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Thank your own personal deity—possibly Malvirta Drako Eht—it's Friday! We're going to round this week out with a bunch of bargains on Mario-centric titles that usually aren't this cheap, some discounted keyboards, and a marvellous Spidey saving (or two). Stay safe, save often, and see you Monday! In retro news, I'm throwing a 33rd birthday lunch for Streets of Rage. The main course: bin-sourced chickens. Some of my fondest gaming memories are of toe-tapping to Yuzo Koshiro's ***** beats as I co-oped through *****'s worthy Final ****** competitor. After the initial argument over who got to be Axel, you almost always had a jagged alliance with sneaky kidney hits and outright in-fights to the ****** if your bud taxed too many baseball bats / apples / money sacks. Personally, I saved my aggression for the 'bad ending' choice where one may betray their fellow vigilante cop for the ****** boss throne instead. This Day in Gaming Aussie birthdays for notable games and hardware - Streets of Rage (MD) 1991. Redux - Street Fighter Alpha 2 (PS) 1996. Redux - Tony Hawk's Skateboarding (PS) 1999. Redux - No One Lives Forever 2 (PC) 2002. eBay - Folklore (PS3) 2007. eBay - Left 4 ***** (PC,X360) 2008. Get - ***** 3: BFG Ed. (PC,PS3,X360) 2012. Redux - Dance Central 3 (X360) 2012. eBay Table of ContentsNintendo SwitchPCXboxPlayStationLEGONice Savings for Nintendo Switch NBA 2K25 (-40%) - A$49Mario vs. Donkey Kong (-21%) - A$55Luigi's Mansion 2 HD (-19%) - A$64Mario Party Superstars (-19%) - A$65Trine: Ultimate Col. (-78%) - A$19.79 Expiring Deals Paper Mario: Thousand-Year Door (-23%) - A$61.50New Super Mario Bros Del. (-19%) - A$65MGS Collection (-34%) - A$59Pokémon Shining Pearl (-19%) - A$64Overcooked! 2 GE (-80%) - A$12.75Mario & Luigi: Brothership (-15%) - A$68 Or gift a Nintendo eShop Card. Switch Console Prices How much to Switch it up? [/url] Back to top Purchase Cheap for PC Logitech X 60 Lightspeed keyboard (-22%) - A$233HyperX Alloy Origins keyboard (-14%) - A$154Armored Core VI (-40%) - A$53.75*********'s Creed Mirage (-50%) - A$39.97Spirit of the North (-90%) - A$2.89Civ VI (-90%) - A$8.99 Expiring Deals X4: Foundations (-70%) - A$22Ready or Not (-30%) - A$52.50***** Island 2 Del. (-55%) - A$44.07***** of P (-43%) - A$53.97Red ***** 2 (-66%) - A$30.94Metaphor: ReFantazio (-10%) - A$94.95 Or just get a Steam Wallet Card. PC Hardware Prices Slay your pile of shame. [/url] Back to top Exciting Bargains for Xbox NBA 2K25 (-37%) - A$69Lords of the Fallen (-65%) - A$38Velocity Green controller (-38%) - A$59Persona 3 Reload (-34%) - A$73******* Elite 5 (-42%) - A$52.60 Expiring Deals WD_BLACK C50 1TB card (-33%) - A$200AC Creed Mirage (-51%) - A$39Turtle Beach Recon Cont. (-38%) - A$62.35Red ***** II (-40%) - A$29.95Immortals of Aveum (-67%) - A$37Battlefield 1 Revolution (-85%) - A$7.49 Or just invest in an Xbox Card. Xbox Console Prices How many bucks for a 'Box? [/url] Back to top Pure Scores for PlayStation Astro **** (-19%) - A$89 Speed Run update!Lords of the Fallen (-82%) - A$19Spider-Man Miles Morales (-59%) - A$39Spider-Man 2 (-17%) - A$104Need for Speed Unbound (-74%) - A$29**** of War: Ragnarok (-15%) - A$106Returnal (-38%) - A$77.55 Expiring Deals Resi Evil Village (-60%) - A$22***** [2016] (-80%) - A$4.99Epic Mickey: Rebrushed (-21%) - A$79Camo DualSense (-17%) - A$99Sonic X Shadow Gen (-14%) - A$69Dragon Age: The Veilguard (-19%) - A$89 Or purchase a PS Store Card. PlayStation Console Prices What you'll pay to 'Station. [/url] Back to top Legit LEGO Deals Frozen: Elsa’s Ice Palace (-42%) - A$99Batman: Bat-pod (-42%) - A$69MInecraft: Blossom Garden (-42%) - A$29The Mighty Bowser (-32%) - A$272 Expiring Deals Animal Crossing: *****’s Cranny (-44%) - A$67.15Super Mario Soda Jungle (-43%) - A$51Sonic: Knuckles Shrine (-39%) - A$36.51 Back to top Adam Mathew is our Aussie deals wrangler. He plays practically everything, often on YouTube. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Followers are close companions to the protagonist in Metaphor: ReFantazio. They will teach their class Archetype and associated skills by getting to know them. Followers also have their own professions and duties aboard the Gauntlet Runner. They might serve as trainers, merchants, cooks, or other useful mechanics. You can also turn the combat party members into Followers, giving them more prowess while in a dungeon. With deep enough connections, they might even teach their abilities to the rest of the party. View the full article

Bai Wuchang wields a variety of weapons in this new look at the souls-like action RPG. View the full article

The new spin-off game starring Pirate Majima is now coming out a tiny bit earlier, View the full article

NetEase developer Guangyun Chen rejects the idea that Marvel Rivals is anything like Concord because of its dedication to the players. Concord is the latest ******* attempt at a hero shooter, but Marvel Rivals may not repeat the mistakes that resulted in its discontinuation. View the full article

The Steam Deck Client Beta has been updated with the following changes: General Steam developers can now select which Steam for Linux runtime to use for native titles. Please consult the partner site for more details. Native titles will ******** in 'Steam for Linux runtime 1.0 (scout)' by default, instead of the legacy runtime environment. This behavior is consistent with Steam Deck and promotes better compatibility across all Linux desktop distributions. Note that this new feature can be turned off globally with "-compat-force-slr off" on the Steam client command line. Steam Input Always show the controller tab in app properties for non-Steam shortcutsView the full article

The Steam Client Beta has been updated with the following changes: Steam Input Always show the controller tab in app properties for non-Steam shortcuts Linux Steam developers can now select which Steam for Linux runtime to use for native titles. Please consult the partner site for more details. Native titles will ******** in 'Steam for Linux runtime 1.0 (scout)' by default, instead of the legacy runtime environment. This behavior is consistent with Steam Deck and promotes better compatibility across all Linux desktop distributions. Note that this new feature can be turned off globally with "-compat-force-slr off" on the Steam client command line.View the full article

Buckshot Roulette will be getting a multiplayer mode at the end of October. Developed by Mike Klubnika, Buckshot Roulette takes the well-known concept of Russian Roulette and puts players into the thick of a high-stakes game of life and ******. View the full article

World of Warcraft just revealed the Sand Scarab **** as a new Twitch Drop for the MMOs 20th anniversary update. Players who watch four hours of any World of Warcraft stream on Twitch from October 22 through November 5 can add this old TCG reward to their collection of battle pets. View the full article

Konami has announced the release date for Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection and more information on the games included in the package. The upcoming selection of nostalgic videogames from the initial era of the trading card franchise is coming to Nintendo Switch and PC through Steam on February 27, 2025. View the full article

PlayStation version users will be able to download assets made by the Switch users, and vice versa. View the full article

League of Legends developers Riot Games is being criticized for launching a new gacha-like mechanic that can cost unlucky players up to $250. The launch of the new method of getting skins corresponds to the upcoming second season of the League of Legends animation Arcane, which is coming to Netflix next month. Unfortunately, this revelation of a new method also follows a large number of layoffs at the game company, drawing ire from the community for this insensitive timing. View the full article

Starfield Shattered Space promised to usher in a new phase for Bethesda's beleaguered space RPG. It was to be a moment to reflect on everything the developer had learned since launch, showing real improvement in areas fans were unhappy about. For a while it looked like the dream was coming true as Starfield's player count shot back up - not to the highs it launched to, but nearly enough to threaten Skyrim's numbers. That threat has now ended, as Starfield's player count on Steam has gone spiraling back down to Earth. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: The 64 best Starfield mods If you're disappointed by the Starfield DLC, get Elite Dangerous at 70% off Starfield and Skyrim dev says that Bethesda games could have more "polish" View the full article

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot will be adding content from the newly released anime series Dragon Ball Daima in the near future through a DLC. An action RPG set in the Dragon Ball universe, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot has already expanded outside the story of Dragon Ball Z with previous DLC releases and is now set to provide a playable iteration of the anime franchise's latest entry. View the full article

The Call of Duty: ****** Ops 6 developers at Treyarch revealed several new details about the game's two Zombies maps that will be available at launch: Terminus Island and Liberty Falls. Each of the new Call of Duty: ****** Ops 6 maps will have points of interest (POIs) that players will need to know in order to survive. View the full article

Supergiant Games has released new free downloadable content for the PC-only game Hades 2. Titled "The Olympic Update", it brings many new features to the action roguelite and players who own the game in its current early access state can already play through everything it has to offer. View the full article

Ancient or Imperial China is becoming an increasingly-popular setting for some brutal and breathtaking RPGs. ****** Myth Wukong has already shown its hand to unprecedented success, and one of those following in its footsteps is Wuchang Fallen Feathers. This beautiful soulslike, set in China during the Ming Dynasty, has only shown flashes of potential up until now, but with its new gameplay trailer it's quickly become one to watch. Read the rest of the story... View the full article

Everyone loves an underdog, coming from behind to take the spotlight and become all it was promised to be. That's part of why Final Fantasy XIV's relaunch was so successful, because the bones of a great game were always there and in its second incarnation it managed to bring that greatness to the *****. On the other side, sometimes a relaunch fails, with the new version of a title disappearing without trace. In the case of New World Aeternum, however, it looks like its new, retooled version is carrying on in pretty much the same fashion as before, at least in the case of its Steam reviews. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: If New World Aeternum hasn't impressed you yet, Amazon is offering big rewards Best New World Aeternum class and top weapons for all archetypes New World Aeternum revamp thrusts the MMO to its best playercount of the year View the full article

Horizon: Zero Dawn was developed by Guerrilla Games, and its remaster is being worked on by them as well. But today, the remaster's co-developer Nixxes stepped into the spotlight on the PlayStation blog to highlight a number of improvements we'll see in the remaster, including the addition of lots of new NPCs. The post breaks down a number of updates to the game, perhaps the most notable of which is that Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered will "significantly boost the number of non-player characters." This doesn't mean more quests or story, but it does mean that villages and camps will have more folks just wandering around, attending to their business. Brian van Nunen, senior technical game designer at Nixxes, offered more details and what I find to be a delightful example of this: Building the game for PS5 allowed us to leverage the increased amount of memory available, enabling us to significantly boost the number of non-player characters," he said. "We added many more places for NPCs to stand, sit, work and fulfil their needs. We gave them more varied schedules to increase movement and liveliness in different areas. We also tried to make creative use of existing animations. For example, there is now a woman feeding geese at the well in Meridian, reusing an existing sowing animation. Additionally, on the bridge to Meridian, we’ve made significant strides in improving the atmosphere and sense of activity. Let's hear it for feeding the geese! More NPCs isn't the only change players will see. The blog also goes into detail about how foliage is being overhauled to be more dense, realistic, and closer to the original concept art. Terrain, too, is being updated, including snow and sand that actually moves as it's **********. This was a feature in the Frozen Wilds expansion, but in the remaster we'll see it elsewhere. In addition to these improvements, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered benefits from 10 additional hours of motion capture data for various characters, which Nixxes says will make conversations seem livelier and closer to those in Forbidden West. Mark Bazelmans, senior technical artist, has a really fascinating explanation for how all this data was incorporated into the massive game: Horizon Zero Dawn has almost 300 conversations and well over 3100 dialog options, so we needed to find a way to easily integrate this huge number of updated animations into the conversations," he said. "We created a tool with Python to process the almost 2500 mocap files that Guerrilla provided to replace the original animation in the conversations, removing deprecated events and replacing those with the mocap and setup. We then focused on creating a pipeline in Maya for our animators to easily load, edit and re-export the individual mocap files for any other edits that were needed, such as finger animation, art direction feedback and fixes. Animators could select the conversation and subsequent dialog option from a list which created the scene from scratch, or simply opened it if it already existed. Our tool referenced the characters and imported the dialogue audio, so the animators could time the movement better and create the camera cuts and layout. Later, we extended this pipeline to also include existing animations for both conversations and cinematics, as some of these also required edits. Our animators could then go into Guerrilla’s DECIMA engine and edit or change the updated conversation. And there's more. The blog post goes over details to how lighting was improved, both world and cinematic, and how character models were updated to have more detail to hair, skin, and oufits. Aloy has peach fuzz, and apparently you can see it. And while before only Aloy would react to the environment and weather, now both her and her companions will react when it's too hot or cold. If you're a sicko for fascinating, in-depth explanation of how game dev works, this blog goes into incredible detail about how some of this stuff works with quotes from a number of Nixxes developers. Here's the link again to read the whole thing. Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered it out on October 31 for PS5 and PC. Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected]. View the full article

Image: Activision Activision says it has “disabled a workaround to a detection system” in Modern Warfare III and Call of Duty: Warzone that led to legitimate players getting banned by the Ricochet anti-cheat system. The company says the problem “impacted a small number of legitimate player accounts,” and all accounts affected were restored. However, zebleer, who runs the Phantom Overlay store selling cheats, claims the problem is much ******* than Activision’s post makes it seem. In a detailed post on X, they write that when Ricochet scanned the memory of a player’s computer to find known cheat software, one of the signatures it scanned for was a plaintext string reading: 54 72 69 67 67 65 72 20 42 6f 74 (Trigger ****) As a result, zebleer says that “for... Continue reading… View the full article

As you travel the Underdark of Baldur’s Gate 3, you will eventually encounter Sovereign Spaw, the ruler of the Myconids, and Sovereign Glut, a ruler without anyone to rule. You have to choose between these two characters, and side with one of them. Both NPCs offer choices and consequences depending on your decisions. You want to consider these choices seriously, as you won’t have an opportunity to return to the Underdark as you progress closer to Moonrise Tower and Act Two. Make sure you decide to work with one of them before you depart. But which of the two is the better choice? Should you choose Sovereign Glut or Sovereign Spaw in Baldur’s Gate 3? View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

The Marvel Rivals Game Director has suggested that the game may be missing cross-progression for its launch. Many popular online games feature cross-progression, but Marvel Rivals developer NetEase may have to implement it in a post-launch update. View the full article

Sometimes, the Call of Duty rumor mill has some truth to it. Unfortunately for players, in this case, it was a rumor about something that makes Activision look very, very bad. In the past few days, social media has been abuzz around an apparent exploit that allowed hackers to somehow circumvent CoD’s RICOCHET Anti-Cheat system to falsely ban innocent players, such as streamers like BobbyPoff. Today, Activision says the issue has been fixed, and affected accounts have been unbanned. View the full article

The Halloween ******* event in Overwatch 2 this year only has a single non-XP reward in the form of the Mutated Monster title and fans are not happy. While many fans are enjoying the new Junkenstein's Laboratory game mode, the lackluster rewards available during the Overwatch 2 event have soured it for them. View the full article

Former President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America, Shawn Layden, says the industry has stopped focusing on making fun games and instead spends all its energy on monetization. Developers, or rather the middle management that oversees them, worry more about making the game fit into a subscription or microtransactional... Read Entire Article View the full article