Idol Showdown sees you throwing animals, running folks over with trucks, and hopping into a shopping cart to wreck your opponents in its wild one-on-one fights. This game is a fan-made title...
The post ‘Idol Showdown’ – A Ridiculous VTuber Fighting Game appeared first on Indie Games Plus.
Sega's Eternal Champions is the next video game franchise to get a silver-screen adaptation.
Whilst it's hardly surprising that filmmakers are still rooting through video game catalogues for ideas, I can't say I had Sega's 1993 fighting game on my bingo card for the next series to be getting an adaptation.
However, according to Hollywood Reporter, that's exactly what's happening, with Jurassic World trilogy writer Derek Connolly set to write the live-action screenplay.
Developer: Capcom Publisher: Capcom Release: Genre: Action The SNES release of Street Fighter II is one of the biggest console exclusives of all time. At the time no one thought it was possible and its release and quality sparked a...
The post Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition appeared first on Classic-Games.net.
Idol Showdown sees you throwing animals, running folks over with trucks, and hopping into a shopping cart to wreck your opponents in its wild one-on-one fights. This game is a fan-made title...
The post ‘Idol Showdown’ – A Ridiculous VTuber Fighting Game appeared first on Indie Games Plus.
Idol Showdown sees you throwing animals, running folks over with trucks, and hopping into a shopping cart to wreck your opponents in its wild one-on-one fights. This game is a fan-made title...
The post ‘Idol Showdown’ – A Ridiculous VTuber Fighting Game appeared first on Indie Games Plus.
China has approved a number of new mobile games for release, most notably Marvel Rivals, Rainbow Six, Dynasty Warriors, and Final Fantasy 14 Mobile.
According to Niko Partners, a total of 15 games were approved yesterday (2nd August), including the still-as-yet-unconfirmed Final Fantasy 14 mobile port.
The news adds credence to a recent rumour that Final Fantasy developer Square Enix had linked up with Tencent to develop a mobile version of its fan-favourite MMO, Final Fantasy 14.
Chivalry 2 is now "content and feature complete", as its developer moves on to new projects.
The medieval first-person slasher received its latest update in May, the Regicide Update, which provides the game's narrative conclusion. In a new blog post, Torn Banner Studios president and creative director Steve Piggott confirmed this is the final update, but not the end of the franchise.
"With the Regicide Update we consider the game to be content and feature complete," said Piggott. "Though every story comes to an end, we know many players will be disappointed by the news - but this isn't the end for the Chivalry franchise."
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Sorry singing fans, Amazon's Yakuza TV show won't include the game's iconic karaoke sessions.
The Yakuza, or Like a Dragon, games are known for their bizarre minigames, but it seems the TV producers are taking a more serious approach to their adaptations by focusing on human emotion and offering new interpretations of familiar characters.
When asked during a roundtable if karaoke would be featured in the Like a Dragon: Yakuza TV show, executive producer Erik Barmack said it would not, though "singing may come eventually" (thanks The Gamer).
NetherRealm has announced Mortal Kombat 1 DLC Khaos Reigns, which will expand the game's story campaign with an all-new cinematic narrative.
"When a perilous threat arrives from an alternate timeline, led by the ruthless Titan Havik whose sole mission is to throw the realms into khaos, Liu Kang must rally his champions and put faith in his enemies to defeat this grave danger," reads the official blurb. "If they fail, the New Era will be reduced to anarchy."
In addition, the Mortal Kombat 1 team has revealed its next Kombat Pack, which will provide players with more fighters to add to their roster. Upcoming fighters include returning kombatants Noob Saibot, voiced by Kaiji Tang; Cyrax, voiced by Enuka Okuma; and Sektor, voiced by Erika Ishii. These three all have "unique backstories as part of the reimagined Mortal Kombat 1 Universe". For example, Sektor and Cyrax are both women in this universe.
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Amazon Prime's Like a Dragon adaptation Like a Dragon: Yakuza will premier on 24th October, 2024.
Previously, we'd been told the series would debut on 25th October.
To mark the change, Amazon also dropped a tantalising, if brief, peek at what's to come in a new teaser trailer:
In the pantheon of fighting games – a genre in which the community typically moves along once a new entry arrives – there are those specific games that stand above the others and maintain a legendary status. Games like Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, and Capcom Vs. SNK 2 have maintained huge communities in the 20-plus years since they launched and are held in high regard by the fighting game community to this day. There's one more example with a particularly mythic status: SNK's 1999 classic Garou: Mark of the Wolves, which was not only was a soft-reboot of the Fatal Fury series but also the last of that series to ever release, as SNK shifted focus onto The King of Fighters as its premiere fighting game franchise.
For years and years, I've been waiting on a follow-up to Mark of the Wolves – which was apparently nearly complete before SNK went bankrupt back in 2001. Every single time EVO would come around and SNK would hit the stage with a new announcement, only for it to be a new Samurai Shodown or King of Fighters (both of which were bangers, mind you), I'd be disappointed. SNK producer Yasuyuki Oda, who also led development on KOF and Samurai Shodown, has been vocal about wanting to return to the game, outright saying in 2022 that he "went back to SNK to complete Garou". This finally came to pass at EVO later that year, when Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves was confirmed.
After a couple more trailers throughout 2023, and making its first playable appearance at EVO Japan earlier this year, City of the Wolves was confirmed for a Summer Game Fest appearance. So, after finding out I was going to the event this year, naturally the very first appointment I made was going to be the fighting game I've waited 25 years for (okay, I only played Garou for the first time like 6 years ago, but it's far more dramatic to put it that way). And after getting to play the game, there's no better way to describe it than hot damn, they nailed it.
This is your friendly reminder that Microsoft is set to close its Xbox 360 digital store on 29th July – that's next Monday – so you have just a few days left to make the most of those last discounts on some of the best Xbox 360 games of the generation.
Microsoft announced a raft of discounts on Xbox 360 digital games back in May. Whilst some games will live on via other platforms and services – including Microsoft's comprehensive backwards compatibility system – there are a handful of games that will disappear from sale forever. So, if you've ever fancied one, now's the time to pick it up.
X user Kalyoshika has shared a list of the games/DLC that "will not survive", as well as "a couple of games that are going from cheap, easy-to-get digital copies", to "impossible-to-get, expensive, piracy only, jump-through-hoops to play".
Chivalry 2 is now "content and feature complete", as its developer moves on to new projects.
The medieval first-person slasher received its latest update in May, the Regicide Update, which provides the game's narrative conclusion. In a new blog post, Torn Banner Studios president and creative director Steve Piggott confirmed this is the final update, but not the end of the franchise.
"With the Regicide Update we consider the game to be content and feature complete," said Piggott. "Though every story comes to an end, we know many players will be disappointed by the news - but this isn't the end for the Chivalry franchise."
Sorry singing fans, Amazon's Yakuza TV show won't include the game's iconic karaoke sessions.
The Yakuza, or Like a Dragon, games are known for their bizarre minigames, but it seems the TV producers are taking a more serious approach to their adaptations by focusing on human emotion and offering new interpretations of familiar characters.
When asked during a roundtable if karaoke would be featured in the Like a Dragon: Yakuza TV show, executive producer Erik Barmack said it would not, though "singing may come eventually" (thanks The Gamer).
NetherRealm has announced Mortal Kombat 1 DLC Khaos Reigns, which will expand the game's story campaign with an all-new cinematic narrative.
"When a perilous threat arrives from an alternate timeline, led by the ruthless Titan Havik whose sole mission is to throw the realms into khaos, Liu Kang must rally his champions and put faith in his enemies to defeat this grave danger," reads the official blurb. "If they fail, the New Era will be reduced to anarchy."
In addition, the Mortal Kombat 1 team has revealed its next Kombat Pack, which will provide players with more fighters to add to their roster. Upcoming fighters include returning kombatants Noob Saibot, voiced by Kaiji Tang; Cyrax, voiced by Enuka Okuma; and Sektor, voiced by Erika Ishii. These three all have "unique backstories as part of the reimagined Mortal Kombat 1 Universe". For example, Sektor and Cyrax are both women in this universe.
Amazon Prime's Like a Dragon adaptation Like a Dragon: Yakuza will premier on 24th October, 2024.
Previously, we'd been told the series would debut on 25th October.
To mark the change, Amazon also dropped a tantalising, if brief, peek at what's to come in a new teaser trailer:
In the pantheon of fighting games – a genre in which the community typically moves along once a new entry arrives – there are those specific games that stand above the others and maintain a legendary status. Games like Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, and Capcom Vs. SNK 2 have maintained huge communities in the 20-plus years since they launched and are held in high regard by the fighting game community to this day. There's one more example with a particularly mythic status: SNK's 1999 classic Garou: Mark of the Wolves, which was not only was a soft-reboot of the Fatal Fury series but also the last of that series to ever release, as SNK shifted focus onto The King of Fighters as its premiere fighting game franchise.
For years and years, I've been waiting on a follow-up to Mark of the Wolves – which was apparently nearly complete before SNK went bankrupt back in 2001. Every single time EVO would come around and SNK would hit the stage with a new announcement, only for it to be a new Samurai Shodown or King of Fighters (both of which were bangers, mind you), I'd be disappointed. SNK producer Yasuyuki Oda, who also led development on KOF and Samurai Shodown, has been vocal about wanting to return to the game, outright saying in 2022 that he "went back to SNK to complete Garou". This finally came to pass at EVO later that year, when Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves was confirmed.
After a couple more trailers throughout 2023, and making its first playable appearance at EVO Japan earlier this year, City of the Wolves was confirmed for a Summer Game Fest appearance. So, after finding out I was going to the event this year, naturally the very first appointment I made was going to be the fighting game I've waited 25 years for (okay, I only played Garou for the first time like 6 years ago, but it's far more dramatic to put it that way). And after getting to play the game, there's no better way to describe it than hot damn, they nailed it.
This is your friendly reminder that Microsoft is set to close its Xbox 360 digital store on 29th July – that's next Monday – so you have just a few days left to make the most of those last discounts on some of the best Xbox 360 games of the generation.
Microsoft announced a raft of discounts on Xbox 360 digital games back in May. Whilst some games will live on via other platforms and services – including Microsoft's comprehensive backwards compatibility system – there are a handful of games that will disappear from sale forever. So, if you've ever fancied one, now's the time to pick it up.
X user Kalyoshika has shared a list of the games/DLC that "will not survive", as well as "a couple of games that are going from cheap, easy-to-get digital copies", to "impossible-to-get, expensive, piracy only, jump-through-hoops to play".
Few acts in games feel quite as gleefully gratifying as removing a knight’s shiny dome with a halberd swing in medieval multiplayer melee Chivalry 2. In a pastime that’s had several decades to perfect the art of hitting men with sharp objects, that’s quite the accomplishment. Since releasing in 2022, Torn Banner have lavished the player base with free horses, angry peasants, and most recently, the Regicide update - hosting a climatic tete-a-tete between two angry crownmen. With work on No More Room In Hell 2 well underway though, Torn Banner have decided to call it on Chiv 2, which they now consider “feature complete.”
The story of Mortal Kombat games in recent years has been a mish-mash of double-crosses, weird friendships, and alternate dimension wobbles. They often feel like a casualty of Marvel movie bloat. Mortal Kombat 1 was marketed as a "reboot", for example, but is really just a continuation of previous nonsense, with developers NetherRealm saying "I don't know, stick a multiverse in it." Yet from that multiverse now arrives another bad guy, bringing new story chapters for the fighting game's first big expansion, as well as extra characters like the liquid metal murderer from Terminator 2, a Conan of the barbarian persuasion, and the masked killer of the Scream movies.
Few acts in games feel quite as gleefully gratifying as removing a knight’s shiny dome with a halberd swing in medieval multiplayer melee Chivalry 2. In a pastime that’s had several decades to perfect the art of hitting men with sharp objects, that’s quite the accomplishment. Since releasing in 2022, Torn Banner have lavished the player base with free horses, angry peasants, and most recently, the Regicide update - hosting a climatic tete-a-tete between two angry crownmen. With work on No More Room In Hell 2 well underway though, Torn Banner have decided to call it on Chiv 2, which they now consider “feature complete.”
MultiVersus development studio Player First Games has been acquired by the game's publisher, Warner Bros. The studio's co-founders will continue to lead the studio. The platform figher's second season is due to go live tomorrow, adding a ranked mode and new characters Samurai Jack and Beetlejuice.
Heihachi Mishima, the mustachioed malevolence of the Tekken series, is going to be the next DLC character for Tekken 8. He was last seen with his loving son Kazuya, who threw him into a volcano. Of course, to be fully submerged in impossibly hot liquid rock is merely a long-running family prank for the cast of this 3D fighting game, sort of like forcing your granddad to do the ice bucket challenge, but with lava. Nobody truly expected the horn-haired headbutter to be fully removed from the series. But I am a little surprised to see him back so soon.
The story of Mortal Kombat games in recent years has been a mish-mash of double-crosses, weird friendships, and alternate dimension wobbles. They often feel like a casualty of Marvel movie bloat. Mortal Kombat 1 was marketed as a "reboot", for example, but is really just a continuation of previous nonsense, with developers NetherRealm saying "I don't know, stick a multiverse in it." Yet from that multiverse now arrives another bad guy, bringing new story chapters for the fighting game's first big expansion, as well as extra characters like the liquid metal murderer from Terminator 2, a Conan of the barbarian persuasion, and the masked killer of the Scream movies.
MultiVersus development studio Player First Games has been acquired by the game's publisher, Warner Bros. The studio's co-founders will continue to lead the studio. The platform figher's second season is due to go live tomorrow, adding a ranked mode and new characters Samurai Jack and Beetlejuice.
Heihachi Mishima, the mustachioed malevolence of the Tekken series, is going to be the next DLC character for Tekken 8. He was last seen with his loving son Kazuya, who threw him into a volcano. Of course, to be fully submerged in impossibly hot liquid rock is merely a long-running family prank for the cast of this 3D fighting game, sort of like forcing your granddad to do the ice bucket challenge, but with lava. Nobody truly expected the horn-haired headbutter to be fully removed from the series. But I am a little surprised to see him back so soon.
Idol Showdown sees you throwing animals, running folks over with trucks, and hopping into a shopping cart to wreck your opponents in its wild one-on-one fights. This game is a fan-made title...
The post ‘Idol Showdown’ – A Ridiculous VTuber Fighting Game appeared first on Indie Games Plus.
Batman is one of the most iconic superheroes in comics, and one of the most complex, with almost a century of accrued lore behind him by this point. With that Marianas Trench of mythology to explore, adaptations have always made perfect sense. From early film serials to TV shows and onwards, we live in a world where Batman is always being remade and reimagined by someone.
One of the most successful reimaginings is Batman: The Animated Series, created by Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski. In stark skyscraper canyons dropping away beneath menacing red skies, this cartoon introduced a new generation of viewers to Batman and his rogue's gallery. The art was stellar, as was the noir-infused storytelling, but the casting was just as important. Here was Mark Hamill as the Joker, and the late Arleen Sorkin as Harley Quinn. And holding it all together was Kevin Conroy, stern and perfectly unknowable, and bringing just the slightest trace of grim humour, as Batman.
I've been thinking about Conroy a lot these past few days. A fan favourite, his death in 2022 devastated the community, and it underlined something that had been felt for a long time: here was truly a Batman for the ages. This summer has brought news of a new Batman game, Batman Arkham Shadow, with Roger Craig Smith returning to the character after his turn in Batman: Arkham Origins. New Arkham games are always welcome, and I'm sure Smith will do a great job. But it's been a perfect opportunity for me to think of Conroy again and be thankful for what he brought to the role, regardless of the medium.
Dark and Darker is a game about escaping dungeons. And there's a problem with that - or there should be. Dungeons are so common in fantasy games that it's hard to pay too much attention to them. We've seen them all before, we know what they do. But when was the last time we really re-examined what being in one would actually be like? Dark and Darker does this, and it does it brilliantly well.
Technically it's a PvPvE extraction game, which means you go into a dungeon with - and against - other people, as well as monsters, and you have to find a way out. If you die, you leave with nothing but the experience points you earned. If you take too long, you'll be hurried and eventually killed by an earthquake, or by a deadly blizzard blowing in. The point is pressure. You know, even before you begin, you're never going to be safe. You will need to move, but where?
It's dark. So dark you won't even see the chests next to you unless you light a torch. You won't see platforms or the missing parts of platforms either. You won't see traps on the floor or the piles of bones that form into skeletons when you're nearby. In terms of setting, Dark and Darker lives up to its name. Light in the game, therefore, is valuable. But torches also mark you out to anyone nearby, and they occupy the sword arm you hold them with. They're a risk.
A phoenix is a mythological firebird that is periodically reborn from its own ashes, a symbol of cyclical renewal. It's also, according to several former employees of Chorus developers Fishlabs in Hamburg, an internal title for the massive cost-cutting project begun by Swedish conglomerate Embracer Group in June 2023.
The current incarnation of a bewildering series of mergers, renamings and acquisitions that date back to the founding of Nordic Games in 2004, Embracer have spent much of the past decade buying up video game studios and licenses, from Deus Ex developers Eidos Montreal to the adaptation rights for The Lords Of The Rings. According to a February 2023 earnings report, by the end of December 2022 the conglomerate had 134 internal studios on the books (including table-top developers) and owned or controlled over 850 IPs, with 224 games in development. Our Graham warned of the perils of such consolidation in 2019, and his misgivings have been borne out. Following the reported collapse of a billion dollar Savvy Games investment deal, Embracer set out to recover their debts by cancelling projects, laying off staff and closing whole studios. Fishlabs - acquired by Embracer in 2018 alongside their parent company Koch Media, nowadays Plaion - were among those burned by "Project Phoenix", first losing a dozen people in September 2023, and then around half their remaining workforce in November. In the process of these reductions, Embracer also binned off two video game projects – a sumptuous sci-fi metroidvania that was in full development, and a "visual prototype" for a brand new Red Faction game.
When it comes to the ultimate showdown of all-time great fighting games, Marvel vs Capcom 2 might well take my personal bet for being the best of the best. I spent countless hours throwing down with housemates, friends and random passers-by who looked like they were up for a brawl during my teenage years. Yet the arcade classic has - as far as I can tell - never been given a proper PC release before the recent announcement of a new bundle of the comic-book crossover series headed to Steam this year.
The impenetrable wall of crossover fiction known as Kingdom Hearts has come to Steam. The games have been on Epic Games Store since 2021, so they're not new to PC folk. But this does open them up to players who shy away from Epic's storefront. I use the term "open up" loosely, because Kingdom Hearts is popularly regarded as a tangle of criss-crossing JRPG confuse-o-plots that require diagrams and multiple explainer videos to follow. I don't know if that's true, having never followed Alice down this Buster Sword-shaped rabbit hole, but it is the popular joke. And, looking into Goofy's cold, dead eyes, I find I am afraid to question it.
A phoenix is a mythological firebird that is periodically reborn from its own ashes, a symbol of cyclical renewal. It's also, according to several former employees of Chorus developers Fishlabs in Hamburg, an internal title for the massive cost-cutting project begun by Swedish conglomerate Embracer Group in June 2023.
The current incarnation of a bewildering series of mergers, renamings and acquisitions that date back to the founding of Nordic Games in 2004, Embracer have spent much of the past decade buying up video game studios and licenses, from Deus Ex developers Eidos Montreal to the adaptation rights for The Lords Of The Rings. According to a February 2023 earnings report, by the end of December 2022 the conglomerate had 134 internal studios on the books (including table-top developers) and owned or controlled over 850 IPs, with 224 games in development. Our Graham warned of the perils of such consolidation in 2019, and his misgivings have been borne out. Following the reported collapse of a billion dollar Savvy Games investment deal, Embracer set out to recover their debts by cancelling projects, laying off staff and closing whole studios. Fishlabs - acquired by Embracer in 2018 alongside their parent company Koch Media, nowadays Plaion - were among those burned by "Project Phoenix", first losing a dozen people in September 2023, and then around half their remaining workforce in November. In the process of these reductions, Embracer also binned off two video game projects – a sumptuous sci-fi metroidvania that was in full development, and a "visual prototype" for a brand new Red Faction game.
When it comes to the ultimate showdown of all-time great fighting games, Marvel vs Capcom 2 might well take my personal bet for being the best of the best. I spent countless hours throwing down with housemates, friends and random passers-by who looked like they were up for a brawl during my teenage years. Yet the arcade classic has - as far as I can tell - never been given a proper PC release before the recent announcement of a new bundle of the comic-book crossover series headed to Steam this year.
The impenetrable wall of crossover fiction known as Kingdom Hearts has come to Steam. The games have been on Epic Games Store since 2021, so they're not new to PC folk. But this does open them up to players who shy away from Epic's storefront. I use the term "open up" loosely, because Kingdom Hearts is popularly regarded as a tangle of criss-crossing JRPG confuse-o-plots that require diagrams and multiple explainer videos to follow. I don't know if that's true, having never followed Alice down this Buster Sword-shaped rabbit hole, but it is the popular joke. And, looking into Goofy's cold, dead eyes, I find I am afraid to question it.
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time's troubled remake has resurfaced during tonight's Ubisoft Forward showcase with the news it'll finally be arriving in 2026, some six years after it was initially revealed. More happily, Price of Persia: The Lost Crown and The Rogue Prince of Persia both have new updates launching today.
Ubisoft revealed it was remaking Sands of Time back in September 2020, when it was originally due to launch the following January. However, following a less than positive reception to its debut trailer, Ubisoft announced the first of several delays for the project, eventually moving it from original developers Ubisoft Pune and Mumbai to Ubisoft Montreal.
When we last heard from the remake at the end of 2023, Ubisoft announced it had "passed an important internal milestone", but things didn't sound especially far along given the publisher had revealed the rebooted project was still in the "conception" phase in May. A year on, it seems the Sands of Time remake still isn't a state that Ubisoft is confident to show; its re-appearance during tonight's showcase was anticlimactic to say the least, taking the form of a 30-second teaser trailer showing... a candle. We did, at least, get an updated release window, with Ubisoft confirming the remake is now targeting a 2026 launch.
Tenjutsu is an all-new roguelike action game from the designer of Dead Cells.
While we didn't get a release date when Devolver Digital made the reveal, we did get to see some gameplay courtesy of a comprehensive, if brief, announcement trailer, which you can see below:
"Step into the shoes of a renegade yakuza hellbent on defying her former associates and loosening their grip on the Secret Garden City in this fast and fluid rogue-jutsu from Sébastien Benard, the designer of Dead Cells," teases the Steam description.
The rumours were true: Bandai Namco has confirmed that Dragon Ball Sparking Zero will indeed release in October – 11th October, to be exact – and it will feature a day one season pass.
Bandai Namco also took the opportunity to announce four different editions – standard, digital-only deluxe, ultimate, and premium. While all will give you the base game, you'll need to purchase a deluxe, ultimate, or premium edition to get the three-day early-access period, season pass, and season pass bonus of Summon Shenron.
The season pass includes the first three DLC packs, which appear to include over 20 additional characters. There's also the now-prerequisite sweetener for anyone looking to pre-order the game ahead of its October street date.
Medieval looter Dark and Darker has finally returned to Steam as an early-access, free-to-play game.
Developer Ironmace confirmed the news at last night's Summer Game Fest show, during which it also revealed that the "unforgiving hardcore fantasy FPS dungeon PvPvE adventure" would be free to play on the Epic Games Store, too.
As a thank you, the team has added a "massive content update" which includes the Ice Abyss area, new boss Frost Wyvern, and an all-new Druid class.
MultiVersus has only been fully launched a week, but already there's an oasis of leaks - and player excitement - mapping out much of what's already set to arrive in the game next. Warner Bros' free-to-play platform fighter is designed as a nexus point for characters and franchises to come together and beat each other up, Super Smash Bros. style, with a rotating roster of unlocked combatants that changes every 24 hours. And it's this growing roster of famous faces that is clearly designed to be its star.
As someone who plays Fortnite on the daily, the concept of a live-service game sustained by a conveyor belt of crossover content is nothing new - and countless games are doing it. From Call of Duty: Warzone to Fall Guys mobile rip-off Stumble Guys, everyone is inviting Snoop Dogg or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to their party. Smash Bros. itself gave up being Nintendo-centric years ago, with Ultimate hosting everyone from Fallout's Vault Boy to Minecraft's Steve.
In MultiVersus, there's the expected representation from Warner Bros.' own stable of game franchises, with a base roster that bares striking resemblence to the publisher's previous multiverse effort Lego Dimensions - its enjoyable toys-to-life project that was sadly wound down before its time. There's plenty of faces from the DC Universe, Scooby-Doo, Adventure Time and Gremlins, then, with more likely to follow, alongside cartoon favourites such as the Looney Tunes gang, Tom & Jerry, plus Rick and Morty.
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Summer Game Fest 2024's opening livestream has come to a close after bringing us trailers for upcoming games, updates for released titles and a couple of surprises too! No fear if you missed the showcase though as below you'll find everything announced during Summer Game Fest 2024.
Before we get started though - no, there was no new GTA 6 trailer. Sorry, nothing I can do about that. With that out of the way, let's take a look at what did make an appearance.
Summer Game Fest began with Lego Horizon Adventures showing off how you can play as Aloy from the Horizon series and transform the robotic wastelands into a Lego paradise. It will arrive on PC, PlayStation 5 and even Nintendo Switch during "holiday" 2024.
It's Steam Next Fest—which means there's gonna be a whole bunch of demos to whet your little gamer teeth on over the next few days. Included in the free-for-all is OutRage: Fight Fest, a party-game style brawler being developed by Hardball Games Ltd. The demo actually came out over the weekend, but it's still part of the festivities nonetheless.
The core concept at play here is that the more you throw punches, the bigger you get—the bigger you get, the more things you can throw. Players who play more aggressively should, in theory, be able to push around and bully everyone else, rewarding proactive (and skillful) play.
Matches take place in small arenas with a variety of game modes—a capture the flag-style mosh pit, a set of elimination rounds, and so on. In terms of structure, I'm reminded of a lot of Fall Guys—OutRage: Fight Fest feels like it's trying to marry a fighting game with a looser party atmosphere. Give players simple mechanics, and they'll stretch those mechanics to their limits in pursuit of glory.
The only issue is, I'm not really sure there's enough here to get players hooked.
OutRage: Fight Fest's mechanics feel far too flat at the moment. You can kick, punch, and grab enemies. Grabbing them flings them backwards, punching them sends them upwards, and kicking them sends them forwards. I can't imagine why you'd ever opt for the punch finisher, though—after you chain three combo hits together, your opponent's sent skyward or away from you, becoming invulnerable for a time.
This means that there's no real way to land extended combos in OutRage: Fight Fest. You get your three whacks in, throw them at a wall, and then reset to do it again. This isn't criminal, mind. Games with low barriers to entry can have great skill expression. Divekick is a great example—that game has two buttons, but introduces a bunch of strategic play by focusing on spacing.
OutRage: Fight Fest, however, doesn't have a great spacing game, either. You only have access to a dodge roll and a very limited sprint. To engage with the enemy, you pretty much just have to hope your opponent doesn't clip you for another one-two-three on the way in. Fights play out like a game of rock, paper scissors without the paper. Sometimes without the scissors, too.
I think Hardball Games has missed a trick, here—Fall Guys took off because it was casual, but you could get good at it, mastering its chaotic stages and learning all sorts of tips and tricks. Similarly, Smash Bros is a game with a low skill floor and an astronomical skill ceiling, with an unimaginable amount of tools in the box for players to use.
I imagine you could get good at OutRage: Fight Fest if you really want to, but it'd feel like it would be in spite of what the game's giving you.
It doesn't help that the game's player base hasn't formed yet. Right now, your OutRage: Fight Fest games will be populated by bots that spend most of their time in impromptu mosh pits. Even if there is some deep and complex meta-game I'm unaware of, your average joe won't get a peek of it—they'll just bounce off the game, causing matches to have more bots, and so on and so on as the snake punches its own tail.
The moshpits also highlight another issue—if you're in a bad spot, your counterplay is to essentially just mash the dodge button and pray. Even the game's selling point of getting bigger to get more threatening isn't really applicable, here—you'll still be stunned and knocked into the three-hit juggles just as easily. The only upshot is that you can throw slightly larger objects at people.
Anyway, I hope OutRage: Fight Fest isn't K.O'd yet—for all my complaints there's something here. The artstyle's fun, and I do think there's a cosy niche for a game just like it. It just needs a little more butter on its bread to give it a chance at finding "inexplicable FF14 crossover" levels of success.
© Hardball Games Ltd.
Ubisoft’s remake of time-rewinding Prince of Persia classic The Sands of Time has finally reappeared to tease - with the emphasis on tease - a release not this year, not next year, but in 2026.
In what is only the third ever piece of videogame-related media to make me weep at my keyboard, Volgar the Viking devs and retro specialists Digital Eclipse have announced a Power Rangers videogame - Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita's Rewind. It's a 90s-style 2D brawler for up to five players, involves "time twisting", and has mode-7-esque arcade shooter bits together with its own spin on the TV show's climactic mecha transformation sequences.
Stare into an abyss for long enough and, as Nietzsche wrote, a mostly naked man will wobble out of the abyss and try to murder you with a mattock. Inasmuch as can be told in the absence of dialogue or a text preamble, the naked man wants to murder you because you, and not he, are in possession of a hat. The hat makes you look like an eraser pencil from Forbidden Planet. It's the kind of headgear worn by the kind of criminal Batman's too grown-up to fight anymore. But it has, nonetheless, roused in this under-dressed stranger a sense of Dionysian frenzy. He will do anything for that hat - hewing your arms off, ripping your intestines out, tearing the skin from your ribcage. And you, in turn, will do anything to rob him of that mattock, because by the gods, it looks a lot more dangerous than the candlestick you're trying to fend him off with.
There are many such lost souls in the bleak, midnight world of the Half Sword demo - all lurking near candle-lit piles of randomly spawned hammers, stools, barrels, axes and lengths of wood, all subject to unforgivably authentic physics and cursor-based attacks that conspire to transform every scuffle into a Monty Python blooper reel.
Back in 2020, fresh out of high school and feeling unstoppable, Charles Maddock and a few friends “decided to code a game about Fish Wizards.” The result was Fishards, Magicka-inspired PVP arena action that has you out-squirt, out-splash, and out-spellcast your mates. It’s a charmer, but after two years of dev, release saw it suffer the same sad fate as many multiplayer-only indies. People would play for half hour, says Maddock, then refund the game because they couldn’t find others to play with.
The Boys' Homelander will join Mortal Kombat 1's roster next week.
As shared by Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon on social media, Homelander is set to fight from 11th June, although early access players with the Kombat Pack DLC will have access to him from 4th June.
Ferra, on the other hand, will join the Kameo roster at an unspecified date "later in June".
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MultiVersus welcomed over 100,000 Steam brawlers on its relaunch, but new character restrictions have left a bad taste in the mouth of players.
The multi-franchise Warner Bros. fighter re-released last night across PC, Xbox and PlayStation, following the end of its open beta last year. On Steam, it recorded a concurrent player peak of 114,515 in the last 24 hours.
However, despite some fairly impressive numbers, the free-to-play brawler has come under fire from the community for a number of reasons, with the main issue being new character restrictions.
A Mortal Kombat YouTuber and modder is accusing Warner Bros of "threatening to destroy" his YouTube channel.
In a lengthy statement on social media platform X, ToastedShoes - an Australian YouTuber with 800K subscribers and 1.7m followers on TikTok - claims he has received an "Intellectual Property Infringement Notification" directly from Warner Bros which asks him to delete "all Mortal Kombat 1 videos from [his] channel or else".
"This morning I received an IP infringement notification directly from Warner Brothers stating that the Mortal Kombat mods in my content 'infringe' on their intellectual property rights," Toasted said. "I've been requested to delete all Mortal Kombat 1 videos from my channel or else they will issue copyright strikes and essentially delete my channel in its entirety.
The developer of MultiVersus has gone "above and beyond" to ensure the game is protected from dataminers.
The free-to-play fighter is out next week and includes villains like The Joker and Agent Smith from The Matrix, both of which were rumoured long before their reveals.
Now, it seems the developer has put stronger defences in place to protect the game from future dataminers, though there's no guarantee there won't be further leaks.
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