Indie studio Speculative Agency - which is currently making "a narrative courtroom deck-builder about ordinary people who make the powerful pay for destroying our future", called All Will Rise (quote from Kickstarter) - has made the brave decision to return funding given by Xbox and Microsoft to join the No Games for Genocide boycott.
I admit I was a bit surprised when I looked at my Pokémon Pokopia playtime on Monday and discovered I’d somehow put in nearly 24 hours over the weekend. But still, that didn’t stop me from scoffing when my colleagues started talking about how they’d been losing sleep to the thing. Ridiculous, I thought! Impossible! So it almost feels inevitable that, a day later, this article comes to you through a thick fog of sleep deprivation - and all because I stayed up till 2am last night, unshakably compelled to fix every damned bridge in Bleak Beach. Pokopia has me good.
There's a treasure hunt of sorts in progress within Marathon, with the best and brightest puzzle solvers and solution sleuths gathering together in search of a glorious prize. That prize is, of course, unlocking the Cryo Archive map for the entire playerbase of Bungie's new extraction shooter. It's also a chance for players to make their mark in the game's legacy, to be one piece of the history Marathon.
Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little about the games we've been playing. This week, everyone's playing Pokémon Pokopia apart from Bertie and Connor, who are arguably the staff members with the best taste - an observation I make completely unbiasedly. Connor does appear to have become quite evil, though, so I think it's best I distance myself from him as well.
If extraction shooters are games in which you duck out of the fray between matches to look at what you just collected, I guess I'm almost playing Marathon the right way. I struggle to keep up with a team, let alone support other players in any meaningful manner, and I'm truly useless in most gunfights. But when the game is over I'm still eagerly checking through my winnings.
Let's be honest, no-one is going into a shop and picking up a Switch 2 because of Drag x Drive, are they? Nor are they seeking out the new(ish) console for a mouse-controlled version of Metroid Prime 4 (even if it is sort-of good). The mouse capabilities of the Switch 2 feel under-utilised so far - in fact, the only time I can really remember vibing with them is in a newly bolted-on mini-game in Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster. Not exactly the DS' stylus or the Wii's Wiimote, is it?
Silent Hill, Siren, and Gravity Rush creator Keiichi Toyama is recruiting for a "new large-scale project".
Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios has re-recorded some of its AI-generated voice lines, acknowledging "there is a quality difference" between lines recorded by human actors and those generated by AI.
March has been a super busy month when it comes to big video game releases, yet players haven't stopped talking about late February's Resident Evil Requiem, which has even climbed to the second top spot of Metacritic's user score ranking. Now, Capcom has finally released sales numbers for the game so far, and it's an even bigger launch than expected.
If you've booted up Marathon today before work (or for the naughtier of you out there, whilst at work), you may have noticed a major change. Not only has a mysterious mail landed in your inbox, but a locked-off fourth map has appeared on the menu. It looks as though Cryo Archive - the hardest map yet - is nearly here.
Yesterday, we learned of layoffs at Warner Bros. Montréal, the latest in a unbearably long list of bad games industry news in recent months. Today, for a change, we have a positive bit of industry news, this time coming from Japanese publisher Atlus (who you'll probably know for Persona, Shin Megami Tensei, and Metaphor ReFantazio).
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The Simpsons showrunner and The Simpsons: Hit & Run writer Matt Selman reckons we should "never say never" to a possible remake or revival.
Bethesda has teased that we can expect new information about 
Several Warner Bros. Montréal developers are reporting that they have been laid off.
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