It's kind of surprising that it took Sea of Thieves seven years to properly introduce smuggling as its own dedicated role with seemingly unique mechanics and loot, but here we are. During the Xbox Games Showcase today, Rare took the stage with a cinematic trailer for the upda🔯te, teasing a whole new faction for the smuggling-minded, "explosive" new loot, and a new set of smuggling-centric voyages.

It seems like details are still pretty light at the moment, but, at the very least, we're getting a new faction, which is cool. Otherwise, it s🌞ee⭕ms like a pretty typical new Sea of Thieves season with some new loot and voyages to uncover.

This could be a stretch, but it also looks like some iteration of the keg rowboats from the Lost Sands update are coming back. If so, it's obviously nothing n𒐪ew, but tho🐲se were one of the most chaotic – and, thus, enjoyable – additions to the game in recent memory, so I'd be happy to see them return.

There's still no release date ꧑for season 17, bꦍut with season 16 only going live a couple of weeks ago and the standard duration between seasons being roughly three months – I'd be surprised to see it release any time soon.

In the meantime, find out where Sea of Thieves docked on our list of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best online games to play right now.

While there's no set release date aside from the provided 2026 window, interested fans can pre-register via the website to keep up to date with news and have a shot at participating in the closed beta, a planned limited-access seven-day test, once it goes live. Upon its official launch, Aniimo will be available to play on both PC and the Xbox Series X|S.

Looking for more 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games to wishlist? Here's a full rundown of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Summer Game Fest 2025 schedule to keep your calendar up to date.

I've been just short of obsessed with Blood of Dawnwalker since it was 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:revealed earlier this year, and although its seemingly 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:rich vampiric lore still has its jagged teeth sunk into 🐽me, I've reserved becoming fully obsessed until I see some gamepla🧸y. Well, now along with the whole world I have seen gameplay, and yup, I'm full-blown obsessed now.

Dawnwalker's first gameplay trailer, debuted during today's 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Xbox Games Showcase, n༒ot only shows off plenty of perfectly violent combat—at one point the player character slices someone's head clean off—we also see some exploration, including said character seemingly scaling a vertical wall with a gravity-defying effortlessness. Like, he's not climbing it; he's just walking up a vertical wall. I guess that's a perk of his human/vampire hybrid DNA.

There's even a brief glimpse of the game's open-world during daᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚylight, and𒊎 I have to say, you can really tell these folks worked on The Witcher 3. Something about the scale of the world, not to mention its snow-capped, jagged peaks, reminds me of CDPR's fantasy opus.

Anyway, the most exciting news for me is that Bloo🦋d of Dawnwalker isn't several years away; it's due out sometime in 2026, which somehow is only six months away now. Get those wooden stakes ready, Dawnwalkers, we're almost there.

Former Witcher 3 lead says his new vampire RPG Blood of Dawnwalker has a smaller open world because "it feels more like you actually know the place" compared to "behemoths"

officially slapped an M 17+ rating on Ghost of Yotei, mainly citing its excessive violence since, as you might have sussed out, this is another bloody revenge story. The certifications board pointed to the game's depiction of decapitati🐻on, dismemberment, blood splatter, impalement, and stabbing, sometimes in slow-mo, as justification.

It also called out how "cutscenes depict additional acts of intense violence: char🐽acters burned at the stake; a man repeatedly stabbed with a knife; a character slitting their own throat." Just the jolly stuff, you know. Beware.

But further down Yotei's list of NSFW sights comes confirmation of our hot spring butts. "During the course of the game, a female character's exposed꧂ buttocks is depicted in a hot spring."

The hot springs in Ghost of Tsushima predictably went viral when it launched in 2020, mainly because, again, you got the briefest look a🏅t Jin Sakai's peachy posterior. Did it go viral with people who found it funny or people who were just really thirsty? I'm not too sure. Either way, it's cool to see the usually straight-faced series carrying on a soon-to-be tradition that's not completely about bloodshed.

And in case you're curious, ESRB🌸 also mentions that you can get drunk off of sake and enter drinking games, "resulting in screen-blurring effects." Very nice.

Ghost of Yotei devs know "how ignorant we were about Japanese culture," but as with Ghost of Tsushima they've had "cultural advisors" to help "deliver a respectful representation" of Japan

Looking back at the game, Kojima concedes that it was "weird". One of Bridges' first tasks was, remember, to hoist the US President's cadaver on his back, on a cross-country dash to a local incinerator. But beneath the eccentricity there was also something vaguely humorous about its central challenge: to carry heavy cargo upon your back across North America without tripping. The taller the load, the greater the chance you'd topple. It's the kind of idea you might expect to find in the work of an indie darling such as Bennett Foddy. And yet, with Sony's keen backing, and Kojima's attention-grasping reputation, a game founded on an indie-esque fancy was rendered as an extravagant epic, one featuring celebrities scanned into the game in screamingly high definitio💞n, plus a wistful, expensive soundtrack and a story whose looming relevance nobody foresaw.

Set in a fragmented America, Death Stranding portrayed a world in which society had collapsed into isolated pockets, connected only by the delivery people who hauled essentials between them. Porters such as Bridges were the new lifeblood of civilisation – not soldiers, not scientists, but logistics workers. At launch, reactions were divided. Some praised the game as visionary, a slow and meditative counterpoint to the combat-heavy overfamiliarity of big-budget games; others derided it as self-indulgent and odd. And then, shortly after its release, everyone entered a world of quarantine, masks and contactless delivery. We were cut off from our friends and family members. Toilet roll became scarce. Death Stranding's vision of human connection maintained through screens and packages suddenly felt less like 🗹speculative fiction and more like an act of prophecy.

Kojima had already written the script for a sequel. Then, during the pandemic, he fell severely ill. He won't discuss the specifics, but it was serious enough to trigger in him something of an existential crisis, a renewed eagerness to make the kinds of games "that don't already exist in the world", ones with resonant messages. When he recovered, he found himself back in his studio's cavernous office, but🌄 almost completely alone. "Everyone else was working remotely," he says. "I felt that perhaps I would never meet ﷽anyone again."

He watched as the world shifted to online meetings: "We were having drinking parties and school events, but now entirely online, an almost entirely digital existence." It felt exactly like the chiral network, Death Stranding's version of the Internet, which protagonist Sam Bridges was tasked with bringing online, city by city. And yet, rather than feeling the satisfaction of a proven prophet, Kojima felt only dismay. "Something had been lost," he says. "Physically, we weren't connected any more. Nobody could travel. Humans can't be fully human if they can't travel any more." Yes, Zoom and all the other tools had ostensibly brought us together. But online connection, 💯Kojima realised, was not the catch-all cure that his game had suggested to the global epidemic of isolation and loneliness.

The pandemic passed, but the fragmentation and yearning for reconnection? Those remained. Kojima tore up the story he had written for 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Death Stranding 2. The sequel, he decided, would instead be a cautionary taไle about the risks of relying upon digital connectedness in lieu of physical presence. 'Should we have connected?' became Death Stranding 2's motivating question.

It's a message Kojima relays to a group of about 30 journalists from around the world on the first morning of a four-day prev🐷iew event (or "boot camp", as it's referred to on several occasions by staff members) at his studio's luxurious HQ in Tokyo's Shinagawa district. It's here he spent the lockdown period alone, fretting. Today, an entire wall of the office contains the signatures and messages of notable visitors to the studio. The names include Hollywood heavyweights such as Timothée Chalamet and Nicholas Cage. Some dismiss Kojima as a star collector, but there's something else going on here. Having spent the COVID lockdown isolated in this place, it's understandable that he'd want everyone who visits to leave a reassuring reminder of their presence.

"Nobody really does these kinds of events any more," Kojima says over a microphone in the studio's pristine white canteen, styled after the set designs of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. And it's true: in-person, group press trips, once a weekly occurrence for magazines s🌠uch as this one, have fallen from fashion in the digital age. It's not difficult to see why. When preview code can be delivered anywhere in the world in no time at all, to get so many people to travel halfway the world to sit in a room in order to play a videogame might seem needlessly costly, across several metrics. But the physicality is the point, Kojima says, smiling. "I wanted to bring you all here, to be in the room together, talking, with the chance to make friends with a stranger." Nobody could accuse videogames' best-known director of failing to fully commit to the bit.

And yet the shift of focus, and of underlying message, is not immediately clear in what we have all come to play. Death Stranding 2: On The Beach begins 11 months after its predecessor concluded. We find Bridges in hiding, a prickly recluse, shut off from the country he had previously united. In another eerily resonant plot point, he has been made redundant by the Automated Porter Assistance System, an AI-based program that initially provided support for porters but soon took over the businཧess of logistics, making their jobs obsolete. He now lives in what looks like a kind of futuristic shipping container, a building that blends with its surroundings via holographic technology, spending his time raising Lou, the infant that, at the end of the original game, he freed from its artificial womb and welcomed into the world to raise as his own child.

The wind-worn off-road courier and the bonny 18-month-old make an unlikely couple, but, considering the trials they have endured together, their bond is understandable. It's certainly interesting from a gameplay perspective. In the opening moments of Death Stranding 2 you explore the sharp, rusty rocks arouꦺnd your home, keeping your balance as you lunge from outcrop to outcrop, protecting the child strapped to your chest all the while. The sense of delicate stewardship will be familiar to any parent who's navigated the outside world with a baby in tow, and the extreme setting here only compounds a sense of fretful parental responsibility.

When, midway through your trek, the area is hit by a minor earthquake, Lou begins to wail. There is a command dedicated to soothing your child, lifting the baby aloft with a cluck and a bounce – an interaction that is familiar in life, but rare in videogames, of the sort that Kojima has always been inspired to include in his work. "Let's go home and get you fed," Bridges says, when the tremors settle. We now see him in his newfound embrace of hermeti🌠c domesticity, cooking food, tidying toys, stockpiling nappies a🌟nd putting Lou to bed. But he has not entirely let go of his old life. This is, we see, a man who keeps a pistol in his cutlery drawer, just in case.

Death Stranding 2 begins in earnest when Bridges receives an unexpected visit from Fragile, the enigmatic courier played by Léa Seydoux. She now runs a private delivery service, Drawbridge, one of many p𒊎owerful private contractors that run North America. She gives Bridges a new mission: to connect Mexico, settlement by settlement, to the chiral grid. In a universe filled with arcane terminology and concepts, it's a pleasingly accessible premise: no matter where in the world you live, it's easy to understand the idea of connecting remote settlements to the Internet. Fragile offers to care for Lou as you head out, and Bridges accepts the mission with surprisingly little resistance. We're back in the old boots, hiking and lunging between settlements in Mexico, and dialling in for family chec𒆙k-ins with Fragile and the baby, like a businessman away on a work trip.

Rural Mexico is, however, hardly a welcoming environment. The expanse of territory is marked by plunging ravines and thickly forested mountains; bandits roam its landscapes searching for porters like you, who they can attack and loot. The weather is more extreme than before: punishing sandstorms can roar in wit⛎hout notice, reducing visibility and violently pushing you sideways. Earthquakes cause landslides. Headwinds slow your progress to a crawl, while tailwinds r🐽isk causing you to stumble over rocks. Rain is a dangerous substance that ages the skin of anyone it touches, and when it falls it immediately begins to damage your cargo and can quickly raise the waterline in the local rivers, reducing the number of places where it's safe to cross. But while the world is brutal and punishing, it is also littered with valuables, all of which tempt you to make brisk diversions to add them to your teetering backpack and increase the potential rewards you'll receive at the next outpost or settlement.

Every sojourn requires careful planning: is there enough life left in your boots to make the next journey? Will there be BTs – those spectral monsters, drawn to noise, that will claw Bridges down into a tar-like ooze if they catch him – for which you'll need specialist weapons and grenades? If rain is predicted, should you pack a spray that can restore your cargo? Will you take the necessary materials to build, say, a lookout tower, from which you'll be able to locate and track enemies? Every decision has a physical cost, measured in bulk and weight. Overprepare and you risk becoming encumbered, and 🐻it usually pays to leave some spare kilograms for treasure you might find along the way.

Most of this feels familiar. You soon access vehicles, and the capacity to build structures which duly appear in the game world of other players, who can leave social-media-style 'likes' to show their appreciat𒅌ion. But the pacing is far snippier and more refined than in the first game – the result, it feels, of taking on feedback and recalibraඣting the balance between cutscene and action. Quality-of-life improvements abound. It's difficult to shake the feeling that this is the game Kojima and his team intended to make the first time around.

But then, within a few hours, it seemsꦅ as though it's all over. Mexico has been reconnected in record time, and, in a dramatic climax, we see Bridges sustain a loss from which he may never recover. What now? The answer arrives quickly: Australia.

The switch to a new continent means more than a change of terrain. Something fundamental shifts. The task of reconnecting settlements is the same, but the texture is clearly different, as you acquire increasingly efficient and varied types of weaponry. You soon leave behind foot-based missions and start to use upgradable vehicles. Then you begin to receive missions in which you're tasked not with delivering cargo but with clearing out enemy encampments. The realisation dawns: combat is far more central to Death Stranding 2's loops and rhythms than in its predecessor, where you were almost always outgunned and 🥂therefore encouraged to avoid conflict.

"The first game was lꩲike the Silk Road," Kojima explains. "It was about extending connections across a country, to allow useful supplies to travel. But the flipside is that negative things can travel more freely too: cockroaches, violence, drugs." Death Stranding 2, then, is intended to show the risks of interconnectivity. "It's represented by the prevalence of weapons. I'm trying to conjure the era of the East India Company, when resources could move freely around the world but, at the same time, this enabled these private companies to become more powerful than governments."

While it's still possible to use stealth, popping out of the tall grass to take down a dawdling security guard, for example, the game encourages a more direct approach. You may approach an enemy encampment from a rocky outcrop, set down your now-removable backpack, build a lookout tower that enables you to mark and track every foe, then use your sniper rifle to take out each one in series. It's all pleasingly taut and game-like and feels, in fact, like a concession to those players who bounced off Death Stranding's eccentricities as well as Kojima reconciling with his own past. Squint and you could be forgiven for thinking you were playing – whisper it – a contemporary update to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Metal Gear Solid 5.

"I felt that myself when I played the game," Kojima admits when presented with the comparison. Drawbridge, the company you now work for, has the use of a futuristic airship, the DHV Magellan (named after Ferdinand Magellan, the 16th-century Portuguese explorer who became the first to circumnavigate the globe), which doubles as a movable base of operations, housing Bridges' living space. "When you return to your bed on the Magellan, it's the same feeling as returning to the plant in Metal Gear," Kojima says. Nods to and echoes of his former work abound. While staying in Bridges' accommodation in any of the bases – static or movable – you can spend some time playin꧂g a series of challenges in VR that are almost indistinguishable from Metal Gear's beloved VR missions. Even the sound effects are similar. There are traditional boss battles, too, complete with glowing weak spots.

Even so, the new focus on combat is surprising 🐼(even if the bullets you fire are described as tranquillisers rather than deadly projectiles). Death Stranding was clearly designed to upset the expectations of Kojima's audience; it was a game about striding out into the world to make connections, rather than sneaking around with a silenced SOCOM. Beneath the strangeness lay a radical design ethos. Death Stranding wasn't about winning, conquering or killing. It was about carrying, balancing, connecting. It introduced a system called the Strand mechanic: players could leave behind ladders, ropes and structures in their own games that would appear in others', anonymously aiding fellow travellers they would never meet. This asynchronous multiplayer design was an elegant metaphor for interdependence. In helping others, players helped themselves.

"I have a 'stick and🌺 the rope' theory," Kojima tells us. "So many games are just about the stick. Even in g🐼ames where you're connected with each other online, everyone's just battling with the stick." The rope, he says, is something used to wrap around things and bring them toward you. "In Death Stranding I wanted to make a game that was all about the rope. The sequel balances the stick and the rope."

To explain why he made this adjustment, Kojima settles into one of his favourite themes: comparisons to cinema. "When I first wrote the draft for Death Stranding 2," he says, "I referenced to my staff the first two Alien films. The first Ridley Scott film was so frightening. There were face-huggers, and monsters bursting from people's chests, and at first nobody knew what it was all about." But by the end of the film, he says, the audience had seen the alien, and understood the rules of the universe, so it was no longer frightening. "When James Cameron came to make the sequel, Aliens, he made a very smart decision to make the film not about horror, but about action. It gave the story a new dimension, whi꧂ch ✱was unfamiliar. That is what I wanted to do with this sequel. Everyone understands Death Stranding's world, so now we've introduced battles to give it this new dimension."

The new focus on combat will appease those players put off by the first game's passive approach. But Kojima has not shied from difficult themes to go alongside💧 the fighting. Grief is a central consideration of the game, a keen presence for Bridges, for whom the burden of loss is something he must carry physically.

One of Kojima's parents died when he was a teenager, so he is intimately familiar with loss. His father came home from work one day, fell down, unconscious, and started shaking. The family called an ambulance. Kojima travelled to the hospital with him. His father's eyes were open all the way, but he was unable to speak. Kojima felt his father wanted to tell him something. He never found out what. In this way, Kojima lost his innocence and, to a degree, his childhood. He spent his teenage years having to care 🐽for his family, making decisions for which he felt unprepared and ill-equipped. "The loss of my father was a major theme in the Metal Gear series," he tells us today. "Those games explore the theme of how you surpass your parents. Death Stranding looks in the other direction: you assume the parent's perspective, looking toward the child."

One of the game's central questions focuses on the story of Bridges' baby, Lou. Kojima has a son himself. "You think you know everything about your son, but there are some things that you don't," he says. "In the first Death Stranding, Sam travels together with Lou, but he doesn't interrogate who Lou is very much. In the sequel, that has changed. It's like how an adoptive parent might not know everything about th☂eir child. They might have questions. That's the emotion I wanted to elicit."

Narrative intrigue abounds, but so do more traditional game-like elements. This is a work stuffed with design ideas, with upgrade trees and satisfying incentives. Completing deliveries contributes toward a five-star rating for every facility and settlement in the game, and each time you achieve a new star rating you're rewarded with tools, weapons and upgrades. Facilities and structures that you or others build into the world can be upgraded using materials; with time, the idea is that the game will become crisscrossed with roads, ziplines and vehicle-charging stations. In this way, just about everything in the game can be turned into a mission, since everything is ripe for investment and nurture. Kojima's Rolodex of celebrity friends adds a less traditional incentive to explore and extend your reach, since many of the faciliti𒊎es are run by recognisable faces. As before, these cameos can be a little distracting, but at the very least they always leave an impression.

It's the astonishing degree of depth and variety elsewhere that makes the real impact, though. There are wildfires, natural disasters and all manner of inventive online features which, as in Hidetaka Miyazaki's work, allow players to collaborate in mystic💟al, indirect ways. And while the fundamental tওasks could be described as industrialised fetch quests, the cargo ranges from vinyl records to pyjamas and live animals, the ways in which they can be ferried expanding accordingly.

Kojima claims the game provides at least 70 hours' worth of adventure. The scale of the production – and the sheen with which everything is delivered – is particularly notable when you consider the comparatively small size of its development team. "I've never wanted my team to grow larger than 150 people working on one game project," Kojima says. His friend, Mad Max director George Miller, once told him that his instincts were correct, and that nomadic sheep-herding communities limit their flocks to 150 sheep, this number being the limit of what a human being can realistically track. "I talked to George last year and he congratulated me on keeping the team small," Kojima says. "I had to admit I went a litt⛦le over 150, and we laughed about it."

It's easy to assume that Kojima Productions, with its extravagant HQ turning out such a lavishly produced sequel, is a blockbuster studio, but Kojima insists his work has an independent spirit. He sees himself as the head of a family, a role he has had to assume from childhood, and says he regards raising child🎶ren and raising his young staff as the same. And while the director's handprints are as visible on Death Stranding 2 as the impressions the BTs make in the soil whenever they approach, it's clear that the game is the result of manifold creativity from a team that has been allowed to express itself in countless ways.

Always eager to reach for a second metaphor, Kojima also compares his staff to apprentices in a kitchen. Yes, he wants them to start by washing dishes, but only so that they can work their way up and one day be able to open restaurants of their own. He resists the idea of an assembly-line studio in which each developer handles only one task; instead, he wants creators who understand not just the "bun" but the whole "hamburger" – the lighting, the systems, the emotions. It's a vision of mentorship not as delegation, but as artistic awakening – and in Death Stranding 2 the results of this growth and development are clear. Yes, this is, as advertised, a Hideo Kojima game. But it's run through with♔ an ethos that, in time, could outlive even꧒ the man himself.

Thinking of catching up on Kojima's past work before you set out on your delivery route? We've got the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best Metal Gear games ranked to get you started. More from Edge? Vampire Survivors kicked off a game development gold rush, but has a legitimately new genre emerged between the cash-ins?

Sucker Punch took the stage during today's 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:PlayStation State of Play with a fresh Ghost of Yotei cinematic trailer showing about 50 glorious seconds of protagonist Atsu standing atop a hill overlooking a small town. "You still with me?" she asks her wolf friend, who peers out over the cliff and says what I assume translates to🍷 "hell yes" in wolfish. It seems likelier than ever that the wolf from earlier trailers is indeed some sort of companion to Atsu during her journey through the bitter wilderness of Hokkaido, Japan, and I'm excited to see how that expands on the gameplay from Tsushima. Speaking of which...

"Gameplay deep dive coming in July," reads the onscreen banner as the trailer fades out. And that's that. Honestly, I was expecting more from a game that we've already seen in more than one trailer, and one that already has a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:confirmed October 2 release date; when the new trailer started and I was watching live I was alm♏ost certain we were about to get some gameplay, but thankfully we at least know we don't have a whole lot longeꦓr to wait for that.

Ghost of Yotei devs know "how ignorant we were about Japanese culture," but as with Ghost of Tsushima they've had "cultural advisors" to help "deliver a respectful representation" of Japan

Releasing tomorrow, June 5, Beacon is yet another 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:free No Man's Sky update. This one aims to change the way you interact with settlements by overhauling them completely. There are huge new robotic settlements to uncover♊, and now, rather than j๊ust an outpost or a few scattered buildings, there will be full towns that you can become mayor of and manage.

You'll be able to construct buildings, upgrade them, add jukebox bars to create your town's very own soundtrack, bring in merchants so you can build custom star🍨ships, and you can relax by fishing ponds. Who needs the infinite frontier of space when you have a nice little pond?

You can also chat with the locals, and a💖s mayor it'll be up to you who joins. You'll also be the arbiter of any arguments that arise between the settlers. These people need defending too, so you'll be able to hire a squad of wingmen who'll leap into action should pirates attack.

It's a far cry from the original planet-hopping adventure No Man's Sky started out as, but it seems liꦬke a cool way to invest more in the planets you fall in love with o♐n your journey.

Best of all, if you were lucky enough to snag a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Switch 2 pre-order, you can play the Switcꦛh 2 version as soon as you boot up your console. This upgrade comes with enhanced textures, better UI resolution, cross-save so you can play on any device, and full multiplayer, something the game doesn't have on the Switch 1.

A press release reads: "For the last year we've had thisꦿ secret room with some Switch 2 dev-kits from Nintendo." That year has been well spent, as the upgrade is "a huge leap forward." The frame rate is higher, the density of detail is greater, and the game can render further than it did on the original Switch.

If you're not a fan of space exploration, check out all the other confirmed 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Switch 2 launch games.

If that sentence made your brain hurt, like it did mine while writing it, allow me to unpack just what's happening here. Anyone who played the first Death Stranding will no doubt fondly remember running into uncanny replicas of various famous faces, including king of late night talk shows Conan O'Brien, horror manga😼 legend Junji Ito, ex-PlayStation boss Hermen Hulst, Remedy's Sam Lake, and filmmaker Edgar Wright, all appearing as the holographic NPCs called Preppers that give the player character Sam Porter his missions.

On a recent episode of Kojima's radio show, the famed director revealed that he had to start turning down requests to appear in Death Stranding 2 because the process of scanni🍎ng people into the game was taking up too much time at the studio. Make no mistake, there will still be plenty of Pr♏eppers in Death Stranding 2, but app𒁃arently about half of the folks who wanted to be one had to be turned down.

Well, apparently,𝐆 one person who made the cut kind of isn't a person at all. Obviously there's a real human behind Hololive vtuber Pekora, one of the most popular to do ever do it, but it's the anime persona that's going to appear in Death Stranding 2, according to a tweet from the official Kojima Productions Twitter account that inc🌃ludes a video of Sam Porter greeting the vtuber.

We have two very funny 💦things to discuss here. One, it's hilarious to imagine celebrities – let's say Pedro Pascal – pleading for Kojima to add them into Death Stranding 2 and being rejected, only for a vtuber to make the cut.

Secondly, this isn't just any v🍷t💜uber; it's seemingly Kojima's very favorite, as he's not only , but . Apparently, you can have all the accolades in the world, but what really matters to Kojima is the hours of anime-disguised entertainment you've provided him while playing his games.

Why is Death Stranding 2 more combat-heavy? Kojima has the most Kojima explanation possible: an obscure gameplay theory he cooked up 8 years ago.

In case you don't remember, the first Death Stranding featured near-perfect replicas of many, many famous faces. Everyone from comedian Conan O'Brien, horror man🍌ga icon Junji Ito, former PlayStation boss Herman Hulst, Alan Wake mastermind Sam Lake, and film director Edgar Wright showed up as Preppers - holographic NPCs who give main man Sam Porter Bridges missions.

ꦏPreppers will show up again in Death Stranding 2, but roughly half of the people who asked to be included apparently had to be turned down.

On Kojima's radio show, the director reportedly shared that carrying out a full scan takes around 15 minutes to complete, and the team apparently scanned so many people that they eventually ran out of space to do any🌌 more, hence why Kojima had to refuse to add so many others. (Thanks, !) Some of the included ce♚lebs also voiced their characters, which is another nice touch.

It's🍃 pretty major news since the internet loves about Kojima scanning every single person he comes into contact with. Considering how seemingly random the cameos in the first game ꦜwere, you can expect the unexpected in Death Stranding 2. S.S. Rajamouli? Phil Spencer? Timothee Chalamet? Lorde? No one's out of the question.

But we'll find out what celebrities m✱ade the cut when Death Stranding 2 properly comes out on J🦩une 26.

Hideo Kojima admits Death Stranding is "weird," which feels like it might be a pretty substantial understatement for his entire body of work

In an interview in Edge Magazine's , the iconic game directorಞ compared the difference between his two open-world delivery sims to the difference between the Silk Road era and the times of the East India Company.

Kojima might be ♐cryptic as ever, but the Silk Road or Silk Routes were essentially a network of routes set up to facilitate trade from China to the rest of the world and vice versa, beginning during the Han Dynasty, and meant goods like silk and spices could travel free꧅ly worldwide. The era of the East India Company, however, instead allowed weapons and drugs to travel across the sea.

"The first game was like the Silk Road," Kojima explained. "It was about extending connections across a country, to allow useful supplies to travel. But the flipside is that negative things can travel more 🍌freely too: cockroaches, violence, drugs."

That's where Kojima's head was at while making Death Stranding 2, which is 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:focusing more on combat than the original. "It's represented by the prevalence of weapons," he added. "I'm trying to conjure the era of the East India Company, when re📖sources could move freely around the world but, at the same time, this enabled these private companies to become more powerful than governments."

Death Stranding and Metal Gear Solid mastermind Hideo Kojima has always wanted to make a film, but Guillermo del Toro told him not to

Kojima said as much in the latest issue of Edge Magazine - - whe༺re he recalled a chat he had with Nicolas Winding Refn (director of Drive and an actor in Death Stranding 2) and Guillermo del Toro💜 (renowned for classics like Shape of Water and Pan's Labyrinth, and, also, Heartman in Death Stranding.)

"I am reevaluating my priorities about what I should do,⛦" Kojima told Edge, recalling that the meeting he had with the two filmmakers turned into a talk "about how much time we have left to create" in life. "I have always harboured an ambition to direct a film, and falling ill made me think: if I wanted to make a film, I would have to do so in my 60s, which will be so physically tough to do."

That's when del Toro apparently told Kojim♛a to rethink his film ambitions. "'You don't have to do live action films. What you’re doing now [in games] is like a live-action film. Don't do this old-media thing of going into filmmaking – just do what you've been doing.'"

"But I'm always thinking about the next ten years," Kojima added. "Because this is comparatively a small company, unlike other 🎃corporations in this industry like Sega or Nintendo, I must tell the staff where we are headed in the next ten years."

Kojima will at least partially be involved in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:A24's upcoming Death Stranding film, and his odd horror game OD also has a stacked list of Hollywood collaborators, includi𒉰ng Jordan Peele, so I wouldn't feel too sꦅorry for the guy.

Hideo Kojima doesn't want more than 150 people working on games like Death Stranding 2 thanks to a sheep herding tip from Mad Max director George Miller

An on-screen blurb spikes the ball ﷺdown: "The games industry is on fire."

The Kickstarter explainer adds a little more color, echoing financial struggles we've heard across the industry in the past few years. Former Dragon Age narrative lead David Gaider, who's Kickstarting a roguelike card game cal🃏led Malys, recently told us he's faced the same hardships.

"Games funding is really, really tough right now," the campaign reads. "Even though we’ve got a lot of experience and pitched to a lot of publishers, new IPs and new teams globally are struggling to find publisher support and financial backing. We’ve spent two years and a lot of energy going down this route, and it’s꧃ been exhausting. We just want to get the game made."

Crescent County is fundamentally about building the ultimate "motorbroom" ♔and using it to deliver packages during the day and win races at night. A motorbroom is exactly what it sounds like: a witওchy, bristly hoverbike that could just mess up some dust. Upgrade your speed, hover ability, and offroad chops, and slap on stickers that let you rewind time or teleport to the side to dodge obstacles and fellow racers.

"Help the locals and get to know their struggles and endless drama (plus earning yourself a little bit of cash)," the Kickstarter adds. "Plan your day by picking your jobs and broom s🌊etup, and then zoဣom around getting things done!"

There's a splash of romance here, too, with a "healthy dose of kissing" in relationships that💞 add more to your plate each day🌄. Choose who to spend your time with from "multiple romances," where to take them, and flirt on your honest-to-goodness flip phone.

It's all very cute and vibrantly painterly, backed by a soundtrac🍬k of lo-fi and "crunchy alt-rock" that has a bit of a soft rock vibe in some tracks, at least in that I played for a bit.

The demo motorbroom controls immediately feel tight; you can drift like in Mario Kart, pull up on your stick for some air to clear gaps, and build pretty impressive speed on flat stretches. There's a nice sense of w♔eight to your vehicle despite it, you know, floating. Add in some compelling characters, varied delivery objectives – there is also talk of herding sheep – and interesting progression systems, and I could see this being a go💙od ol' vibe.

Crescent County is doing pretty well on Kickstarter with over half of its goal raised with 27 days to go. Electric Saint says it's shooting for a late 2026 launch, "just, please don't get delay꧒ed again GTA 6."

"GTA 6 is basically a huge meteor, and we will just stay clear of the blast zone": Publishers are in a frenzy over when to release their games to avoid Rockstar.

Complaints about stability issues, monetization excesses, and major story changes have been boiling over, and another extensive apology from the dev team is proving unsucces🅰sful at improving the c﷽ommunity's sentiment.

"Since the launch of Version 1.5, insufficient preparation during pre-release te🌳sting led to unexpected live issues," the devs say on Twitter, "resulting in an unstable game environment and unsatisfactory content. We fully acknowledge that this is our responsibility, and addressing these shortcomings remains a top priority for our team moving forward."

For now, the devs are extending the length of the 1.5 Bubble Season, with 1.6 now set to take over on June 12, a small delay𒅌 from the previously announced June 4 launch. They'﷽re also adding some additional daily login bonuses from June 5 through June 12, with 120 Diamond and 1 Energy Crystal delivered each day.

The response to that last bit is perhaps the best illustration of where the community is at right now, as fans are treating the login bonuses not as a gift, but rather as a cynical way for the devs to keep everyone logging in day afte🍨r day. "Infold finally replies and ends it with: 'Oh, and if you want compensation, you must login for 8 days in a row for it all,'" as one puts it.

One of the biggest points of contention wi🃏th 1.5 has been its , which players have been that's dramatically changed the tone of the story.

"Rest assured," the devs say, "we've heard your feedback loud and clear: The Threads of Reunion storyli♊ne's absence in this version was never intended as a removal from Infinity Nikki's narrative – its associated outfit remain on our development roadmap. Due to technical hurdles in Version 1.5, we were unable to properly refine the introduction of the Sea of Stars chapter and the narrative setup for Threads of Reunion, which regrettably led to confusion. These elements are planned for future updates."

The idea that a truncated story change might have launched because of "technical issues" with the update certainly hasn't gone down well with fans. As one , why would the devs "release a story they knew wasn't done because of technical issues in the rest oꦿf an update they hadn't🍰 even released?"

The studio finishes its message by introducing the "Miraland Round Table" in an effort to "openly address player concerns and collaboratively explore solutions." This takes the form oꦕf both an email address and an in-game customer servic꧂e widget you can send your feedback to.

"Your candid feedback – both critical and encouraging – has prompted deep reflection," the devs conclude. "Draft💙ing this message stirs mixed emotions: guilt over delayed promiseဣs, yet gratitude for your unwavering support." I probably don't need to point to any more community commentary to make clear that the support is, in fact, wavering.

These are the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best free games you can play today.

"The loss of my father was a major theme in the Metal Gear series," Kojima says in Edge magazine issue 411. 🍸"Those games explore the theme of how you ▨surpass your parents. Death Stranding looks in the other direction: you assume the parent's perspective, looking toward the child."

Kojima was just 13 when his father died, and he's occasionally spoken about the effect that had on him both personally and as a creator. "It was hard and lonely but, in a way, it strengthened my resolve to become a filmmaker," he 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:told us in a 2015 interview. "I’ve been stuck with something of a father complex ever since. All the Metal Gear games so far h♊ave been paternal stories. They’re all about killing your father (laughs)."

The number of parent and child themes in Metal Gear are too numerous to count, from the legacy that carries from Big Boss to Sღolid Snake to the downright oedipal Otacon backstory we were traumatized by in MGS2. Then, of course, ♔Death Stranding puts us in the parental perspective of Sam Bridges, caring for the baby Lou throughout the course of the game.

"You think you know everything about your son, but there are some things that you don't," Kojima t🦋ells Edge. “In the first Death Stranding, Sam travels🌌 together with Lou, but he doesn’t interrogate who Lou is very much. In the sequel, that has changed. It's like how an adoptive parent might not know everything about their child. They might have questions. That's the emotion I wanted to elicit."

Kojima's certainly playing with a lot of ideas he previously explored in Metal Gear Solid. There's the Magellan ship that looks exಞactly like Metal Gear Rex, the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:doppelganger of Solid Snake, and even a reference to an extr♛emely specific alternat🅷e cover for MGS2. That extends to gameplay, too, with the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Magellan 🍸serving as a home base evoking MGS5. Clearly, Koji🐼ma's still thinking about the series he's best known for even after all these years.

Death Stranding 2 is one of the biggest 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming PS5 games on the horizon.

Speaking in the newest issue of Edge Magazine - - the famed game director said he pointed his team toward Ridley Scott's classic horror film and James Cameron's very diffꦓerent sequel after writing the first draft script for Death Stranding 2.

"The first Ridley Scott film was so frightening," he said. "There were facehuggers and monsters bursting from people’s chests, and at first nobo✱dy knew what it was all about.”

He continued to explain that by the time credits rolled, the mysterious alien threat had properly showed its face, the universe's rules had been unde෴rstood by the audience, and the terror was slightly less scary. "When James Cameron came to make the sequel, Aliens, he made a very smart decision to make the film not about horror, but about action. It gave the story a new dimension, which was unfamiliar."

That's a feeling that inspired Kojima for his second go around in Death Stranding. We have soꦚme kind of understanding of how BTs work, so now it's ti♍me to up, or at least shift, the stakes. "That is what I wanted to do with this sequel. Everyone understands Death Stranding’s world, so now we’ve introduced battles to give it this new dimension.”

Death Stranding and The Walking Dead's Norman Reedus doesn't think "anybody can understand" what's going on in Hideo Kojima's brain

"Infold has c♒ontinued to ignore its players, server quality has declined, and the game has been thoroughly massacred," says a Reddit post at the moment. "If in one week, May 18, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the devs continue to ignore us, don't log on, don't play, and don't give them money."

"Please help spread the word of #girlout," the post continues. "This is just m♋y attempt to organize and help coordinate the community in largescale protests to show Infold just✃ how scorned we are."

The Infinity Nikki introduced a massive amount of content to the game, including co-op invites and substantial story changes, but players say these supposed upgrades have only m♏ade Infinity 🎀Nikki more broken and confusing.

So Bubble Season has become the evil foil to the gargantuan updates that transformed titles 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:like No Man's Sky and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Cyberpunk 2077 into more beautiful, intuitive ꦜgames; instead, with 530 "helpful" rating🔜s says Infold has "plummeted this game into the ground."

"TL;DR: Game is a buggy mess," it reads, calling the devs "greedy" while adding: "Co-op sucks. Changed lo🍸re without letting anyone know. Don't waste your time or money."

But, though players are organizing in droves à la the French Revolution to catapult their valid complaints at Infold, the developer seems t🍌o have taken up poetry rather🅰 than issue a ton of hot fixes.

"May's breezes carry bubbles and dreams, / Across a sea of pink clouds, soft and slow𒊎 – / Whওere every moment blooms at your fingertips," the developer .

Open-world dress-up game Infinity Nikki is serious business – so serious its devs have already banned over 80 accounts for cheating: "We implore all Stylists to adhere to the game rules"

The Reddit from user "Spirited_Aꦉd3028" that started it all highlights what he thought would be the loss of his save. "RIP my permadeath file beautifully," wrote the No Man's Sky player, explaining why he figuredꦬ he'd be unable to salvage any of his hard work.

"I landed on the wrong planet in my permadeath save. I'm on a tiny pillar of rock, surrounded by deep ocean in every direction. I'm out of launch fuel, and I have nജo ferrite."

He described how he could "only survive a few seconds outside the ship before the toxic air kills me," stati🎃ng that he's "been doing suicide laps in every direction, diving in and shooting aimlessly for ferrite dust."

At the time, Spirited_Ad30💦28 concluded in one seriously poetic line that his permadeath save was truly over thanks to a simple slip-up: "All I can do is sit in my ship, watch the lightning storms, and wait for my oxygen to⛄ run out."

Hello Games' Sean Murray himself shared the fan's on his own social media, alongside a salute emoji. It looks like Spirited_Ad3028, or "Plescia FPS" as he's known on YouTube, isn't in need of any solidarity, however – a new from the now-iconic No Man's Sky player shows hജim taking off and successfully leaving the toxic planet behind. That's right, what he, readers, and developers alike thought was the end of his permadeath run ac🍸tually wasn't.

"I finally escaped this hell planet," as the upload is aptly dubbed, sees the fan set off into the sky – three months after he deemed his save file doomed. "I was stuck on this planet and abandoned this file for three months," he exp﷽lains in the description.

"A Reddit post that got over [one million] views helped me ge🐽t out. Someone mentioned to dismantle my scanner (didn't even know you can) for the last bi꧙t of ferrite. Thank you!"

That's all it took in the end, then – dismantling his scanner for ferrite, allowing him to finally escape a𒅌 hellish world and save his permadeath playthrough. If there's one lesson learned by this debacle, it's to always reach out before giving up𓄧 hope.

While you're here, be sure to check out our roundup of other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:games like No Man's Sky.

"As an American, I had primarily seen the country through the lens of beloved classic samurai movies," game director Nate Fox admits in a𒆙 . "But actually going there, f♏eeling the wind on your face, smelling pine forests, and meeting locals is deeply inspiring."

For the original game, Fox says Sucker Punch "wanted to do right by the reality of Tsushima's history, even though we were going to tell a fictional story in a di🌼gital version of Tsushima that was not a stone for stone recreation of the island." A big part of that was "listening to our cultural advisors and by doing research," and they've taken a similar 𓂃approach for Ghost of Yotei.

Hokkaido's combination of "natural beauty and a sense of danger," alongside its real-w🔯orld history, made it an "easy" choice for the game's setting. The team took "two reference gathering trips" to the re🗹gion.

They were especially impressed by Mount Yotei, Fox says, "which the Ainu call 'the Female Mountain.' Of course, on the trip we’d been thinking a lot about our hero. Hearing the Ainu name for the mountain really bonded it to Atsu. For us, Yotei became a symbol of Hokkaido. While for Atsu, it'🌜s a symbol of home and of the family she lost. This process of being there, talking about the game with locales, then synthesizing new ideas is what made the trip so fulfilling."

Fox admits that "as a bunch of Americans," the team "knew how ignorant we were about Japanese culture. To help start to solve that problem we met with a wealth of knowle💦dgeable individuals and visited important cultural sites."

Clearly, Sucker Punch's dedication to getting the details right has been appreciated, as Fox – alongside creative director Jason Connell – was made a permanent tourism ambassado♏r for the island of Tsushima in 2021. Here's hoping tha﷽t the team's efforts with Ghost 🍃of Yotei are worth of similar respect.

Tsushima is one of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best open-world games around, and Yotei is one of the biggest 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming PS5 games on the horizon.

A game engine is basically a framework of software and tools used to make games. BlackSpace isn't just the Crimson Desert engine, and future games that use it will likely make considerable tweaks – the same engine can be used to produce r༺adically different games – but Crimson Desert did make for a good showing of what it can do. Crimson Desert was already on my radar because it feels like a s﷽ingle-player evolution of Black Desert, an MMO that I essentially played as a single-player RPG for hundreds of hours, so I walked into this oddball appointment with hungry eyes. I was joined by several Pearl Abyss shepherds and, virtually, by Kwanghyeon Go and Kyungjoon Cho, respectively the heads of the game engine g🥃raphic and system divisions, all crowded around a monitor in a neon-seared meeting room.

What I saw was a customized build of BlackSpace, not a final version of Crimson Desert itself. I was not disappointed. BlackSpace is impressive tech. It's capable of gorgeous and reactive sandboxes that seem to build on what the modern Zelda games do so well. (We will be talking about Ninte🔴ndo's open-world masterwork for years.) More than anything, I wish these kinds of educational and genuinely fascinating details were showcased more regularly, because I would absolutely kill to see the bones of other open-world games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Red Dead Redemption 2, and the now-delayed GTA 6.

Pop the hood

We started with a Tears of the Kingdom-style freefall from sky islands, the world transitioning seamlessly below. Clever subdivision of levels and assets enables more precise loading on the engine side, I'm told, and more believable presentation for the player. The whole world looks loaded, with no glaring pop-in disruptions even during a 𓂃dramatic change of scenery, but the engine's only showing you what you need to see. Just enough mirrors and not one more. Coupled with impressive render distance, you get a convincing dive down to the surface.

BlackSpace was built with a few goals in mind. Hyper-realistic interactivity was at the top of the list, and this bleeds into everything from combat to environments. You can throw enemies into walls, spikes, or each other to deal damage. If you set fire to a sturdy wooden gate, it will weaken as it burns, letting you bust through once-immovable surfaces. In-engine toggles brought normally invisible hitboxes and hurtboxes to the foreground, showing how characters and objects collide or what's currently being affected by physics, and highlighting extremely precise interactions. How hard you hit anཧ object can affect how much debris is created. That might be splinters of wood erupting from a struck post, or blades of tall grass gently falling from the point where you cut them.

The Zelda receptor in my brain reacted again when we got to climbing – you might climb trees, cliff faces, or buildings – and it went into overdrive with the introduction of ice arrows. (I realize Zelda didn't invent climbing any more than Persona 5 invented Japan, but the packaging here hit my brain in a similar way.) BlackSpace uses tech called Shallow Water to realistically simulate the flow of water over surfaces, from rivers coursing aro♛und rocks to the waves of the sea cascading on shore. When you launch an ice arrow at a river, a chunk of ice will form. It will drift downstream and may eventually collide with a rock and break apart in individual slivers, gently pushed apart by the water's hands.

If you were to dip into the river yourself, you'd find that only specific parts of your body, your clothes, or even your horse, assuming you were mounted, would get wet. Your feet and legs if you waded in, your chest if you fell face-first, and so on. (You might be 🌟pos🔯sessed to ask an absurdly detailed question about this.) GPU-based cloth and hair simulation, which I saꦓw up-close with honest-to-goodness wind vectors visualized as conductors of lau🍸ndry in the breeze, bring another sprinkling of realism.

Here's one for my fellow fashion fans: the cloth and collision tech looks incredible. Cloaks surround your character but don't clip through the clothi🐬ng underneath. A shield or bow rests believably on your back without digging into your armor. Your hair, like your horse's tail, whips behind you based on your movement speed. It's a small hangup, and I understand the technical challenges here, but it always irks me just a little when my carefully crafted look ends up clipping and overlapping unnaturally in cutscenes or in motion, and BlackSpace looks like a step forward here. I specifically asked about this, and while "there might be a collision" at some point, the devs say "we want to optimize that as🀅 much as possible as well."

I saw clouds moving and billowing in real time, shadows inching around ray traced interiors as the sun crawled along the horizon outside a stained glass window, rain rushing in and then retreating before god's rꦿays, and torches pulsing like handheld suns in the night. NPCs scurried about according to scheduled behaviors; I saw them shield themselves from dynamic rain, crowd the streets during the൩ day, and then pack pubs at night. It's on individual games and systems make full use of all these features, but the foundation is tantalizing. It's easy to imagine a lively world being made here.

Features on features

I was overflowing with questions by the time the demo ended. Loosely cog꧒nizant of how difficult it is to build a new gameꦇ engine, I had to ask why you'd do this in the first place, and how BlackSpace improves on what Black Desert was capable of.

"The Black Desert engine was specific for Black Desert only," the engine heads collectively responded via interpreter. "So there's a lot of features that could not be implemented to any other open-world game or in general other genres of games. We wanted to make a new engine to implement throughout all the new🍌 platforms and all the new genres of games so that it could feel realistic and it could be natural, more than the Black Deser🐠t engine."

With multiple potential games in mind, the team aimed for a broad engin♔e feature set, fully aware that not every game may push every button or pull every lever they create. Because it's all in-house – and this is one of the major payoffs to the Herculean task of making your own engine – the game and engine teams can coordinate on ideating and implementing new features to support specific ideas.

I asked how you wrangle all these fea🌟tures while minimizing impact on performance and accounting for a range of platforms, and multiple devs actually sighed or put their head in their hands. Short answer🌳? Aim high, but "we need to optimize the game as much as possible so that all the features can apply smoothly on low-spec devices as well."

I imagine this balancing act is even more paiꦡnful when you're optimizing a subtle feature that many people may not pick up on. But with those additions, it's a mix of things the devs want to add as creators, things players will likely notice, and elements that will go unnoticed if they're doing their job right. I look forward to eyeballing them for myself out in the wild.

"All these subtle features, it's kind of both, because our developers also wanted these kinds of features to be implemented," the engine devs said𝄹. "But even though the pla♒yers would not notice these kinds of little features, if these features don't exist, they'll notice right away this difference between implemented features and the gameplay where these features are not implemented. So it's kind of both. So we, even though players don't notice, we see that this will also make it more realistic and more natural."

I spent an hour fighting 4 of Crimson Desert's bosses and learned to embrace the hack-and-slash, but it wasn't enough to kill its giant enemy crab.

On May 13, a British man and woman hiked up the Yotei mountain in Hokkaido and became trapped due to the🧸 cold weather. The man was wearing shorts and the woman was wearing a short-sleeved top, so they really weren't prepared for the cold weather toward the top of the 1,898-meter-high mountain.

As reported by (spotted by ), the couple had gotten to the ninth shelter on the mountain, some 1,750 meters up. It was the final one before the peak, but the cold ꦜweather and their lack of appropriate hiking gear prevented the couple from ascending much further. They called the police and were rescued by helicopter 30 minutes later.

The two apparently had no former experience mountain climbing, so it's pretty impressive they made it as far as they did. However, locals are expressing their annoyance at the tourists because mountain rescues are funded by local taxpayers. There are even by Japanese politicia🍨ns to require t🌞ourists to foot the bill for their rescues in the future.

This isn't the first time tourists have angered locals after visiting a video game location in Japan. The Watazumi Shrine found on Tsushima Island and believed to be the inspiration for Ghost of Tsushima's Scarlet Rock shrine recently banned all tourists after "an extremely serious and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:unforgivable act of disrespect was committed by a foreigner."

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Ghost of Yotei is due out October 2, 2025, and is set 300 years after the original Ghost of Tsushima. It also features a new protagonist, Atsu, on a quest for revenge against the people that k🃏illed her family and l✨eft her pinned to a burning gingko tree.

Rather than getting stranded up a mountain, check out all the upcoming 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:video game release dates and explore a new virtual world instead.

Schedule 1 has been popular enough to inspire 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:a roster of PS5 ripoff listings and a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:massive review bomb on Drug Dealer Simulator for investigating similarities between it and Schedule 1. However, ൩potential dealers looking to get into the drug production biz in Australia have noticed that the game is currently nowhere to be found on Steam, leading to fears that the game has been banned. However, the developer of the game – known mononymously as Tyler – has to assure Aussie fans that isn't the case.

"To anyone in Australia, you might’ve noticed Schedule I is hidden on Steam. Don’t worry, the game hasn’t been banned" Tyler explained. The Australian developer mentioned that the rea🔯son for its disappearance is because "all games sold in Australia need to receive a classification/age rating," with the d꧟ev admitting "I thought this was only required for console and physical releases" Tyler has assured fans he's trying to get this sorted quickly however, saying, "I’m contacting the ratings agency today and getting this resolved ASAP."

While the game hasn't been banned, drugs are notoriously one of the Australian ratings boards main sticking points when it comes to games that have been banned in the country. Notably, Disco Elysium 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:was banned in the country over its drug use, before being澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询: lifted upon appeal and slapped with an 18+ rating. So hopefully Australia gives the game an 18+ rating out of the gate, and the game can get back to what it does best… which is drugs.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 draft trailer from 5 years ago surfaces online, and it looks like a completely different RPG with no final visuals and "terrible robotic voices".

After the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:GTA 6 trailer dropped earlier this week, plenty of industry figures began to highlight the extreme attention to detail that Rockstar was displaying. That ranged from the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:bubbles inside GTA 6's beer bottles to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:realistic cloth physics to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:individual blades of grass, but Murray had his eyes on something else.

"Is this why they delayed it," he asked, zooming in on a cyclist riding away from the camera. Notable here is that this cyclist has their pedals between the soles of their feet and the flip-flops they're wearing. Apparently, that's quite a common phenomena in Florida, the real-life parallel that Rockstar uses for Vice City's home state of Leonida, which led some people to point out that what Murray might think 𝓀is an error, is in fact an intentional feature.

Others, however, seem to think this is Murray ragging on Rockstar over a bug. To the untrained eye, this does look a bit like a mistake - I've certainly never seen anyone cycling like that in the UK, and i🌳n the context of a video game, it could appear to be a clipping issue.

In fact, I'm pretty sure Murray is praising Rockstar here - getting collision to work like this seems incredibly hard, and it's representative of the kind of work that's likely what's pushed 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:GTA 6 to 2026. Unfortunately for Murray, however, this is the internet, wh🅷ere nuance is a myth, and some pl𝓰ayers think that he seems to be chucking rocks from the .

"You seriously can't be the one talking," responded. "The cheek of No Man's Sky tweeting this," another. "This is a losing battle for you respectfully sir," a particularly polite response. That's mostly because of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Light No Fire, which, as several responses point out, has been pretty much enꦏtirely missing in action ♚since its initial reveal at the tail end of 2023.

Since then, there have been all of three official updates, two of which have been warning players that this is a tough project for 𒐪a team like Hello Games to pull off in a reasonable timeframe. All of thiꦕs remains ironic, however, since Light No Fire definitely hasn't been delayed, but it's even more strange given that Murray wasn't even taking shots at Rockstar in the first place.

Last we heard, Murray and co were "extremely busy" with Light No Fire.

A recent Reddit from user "Spirited_Ad3028" highlights such a bittersweet experience. "RIP my permadeath file beautifully," writes the No Man's Sky player, going on to explain why they're unable to salvage any of their hard work thus far. "I landed on the wrong planet in my permadeath save. I'm on a tiny pillar of rock, surrounded by deep ocean in every direction. I'm out🎉 of launch fuel, and I have no ferrite."

The poster continues, detailing their heartbreaking situation in depth. "I can only survive a few seconds outside the ship before the toxic air kills me – and toxic storms roll in every few minu🙈tes, bringing massive waves. I've been doing suicide laps in every direction, diving in and shooting aimlessly for ferrite dust. All I can do is sit in my ship, watch the lightning storms, and wait for my oxygen to run out."

It's almost poetic, in a way – like something plucked straight out of a sci-fi novel or film. Lost in space with a broken ship on a killer planet with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Those of us reading or relating to Spirited_Ad3028's experience aren't alone in thinking so, either, it seems. Hello Games' Sean Murray himself has shared a of the fan's unfortunate debacle on his own social media𒉰, alongside a salute emoji.

One viewer's comment seems to commend the player for going out with a bang: "That's how permadeath runs should end, with a grand finale." Another calls it "a beautiful death." As a longtime No Man's Sky player myself, I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be devastated to lose everything (not that I'm brave enough to run permadeath saves, anyway), but one thing's for certain – it's definitely one of the more peaceful ways to die in-game.

Love exploring space? Here are some great games like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:No Man's Sky to check out next.

Historically, every new Nintendo console, including the Nintendo Switch, has come with an unspoken disclaimer: This isn't as powerful as the hardware provided by rival companies. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Legend of Zelda: Breath of ♐th𒀰e Wild immediately r🧔efutes this reputation and has changed video games (especially when it comes to our definition of a good open world game) forever. Power is about what the player is able to bring to a game. Everything else is just window dressing.

Fresh air

When Breath of the Wild was released as a launch title for the Nintendo Switch on March 3, 2017, the acclaim and embrace were immediate. For around two decades, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time had been relatively cemented as the finest entry in the classic series (some also include The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in that conversation and they're absolutely correct to).

Breath of the Wild broke up the rankings like a mousey Remote Bomb. The Legend of Zelda has always been a testament to the wonder of exploration – the "call of the wild" that lures you to remote places and asks that you test your mettle both within and against nature. Brea♛th of the Wꦬild felt like the apotheosis of this particular sensation.

It was also a necessary shock to the open world genre, something that had always thrived on size. Countless games have been sold on the promise of expansion and, to be fair, there is something to be said about how cool it is to watch a horizon get wider and wider. But it's also been an excuse for hollowness. You run, climb and ride through yet another stretch of digital plain on yet another version of a "fetch quest" and you think "What in the heck am I doing this for? This isn't more fun. This is just…more."

Breath of the Wild lays no claim to being the biggest game ever, but it rarely makes you contemplate your open world purpose. Mostly because there's no time to. Even when you're not trying to solve the puzzles iꦺn the latest shrine you just encountered or tackling a Divine Beast, you're constan🍬tly running into challenges – a new enclave of enemies, a new biome or climate to prepare for, a new bit of treasure that hangs just out of reach that requires, not some fix-all tool, but your own ingenuity.

Breath of the Wild ev﷽en invites you to challenge yourself. Sure, you could run straight into a gaggle of monsters and swing your sword with abandon, but what if you used the environment around you to dismantle them? It would take longer🎀, but would pay off in pure satisfaction.

This kind of exhilarating gameplay did not go unnoticed by the video game industry at large. Not only did Nintendo eagerly capitalize on Breath of the Wild with a sequel, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Th♓e Legend of Zelda: Tears 🐼of the Kingdom, that doubled down on its inventiveness, but other developers took note. Sucker Punch used Breath of the Wild as for 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Ghost of Tsushima. When directing 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Elden Ring, Hidetaka Miyazaki took Breath of the Wild, alongside a few other outstanding open world games, . When Outcast returned with Outcast: A New Beginning, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:it sought to recapture some of Breath of the Wild's delightful aspects. Even first person shooter 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Halo: Infinite, yes re🀅ally, , before cutting back on ওits lofty ambitions.

Catching feelings

However, if there was any title that seemed to take an obvious cue from Breath of the Wild, it was from one of the most reliably traditional series in gaming: 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Pokémon's move to the modern definition of "open world" had been all but inevitable, but many aꦰspects of Legends: Arceus seem drawn from Breath of the Wild's wellspring.

This is especially clear with the "roughing it" sensibilities that require a player to work through obstacles while keeping on the move. Considering that Pokémon games of the past typically stuck to a pac🥂e that was dictated by the player, this made for a very refreshing title and likely Pokémon's best in nearly a decade.

In the eight years since its release, esteem for Breath of the Wild has only grown. Though it wasn't the only open world game from that time period to make an impact (games like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3 and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Red Dead Redemption 2 were also huge hits), it is Breath of the Wi🧜ld that feels like it's seepeᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚd into the broader medium the most.

It reframed our relationship with the objectives of open world games in a way that's immediately obvious, all while still feeling very much The Legend of Zelda. And tho𒆙ugh, again, the Nintendo Switch would never have the pure processing power of other modern systems, Breath of the Wild proved that a developer need not feel limited by that fact. Instead, like many of the sequences in Breath of the Wild, it was an invitation to try something new. A challenge.

With the Nintendo Switch 2 on the way, it's a pretty safe assumption that we'll not just get new main series The Legend of Zelda games, but perhaps dozens of other titles that can trace their roots back to Breath of the Wild. After all, it helped make a Nintendo Switch 2 even possible, as the game was so foundational in the turning of the original Switch into a worldwide phenomenon. What remains up in the air, though, is if we'll ever get a game as forward-looking as Breath of the Wild again, one that wasn't just interested in continu💟ing the The Legend of the Zelda brand but in reinventing how we fall in love with it.

Need another adventure? Check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best Zelda games ranking!

Di🅘rector Hideo Kojima🌱 announces as much over on social media, alongside a few adorable pictures of the team, writing that the "journey begins soon" and you only have "just a little longer until June 26," AKA the game's full release date.

For everyone out of the loop, going gold used to mean that an in-development game was complete and ready to be burned onto discs for physical distribution. The term has stuck around even when some games forego a physical release or when the teams are still working on a day one patch until the last second because, I guesꦺs, it sounds pretty cool.

Regardless, Kojima Productions seems to have finished the version of Death Strandin🅺g 2 that'll be embedded ontoꦿ your physical discs.

That seemingly frees Hideo Kojima up to work on the several other projects that he announced while still actively directing his open-world follow-up. There's OD, the mysterious Xbox-backed horror game that's being made in collaboration with Jordan Peele and other "talented storytellers" yet to be announced. Then, he's going back to his action espionage roots with Physint. And he'll also, at least partially, be involved in A24's Death Stranding film adaptation helmed by A Quiet Place: Day One director Michael Sarnoski, who's done his ൲gameplay researඣch.

Death Stranding 2 comes to PS5 on June 26, but if the first game's PC and Xbox ports were any indication, the seque🍒l should be making the jump to other platforms in the years to come.

For now, check out the other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games of 2025 and beyond to see what's next.

Death Stranding 2 is mere weeks away at this point, and if the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:recently released trailer is anything to go by, it looks to 𓄧be an ambitious follow-up to the or✤iginal game. And clearly Kojima Productions is confident, as it invited press to play 30 hours of the upcoming game, around two months ahead of the game's launch on June 26, 2025.

After the event, Kojima hosted a Q&A with the press, which reported on. During the event, Kojima explained why the sequ🌟el is making its way out of the Uni🅘ted Cities of America and into Australia, saying, "I wanted an area that was sprawled from east to west like America and also somewhere that faced the ocean to the north and south. In that case, Eurasia or Africa felt like too big of a continent, but in terms of size and scale, I felt that Australia was a good fit."

However, Kojima did mention the Plate Gate mechanic featured in the game, which allows Sam to travel between environments, realizing that using it could allow "endless sequels," although he clarified, "I, of course, don't have any plans to do that." However, Kojima did reveal, "I already have a conceptℱ for another sequel. I am not going to make it myself, but if I passed it on to som🥃eone else, they could probably make it."

This wouldn't be the first time Kojima attempted to step back from one of his series, although it could be the first successful one, as the director wanted to hand off the reins for Metal Gear Solid 4. However, he returned to co-direct the game with Shuyo Murata after a massive fan outcry.

Hideo Kojima says "everyone would move out of the way" of GTA 6, but Death Stranding 2 is 95% complete, and its release date was decided a long time ago.

"Some are saying GTA may or may not release in November," Kojima said in a podcast recorded before GTA 6's delay to M🐬ay was announced, as translated by . "As soon as it would be announced for November, everyone would move out of they way. For instance, if a new Mission Impossible movie were to release in May, others wouldn't be able to compete with that so would move somewhere else."

It's perhaps the most Kojima analogy imaginable to compare GTA to Mission Impossible, but regardless, it doesn't seem these concerns had much of an effect on Death Strandin💃g 2. According to Genki's translation, the game's release date was decided "a long time ago," and while Kojima himself wanted a September launch, it seems there was no need to delay it any further.

Kojima said that Death Stranding 2 was 95% complete at the time the podcast was recorded in mid-April, and it seems much of the work left to be done is down to bug-fixing. However, while Koꦕjima's endeavoring to make sure DS2 is as bug-free as possible, even he'll admit that some minor bugs are unavoidable in an open-world game.

Broadly, publishers trying to set the release dates for their games are breathing a sigh of relief now that GTA 6 has been confirmed for May 2026. As that release window remained an open question for months, the sentiment from the industry was that "GTA 6 is basically a hug🌠e meteor, and we will just stay clear of the blast zo♓ne." That's a lot easier now that we know where the impactꦑ site is gonna be centered.

Here are all the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games for 2025 and beyond that you need to know about.

HoYoverse paid a $20 million fine and w🌠as ordered to update how it presents its costs and odds, among other things. It is also rolling out a new wall for age verification for US Genshin players on May 20, with a July 18, 2025 deadline for completion. "If the verification is not completed by July 20th, 2026, the personal information of your HoYoverse account will be deleted permanently,"

T🌳he May 6 Genshin Impact update made significant changes to the way odds and costs are presented. New disclaimers have be🧸en added to the limited-time banners and the in-game premium store, explicitly laying out just how expensive this style of 'gacha' game can be.

How much Genshin Impact really costs

The limited-time character banner, where players can spend a special Fate currency on batches o🔥f 1 or 10 lootboxes in the hopes of obtaining the featured character (currently new character Escoffier), has a new description which notes that the "consolidated probability," or the overall odds while accounting fo༺r various 'pity' systems that eventually guarantee the desired character, is 1.103%.

As a result, "the cost of obtaining a 5-star event-exclusive ꦉcharacter may vary from $1.98 to $475.20 (if purchased in USD)." Quite t🎉he range!

The limited weapon ওbanner, which was fairly recently upd𒉰ated to be less punishing but is still widely disliked in the Genshin community, has a similar disclaimer. The consolidated 5-star odds there are 1.48% per wish, reflecting its slightly more generous pity count, so the cost of an exclusive 5-star weapon ranges from $1.98 to $422.40 in USD. A whole $50 cheaper!

To unpack this math, we also have to look at the new blurbs in Genshin's in-game shop, where you would purchase Genesis Crystals that can be converted to Primogems and then spent on Fates in confou♈nding increments of 160. Clear as mud, right?

The shop now includes a Fate calculator of sorts, indicating how many pulls you're getting for you💖r money. Here's the shortlist, which notably includes the first-time buyer bonus of doubled Genesis Crystals – an incentive to start spending, because companies know that after you spend once, you're more likely to spend again.

• $0.99 - 60 + 60 Genesis Crystals, or 0.7 Fates
• $4.99 - 300 + 300 Genesis Crystals, or 3.7 Fates
• $14.99 - 980 + 980 Genesis Crystals, or 12.2 Fates
• $29.99 - 1,980 + 1,980 Genesis Crystals, or 24.7 Fates
• $49.99 - 3,280 + 3,280 Genesis Crystals, or 41 Fates
• $99.99 - 6,480 + 6,480 Genesis Crystals, or 81 Fates

If you remove these first-time bonuses and keep spꩵending hypothet🧸ical money, the cost of buying Fates outright rises dramatically, hence the $475 ceiling in the character disclaimer.

HoYoverse is essentially saying that that's the most it could cost if♔ we assum♛e – not unreasonably, given the low rates – that you get unlucky and have to rely on the built-in guarantee to get your character.

This also assumes you're brute-forcing the cost with real money alone, ignoring the Primogems and Fates given out in-game through regular rewards and specꦍial events.

Genshin Imp𝓀act has not changed its drop rates or prices here, but these disclaimers ar✨e still a pretty big deal.

Gacha games like Genshin have 🍃historically gone out of their way to conceal and downplay costs with multiple currencies that obscure where exactly your money is going (into a black hole) and how much you'll need to spend to get what you want (more than you think).

This can act as a smokescreen or psychological cushion that makes it easier to spend since it feels like you're getting more for your money, or easier to spend more because you realize too late that you didn't buy enough of whatever currency and the sunk cost fallacy is banging on your do⛄or like a hurricane.

In reality, dropping $100 in Genshin, without a first-🙈time bonus, doesn't even guarantee a single 😼5-star character or weapon.

This update, prompted by the FTC's order, has blown that smokescreen away. The 𓆉FTC spells this out in its report on the complaint filed by the Department of꧟ Justice "upon referral from the Commission."

"Genshin Impact’s purchasing process obscures the reality that consumers commonly must spend large amounts of real money to obtain 'five-star prizes,' and that some children🌱 have spent hundreds ▨or even thousands of dollars to win them," it reads. "The complaint alleges that the system is challenging and confusing, particularly for children and teens."

It's worth noting here that, in the storied history of gacha games, the biggest spenders, the so-called 'whales' that companies seek to harpoon, have spent more thanಌ just a few thousand dollars. In April 2024, gacha YouTuber Xlice posted a video reviewing the account of . (Credit where it's due: the same player makes a point to .)

The FTC continues: "Players must exchange real dollars for bundles of virtual currency that then have to be re-exchanged multiple times to open loot boxes, with exchange rates in unusual denominations. This complicated system, according to the complaint, misleads coꦓnsumers about the amount of money that players spend on loot boxes on an ongoing basis, and the amount of money that players would likely need to spend to obtain certain prizes."

If the idea of spending over $400 on a single character or weapon in a video game, or spending $100 on microtransactions without even getting what you want, sounds absurd, well, good. It should sound absurd. And I say that as someone who's played Genshin Impact almost every day since it launched in September 2020 and jus🌞t recently got into HoYo's newest game, Z💝enless Zone Zero.

I always compare these games to alcohol. They are inherently hazardous and fully capable of ruining your life or finances if you let them, but 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:they can also be🌳 fun when enjoyed responsibly and in moderati🅠on. (Ironically, I don't 🐻drink!) Also: kids shouldn't have them.

These are the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best games to play in 2025, so far.

This Collector's Edition follows the tradition most similar releases do these days, where you get an array of knickknacks sur🦩rounding one, big centerpiece item. In this case, it's a standing model of the Ghost Mask, which admittedly looks pretty cool. But man, if I'm spending $250 on a video game, I want a real copy of that game to put on my shelf, too.

I'm a video game collector, which broadly means that I like buying physical games to keep as a proper, tangible library. All those other goodies in these Collector's Editions are nice and all, but the thing I really want to collect is the video game itself. If I wanted everything, I'd be buying the CE and rebuyin♐g the game itself on disc for another $70.

The fact that the CE only has a digital game shouldn't be a surprise – Sony's done the same with 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Horizon Forbidden West, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and even the upcoming 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Death Stranding 2, and we've seen from publishers like Sq꧂uare Enix.

Perhaps the most infamous example was last year's Dragon Age: The Veilguard Colle🐲ctor's Edition, which didn't come with the game at all, whether in digital or physical form. I'm starting to think that might actually be the more attractive way 🐷to go, though, because then at least collectors who want the game on disc won't have to buy it twice.

Retro remake dev calls Switch 2 game-key cards "disheartening," says you'd hope a company as big as Nintendo "would take preservation a little more seriously."

As disappointing as the delay is, the writing has been on the wall. Rockstar's been radio silent even while 2024's months have trickled away, while parent company Take-Two had no issue penciling in Borderlands 4 to launch around the time that half the games industry assumed GTA 6 would be releasing. Given we've only just entered May of this year, the wait ahead is looking excruciating – 💞but for many publishers and developers, the bog꧋eyman has just left.

Open waters

Take a glance at our list of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:video game release dates for 2025, and you'll notice a pattern: there, er, aren't actually that many of them from July onward. Some of that can be attributed to the fact that Summer Game Fest, which has fast become a prime time to announce release dates, doesn't take place for another month. But a larger factor is that publishers have been scared to pit their darlings against GTA 6, which is guaranteed to eclipse anything unfortunate enough to launch in its shadow. The next Grand Theft Auto is, for those who pick up one or two releases at most each year, the upcoming game. For publishers and developers, the safest course of action is to be nowhere near the blast zone ဣwhenever it drops.

Now, everything has changed. Not only does GTA 6 have a release date that publishers can safely plan around, but it's not even launching this year. The coveted September to December window – lucrative for its run-up to the holidays – is wide open, with just a few months' notice. With the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Switch 2 launching well before that period, it's open season. Those months currently look like a ghost town, but given the frankly ludicrous amount of big hitters with vague promises of launching in 2025, exp✃ect to see that fill out at lightning speed.

Need a refresher? 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Hollow Knight: Silksong is finally set to launch this year, while Xbox is yet to lock in dates for both 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Gears of War: E-Day and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Outer Worlds 2. Even Nintendo – the only company that could maybe take GTA 6's meteoric launch on the chin – has kept release dates for 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Pokemon Legends Z-A and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Metroid Prime 4 under wraps. ⛎There are more (so many more), but you get the point.

As a result, expect to see a collective releasing of held breath. I would be shocked if the last quarter of 2024 didn't look fit to burst by the end of June, to the point where smaller studios may choose to avoid the feeding frenzy of AAA releases and instead save their titles for the first months of 2026. Consider the fact that Summer Game Fest may reveal even more titles launching this year, and we'll likely be playing every game but GTA 6 by Christmas.

Publishers w🧸ill already be scrambling to fill that void, and I can only imagine the migraines brewing across the industry's various board rooms today. But there's another upshot of all thiꩵs, and one I'm far more excited by: Game of the Year is back on the menu! The sheer hype surrounding GTA 6, along with the frankly wild expectations it carries – in part because we know so little about it – has meant that many people have been reserving the award for a game we haven't actually seen in action yet.

Now, the playing field is open. I spent the first months of 2025 wondering if 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 could have nabbed GOTY if it didn't have to go against Rockstar (澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:it remains my personal pick), and now I won't have to wonder. Sandfall Interactive is likely throwing a party over Rockstar's announcement – our own glowing 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 review is just one of many. The Blue Prince missionaries are out in force (I've installed it, leave me be!), while AAA titans like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Avowed, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Monster Hunter Wilds, and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Assassin's Creed Shadows were all delights. That's not even counting presumed contenders yet to come. I promise I'm not trying to throw games at you, but 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Mario Kart World? 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Ghost of Yotei? It's hard 🐼to undersell just how unꦏpredictable 2025 is about to become.

As a gremlin who thrives on chaos, I'm looking at all of this and rubbing my hands. ꩵThat said, I do feel for every sunken heart still grappling🌌 with GTA 6's delay. Even as someone who prefers Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption side over Grand Theft Auto, the prospect of waiting another year is agonizing. But if it's any consolation, Rockstar's bowing out has sparked one of the wildest years in gaming history, and it's sure to be entertaining if nothing else. Elvis has left the building – best of luck to whoever's on stage next.

Check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:GTA 6 wishlist for everything we want to see make it in the game

"Dear Stylists, hope thiওs message finds you well," Papergames begins politely in its s🌄tatement .

Infinity Nikki's so-called Stylists are not well – they are practically sick with disappointment over price increases and what Papergames itself describes as "nearly one hundred issues" in gameplay. The currently rated "Most Helpful" reads lik𒊎e a dying wish: "Do not play this game if you do not want to be exploited."

"They made a bathtub $10," comments another negative Steam review, this o🅷ne with over 350 "hel♕pful" ratings. "That better drown my enemies for me for that price."

To defend itself, Papergames says in its statement "we understand tꦚhat every stylist's love and trust in Infinity Nikki is something we must cherish and uphold with the utmost dedicatio🍷n."

"Every member of our team shares the same deep love for the Nikki IP and treats every version update with the utmost c🍌are and commitment," Papergames continues in its apology letter. "We stand together with all our stylists. [...] Please give us one more chance – to let Nikki's starlight continue to shine for us all, and to keep the warmth in our hearts forever burning bright."

"I can't get through the cut scene," says more preoccupied by Infinity Nikki's fresh bugs✱ and glitches. "I keep falling to my death. Please ꧅fix."

After more than 200,000 wishlists, open-world dress-up game Infinity Nikki finally gets a Steam release date and some free gifts to celebrate.

Its fresh coat of paint proved enticing enough to keep that commitment, so between stints in Cyrodiil, I've been tearing through zombified Oregon. Here's the thing, though: this is exactly how I remember Days Gone, which is both good and bad. Six years is an awfully short gap betwe🧜en an original launch and remaster, which makes the endeavor feel like painting a white room white again – you can see the gloss and kn༒ow it's fresh; but for all intents and purposes, not much has really changed.

Light it up

I hope that doesn't sound too cynical, because Days Gone Remastered's tweaks are neat for the $10 asking price. An overhauled lighting system plays wonderfully with Oregon's woodland sprawl, and there have been a few times where I've stumbled into prowling zombies because I've been admiring the way sunlight drizzles around tree trunks. Similarly to 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Forza Horizon 5'ཧs recent jump to PS5, Days Gone Re🎉mastered makes brilliant useജ of the console's DuelSense controller – throttle your bike, and you'll really feel it.

The parts of Days Gone that were always good still shine. I'm yet to play another game that conveys the same breathless panic of running from a zombie horde, the rural Oregon setting boasts the same fragile peace I adore in DayZ, and the piecemeal building of your own motorbike is in𓄧credibly satisfyiꦕng.

Likewise, the bits I don't like are still here. Protagonist Deacon St. John has a crippling inability to shut up and let players come to their own conclusions about the world, offering commentary on every minute interaction and going so far as to chatter through a conversation we're meant to be eavesdropping on. The tone of all characters, not just Deacon, is lost somewhere between hammy intellectualism and rugged bro code. There are themes I find interesting – navigating grief in a world where there's nothing but grief, concepts of Americana fed thro𝓀ugh a meat grinder – but its subtler flavors are buried beneath an overwhelming cheesiness.

I can accept all of that, because Days Gone Remastered isn't really ꦿintended to win over new fans. The original game has steadily built up a fairly large fanbase over the years, and everyone I know that does like it universally says it gets far better further in – a point I've not broken through just yet, but plan to reach this time around.

Reflexively, it's easy to suggest that the remaster should have dug a little deeper, maybe attached a volume dial to Deacon's weathered denim 🌳jacket, but by doing so you wade from the shallows of objective improvements into far more subjective waters. And is that really the point of this remaster, to win over new fans? Was there a single player who couldn't crack Days Gone solely because of the graphics? No, to both of those questions. This is a subtle round of polish catering to existing fans, with the added possibility that it will make for a better first impressi🌟on on PS5 newcomers.

A better question is whether that's really necessary? I'm always a little underwhelmed by PlayStation's rapid-fire remaster strategy, and don't think it's the end of the world if Days Gone looks six years old, or if 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Last of Us Part 2 shows all four years of its age. I do like the extras that sometimes come bundled in – Days Gone's Horde Assault transforms the game into a bona fide survival shooter, and I don't have enough faith in the kindness of man to admit how much time I sank into The Last of Us Part 2's roguelike No Reꦆturn mode.

All of that considered💃, my concerns around this forever pretty strategy are less value-based and more existential. If you like Days Gone and want to spend more time oohing and aahing over it, then yeah, $10 is a perfectly reasonable asking price. But whether it needed to be sold at all, or as a remaster – an umbrella term that becomes less cohesive with each passing year – is something I have more trouble pinning down.

Maybe, beneath it all, it's a vocabulary issue. Oblivion Remastered makes far more drastic changes and – to me – earns the remaster moniker. Some would suggest it even treads remake territory. Days Gone Remastered shares the same naming strategy, but in practice is more like Days Gone (Improved A Bit Edition). The room is still white, but boy oh boy – would you look at that sheen?

My first 3 hours in Oblivion Remastered were crammed with 2006 weirdness, making it the perfect reimagining of my favorite RPG

"17 ye✅ars ago, on April 29, 2008, we released Grand Theft Auto 4," Vermeij tweets. "To focus on making the game truly next-gen, we dropped many game features from San Andreas. Stats (fitness, weight), Multiple cities, Stealth, Underwater swimming, Jet packs, Tanks, Bicycles, Monster trucks, Car modding, Planes."

These were very beloved features in San Andreas, but I suppose they had to be sacrificed to bring the game up to Rockstar's desir🌊ed graphical standard.

"It was a big jump from San Andreas," Vermeij . "It was al꧅so the hardware. PS2 ♐to PS3 was a massive jump."

Despite cutting some things, Vermeij that✤ GTA 4's excellent GP🐼S system, which rerouted you in real-time like an actual car's navigation system, was "not all that hard." He adds, "I wrote the car pathfinding for GTA 3 and it was basically unchanged in 4."

The game also proved to be a good testing ground for what would later become Rockstar's money-printing machine. "We finally realized a 32 player network game which later evolved into 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:GTA Online," Vermeij claims. Who knows what parts of GTA 6 will༺ lead to whatever Rockstar cooks up in the future?

He also some of the fun defenses added to GTA games to prevent people from pirating them. "I put in some code to make things go subtly wrong when the CD protection was removed. For instance; in Vice City it would rain forever." Nothing game breaking, but annoying if you want to experience the 🍰way the game is truly meant to be played.

In the meantime, check out 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:everything we know about GTA 6.

In the ad﷽vert, Qualley contorts her face and body in time to the fast-paced and bass heavy Mutant Brain by Jonze's b🤡rother, Sam Spiegel.

It's weird and wonderful, odd even by perfume advert stand✅ards, so it's easy to see why Kojima he "saw this and offered her the role." One person , "That's probably the least surprising thing I've seen you say."

Qualley puts her skills as both a dancer and actor on full display, showing impressive mast🧔ery over every facet of her physicality – little did she know 🗹she was making the perfect audition tape for a motion capture gig in Death Stranding.

Mama in the game is a genius inventor, and also has an invisible BT connected to her, so it's a weird role, but Qualley is used to those, starring in The Substanc𒐪e and being part of a cult in Once Upon a🐟 Time in Hollywood.

It's not certain if she'll be in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Death Stranding 2, but she does have an identical twin, Lockne, also portrayed by Qualley, so we could be seeing more of her. Or she may be in the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Death Stranding movie.

Kojima's love of films and movie stars has been well-documented over the years. Whenever there's a new rising star he'll often post 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:a picture of them having a video call, like with Fallout star Emma Purnell. He does say that "70% of my body is made of movies" in his Twitter bio, so he has𓃲 a reputation to uphold as the biggest cinephile in game development.

While you're here, check out all the upcoming 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:video game release dates of 2025.

Atsu then spent the years leading up to Ghost of Yotei's events preparing. "She learned to fight, to kill, and to hunt, and after years away, she has returned to her home with a list of six names: The Snake, The Oni, The Kitsune, The Spider, The Dragon, and Lord Saito. One by one, she’s hunting them down to avenge her family, armed with the same katana used to pin her to that burning tree all those years ago." There's more to her story than just revenge, however.

"But while Atsu’s story begins with vengeance, she’ll find there’s more to her journey than just revenge," as the blog describes. "As she explores Ezo, Atsu will meet unlikely allies and forge connections that help give her a new sense of purpose." It's an exciting look at the Ghost of Tsushima sequel's new 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:female protagonist, and there's not long left to wait until fans can experience it firsthand, with Sony stating pre-orders for Ghost of Yotei begin next week, on May 2, "at 10:00 AM in your local timezone."

The Last of Us and Ghost of Tsushima devs always made the best prototypes, says former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida: "From the very beginning, they make games feel great"

On the heels of the 2.3 reveal, to address mounting criticism and disappointment regarding the game's anniversary rewards, echoing verbiage from similar spats after the game's launch. Back then, it was bu✃gs and performance; this time, it's rewards, attitude, and presentation.

"We'd like to take this opportunity to address your concerns and since⛄rely apologize for the disappointment," the post 🤪reads.

"Our roadmap for the recent versions of Wuthering Waves allocated develoꦇpment resources to an anniversary experience in Version 2.3 that is both relaxing and entertaining. However, this allocation did not meet our 𓆏Rovers' expectations for an anniversary celebration.

"At the same time, we fell short in how the broadcast was structured, scripted, and presented, leading to a poor viewing experience. We🐬 at the Dev Team have i🎉dentified and acknowledge certain shortcomings in our content management, preparation, and delivery."

Kuro also acknowledges that "Wuthering Waves' accomplishments over the past year would not have been possible without our Rovers, especially Rovers who've been with us on this journey from the very start," seemingly tipping its hat to the folks who stuck with the game despite serious technical issues that 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:threatened to torpedo its launch.

Extending an olive branch, as well as the team's "gratitude and sincerest apologies," Kuro has spun up a Wuthering Waves login event handing out 10 Radiant Tide, 10 Forging Tide, and 10 Lustrous Tide, giving players some free rolls on the main three banners. Somewhere in Kuro Games' office is a line of glass cases embossed, "In case of riots, break glass," with free rolls inside and ꦦa few already shattered cases standing as reminders.

This emergency freebie hasn't landedꦇ perfectly, either. Players are still skewering Kuro for leaving the actual anniversary on the lighter side, with a focus on new or returning players and paid incentives rather🅷 than giveaways, while chucking out a login event like chum.

"This felt like them dropping the cake and giving u𝓰s the strawberries from the 🅺fridge," the top comment on .

"The🔯 'stay tuned' part is doing some heavy lifting here because if the 10/10/10 is all, that's a pretty feeble response," another player writes, clocking the "stay tuned for more updates" comment from Kuro.

"The problem of the banners is still exactly the same. The 30 pulls don'ꦿt do anything to solve that really," says another reply, focusing on th𓂃e anniversary rerun banners that, like the normal versions, don't actually guarantee your selected agent.

Why does this sort of anniversary drama happen with seemingly every game like this, including Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail? The easy answer is that gacha games are designed to stoke disappointment and players alway꧒s want more, but I think there's more to it.

The post-Genshin wave of action gacha games has introduced many player💎s to the inherently preda✨tory and fun-second, money-first practices that have dominated some regional markets for years, and these new players seem less accepting of the genre's baggage.

Genshin also triggered🃏 a paradigm shift in how gachas are made and monetized, with many games now emulating develop😼er Hoyoverse's style wholesale.

The expectation within the gacha space is that anniversary celebration🎃s are the one time a year where games go hog-wild with oodles of free stuff, but Genshin and its ilk have consistently been more reserved with rewards.

Wuthering Waves has taken countless cues 🅰from Genshin already, but fans h♉ad hoped it might set a new trend in anniversary plans.

Instead, its anniversary blowback 𓂃has been nearly beat-for-beat – if anything, the backlash has been intensified by lingering soreness from Wuthering Waves' post-launch comeback arc and conflicting player expectations.

If and howꦅ Kuro can fully appease everyone remains to be seen, but as someone who likes these games despite the gacha trappings, I keep coming back to an adage that's also served me well in Deꦗstiny 2: just give people more stuff.

In a brutal 60-hour YouTube video, one devoted fan preserves notorious Genshin Impact streamer's legendarily bad luck for all eternity: "What am I doing with my life."

First of all, I didn't know y♈ou could make 60-hour YouTube videos. As my boss Rollin Bishop reckoned, surely "some physical law has been crossed" here. Secondly, do not watch this video without rest. There are some things for which the human mind just is not equipped.

Zy0x is one of the biggest content creators in the Western Genshin space, and his devotion to Xiao, a character released years ago in update 1.3 (the game is now in 5.5), has become such a widely known meme in the English-speaking community, it's rare for me to see a Xiao🉐-related post or trailer without seeing Zy0x mentioned () in the replies.

Improving his Xiao was the whole point of Zy0x's ill-fated grind, and that grind has ended with a conclusion that no fiction couldꦉ hope to match.

The 30-feature-film-length video☂ about Zy0x is nothing short of testament. It's testament to the cruel and unflinching RNG of Genshin Impact's main grind, artifact itemization, which uses everything short of bear traps to stall your progress.

It's testament to the dedication of whoever runs the channel,🌃 who collected dozens of streams going back to October 2022 to assemble this melancholy marathon.

And, undeniably, i✱t's testament to Zy0x's dedication to Xiao.

But the real tragedy of this video isn't so obvious. It's about Zy0x's years-long grind to get good artifacts on Xiao's signature artifact set, Vermillion H🍷erea﷽fter, long regarded as the character's best-in-slot option, which is only found in a domain that drops terribly inflexible artifacts rightly avoided by most players.

But this video has only been released now because Vermillion Hereafter was recently outclassed by a new artifact set, Long Night's Oath, released in update 5.5 as the signature set🍎 for new character Varesa.

As Genshin theorycrafter , this new artifact set is mathematically better for Xiao. The kicker is that it was released mere weeks after Zy0x finally obtained the keystone piece – a good Anemo-type goblet – that his Vermillion Xiao build had been missing𝐆.

(I say that, but this video plainly shows he had a good build long ago, just not good enough to satisfy whatever impulse demanded his grind.)

The fact that Varesa, the character this set was actually designed for, is generally s🦋tronger than Xiao – who 🅰has held up reasonably well for such an old character – just puts the boot in.

To sum all of this up: one Genshin Impact player spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours over the course of several years farming extremely limited-use gear specifically to upgrade o🐲ne character, only for a betꦉter gear set to arrive mere weeks after it finally appeared that his watch had ended, and that interminable grind has now been preserved in a 60-hour video which, in any sane universe, will serve as a lighthouse to warn other players to avoid this.

Also: a pink cowgirl 🗹dunked on Xiaᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚo in the same update.

Condensing that has over a million views according to the app's analytics, Zy0x saဣid it best in the top comment on this video: "What am I doing with my li✃fe".

Here are 10 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:games like Genshin Impact to play next in 2025.

Developer Sucker Punch's action-adventure game is an exciting mystery for 2025, with its promise of a bloodsoaked version of the Eden that was 1600s Japan, and a missing release date. But, while Ghost of Tsushima fans should continu🧔e to work on their patience, Yoshida is ꦅhappy to report Yotei is lipstick smooth so far.

"Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch always make the game feel right," Yoshida says on a , repeating a sentiment he shared earlier this month with 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Game File. "It's that kind o💮f thing [where] you forget holding the 🐠controller, it becomes so feel natural and intuitive to play."

Yoshida continues to say that Sucker Punch specifically, "somehow, always from the very early stage of development" is ab🐈le to deliver a "bug-free" and completely playable video gameꦛ.

"Somehow, the game doesn't crash," Yoshida says incredulously. "And, you know, they've been changing the battle system so many times, but still, it a𓂃lways works."

As the previous head of PlayStation Indies, a position he ಞleft earlier this year, Yoshida says he got to "play so many different versions of Ghost of Tsushima and Ghost of Yotei, actually, until I left the company.

"Every time I visit [Sucker Punch], even though I left the first party – the producer of the game brought me into his room and let me try Ghost of Yotei in development, and he wanted my feedback. It always felt great. So I'm looking forward to th♑is game." You and everyone else, Yoshida.

Ghost of Yotei will let you cut loose with dual katanas, ōdachi, and more new weapons when it launches this year, PlayStation confirms.

"Tune in to get a first glimpse at wh💦at’s next for Star Wars Outlaws," Ubisoft says in a tweet. "Join us on April 18th at Star Warﷺs Celebration to learn more." Attached is a poster image for the new DLC, showcasing Hondo Ohnaka in all his questionable glory as well as a series of starfighters apparently chasing a small escape pod.

The DLC's title, A Pirate's Fortune, and a small plot description 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:were first revealed last year: "The Trailblazer’s reputation precedes Kay as she runs into veteran pirate Hondo Ohnaka, who is looking to settle old scores with a ruthless gang of pirates." This teaser image is the first major update we've gotten on the expansion since. Ohnaka was a regular presence throughout the Clone Wars and Rebels animated series, and has long been a favorite among fans♉.

A Pirate's Fortune was listed for a "spring 2025" release in the last roadmap. The previous DLC, Wild Card, offered a fun little side story quite different from anything the main 🐓game, and I'm hopeful this second 𒁃expansion can do the same – though I do have my fingers crossed for something a bit meatier this time around. We'll find out more soon enough.

If you're diving into the open-world game for the first time, check out our guide to the best Star Wars Outlaws outfits, armor, and loadout.

Developer Infold Games' follow-up to the successful Nikki series of mobile dress-up titles spanning over 12 years is making its way onto Steam later this month. The studio reveals as much in a recent online , first celebrating the impressive number of wishlists that Infinity Nikki has already made its way onto on 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Valve's platform. "What an incredible journ🌃ey," writes Infold. "Infinity Nikk🐈i has surpassed 200,000 Wishlists on Steam!"

The dev continues, unveiling the date that's been heaꦰvy on many of us Nikki stans' minds – the day the shiny dress-up game is dropping on Steam. "The final surprise has been revealed, but this is just the beginning! Infinity Nikki will officially launch on Steam on April 29th." That's not all, though. Infold has more surprises up its sleeve for fans, including some fun free goodies to tickle all those pull-hungry gacha bones in our bodies.

"To celebrate, we'll be sending all Stylists worldwide 10 Resonite Crystals, 3 Energy Crystals and more as special gifts," states the studio, telling players to "be sure to check your in-game mailbox after the Steam launch!" While it's not , much to many commenters' dismay, I'm personally happy to be receiving any freebies at all – my bank account has suffered enough since 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Infinity Nikki's original launch in December.

Enjoying the game already? Here are all the current 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Infinity Nikki codes and how to redeem them.

"As you may be aware, there have been some games on the PlayStation store appearing over the past few weeks with the name ‘Schedule I’ in them," the game's developer, who goes simply by Tyler, says i🎐n a . "Just confirming these are not affiliated with me in any way. I’d love to port Schedule I to console when the game is at the right stage for that, but I will announce it to the Schedule I comm𝓀unity well before it happens."

Schedule 1 is currently in early access and is expected to remain there for "approximately two years," according to the St✤eam page. It's not unheard of for early access titles to land on console, particularly with Xbox's Game Preview program, but typically, console ports come alongside a 1.0 release on PC for most indies in a similar position. Exactly what Tyler has in mind for Schedule 1 remains to be seen.

The fake games have been repeatedly over the past few weeks, all bearing the Schedule 1 title alongside subtitles like "Syndicate" or "Dope Empire." None had apparently been released, and they've all apparently been taken down. These sorts of lookalikes have been cropping up on PSN for some time, as we saw with aꦓ bizarre GTA: Vice City knock-off that appeared ꧃last year.

Of course, Schedule 1 itself bears some resemblance to the Drug Dealer Simulator games that have been on Steam for years, prompting a "necessary" investigation but "no lawsuit" from the pu༒blisher of those titles. But there's a distinct dif🃏ference between being simil🅰ar to a previous game and outright pretending to be the same thing, and it's clear which side of the divide these PSN titles are falling on.

These are the best 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:open-world games you can explore today.

Nintendo of America senior vice president of product development Nate Bihldorff suggests as much in a new . When asked if he'd been able to find any instances of frame rate drops with either Breath of the Wild or its sequel, Tears of🍎 the Kingdom, on Switch 2, Bihldorff says "I haven't, to be honest."

Bihldorff continues: "Believe me, the first thing I did when I booted up the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of Breﷺath of the Wild is, I ꦐwent to the Korok Forest, because I knew the area previously had been the heaviest processing load."

"And as I walked around, all this foliage is finally being able 🀅to get rendered," he says. He still believes that it is "absolute wizardry" that the original Switch was able to handle a game as lush and demanding as Breath of the Wild. But Bihldorff also acknowledges "there's no question that [the Korok Forest] was the area that saw the biggest performance hit" on the first Switch. On the Switch 2, "I saw no dips" in Breath of the Wild's behavior, he adds.

"I will say, n🐻othing's perfect," Bihldorff notes, "especially with Tears of the Kingdom. The amount of stuff that you can do in that game is impossible to predict because of the access they've given you to building things."

So when it comes to Nintendo's upcoming console, Bihldorff acknowledges, "there probably are still gonna be ways that you can go beyond the stress of the system. But I haven't found any."

I wildly underestimated the Switch 2, and after just getting a Steam Deck, I'm almost regretting it.

If that's not bad enough, Kaso-Machi is said to be under a curse that slowly kills all male yakuza who set foot in the town. Oh, and the mascot business? That already went under, leaving its sole employee, Pinky, to turn it into a love hotel. Michi has to get back the permits from the corru💟pt town mayor who has served near limitless terms, and take Pinky under his wing as he recruits enough mascots to make the titular agency thrive – all while sending enough money back to his boss to keep the knives from her throat. With a broom over his shoulder, Michi is known as The Janitor – but even for him this is one heck of a mess to clean up. Doing so means combining a management sim with open world vehicle exploration. Not a common combo.

Like a mascot

Pinky isn't just a cute nickname, by the way. Mascots in🔜 this world are people like you or I – not cute suits. Pinky is a literal living, breathing mascot who resembles a giant severed little finger (a reference to yubitsume, the practice of cutting off your little finger in atonement often synonymous with Japanese crime cinema). With ties to the crime family of her own, Pinky is young but fierce, desperate to commit ꦆdaring crimes alongside Michi and have a good time while doing it.

It's an odd design for a mascot, but Kaso-Machi – rundown as it is – is home to all sorts of misfits and oddballs. The easier to love mascots, after all, have left town for greener pastures with their mascot magic in tow. You'll end up meeting all sorts of str☂ange ♔characters, such as the eternally wet and crying To-Fu to the straight-faced business cat in a suit Salary Nyan.

Residents you befriend are just as eclectic, and can jump in to help at mascot events, from Mr. Mori and Tora, a train conductor and his feline friend who stand watch at the now dilapidated final train stop in the town, to an arcade game obsessed kappa who collects loose change on the cup on his head. There's a lot going on – Promise Mascot Agency is a heady mix between bizarre vibes and multiple gameplay styles that makes it🙈 like little else.

One thing Promise Mascot Agency isn't, however, is a straightforward followup to Paradise Killer, the vaporwave murder🌺 mystery that put indie developer Kaizen Game Works on the map. Which isn't to say there are no throughlin🌟es at all. Promise Mascot Agency is just as visually striking, trading in the bright colors for a film grain showa era effect. Otherwise, the most DNA the two share is how eclectic and hard to pin down both are. Promise Mascot Agency was also .

Here, like in Paradise Killer, there is still a lot of explo⛎ration. However, in Promise Mascot Agency, it all takes place in Michi's trusty pickup trick as Pinky bounces around in the back. Growing your business means getting out and about in the open world Kaso-Machi, which is spread across a fairly large mountain with ports and farms surrounding it. Meeting mascots allows you to recruit them by offering them a range of perks from better profit percentages from jobs to time off, and meeting business-owning residents means you can start taking𝓡 jobs from them.

Between them all are numerous collectibles, like bashing down adverts for the mayor's re-election to, once you get the upgrade, scooping up garbage to clean up town. Everything you do increases your f𒉰ans, and levelling up gets you access to higher paying jobs. Rinse and repeat as you earn enough money to keep progressing through story milestones.

Which can be easier said than done. While Promise Mascot Agency eases you in as you fi𒊎rst explore the map, the knives of rival clans begin to come for Matriarch Shimazu soon enough, represented like a fuel gauge with a dagger constantly creeping closer to her. Sending money keeps them at bay, but even what feels like large amounts of cash early on barely moves the needle. Jobs take time to complete too, happening in the background as you send mascots off while you continue to drive around. While the final inches of the Ma𓆉triarch's death meter takes some time to completely deplete, it can feel dicey as you wait for completed jobs to give you enough to buy just a little more time, rushing to an ATM to send the payment. It can be genuinely tense.

Getting the job done

Jobs themselves can complete automatically, but often your mascots will end up in trouble – a portion of their payment locked away unless you can successfully swoop in to rescue them. These take place as quickfire card games, where you have a limited amount of resources to a🍃pply your mascot heroes – the friends you've made and helped power-up along the way. Always comical, these revolve around mundane incidents like mascots getting stuck in a "normal-sized door", streamers trying to get a rise out of them, playful dogs, or malfunctioning vending machines gone wrong. Whether categorized as Social, Engineering, or something else, different stats can help in different situations – and you can also cleverly use mascot heroes to keep drawing and playing extra cards.

The prob𒀰lem with all the above is that, to be honest, on a mechanical level, Promise Mascot Agency is really poorly balanced. Once you've played for long enough, keeping payments going across to Matriarch Shimazu will suddenly go from being really stressful to essentially trivial (for me, around the time I unlocked merch drops for my most popular mascots), raking in more than enough cash for it to matter. Likewise, hoovering up enough collectibles to level up my mascot helpers means that they can easily overcome any of the mascot challenges; that's if the expensive items I can give mascots to lower the chance they'll run into trouble don't trigger (which is all well and good, as these card challenges can get repetitive fast).

Even exploring becomes much more trivial after a couple of truck upgrades – one allowing you to literally target and blast most pick-ups from a distance. Similarly, you quickly💞 learn that being as stingy with perks you offer mascots is for the best too, keeping them active longer – as their other stats will quickly balloon alongside the better jobs you take on. The management aspect of the game becomes meaningless. A power curve is one thing, but it meant Promise Mascot Agency suddenly went from really difficult plate spinning to near perpetual-motion with just the tiniest of nudges.

Still, even though 🍎the mechanical systems are flawed, that's not really what the game is all about. At its heart, Promise Mascot Agency is all about the vibes, and there it's nearly flawless. Rocking some fantastic Japanese vocal talent (including Takaya Kuroda as Michi, known as Like a Dragon's Kazuma Kiryu, as well as the likes of Shuhei Yoshida, Ayano Shibuya, Hidetaka Suehiro, and many more), the characters are the true heart of the game.

The story, while silly at first, manages to nail some real emotional beats, whilꦉe spiralling out into a genuinely twisty crime conspiracy that balances grounded plot elements with its magical mascot powers seamlessly. There's a real sense something sinister is going on as you drive through certain areas too, like empty and ruined apartment buildings abandoned after the town's mining industry fell apart.

Even though there's nothing particularly deep about the way you manage your mascots or improve your friendship with the citizens of Kaso-Machi, the act of driving around and helping them out does mean you feel like you get to them well – and that you're building a sen🐓se of community. It might be a town down on its luck, but despite corrupt forces trying to squeeze all it can out of its last gasps, there are real people – human and mascot alike – who want to make things better.

While I was left a bit disappointed there weren't deeper mechanics at play, I finished up Promise Mascot Agency with plenty of fond memories of the new pals I had made 💞along the way. That's one important promise kept.

Promise Mascotܫ Agency was reviewed on PC, with a code provided꧋ by the publisher.

Up for a similar theming with more action? Check our ranked 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best Yakuza games for plenty more!

During today's Treehouse stream (), if you weren't too distracted by the onslaught of pissed off gamers chanting "澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:DROP THE PRICE" in chat, you would have noticed Nintendo showing a side-by-side comparison of Br൩eath of the Wild running on both Switch and Switch 2 that looks like the world's most expensive makeover.

On the Switch, Breath of the Wild's colors are muted, and its 𝔍details look fuzzy on the edges, like you're observing them through cloudy glasses. It's still obvious that the Zelda game takes place in a lush fantasy world, as dramatic sunlight shines on the determined꧋ Link, casting a long, magical shadow beside him on the tall grass. But the Switch sucks a lot of vibrancy out of the fairytale, that's for sure.

The Switch 2, however, appears to do it justice. Bre🥀ath of the Wild's pastel vision of Hyrule has more nuance in its color🦄 – the grass is multiple shades of green, it's not just smothered in lime. Even wispy substances like dust and fog seem to have more dimension.

And, notably, the Switch 2 observably causes a wild – and ver🐲y welcome – boost to performance. As the Treehouse hosts demonstrate the same Breath of the Wild scenes in both their Switch and Switch 2 copies of the game GamesRadar+ found that Breath of the Wild's loading screens zip by five times faster on Switch 2 than they do on Switch, whose frames shudder and linger.

It's also obvious that Link just generally moves with buttery smoothness in the Switch 2, whereas y❀ou'💫d never see him gliding like that with the Switch. Drop the price? More like drop the workout routine.

After racing my heart out in Mario Kart World, I'm convinced the 24-player Knockout Tour is a real racing revolution.

We knew the Switch 2 would be more powerful, but never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined it would be capable of running a game like Elden Ring or Cyberpunk 2077. It's also getting Hades 2, which was expected, and Street Fighter 6 for the fighting game fans among you. Now I'm excited to see what other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming Switch 2 games we'll be getting.

The list of third-party last-gen games that will be making their way to the Switch 2 continued to grow throughout today's Direct. Other titles included Hogwarts Legacy and Civilization 7, which will be joined by 2K brethren Borderl♍ands 4 on the new console, provin🐻g that it's not just old games that will be running on the new hardware.

Speaking of new games, one of the bigger surprises was that in addition to Elden Ring, FromSoftware had another game featuring in the Switch 2 reveal - The Duskbloods is a Switch 2 exclusive💫 coming from the house of ꦓDark Souls. With some seriously gothic architec๊ture and what looks l༺ike a pretty expansively open-world approach, there's obviously some Bloodborne DNA there, but also plenty of what helped Elden Ring elevate beyond its older siblings, which is exciting for those of us who've been waiting a decade for a return to Yharnam (in spirit, at least).

Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders could drop today, and we're following live to see if stock hits the shelves.

Kojima tweets: "The PS4 version was released in November 2019. Shortly after, the world was hit by the pandemic. The PC version followed in July 2020, then the PS5 version of DSDC in September 2021. The PC version of DSDC came in March 2022, the Mac version in January 2024, and the Xbox ve♈rsion in November 2024. Our first IP from the studio—steadily expanding across multiple platforms. We’ve finally reached 20 million porters. Thank you all so much! We look forward to your continued support."

The game has seen 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:a surge in Steam players, I assume because you're all either completing or replaying it ahead of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Death Stranding 2's imminent launch date. This is what's pushed it over that 20 million mark. Just note though, 𓆉that's players, not sales. I played my housemate's copy, so we'd count as two players but just one purc⭕hase.

I didn't play it until Apr🥃il, during the first lockdown in the UK. My housemate bought it when he was furloughed, and watching him wander the hills and mountains of the NUSA was captivating. It was the perfect time for a game all about connection.

Now, the game seems more poignant than ever, and Kojima says, "But even after five years from the ini💙tial release, many are still playing the game. That makes me the happiest." What a sඣweetheart.

He may be looking back, but he's still hard at work on 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Death Stranding 2. All the recording and sound mixing has been completed, and the game is just three months away from launc🙈h.

In the meantime, check out all the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games of 2025 and find something to play while you wait.

I had this demo in the back of my mind during a recent appointment with Pearl Abyss, which came to GDC 2025 to showcase its BlackSpace Engine, the proprietary open-world game-making tech and tools behind more than just the upcoming RPG 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Crimson Desert, which was the vehicle for the showcase. In the best way, it felt like an hour-long tour of a sausage factory, but instead of sheep knees or pig lungs or whatever sausages are made of, I saw wind vectors 𒉰and hurtboxes and physics toggles.

We don't see stuff like this very often, which is a shame. It was fascinating and refreshing. Elemental reactions, time lapses, NPC pathing, torch illumination – real nitty-gritty stuff. And, also and especially, water. Water that looked a whole lot like water, and even more watery with water tech called Shallow Water enabled. Water that could selective💖ly dampen your horse's legs, for example, or, when struck with ice magic, conjure and fracture ice and send it drifting lazily downstream, colliding with rocks and piling up in little crystalline nests.

The entire point of this showcase was to be ridiculously detailed, ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚand this water planted a ridiculously detailed question in my head. I obviously stay on top of all the hot new releases and cutting-edge graphics tech going around – how about that Balatro, huh – but this shiny new engine felt like a good opportunity to measure 2025's video game progress against the Nathan Drake Sweater Gradient. The NDSG, we in the business call it. I had to know.

H꧃ere is the question that I inflicted on the nice Pearl Abyss engine developers who were gracious enough to humor me all the way from Korea: if my character lands face-down in a shallow river and uses his hands to catch himself, when I stand up, will my back still be dry?

The answer, conveyed via interpreter after quite some discussion, started simply. "As for the partial wetness, only the arm part would be wet," the team responded. "Th🌳e back and cloak would be dry. We've distinguished the parts 💛of the body so that when there's partial wetness, it can be distinctively wet. The wetness is distinguishable."

"The wetness is distinguishable" isn't exactly a back-of-the-Uncharted-box blurb, but it's exactly the kind of blunt summary that I came to hear. But I was secretly a little disappointed. Not by the water. It was, as we've established, watery. It is, I can't stress enough, very pretty and pretty cool, and now it's bonafide𝕴 distinctive. But sometimes when you're watching somebody make sausage, you want to see a casing rip just to see how they get things bac𒀰k on track.

Well reader, a PR shepherd cut i♏nto our conversation, and the casing ripped.

Is this partial wetness game-specific or engine-specific? This type of question came up a๊ few times throughout th🦩e demo, but one staff member was on my side here, reckoning this water is more about the tech piloting it. They also reckoned that individual polygons can have different features applied to them, and I'd fully handed them the wheel by this point, content to sit back and watch a team of about seven development staff crosstalk like we're in a NASA command room and there's a cat on the launch pad. This question took several minutes in total to get through. The wetness isn't just by item, then, but by polygon, or by partial sections of items within the engine?

"Let me just make a correction," the final record reads. "It's not polyg🅘ons or parts, it's ne👍ither of them. It's a volumetric masking feature."

There you 🥃have it. The wetness is disting♐uishable because it's a volumetric masking feature, so my back would stay dry. Oh yeah, I'm gonna push this right up the NDSG.

Crimson Desert feels like Dragon’s Dogma 2 combined with The Witcher 3’s lone hero action swagger.

Kojima tweets: "The number of 'Death Stranding' players has exceeded 20 million. Thank you very much. Sams from all over the world are ꦇstill delivering. You are connecting𝐆 the world."

That theme of connection is obviously central to Death Stranding. While it's got heavy political themes and we can draw a lot of parallels between the world of the game and the real one, one part of its meaning was recentꦉly revealed by Kojima himself.

"I thought I lost everything when I became alone nine years ago," he said recently, referring to his departure from Konami. It's hard to believe a developer as revered as Kojima could have so much self-doubt, but he did, and that fuelled Death Stranding. Ultimately, he found that we were willing to go whe🍃rever he took us. "I had something very important, which was connection with peop🃏le."

With regard to how many people have enjoyed Death Stranding, it's important to note that Kojima states there are over 20 million "players," not 20 million sales. My housemate bought the game and💟 I played his copy, so we'd count as two players but only one sale. So, 20 million isn't a perfect indicator of how much money the game has made, but it c🐎learly did well enough to justify a sequel.

That being said, the for Death Stranding shot up in March, meaning people are either buying it or replaying it ahead of the sequel. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:That sequel is just three months away, and it's also achieved a milestone recently: all the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:recording and sound mixing is now complete. Kojima has consistently shared these kinds of updates, like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:when the Japanese dub was finished and when 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:actors wrapped up filming.

While we wait for June 26, check out all the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games of 2025 so you've got something to play in the next couple of months.

Kojima tweets: "Finished s🧸ound mixing with Molinare in London. A total of about three years, including ADR. Thank you very much. A light toast with our sound team and the folks at Molinare." Kojima Produꦉctions' champagne budget must be pretty high.

ADR stands for automated dialogue replacement. It's a process that involves swappingไ out voice lines recorded on set for lines recorded in a studio, where there will be less background noise.

I love that Kojima shares updates like this during the development process. He mostly focuses on the editing and acting aspects of the game, but it's stiဣll fascinating nonetheless. I had no idea just recording and sound mixing could take as long as three years on a game.

He wasted absolutely no time on getting this part of the process wrapped up, as the lines for 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:the Japanese dub were finished just a few days ago, March 25. It's all a bit nerve-wracking though when you consider the game is barely three months from its 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:launch date of June 26. It really is wild howꦑ close to the edge game developers get when it comes to 🗹finalizing and polishing everything.

Fortunately, that means we don't have to wait too long before we can see the moments with Troy Baker's Higgs that Kojima says are "so ridiculous" we'll "probably throw the controller." 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Death Stranding was already absurd, so I'm interes𒐪ted to see what new heights this se𝓀quel is taken to.

While we wait, check out all the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games of 2025 that we have to look forward to in the coming months. What one will you play before Death Stranding 2?

Bennett Foddy is likely a name that inspires fear in many players' hearts. Foddy made the viral flash game hit QWOP back in 2008. While they've been involved with other games like VVVVVV and Ape Out, Foddy has made a number of rage-inducing, awkward movement games to torment gamers around the world. The likes of CLOP (QWOP but you play as a unicorn), GIRP (playing a game of twister on your keyboard to climb), and then the most devious of all, Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy (which in turn went on to inspire other popular rage games like Only Up and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:A Difficult Game About Climbing).

Foddy's next game is Baby Steps (which is being 🌱developed alongside Ape Out's designer and composer Gabe Cuzzillo and Maxi Boch). In Baby Steps you take on the role of a 30-something manchild who is forced into exploring the great outdoors. The catch – of course – is that you have to manually control every step Nate takes; it's literally a walking simulator.

In the same vein as Foddy's other games, it's got an awkward movement system, but despite this, the developer didn't intend for Baby Steps to be rage-inducing. GamesRadar+ senior writer Austin Wood played the game and spoke to Foddy at GDC 2025 (describing playing it in front of Foddy as "t๊he most intimidating demo I’ve had in 12 years of covering video games").

Foddy told us "You can inflict that on yourself playing Baby Steps if you want to. Some people will want to if they're fans of my work in particular. But this is really a step away from that, like Ape Out." Unlike Getting Over It – which sometimes feels like it was made with pure malice – Foddy describes Bಌaby Steps' difficulty as "more of a real arcade vibe, s🍸ort of skill ceiling, with reliable input."

One way this player-made difficulty plays out is with the ga✱me's different paths. Foddy describes it, saying, "It's a rock or it's a tree; it's minding its own business. It's not telling you, 'hey, can you get up here?' You're deciding at some point, I think I can get up there, and that moment is where the player starts to sort of set the friction for themselves. We've really tried to zero in on that feeling as much as we can."

Baby Steps is releasing later in 2025, but why not pass the time until you can become a manchild by playing some of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best games of 2025?