Fortnite’s eighth season is just three days away, with players across Switch and all other platforms gearing up for a brand new set of challenges, skins, and crazy shooter antics.
Epic Games has been leaving teasers for the new season on the official Fortnite Twitter account over the last couple of days. The first one clearly indicates that pirates are set to be involved, with today’s update showing a snake. Could snakes be hiding inside the mysterious eggs which have spawned on the map? We’ll have to wait and see.
Elsewhere, a recent Fortnite AMA session (thanks, Eurogamer) revealed that players should be expecting bananas. We’d love to give you more info on what this actually means, but Epic Games simply used “bananas” to sum up the upcoming season in one word. It would also appear that planes are set to be a thing of the past with the new season, so make sure to get as much fun as you can from them over the next few days.
If you missed the news, players currently have the chance to earn a Season 8 Battle Pass for free by completing in-game challenges. While it hasn’t been confirmed to be the case, this may well have been put in place to combat the game’s new battle royale competitor, Apex Legends, with Epic Games hoping to keep players interested despite the new experience available elsewhere.
Do you still regularly play Fortnite? Will you be jumping back in for the eighth season? Let us know in the usual place.
We were rather fond of Detective Pikachu on Nintendo 3DS, so much so that we said we’d like to see certain traits of the game be brought forward as standards for the series in our review. Naturally, hearing the news of a full feature film based on the game had us excited and worried in equal measure, but we’ve never been more sure that Ryan Reynolds is the perfect man for the star role.
Today, Reynolds has shared a short clip where he talks about his role as the walking, talking Pikachu. Things start off seeming pretty serious, but you’ll soon start to realise that the whole thing is a joke, full of the humour and style you’d expect from the leading man. He talks about refusing to pick up his daughters from school because Pikachu doesn’t have daughters, and wanting to lose 182 pounds to be the correct weight. It’s worth a watch.
Excitingly, the video arrives alongside confirmation that a new trailer for the film is set to be shared tomorrow. We’ll make sure to keep an eye out for that one and share it with you lovely readers when it drops.
Still hyped for this one? Did you see the latest trailer which was shared earlier this month? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
The three games will hit the eShop on May 21st. In North America, there will be the option to purchase Zero and RE1 in a box under the title Resident Evil Origins Collection, but in Europe no mention has been made of a physical copy – which would suggest they will be digital exclusives, but we’d love to be proven wrong on that score.
The original game will be the HD Remaster version, which is based on the GameCube remaster from what back when. Resident Evil Zero was a GameCube exclusive for a time, as was the fourth entry, and they’ve all been re-released on the Wii in the past. Now we’ll get the chance to experience the horror in portable form.
That still means we have a Resident Evil 2-sized hole in our library (and space for Resident Evil 3, of course), but it should be more than enough zombie-slaying action for most people. Which are you looking forward to playing the most?
Publisher Deep Silver has finally lifted the lid on the Nintendo Switch release date for Saints Row: The Third – The Full Package. We’re pleased to let you know that you’ll be able to get your hands on it from 10th May.
The news comes from a tweet shared by the studio today; no other details were given, but we’re happy to have a date now confirmed.
The third instalment of the Saints Row franchise, this game has players leading the Third Street Saints gang in a bid to overtake its rivals in the city. The series is often compared to Grand Theft Auto thanks to its open world setting and the weapons and vehicles used throughout.
Last year, it was confirmed that the game would include all previously released DLC, explaining the reasoning behind the game’s cheeky ‘Full Package’ title. If you haven’t played this one before, check out this trailer from the original 2011 release.
Will you be getting this one as soon as it launches this May? Are you excited to play it on Switch? Let us know in the comments below.
Square Enix has today shared two new trailers for upcoming Final Fantasy games on Nintendo Switch. The trailers have arrived alongside news that both games are now available to pre-order from the Nintendo eShop.
We’ve gathered these trailers and information on each release for you below.
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is set to include “high-definition graphics, original and remastered soundtracks, and a new trial mode”. Other additional enhancements have been shared in a press release today:
License Reset Function: By talking to Clan Centurio’s leader Montblanc in Rabanastre, players can reset and change their party member’s jobs, allowing them to customise the jobs of their party as desired.
Additional Gambit Sets: Gambits allow players to customize their party’s AI. Players can now create three unique sets, allowing players to switch between sets for different situations, such as map exploration or boss fights.
Improved ‘New Game+’: Allows users to start the game with party members at level 90 and carry over some items like weapons, magic and gil obtained during previous playthroughs.
Final Fantasy X | X-2 HD Remaster
The new trailer for Final Fantasy X | X-2 HD Remaster showcases the “emotional story and exciting gameplay players can look forward to”. This one will include modern visuals, the ability to switch between the original or re-arranged soundtrack, and dozens of hours of adventure and gameplay content.
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age launches on Switch on 30th April; Final Fantasy X / X-2 HD Remaster arrives just before that on 16th April. As noted above, you can now pre-order both games digitally if you wish.
Will you be grabbing any of these? Are you looking forward to playing Final Fantasy VII on Switch instead? Share your thoughts with us below.
This Sunday, the Nintendo Switch will be two years old, meaning it’s been two whole years since we first treated our eyeballs to that opening shot in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. If you live in Europe, this means that the My Nintendo programme will soon stop accepting registrations for any games that launched alongside the console on 3rd March 2017.
As you may be aware, My Nintendo Gold Points from the physical versions of Nintendo Switch games must be redeemed within two years of the official release date, regardless of when you bought the game itself. We’ve listed every Switch game that was released at retail on the console’s launch day below (any games purchased digitally will have automatically collected your Gold Points).
Of course, as the weeks go by, other games will also start to be unavailable for points registration. If you need to double check the release date for any of your games, you can do so by searching for it in our mega game database.
As a reminder, the North American My Nintendo rewards programme only allows customers to register a game for one year from its release date. The likes of Zelda and 1-2-Switch are therefore now unavailable to register.
If you haven’t claimed those points, make sure to do it this week. We’ll leave you with some instructions on how to do exactly that:
Insert the game card into the Nintendo Switch console.
Highlight the game icon on your console’s HOME Menu and press the + Button
Select “My Nintendo Rewards Programme”
Select “Earn Points (game card version only)”
Have you saved up many My Nintendo Gold Points? Do you use them to treat yourself to other games on the eShop? Tell us below.
The Sega Mega Drive Mini is set to bring Sega-focused retro delights to your living room later in 2019, all in a very similar fashion to Nintendo’s NES and SNES mini consoles which saw releases in recent years. Before it arrives, though, Sega is hoping to find out which games you’d like to be playable on the system.
The company has hosted three Twitter polls which allow fans to vote for their preferred games. Focusing on the Sonic the Hedgehog, Puyo Puyo, and Shining Force series, each poll features just two options; the winner of each should find its way onto the console when it launches.
If you’re hoping to pick up a Sega Mega Drive Mini later this year, make sure your voice is heard by dropping some votes. And then let us know how you voted in the comments too because we’re nosy like that.
Even the best of us can become entirely engrossed in our Pokémon GO captures and battling, but this story is a perfect example of things going way too far.
A 40-year-old man has reportedly been arrested after striking a police officer in the face. The incident took place in Matsuyama, the capital city of Japan’s Ehime Prefecture, where the man was playing the game on his smartphone.
According to Yahoo! Japan (thanks Kotaku), around fifty Pokémon GO players were gathered near a hotel in the Chifunemachi area of the city. The report suggests that these players were entering the hotel without permission, presumably to get their hands on a Pokémon which had been plonked inside the hotel’s location, forcing staff to call the police.
It would appear that the man in question missed out on this seemingly elusive Pokémon thanks to all of the confusion, however, giving this very reason for his alleged violent outburst in a statement to the police. When questioned, the man reportedly said, “Because of you, I didn’t catch [Pokémon]”, before threatening the officials further.
Thankfully, the police officer didn’t suffer any injuries as a result of the man’s actions.
The Switch’s popularity has come at a high price. The majority of multi-platform releases in both physical and digital form often cost more on Nintendo’s hybrid platform. Eurogamer even investigated why this was happening on the physical front in 2017, only to discover game cards cost more to produce than discs and vary in terms of price, depending on capacity.
When this mystery was solved, the unfortunate term “Switch tax” was coined, to help explain why games on Nintendo’s latest device cost £10.00 or $10.00 more than versions available on other systems. With this in mind, Nintendo Soup has noticed it might actually be the other way around with one upcoming release. According to a listing on Amazon, the physical copy of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on Switch will cost $39.99 and an extra $10.00 more ($49.99 in total) on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. However, there is a temporary discount for the Xbox One release, pushing it back down to the same price as the Switch version.
This isn’t necessarily the first time something like this has happened, but it does raise questions as to why the Switch version is this price and what’s happened to the infamous Switch tax. The same Amazon listing has also reportedly confirmed the game will be launched on 17th September 2019. It’s worth pointing out how no release date or price has been officially confirmed at this point in time.
What do you make of this? Does this listing seem too good to be true? Will you be picking up this game whenever it is released? Tell us down below.
The latest entry in the popular SteamWorld saga, SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech is coming to Switch later this year and promises to deliver a fun take on the otherwise well-worn RPG genre.
We were lucky enough to get some quality time with Image & Form’s Brjánn Sigurgeirsson and chat about the game, its origins and what we can expect when it launches a little down the line in 2019.
Nintendo Life: Where did the idea for SteamWorld Quest come from, and how long has the game been in development so far?
Brjánn Sigurgeirsson: Well, SteamWorld Quest started as a pitch from Peter Johansson, the director of the game. While making SteamWorld Dig 2 we decided to do an internal game pitching round for coming title(s), where everyone got to pitch one or more game ideas to the rest of the studio. The plan was that we’d then get together and pick one (or more) for subsequent development. That probably sounds like a marvellous idea and a great exercise in democracy, but it was a lot harder than we expected; not to come up with ideas, but rather to pick the winners. We hadn’t set up the criteria properly beforehand and it rather became a great lesson in humility and guilty feelings towards all the runner-up ideas. Nevertheless, SteamWorld Quest perhaps wouldn’t have been born without the process.
For a good while, important aspects of the game were quite different than they are now, but then we had one of our proud – internally at least – moments: a marathon meeting where we decided to chuck out what wasn’t working and instead make a truly epic game. We had similar moments while making the original SteamWorld Dig and SteamWorld Heist. Not very surprisingly, making epic games is typically better than keeping stuff that doesn’t work very well.
This new game is set in what appears to be a different time period to previous SteamWorld games. How does Quest tie in with the rest of the series chronologically?
It does tie in with the rest, believe it or not. There’s been some truly brilliant work in the last few months on the SteamWorld lore front, and Quest expands on it. I won’t give any of it away here, and Quest itself contains just enough hints to keep everyone speculating what this world is about. We won’t be running out of Steam(World) anytime soon. It’s a wonderful and remarkable place.
There’s a big focus on card-based attacks in this game; why have you chosen to embrace this mechanic in an RPG setting?
First, a trademark anecdote to show how good I am at using analogies and stuff: in the nineties, there was this Mac software company called Thought I Could Software, and it was always my favourite company name. Those three words told the entire story of the people who worked there.
Now, about the card battle mechanic (notice how smoothly I segue from the anecdote to the real answer) we simply thought we could. We also thought it would be very cool and topical – they’re robots, so they would, of course, be using punch cards. One card, one battle instruction. Plus I’m sure you all appreciate the pun-fest here: card battles, attacks, punches, punch cards. And finally, many of us play card-based games. But I should also mention that it’s an RPG that uses card-battle mechanics rather than a card game with RPG elements. It’s really an epic game about friendship and what it takes to be a hero. We’re debating in the office whether it’s more of a JRPG than a straight-up RPG. I’d say it is, but then again it’s not a Japanese game. So let’s call it an SRPG – a Swedish RPG
To answer the question on a broader level: this time we decided to make a card-battle RPG. Next time it’s likely to be something else again. It’s a long story, but we really want to continue making different kinds of games. It’s a very expensive way to make games, it’s potentially dangerous as we risk taking the wrong turns every time and/or alienating our community, but we’re confident in our abilities… and more importantly, everyone only lives once. It takes us somewhere between 18 and 24 months to make a SteamWorld game. We are literally getting a bit older with every release, we only have time to make so many games, and there’s so much we want to tell and also explore ourselves. Not only do we want to bring something great to our players every time, we also want to surprise them and outdo ourselves with every game.
This approach is also really gratifying. When we announced SteamWorld Heist, quite a few players mentioned that they didn’t like to play turn-based games. When we released Heist, players said they’d thought that they wouldn’t like turn-based games, but Heist had changed their mind. You can only imagine how it feels to get credit for opening up a whole new genre to a player. That’s like permanently opening someone’s ears to, say, classical music! With Quest, we know that many players like to play RPGs, but not everyone is sure they like the card elements. It’s up to us to make Quest fun and accessible enough also for people who don’t usually play these kinds of games, so that they can start enjoying other games like it. This idea of “teaching people to like games” sounds pretentious, but I think it’s really cool to work at a studio that tries to come up with new stuff every time.
What titles would you say have provided inspiration for Quest?
If we start with non-game stuff, I’d say that all epic stories are inspiring. Being an Icelander I’m really fond of heroic tales. The old Norse sagas are crammed with heroes, heroic deeds and the darkest humour you’ll ever find. Our main writer Pelle Cahndlerby also thrives on this stuff. Then there’s a really cool movie on the subject of epic medieval fantasy that does a clever cameo in SteamWorld Quest (if movies are allowed to do cameos). As for games, for Quest we’ve been inspired by Mega Man Battle Network, Baten Kaitos, Fate/Grand Order and a few others. Please note that none of them are really the same thing as SteamWorld Quest, however.
What element of Quest do you think players will find the most surprising?
The abilities and traits of all the characters in SteamWorld Quest are truly surprising. The cast of Dig 1, Dig 2 and Heist are all pretty simpleminded and, well, showcase just the most basic of robotic needs and urges… such as mining and shooting off hats. From what little we’ve shared so far about Quest there’s already a lot of speculation online as to why the robots are talking about, say, food and alchemy; it ought to be utterly useless to them. But as I just mentioned, with Quest we set the stage for some really spectacular SteamWorld mythology.
Being the studio head I’d like to talk up the various elements of the game as well, but it’s somewhat less surprising that the music, the art, the dialogue and the game systems are magnificent, as we like to polish things for very long stretches of time. However, I’m confident that players will yet again be surprised by the magic, fun and value we’re giving them for their money.
What’s it been like working with Nintendo again?
We’ve never stopped working with Nintendo, it’s a constant joy and privilege. Nintendo is very important to us, and they all make us feel quite special. They inspire us to improve simply by the way they do things. They set the bar very high.
You’ve given the game a release window of 2019 – can you tell us if this will be sooner rather than later this year?
Since it’s one of the best games you’ll play this year, it will certainly be later than you want. But it will also probably be sooner than you think.
Will Quest remain exclusive to the Switch, or do you plan to bring it to other platforms?
Right now we’re concentrating on the Switch – as mentioned in Nintendo’s Indie Highlights showreel in January, SteamWorld Quest is coming to Nintendo Switch first. We may decide to bring it to other platforms later. But first things first.
We’d like to thank Brjánn for taking the time to speak with us. SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech launches later this year on Nintendo Switch.
