Author: sick skills

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Now Available on Steam – Killer Instinct

Killer Instinct is Now Available on Steam!

The legendary fighting franchise is back with over-the-top action, a wild cast of combatants, rocking reactive music, and C-C-C-COMBO BREAKERS!!! Choose your ultimate combatants each with fluid animations, unique combat tactics, and enthralling special attacks. Use the open-ended combo system to rack up huge combos as your opponent looks for openings to break you and turn the tides of battle. Go online and compete against players from all over the world, or master your combat skills with in-depth tutorials and intelligent AI combatants.

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Fall into October’s Games with Gold

Editor’s Note: We’ve adjusted the artwork associated with this post to correctly list the 3200 gamerscore points you can earn with October’s Games with Gold. Apologies for any confusion this may have caused.

Add to your ever-growing collection of great games on Xbox thanks to October’s Games with Gold! Starting October 1 on Xbox One, play the emotionally gripping first-person narrative adventure game Gone Home: Console Edition. Then on October 16, take to the stars in the challenging sci-fi puzzle game The Turing Test.

Also in October for Xbox 360, and Xbox One through Backward Compatibility, the classic Xbox Live Arcade platformer Rayman 3 HD will be available to play, as well as the epic World War II first-person shooter Medal of Honor: Airborne.

All games will be available for a limited time as part of Games with Gold, so get Xbox Live Gold today to get in on the action.

Gone Home: Console Edition

Interactive storytelling is at the heart of this award-winning, genre-defining game. Imagine coming home after a year abroad to find none of your family home. As you move through the house, interact with keepsakes and photographs and other clues to uncover what happened. From the creators of the recently-released Tacoma on Xbox One.

The Turing Test

Engage your logic skills for this first-person puzzler set on Jupiter’s moon, Europa. In The Turning Test, use your Energy Manipulation Tool (EMT) to transfer power in and out of many machines and giant structures that can help you as the narrative-focused story evolves.

Rayman 3 HD

The charming 3D platformer returns in high-def! Jump, fly, and fight your way through the fantastic world of Rayman 3 HD and take on an army of Hoodlums led by the Black Lum, Andre. With remastered visuals and updated audio, this is the definitive version of Rayman 3.

Medal of Honor: Airborne

How you decide to approach Medal of Honor: Airborne starts the moment you jump out of the plane. Control your drop as you navigate to a desired insertion point to put yourself in the thick of the fight. Then navigate through the war-torn villages and towns to gain an advantage over your enemies on rooftops, balconies and other ruins. With customizable weapons and free-roaming objectives, and local and online co-op, this is a fantastic shooter to add to your library.

Read more about our Games with Gold program here and stay tuned to Xbox Wire for all the latest news on Xbox.

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Oxenfree Comes to the North American eShop on 6th October

An interesting experiment in the realm of storytelling in games, Oxenfree was a notable indie release of last year; chronicling the story of a young group of adventurers that find themselves unravelling the ghostly secrets of a deserted island. It was rather well received when it debuted on other platforms, and it seems that Switch owners in North America won’t have much longer to wait until they can try it out on the hybrid.

The listing for the game on the eShop pegs it for a 6th October release date, so it’s only a little over a week and a half away in the region. The game made its name on a smartly designed conversation system that closely mimics the nuance of real life conversations, while also having an impact on the narrative, so it’ll be interesting to see how it all holds up on the Switch. Check out a trailer below:

What do you think? Will you be picking this up? How important do you find narrative to a video game? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Stardew Valley Has Been Finalized on Nintendo Switch

Stardew Valley is one of the most anticipated upcoming indie releases on the horizon for the Nintendo Switch, and it’s been known for a while that the game is essentially good to go on the platform, with just some final approvals barring the way to release. The Rune Factory-esque sim game has made quite a cultural impact on other platforms and will no doubt prove to be right at home on the Switch, and now it seems that the game has been given the green light.

Chucklefish recently posted a tweet saying that Nintendo has approved the game for the Switch, so now all that’s left is for the company to work out a release date and then it’ll be live on the eShop. Certainly good news to hear, as there’s no other game like this in the Switch’s relatively young library yet, and given the success that other indies have found on the platform, this one’s sure to shine bright. Here’s the launch trailer from its debut last year:

What do you think? Will you be picking this up? If you played it on other platforms, what did you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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LEGO Worlds Just Got a New Update

Suffice to say, we weren’t all too impressed with LEGO Worlds when it came out a few weeks ago, as the subpar performance and janky gameplay made it an experience that simply wasn’t all that much fun to play. Even so, we held off on giving it a score until the full experience could be delivered—an online mode was promised to be coming in an update shortly after launch. Now, the update has finally gone out, and it does make a series of notable changes to the game.

There’s no patch notes out, so the playerbase is still trying to figure out exactly what all was changed. The biggest and most obvious change is that you can now play in a two-player online mode, though with the provision that the other player has to be on your friends list; no random matchups here. Additionally, there have been some performance changes; the game now seems to run at a solid 30 FPS, though the draw distance and resolution also seem to have taken a hit. Perhaps the exchange was necessary, but it honestly looks a lot better in motion now than it did before the update. And, of course, the final and most important change is that the Switch menu icon for the game has been updated to reflect the box art. Much better.

What do you think? Do you like the changes that were made with this update? What do you think of LEGO Worlds on the Switch? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Bungie Bounty – Gigz

Destiny 2 has been out for a few weeks now. It’s now time to bring back the old ritual of placing a bounty on someone’s head and watching the community hunt them down to claim sweet rewards. This will be the first instance of the Bungie Bounty showing up in Destiny 2, and we are placing it on a member of our community who goes by the name of Gigz. Where can you find him?

Bungie Bounty: Gigz

When:  September 27, 2017

8:00–10:00 p.m. (Pacific)

Playlist: Competitive

Console: PS4

We are changing up the format a bit. Instead of Gigz going in solo, this will be a true Bungie Bounty. He will have the following fireteam of Bungie folk backing him up: 

Tocom – Kevin Yanes, Senior Designer

We won’t be revealing anything on stream – our mission will be to play some games with the community and to give out emblems to anyone who can best us at our own game. All you need to do to claim your emblem is match against us and win.

What is this about an emblem?

We have a brand new one to give out for Bungie Bounties in Destiny 2. Feast your eyes on the Sign of Mutual Combat:

All winners will receive their emblem in the Collections section of their vault within a week. I’ll make the announcement on my Twitter. You can see the emblems in your vault at any of the social spaces.

We will have more Bounties for you in the future, so if this time or console doesn’t work for you, stay tuned for the next Bungie Bounty on Xbox One. 

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Super Mario Kart’s competitive scene is still going strong, 25 years on

“[Super Mario Kart] is not like in the recent Mario Karts where you can be trolled by blue shells and be successively hit by 11 opponents. The fact that we still discover new strategies and beat the World Records on a weekly basis makes it really attractive.”

– Super Mario Kart world champ Julien “ScouB” Holmière, speaking to Polygon.

What makes a game like Super Mario Kart timeless?

According to devoted player Sami Cetin, at least part of it has to do with the fact that the 1992 SNES racer doesn’t have a blue shell, which first debuted in Mario Kart 64 and has since inspired much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Cetin has been played Super Mario Kart competitively for decades, going so far as to establish a website dedicated to tracking Super Mario Kart time trial world records (in 1998!) that has since inspired an annual Super Mario Kart World Championship to see who’s the fastest of them all.

Cetin himself won in 2012, and in a new Polygon feature he and current world champ Julien Holmière explain why players continue to find new depths to this 25-year-old game.  

“Being a top player in [Super Mario Kart] requires a huge effort, because there are so many techniques to familiarize yourself with,” Holmière told Polygon. “The handling is much harder than on the recent Mario Karts. When you first play Super Mario Kart you will barely go full speed and barely stay on the track.”

The World Championship isn’t just about racing, either; it requires would-be champions to compete in a variety of game modes, including head-to-head Battle Mode. 

“It all ties in together,” Cetin explained. “A good racer can be a better racer if they have mastered Time Trials; otherwise if their opponent gets out of sight then they [will] have to rely on powerful weapons which may have a very low probability. Similarly, a tactical racer can cause problems for a Time Trial player, providing they are not too much slower. It is a game of chess in a way when playing competitively.”

To read more about how the Super Mario Kart competitive scene works, and what it means to those who participate, you can (and should) read the full article over on Polygon.

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Valve rep: No Steam Dev Days this year, not likely next year either

Any devs still holding out hope of an invite to Steam Dev Days this year should probably pack it in, as Valve’s Tom Giardino noted on Twitter this weekend that there won’t be one in 2017 — and 2018 isn’t looking good, either.

It’s something devs should know about, but not at all unusual; after launching Dev Days in 2014, Valve took a pass on 2015 because, according to a company representative, it didn’t make sense in a year when Valve didn’t debut a bunch of new tech.

In 2016, the year the HTC Vive and other VR headsets made their commercial debut, Valve decided to revive its Steam developer conference with a special focus on VR.

While there won’t be a similar event this year, curious devs can of course still go back and watch Dev Days talks from 2014 and 2016, which feature speakers like Michael Abrash (when he was still at Valve), Tim Sweeney, and a number of other notable game industry types. 

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Atlus tries, fails to take down Patreon for PS3 emulator via DMCA

Sega-owned game company Atlus Co. confirmed today that it attempted to get the Patreon for the PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 taken down by invoking its rights to Persona 5 under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

What’s especially interesting here is how wide Atlus aimed with its DMCA takedown attempt, shooting not so much to stop people from talking about or emulating Persona 5 on PC but to stop anyone from financially supporting (via Patreon, at least) the RPCS3 emulation group at all.

The company appears to have been only partially successful; in a statement posted today on Reddit, a representative of the RPCS3 dev team claims that on Saturday Patreon (but not the dev team) received notice that Atlus had filed a DMCA takedown against the RPCS3 Patreon page.

Notably, Patreon reportedly pushed back, stating that they believed the emulation group’s work fell under fair use and that the emulator itself did not infringe on any of Atlus’ copyrights. Atlus reportedly retorted that the RPCS3 website gave specific instructions on how “circumvent our DRM protections” by dumping copies of PS3 games so they can be played on an emulator. As of now, the RPCS3 Patreon page is still up but all mention of Persona 5 have been removed from both it and the RPCS3 website.

“In discussion with the very helpful people over at Patreon we have decided to proceed with caution,” the respresentative added. “Per the request of Patreon, we removed every single reference to Persona 5 on the Patreon page itself and rpcs3.net. This seems to have resolved the situation.”

Atlus has a track record of being touchy about the notion of people seeing Persona 5 without paying for it, blocking it from being shared via the PS4’s social features and setting limits (backed up by threat of contentID strikes) earlier this year on how much of the game YouTubers and streamers may show. 

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Japan Is Getting A New HDMI Super Famicom That Also Plays SNES Games

A 16-bit revival

Japanese company Columbus Circle is hopping on board the SNES Mini hype train by releasing its own clone of the popular 16-bit console.

The SFC Compact HDMI console launched in Japan today and plays both Super Famicom and NA/EU SNES cartridges. 

It comes bundled with two controllers, an AC adapter and both HDMI and AV cables, and costs 9,936 Yen (approximately $90 / £66).

This system will be fighting for the attention of consumers alongside Hyperkin’s upcoming Supa Retron HD, which also plays SNES games in high definition. Are you tempted to invest? Let us know with a comment.

[via japanesenintendo.com, columbuscircle.co.jp]