The stabbing worlds of Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice come together in Blades Of Ashina, a DS3 mod which adds a number of Sekiro-inspired weapons. Mods swapping in weapon from other games are common, but these are full additions: they have unique moves, adding complex setups and combos with the speed and variety of Sekiro. Looks dead fancy. Come check out these sweet clips of upcoming murders with Owl's sword.
Unfortunately, Watch Dogs: Legion players will be waiting a little while longer before they get to go some lovely London hacking-sprees with their pals. The game's online mode was supposed to launch on PC and consoles tomorrow, on March 9th, but on Friday Ubisoft announced that due to some bugs and crashes they're postponing the mode's release. Console players will be able to get their hands on it later this month, however for PC, the mode has been delayed indefinitely.
Picture your mind as the control room of a massive death robot, which is in the middle of a fight against a millipede the size of Croydon. It’s a hectic duel: the whole command crew are at their battle stations, doing that Star Trek thing where they try to use computers while standing up and thrashing about. And in all the uproar, the communications console has been left briefly unattended. Enter the janitor, then, with a cheeky wink to camera. They are your subconscious mind, in this metaphor. And while the rest of the crew is distracted, they’re going to have some fun.
Razer's Kraken Ultimate RGB gaming headset is back down to its all-time lowest price over on Amazon US today, matching its Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day deal price. Having fluctuated between £100 and its original price of $130 for much of the last year, Razer's flagship USB gaming headset can now be had for just $70, nabbing you a total saving of 46%.
Sundays are for wringing out the last of the toothpaste from its tube, and feeling particularly satisfied about it. Before you practice good dental hygiene, let's read this week's best writing about video games.
Tales Of Arise was announced in 2019, then delayed into 2021 last due in part to development challenges posed by Covid-19. Now it seems the Japanese action RPG is resurfacing. There's a new trailer below, with promise of more to come this spring.
Artists make decisions depending on the limitations they're working within. For that reason, I usually look at "upscaling" mods and think they've made old games look sharper, but worse. Whether the work is done by AI or by hand, the original artist's intent is often wiped away in the process.
That's what I was expecting when I looked at Final Fantasy IX's Moguri mod, but nope. It looks beautiful - like the original game, only less fuzzy, widescreen, and with higher framerate cinematics.
Marvel's Avengers seemed to come out to the mildest of shrugs from players, but there's still new DLC on the way in Operation: Hawkeye - Future Imperfect. Ahead of its arrival on March 18th, the developers have detailed some changes coming to the base game - including substantial reworks to how it dishes out XP and cosmetics. In brief: levelling is going to take longer.
Wargame: Red Dragon is the latest freebie available on the Epic Games Store. It's a vast real-time strategy game about many types of tanks and helicopter doing battle in an alternate history Cold War.
There have been a lot of reports into crunch culture at game studios over the past few years, but those stories have often excluded mention of work outsourcing studios. These are companies with names you won't know, but which are often responsible for a lot of the art, testing and other duties on blockbuster games.
In their latest video, YouTube channel People Make Games spoke to 19 current and former developers at two outsourcing studios in Southeast Asia about the work they do, and the ways in which crunch is being shipped overseas.