the tent afterward and playfully calls Arthur a creep.
The party lasts through the night, and while there’s not a particularly large amount to actually do from a gameplay standpoint, it’s one of the better moments in Red Dead 2 because it takes advantage of what’s great about the game: its characters. You spend the party just learning about the people who make up the gang, and time spent with them deepens the story moments and conversations that come later.
It’s nice, too, that for as much shooting and stabbing as you do in Red Dead 2, there are ways to interact with its world that don’t come at the end of a gun barrel. The games industry is full of triple-A titles that have huge, beautiful, imaginative worlds, but your only way of taking part in those worlds is to kill the stuff within them. For all that imagination, the reality of what games offer is usually pretty narrow: kill, or be killed. In Red Dead 2, there are at least these other opportunities, where interacting with characters is as rewarding as sticking them up or gunning them down.
Video games as a medium often still struggle in trying to tell compelling stories, specifically focusing on plot and action while relegating character development and worldbuilding to collectible notes and audio logs. Games often feel like their creators fear that if players aren’t constantly running from one battle to the next, they’ll stop playing altogether–there’s no time to waste on populating many games with people, even though the people within them are what make humans so interested in stories in the first place.
Red Dead 2 isn’t afraid to let you stop and just spend time with its characters. The party scene has no real gameplay loop, there’s no achievement or trophy tied to it, and you can basically set your controller down for most of it. Red Dead 2’s confidence in its characters is such that the game is okay with you not playing for a bit, but instead just being there, in that moment it’s trying to create for you. Rockstar’s willingness to try to leave you in moments like that is refreshing, because so many games and developers aren’t. When other developers are looking at Red Dead 2’s success, I hope that’s the lesson they take from it.
Nintendo has announced that more than 10 million NES Classic and SNES Classic units have been sold since both consoles released. First launching to high demand in November 2016, the NES Classic was cancelled in April 2017 and then re-released in June 2018. The SNES Classic released in September 2017.
During Nintendo’s financial results briefing, president Shuntaro Furukawa stated both Classic consoles’ success suggested there might be “even greater demand during the holiday season.” Furukawa did not discuss either unit’s future during the briefing, and did not remark whether this success might justify the creation of additional Classic consoles–for Nintendo 64 or GameCube, for example–or the addition of more NES games on Switch Online.
Nintendo has also released the updated list of the company’s global game sales data for both Switch and 3DS. The biggest change in the Switch list is Mario Tennis Aces, which shot up to the number six spot with 2.16 million copies sold, after being number 10 during the last update. The big four–Super Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Splatoon 2–remain in the top, while the rest of the list has shuffled around a bit. With Nintendo adopting a pay to play online model for the Switch, it will be interesting to see if Splatoon 2 can continue to remain in the top four, or if it will be knocked out by another game in the coming months.
The full list of the top 10 games on both Switch and 3DS are listed below.
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The Elite Pro 2 + SuperAmp is the latest wired 7.1 surround sound headset from Turtle Beach (See it on Amazon). As its name suggests, this headset sits near the top of the company’s lineup and commands an unsurprisingly high price of $249; a $50 premium over the previous Elite Pro model. The reason for the price bump is because it now has surround sound and an included SuperAmp control unit. Unlike the previous Elite Pro’s Tactical Audio Controller (TAC), the new version swaps out a breakout box with multiple sliders for a Bluetooth-connected hardware wheel and a mobile app to streamline the operation a bit. The new Elite Pro 2 is offered in versions for either Xbox or Playstation, so PC gamers will have to stick with the older model, for now.
Whereas normally a review would try to get to the heart of what makes a game fun (or not), in the case of a compilation like the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection I’m judging the work that was put into curating, presenting, contextualizing, and enhancing the artifacts on display. These games are relics of another time, and in some cases not much fun to play today. But video game history is important, and I’m grateful developer Digital Eclipse is willing to do the work to preserve games that most people today probably haven’t even heard of.
Digital Eclipse, known for its work on the Mega Man Legacy Collection and the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, has put together another attractive museum exhibit for retro game fans to stroll through. The SNK 40th Anniversary Collection focuses on the pre-Neo Geo years of the company — basically the ‘80s (or The Greatest Decade, as I like to call it). Fourteen games are included at launch:
This post contains spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 9, episode 5, “What Comes After.”
AMC’s The Walking Dead unloaded quite a bit on us this past Sunday. Not just with Andrew Lincoln’s official exit from the series – which we all knew was coming – but with the news that Lincoln would be starring in three Walking Dead movies. On top of this, creating some non-Rick Grimes buzz, there was a huge time jump during the final moments of the episode.
November’s round of PlayStation Plus freebies is now available to anyone who has a subscription to the online service. This month adds a unique take on the first-person shooter, a detailed RPG set in modern-day Japan, and plenty of game-show and arcade action. They will be available through December 4 on the PlayStation Store.
As previously announced, the PlayStation 4 offerings this month include Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition and Yakuza Kiwami. Bulletstorm is a remastered version of the over-the-top first-person shooter, with a unique grapple mechanic that lets you yo-yo enemies to control the battlefield. Yakuza Kiwami is a remake of the very first Yakuza game from 2006, following Kazuma Kiryu as he tries to find a load of cash stolen from his gang.
PS3 owners get Jackbox Party Pack 2, the party mini-game collection that links up with your smartphones to serve as controllers. The retro-styled Arkedo Series is also available on PS3 as well. Finally, the Vita gets throwback B-movie game Roundabout and the adventure game Burly Men at Sea. Both of those Vita offerings are also available on PS4 for good measure.
As always, these games will be linked with your PlayStation Plus subscription, and will be available as long as you have it. If you unsubscribe, you’ll also lose access to the games. If you’re in the market for more cheap games, meanwhile, keep an eye on our Black Friday round-ups.
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Fortnite‘s 6.22 update has arrived, bringing a new weapon as well as two limited-time modes to the hit game. While the Fortnitemares event may now be over in Battle Royale, the Halloween spirit carries on in one of this week’s LTMs, a brand-new mode dubbed Team Terror.
Much like other team-based LTMs, Team Terror pits two teams of players (in this case, 32 vs. 32) against each other in a battle to be the last side standing. What sets it apart from previous modes, however, is the presence of Cube Monsters, the zombie-like creatures that first appeared during the aforementioned Fortnitemares event. These will spawn around the island as the match rolls on, adding a PvE element to the LTM.
Destroying Cube Monsters will cause them to drop weapons or ammo, giving you an incentive to take down any you come across. Resource and loot drop rates have also been adjusted for the new LTM. The likelihood of floor loot spawning has been increased by 15%, and farming resources have been increased by 75%. You can find more details on Team Terror in Epic’s patch notes.
In addition to Team Terror, Epic has brought back a previous LTM this week: Blitz. This is a much faster-paced version of a standard battle royale game; the match begins with the storm already closing in on the island, and the time between storm circles is much shorter than normal, so each match will last about 15 minutes at most. Loot is also much more plentiful in Blitz mode, further speeding the action up.
Beyond the new LTMs, the 6.22 update introduced a new gun to the game: the Heavy Assault Rifle. It’s available in Rare, Epic, and Legendary variants and can be found as floor loot or in chests, vending machines, and supply drops. Epic has also reverted the Pumpkin Launcher back to the standard Rocket Launcher and reduced the spawn rate of the new balloons.
There seems to be nothing Minecraft players can’t or won’t build in the game. Case in point, Microsoft has now constructed its own corporate headquarters inside the game it bought for $2.5 billion in 2014.
CNBC reports that Microsoft hired Blockworks, a UK design studio that works in Minecraft, to give employees an advance look at a planned refresh of Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington campus. The 500-acre campus’ overhaul is scheduled to be finished in 2022.
Microsoft’s decision to preview the project in Minecraft came about when an employee saw his son playing the game. He realized Minecraft could be used to show employees the planned campus changes well ahead of their completion, and in a more immersive way than traditional building renders can.