Steam

Palworld has launched on PS5 in Japan even as its developer battles a lawsuit with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company in the country. Palworld’s long-awaited PS5 release shadow-dropped on September 24 after an announcement during Sony’s State of Play broadcast, but while gamers in 68 countries worldwide were downloading the survival and crafting game dubbed 'Pokémon with guns' on PlayStation, ********* gamers had to wait. The ********* PS5 release comes hot on the heels of Nintendo and The Pokémon Company’s shock ****** lawsuit against Pocketpair for alleged patent infringement, which was filed in Japan. Pocketpair has insisted it had no idea which patents it’s accused of infringing, but experts have pointed to a “******* patent” that revolves around the mechanic of catching Pokémon itself. Last week, one patent expert said the lawsuit shows “just how seriously Nintendo views the threat of Palworld.” After Palworld’s huge launch earlier this year on PC and Xbox, comparisons were made between Palworld’s Pals and Pokémon, with some accusing Pocketpair of "ripping off" Pokémon designs. But rather than file a copyright infringement lawsuit, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have gone down the patent route. It is worth noting that Palworld does include a mechanic that involves throwing a ball-like object (called a Pal Sphere) at monsters out in a field to capture them, similar to the mechanic seen in the 2022 Nintendo Switch exclusive Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and this may prove the key to the lawsuit. Palworld launched on Steam priced $30 and straight into Game Pass on Xbox and PC earlier this year, breaking sales and concurrent player number records in the process. Pocketpair boss Takuro Mizobe has said Palworld's launch was so big that the developer couldn’t handle the massive profits the game generated. Still, Pocketpair acted swiftly to capitalize on Palworld’s breakout success, signing a deal with Sony to form a new business called Palworld Entertainment that’s tasked with expanding the IP. And in a further sign that Pocketpair ******** undeterred in pushing Palword as far is can possibly go, it this week announced a deal with PUBG company Krafton to develop a mobile version of the hit game. Tweeting the announcement of Palworld’s PS5 launch in Japan, Pocketpair apologized for the delay and promised to “continue to provide exciting and large-scale updates to the PS5 version so that everyone can enjoy the game even more.” Pocketpair has said it will begrudgingly investigate the patent infringement claims while continuing to update Palworld despite the lawsuit, and apologized to players left concerned about the future of the game. Wesley is the *** News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

The Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero leaks have begun a week before its official release date — and Bandai Namco has responded in perhaps the only way it can: with takedowns and shifty eyes. It seems someone got hold of a copy of the game early and, as is the internet way, started streaming the game. It didn’t take long for Bandai Namco to ***** that stream from orbit, but of course the internet noticed and never forgets. Since then, Bandai Namco has worked to plug further leaks, but it faces an uphill battle at this stage. And in a tweet responding to the leaks, Bandai Namco made clear it’s keeping an eye (or two) on the internet. In any case, if you’re mindful of spoilers, now might be the time to batten down the hatches. — Bandai Namco US (@BandaiNamcoUS) October 3, 2024 Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is one of IGN’s most anticipated games still to come in 2024. It’s a true sequel to the Budokai Tenkaichi series that has been largely dormant ever since Budokai Tenkaichi 3 came out way back in 2007 on the PlayStation 2. There's a lot we already know about the game, much of which is covered in IGN’s Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero preview, and we recently got a chance to speak with producer Jun Furutani for more insight into the development and Bandai Namco’s plans for the future. Wesley is the *** News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld. View the full article

If you were wondering how many changes have been made to the Until Dawn remake and whether it is still faithful to the original, here is our Until Dawn remake vs. original comparison, with all differences listed. Until Dawn (2024) changes from the original The sisters get more screen time. Screenshot by Dot Esports Outside of cinematography changes, there aren’t many differences in Until Dawn (2024). Somehow, Ballistic Moon has greatly improved the interactive feel of this installment. The camera angle changes offer a fresh perspective that truly makes you feel like you’re watching a horror film instead of playing a video game. While I love me some fixed camera angles and wide-angle shots that isolate the character and make them feel minuscule compared to the threat around them, Until Dawn’s cinematography lets you take in the beautiful scenery—and feel scared to take it all in. View the full article

With the impending release of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, Sony has elected to include the open-world action game into the list of games that eschew millions of players in over 170 countries around the world. Read more View the full article

After losing to a 0.01 second defuse at VCT Ascension 2024 in front of their home crowd, ***** Esports woke up to life-changing news when they learned Bleed Esports had been removed from the VCT Pacific League in 2025, opening a slot for the Indonesian organization. On Oct. 4, five days after VCT Ascension 2024, Riot Games removed Bleed Esports from the league. The official announcement said the organization was removed due to “******** to comply with critical reporting requirements and other key obligations under the Team Participation Agreement (TPA).” View the full article

Game development is a complicated ******, a constant challenge to get funding and for Studio ****** Flag who were building the promising looking Orphan Age it's all over. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Concord. ******** Squad: ***** the Justice League. Star Wars Outlaws. Final Fantasy 16. The list of big budget video game failures is growing longer each month, with triple-A publishers struggling to make a dent in the dominance of older, more established players in this most brutal of markets. Throughout it all, massive hits come out of nowhere. One of those is Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, developed by World War Z and SnowRunner studio Saber Interactive and published by Focus Entertainment. Of course, Space Marine 2 benefited from the strength of the Warhammer 40,000 brand, which is carefully managed by Games Workshop and about as big as it’s ever been. But still, Space Marine 2’s breakout success came as a surprise even to its developer, as Saber Chief Creative Officer Tim Willits told IGN in a recent interview. As the video game industry comes to terms with the high-profile ******** of the likes of Concord and ******** Squad, what enabled Space Marine 2 to succeed? Both Concord and ******** Squad took years to develop at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, and launched into genres some say gamers had long since moved on from. In some respects Space Marine 2 is similar. It is Saber’s biggest ever video game undertaking and took over four years to develop — a significant cycle as far as triple-A production goes although, as we’ve seen with Concord and ******** Squad, hardly an outlier. Indeed we’ve seen huge hits from video games that had similarly long developments. Arrowhead’s Helldivers 2, the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game of all time, took just shy of eight years to develop and at significant expense. It is an oversimplification to say Concord and ******** Squad's long developments were the root cause of their ********, although they clearly played a big part. A lot of games are released with high budgets, and they're not selling nearly as well as expected. This week, Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney said the games industry was going through what he called a “generational change” that had led to some games failing to sell as well as their publishers had hoped. "One of the manifestations [of that change] we're seeing right now is that a lot of games are released with high budgets, and they're not selling nearly as well as expected," Sweeney said. "Whereas other games are going incredibly strong. What we're seeing is a real trend where players are gravitating toward the really big games where they can play with more of their friends." That reads as a somewhat ill-advised dig at single-player games, or at least their sustainability as triple-A projects. Yes, Space Marine 2 and Helldivers 2 are boosted by their co-op play, but single-player games continue to sell in record numbers. Just look at FromSoftware’s Elden Ring and Game Science’s ****** Myth: Wukong — both predominantly single-player games. Willits has his own theory on what’s happening. Speaking to IGN, Willits said that the problem isn’t necessarily that triple-A games take too long to develop and thus launch into already abandoned genres. Rather, Willits believes, triple-A developers are tending to “over-scope” their games, which in turn means they fail to do any one thing brilliantly. For Space Marine 2, Willits explained, Saber made sure to nail the core combat and kept a handle on the scope of the game, so much so that some have praised it for rekindling memories of the Xbox 360 era of action games. “It is not necessarily the genre that has moved on, because great games will always do well,” Willits insisted. “One of the things that we try to do at Saber, and this is part of my job as creative officer of all the teams, we have a core belief that what you do every second and what happens when you push these buttons and that core gameplay loop is so critical. So we focus on the moment-to-moment interaction in the gameplay and the feeling you have. “And then we adhere to our core pillars, like be the ultimate Space Marine, melee, ranged, swarms, that's it. And a lot of teams throughout development will over-scope games. They look at some other game that just came out and say, ‘oh, we got to do that, let's add this, we got to do this.’ And they lose focus on the core, what actually makes the game fun. “We are not in Space Marine 2 doing things that… well, the swarms are new technology, but there isn't some revolutionary new gameplay mechanic that no one's ever seen before. There are gameplay mechanics that people are familiar with, but we do it really, really well. And we ******** really, really well.” What business are we in where you fail if you sell less than five million? Then there’s the question of the cost of development, which pretty much every triple-A publisher has said has risen sharply (once again) with the launch of the latest generation of consoles. Development costs, Willits said, have got so out of control that some triple-A games, especially those in U.S. states such as California, now have unreasonable sales expectations set against their budgets. Saber, Willits insisted, developed Space Marine 2 “affordably,” with a budget less than half that of ***** Eternal, the last game Willtis worked on while boss of id Software before leaving to join Saber in 2019. “We don't need to sell four million units to make it [Space Marine 2] a success,” Willits said. “There are many games, sadly, especially out of North ********* developers, where if you do not sell five million copies you are a ********. I mean, what business are we in where you fail if you sell less than five million?” He continued: “There are examples like that, and we do not want to be that business. We want to be a developer that focuses on the core experience, what makes the games actually fun, and then do it really well and then make it affordably. “Look at SnowRunner! Dude, SnowRunner is literally driving trucks through mud. That's it, I'm done. I just described the game. 15 million people played it because the experience is perfect. Look at World War Z. Like, come on, we're not going to get an Academy Award for that game, but 25 million people have played it because it's just this perfectness, and that's what we do well.” Even with Willits’ over-scope argument in mind, there are exceptions to the rule. Consider Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 which, including its successful early access *******, was in the works for around six years before its record-breaking launch in 2023. Predominantly single-player and with a “Rockstar-level nonsense for scope,” as one developer put it. What to make of all this? Perhaps all we can say is that video game development is super hard and not an exact science. If it were, every game would be successful. Willits had previously told IGN that the success of Space Marine 2 “changes everything” for Saber, and would even positively affect its future projects. While neither Saber nor Focus have announced a sales figure for Space Marine 2, Focus has confirmed over two million played at launch. In fact, Space Marine 2 is the most-played Warhammer video game of any type ever released on Steam, with 225,690 peak concurrent players on Valve’s platform. Willits won't go into hard numbers for Space Marine 2's success, either in revenue or profit terms, but he has gone on the record to say Space Marine 2 is the fastest-selling game he's ever worked on, and that includes all the *****, Quake, Wolfenstein, and Rage games id Software released over the 24 years he was at the studio. Wesley is the *** News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld. View the full article

Whether you like Josh or not, it’s debatable whether he deserved what he got in Until Dawn. While his fate ******** the same as seen in the original Until Dawn, you may have forgotten the crucial way to give him a proper send-off—that doesn’t include getting crushed. Here’s everything you need to know about altering Josh’s fate in Until Dawn. View the full article

If you prefer air travel to climbing mountains or horseback, and are keen to try out cool The Witcher 3 add-ons made using its REDkit modding tools, it seems you're in luck. As part of a big new quest mod that's had its opening missions released early, you can take Geralt on a trip to a mysterious island via hot air balloon. Read more View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Developer Eric Engestrom announced the release of Mesa 24.2.4 open source graphics drivers, coming with multiple bug fixes for this stable release. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Among multiple sandbox changes coming to Destiny 2 next week with Revenant, the long-forgotten raid, Garden of Salvation, will finally get a ******* update. Bungie gave us a preview of what we can expect from the reprised loot pool. In This Week In Destiny blog post on Oct. 3, Bungie revealed Garden of Salvation is getting reprised weapons in the upcoming Destiny 2 Episode, featuring new perks, elements, and Deepsight versions so you can craft them. Every week, Hawthorne will offer a quest that grants a Deepsight *******, much like the O Deepsight Mine quest for Last Wish. Bungie said it still wants to “reward invested players with great weapons that can be crafted,” despite shifting focus back on attunement and chasing **** rolls with seasonal weapons. View the full article

Caves of Qud is easily (and I keep saying this) one of the best roguelikes ever made, and with the latest Beta it's a lot easier to get into. You might also want to buy it soon before the price rises. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

After a ******* Steam Beta Client recently that had some nice improvements for Game Recording, and various Linux fixes along with another SteamOS Beta - we have yet another tiny SteamOS update. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Always the bridesmaid but never the bride, SpongeBob’s sleepy sidekick, Patrick Star, has often been overlooked in favour of his over-the-top neighbour – at least in the world of video games. That hasn’t stopped him from making a home in our hearts, though, so I was riding high when I learned the enigmatic starfish was finally being thrust into the limelight… but then the emotional rollercoaster dipped back down as I discovered SpongeBob SquarePants: The Patrick Star Game is little more than a sea of uninspired minigames and repetitive activities that waste almost all of its obvious potential, outside of a boatload of cute references to the show. Stepping into the flowery shorts of Patrick himself, you embark on a six-hour sandbox platforming expedition through a thoughtfully recreated Bikini Bottom. In addition to having a dedicated burp button, Patrick can pick up items with either hand and fall asleep on command, turning the invertebrate into a possessed bowling ball that you can send hurtling across the sea floor. Due to the underwater setting, gravity is kinder than in most physics-based puzzlers, meaning there’s added time to plot your jumps and fix mistakes when you’re off the ground. This forgiving, familiar control scheme is applied to a mixed bag of activities dotted around the map, like skydiving or smashing up crates in the local Rage Room. Succeeding in these tasks rewards you with precious Sand Dollars that will eventually afford Patrick a slot to compete against his porous bestie in the prestigious Fry Cook Games. It’s an approachable setup buffeted by charming but eventually repetitious conversations with beloved characters like Mr. Krabs, Plankton and Sandy Cheeks. The surrounding cartoon world is a blend of solid and breakable structures and allowed me to engage my inner chaos merchant as I took out any aggression on glass panes and metal walls alike. It isn’t all down to Patrick’s spiny appendages, though, as you can also take advantage of equippable tools littered around the vibrant underwater wonderland which bolster his platforming abilities. Whether I was sailing across a valley with the help of a paraglider or taking out a false wall with a comically oversized hammer it was easy to get caught in a chaotic feedback loop, bounding around the suburbs and bothering the Bottom-ites. But while it all sounds very freeing on paper, it’s also paper-thin, and I soon saw the limits of this reasonably sized world. When you push the haphazard reactivity too far the mask starts to slip, with clipping issues and unusual NPC behavior that illuminates the frayed technical seams that eventually come apart and leave an otherwise good first impression in tatters. Perhaps the saving grace here is that Bikini Bottom as a whole is such a joy to explore, for the short time the novelty lasts at least. It’s an interactive diorama, decorated with hallowed locations like Mrs Puff’s Boating School and Glove World, and it speaks to the power of SpongeBob SquarePants that I was so enchanted by the referential signage, food items, and flower clouds scattered across the sky. The nostalgia is compounded by Patrick’s unlockable outfits, too – while the promise of entering the Fry Cook Games didn’t prompt much passion, grinding for iconic outfits like The Elastic Waistband and Patrick’s ‘Sweet Victory’ suit certainly did. That magic eventually runs out, though, and a broader shallowness rears its head. While this is felt across The Patrick Star Game as a whole, it’s most apparent in its inconsistent array of minigames, which range from well-meaning imitations of pre-existing ideas to thankless busywork. I most enjoyed the Chum Bucket, an Overcooked clone that had me scrambling to make gooey buckets of eyeballs and bones under a time limit for paying customers. Elsewhere, I found myself clearing out lounging locals from Squidward’s favourite sunbathing spot, which both felt on-point thematically and leveraged the wacky physics to great effect. In these moments, I was reminded of The Simpsons Game's hilarious and moreish slate of tasks, which similarly combined its show's unique humour with appropriately comical jobs. Unfortunately, these moments of clarity were soon overshadowed by a glut of laboriousness. That includes seeking out endless golden gloves across a pint-sized amusement park or trawling the dump in search of an ever-increasing number of treasure chests. In the latter, I soon resolved to tear the place apart with an enormous magnet, but that approach only made my search more challenging as fished-up cars and other detritus got caught in the environment, trapping spoiled mattresses in a state of annoying eternal squeaking. Ultimately, I abandoned all hope and moved on, searching for alternate means of earning the Sand Dollars necessary to enter the Fry Cook Games. And, even when I did reach that coveted finale, I was met with more of the same clunky interactions I was already familiar with – it felt fitting that Patrick fell asleep during the closing ceremony. It’s a shame that The Patrick Star Game resorts to simplistic collect-and-clear tasks when there’s such a deep well of SpongeBob lore to pull from. There are shades of this in the Bikini Bottom University segment, where you take on Squidward in an art contest, but its on-rails, oversimplified nature makes it hard to feel too invested. It would have been nice to see a more cohesive story play out instead of dealing with so many disconnected and lacklustre cameos. It’s small consolation, but at least when I did get bored of the repetitive minigames, I could switch gears and tackle a list of more specific Feats, earning Sand Dollars for serving up burnt Krabby Patties or completing my childhood dream: pulling a full-blown 360 on the neighbourhood swing set. The light-hearted requirements of these Feats provided focus when I was losing interest, and the collectable Mayo Jars placed throughout Bikini Bottom broke up the post-game monotony with some proper platforming challenges. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Firaxis Games and 2K have released the system requirements for Sid Meier's Civilization VII on Windows, but the Linux and macOS requirements will be coming later. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

Game Rant can exclusively share another look at SpongeBob SquarePants: The Patrick Star Game. The new gameplay footage showcases the Demolition Derby Stadium, one of the numerous locations featured in the latest SpongeBob SquarePants game. View the full article

The start of October is the perfect time to explore the outdoors with the Galarian Expedition event in Pokémon Go. For those who participate in the event, there’s the Galarian Expedition Collection Challenge 2 quest you can complete if you can track down all the Pokémon. The Collection Challenge is exclusive to the Galarian Expedition event, which is happening from Oct. 4 to the 11 in Pokémon Go. For those playing the mobile game, it’s a good idea to go out of your way to complete this challenge to earn the rewards. However, tracking down all the Pokémon could prove to be tricky. Here’s what you need to know about how to catch all Pokémon for the Galarian Expedition Collection Challenge 2 and the rewards you get in Pokémon Go. View the full article

After a string of Resident Evil remakes, the resurrection of ***** Space, and even genre granddaddy Alone in the Dark stepping back into the spotlight earlier this year, it feels long overdue that seminal survival horror classic Silent Hill 2 should emerge from the fog and be given a modern makeover. Enter Bloober Team, the psychological horror specialists best known for Layers of ***** and Observer, who’ve been given the task of taking the morbid masterpiece from the PlayStation 2 era and making the fetid flesh of its many demonic ghouls seem fresh. As a big fan of the original, I’m happy to report that this resulting Silent Hill 2 remake is an exceptionally grim and grimy horrorscape that’s consistently compelling to explore, packed with new puzzles and beefed-up boss encounters, and enhanced with modernised combat that made my return to the small town of Silent Hill a regularly violent thrill. Given it was released more than two decades ago, there’s every chance you don’t have the foggiest idea what made the original Silent Hill 2 so impactful. Aside from its sinister small town setting that felt like stepping into the pages of a Stephen King novel, Silent Hill 2 stood apart from other survival horror stories of its era by putting just as much focus on the battle with personal demons as it did regular scraps with the snarling physical kind. Protagonist James Sunderland, who’s lured to a remote mining town by the promise of making contact with his deceased wife Mary, is not a battle hardened member of a zombie-******** special unit – he’s an ordinary man forced to confront some truly extraordinary things. The struggles with his own guilt and trauma both humanise him and add believable heft to the horrors that unfold around him. Silent Hill 2’s festering environment is at once both off-putting and alluring, like a scab you can’t stop picking. While the roles of James and the handful of other lost souls he meets along the way have been recast with voice actors of a noticeably higher standard in this remake, the campy dialogue they deliver ******** mostly unchanged. This does preserve the off-kilter, David Lynchian feel of the original character interactions, but comes across as a little bit jarring at times given the vastly improved standards of storytelling we’ve seen in more recent horror landmarks. I was no less entertained by Silent Hill 2’s quirky characters this time around, even if I never became emotionally invested in their plights to the same extent I did with the supporting casts in The Last of Us or Alan Wake II. Regardless, I found the mystery surrounding the fate of Mary was still more than intriguing enough to drag me through the darkest depths of Silent Hill 2’s story. ***** Comes to Fogtown The difference in look and feel between this Silent Hill 2 remake and the 2001 original is night and day – or perhaps that should be nightmare and daydream given the surreal nature of its small town’s continually altering state. The streets are blanketed by believably heavy fog and rich with detail, right down to the missing persons posters taped to telephone poles that flutter in the breeze. Dimly lit dwellings are overrun with discernable signs of decay, and drywall and cinder block splinter off in shards from startling shockwaves felt in hurried hallway chase scenes. Hordes of cockroaches startle and scatter in the beam of your flashlight as you make your way down each putrid path that winds you through an increasingly hellish otherworld. Silent Hill 2’s festering environment is at once both off-putting and alluring, like a scab you can’t stop picking. The enemies too have been dressed up in far more disturbing and disgusting designs. The most common type, the Lying Figure, which appears to have its arms wrapped up in a straightjacket made of its own skin, seems slick with a decidedly icky sheen and more smoothly shifts from two-legged stagger to writhing prone along the ground in preparation for a surprise *******. There’s also the twitchy, Bubble Head Nurses introduced during the Brookhaven Hospital section (who now come in both pipe and ******-toting forms), and of course Pyramid Head, who’s sharply pointed skull once again brings a more literal meaning to the term apex predator. This lumbering ******-dealer ******** one of the most terrifying presences in the horror genre, only now he seems somehow even more sinister thanks to extra details like the realistic rust on his jagged head and the ghastly inky goop that coats his powerful frame. Of course, that’s when you can actually see the enhanced enemies and environments around you, since Silent Hill 2 is also oppressively dark for significantly long periods at a time. James’ chest-mounted flashlight has a shorter throw than Mr. Burns, meaning it’s regularly the case that you can only see a few feet in front of his nose – testing your television’s ****** levels, tightening the unrelenting sense of claustrophobia, and leaving you vulnerable to ambushes from the creepy Mannequin enemies that stand eerily still in the corners of rooms like they’re floor lamps purchased from *****’s Home Depot. It’s during these moments, when your peripheral vision shrinks down to a pinhole, that Silent Hill 2’s incredibly unsettling audio design really comes to the *****. The signature radio static hisses that intensify around imminent dangers, the shrieks in the distance and whispers that are uncomfortably close, and the accompanying discordant drones maintain an ongoing and ominous sense of dread. Stalking through Silent Hill 2 left my nerves more shredded than a guitar solo played by a shirtless Hugh Jackman. Cloudy with a Chance of Street Brawls Thankfully when things get loud in Silent Hill 2, we’re much better equipped to ****** back this time. Gone is the stiff, auto-targeted ********* and cumbersome pause menu-based *******-swapping of the original, Silent Hill 2’s combat feels much more like what you’d expect from a survival horror adventure post-Resident Evil 4. Enemies can be manually targeted from an over-the-shoulder viewpoint, weapons can be quickly shuffled between at the tap of a d-pad button, and James is also able to perform quick dodges to nimbly sidestep around lurching enemies or the streams of acidic bile they spew. Additionally, melee attacks can be used to smash through glass in order to gather health drinks and ammunition from cabinets or locked cars, and even to ****** through weakened sections of walls to gain access to secret areas hidden amongst its expanded environments. Stalking through Silent Hill 2 left my nerves more shredded than a guitar solo played by a shirtless Hugh Jackman. That said, although Silent Hill 2 gives you far more control over each shot fired, it ******** staunchly true to the original in terms of its noticeably limited arsenal of weapons – James is an underpowered everyman by design, after all. There are two types of melee weapons plus a handgun, shotgun, and rifle, and that’s your lot. There are no ******* upgrades or mods to expand the capabilities of your arsenal further, and ultimately I didn’t particularly favour one ******* over the other – I pretty much just switched to whichever **** I had the most ammo for at any one time. Actually that’s not entirely true – according to the story completion stats page, I did prefer one ******* more than most: the lead pipe. Partly since ammo was so scarce, but mainly because it just feels amazingly satisfying to relieve Silent Hill 2’s near-constant tension by clubbing a hellborn ****** to the ground and continuing to pound their slimy skulls in until they’ve long since expired. Yet while Silent Hill 2 lags behind the likes of Resident Evil 4 or ***** Space as far as the flexibility of its firepower goes, the developers – in collaboration with original Silent Hill 2 creature designer Masahiro Ito – have thrown a few new ****** types into the mix to keep the combat consistently engaging despite its relative mechanical simplicity. When I first entered the Toluca Prison section in the story’s second half only to find a freaky new breed of Mannequin that could scramble up and down walls and along the ceiling like a spider made of discarded doll parts, I couldn’t hit the new 180-degree turn button fast enough. However, once I’d composed myself, I set about trying to pick them off from afar with my rifle as they shuffled in and out of the shadows above, which gave Silent Hill 2’s combat a challenging new edge. Where the overhauled combat really shines, however, is in the boss battles. Some fights, like the first encounter with the iconic Pyramid Head, play out largely the same way they did before – they just feel more muscular and menacing thanks to the immediacy of the over-the-shoulder viewpoint and the vastly more detailed visuals. However, other action sequences have been enhanced to far more comprehensive degrees. Without spoiling too much, there’s one particular late game ****** in the original Silent Hill 2 that amounted to little more than an attritional head-to-head stand-off, but here it’s been reworked into an intense game of cat and mouse amidst the frigid air and dangling carcasses inside a meat locker – effectively transforming one of the story’s weakest boss fights into one of its very best. What We Said About Silent Hill 2 (2001) With Silent Hill 2, Konami has delivered a deep, long (10-15 hours) adventure that's scary in a disturbing, eerie fashion. The game's mechanics show an attempt to improve the genre's general failings, and more importantly don't get in the way of the game or the story itself. As a PlayStation 2 game overall, Silent Hill 2 is graphically stunning, while providing a full production package of surround sound techniques and good voice acting to boot. Konami's survival-horror game doesn't break the genre's mold so much as it modifies and eases up the rigid boundaries set early in the genre's early games. Konami's effort is a ***** scary game, entirely worth every last cent. It's frightening, deep, clever, and tries to improve the genre, if just a little, and in the end, that's all I really want in a survival horror game. – Doug Perry, September 26, 2001 Score: 9 Read the full Silent Hill 2 (2001) review [/url] Similarly, many of the original game’s puzzles have been preserved here, whether it’s the eccentric, point-and-click adventure kind like using a specific tool in order to retrieve an item from an apartment suite garbage chute, or the more ingenious form like swiveling an ornate box on its axis in order to manipulate the towering, MC Escher-inspired room of impossible staircases inside a late-game labyrinth. Meanwhile, other brainteasers like the coin puzzle early on have been given additional steps to complete, which prevented their solutions from ever becoming too predictable as someone who played the original all those years ago. With the exception of some obligatory valve-turning here and there, puzzle types are largely unique and consistently stimulating, and there are plenty of them to solve. (Like combat, you can also vary the difficulty of puzzles via the in-game menu in order to best suit your tastes). However, some of the simpler puzzles have been expanded upon a touch too much. Take one early obstacle in the original that effectively required you to solve a fairly straightforward riddle in order to wind a grandfather clock to a specific time. In this remake, I had to undergo a sequence of multi-part treasure hunts to gather up each of the three hands for the clock face – fending off ****** hordes and completing additional puzzles along the way – which ultimately meant that close to an hour of my playthrough was spent simply attempting to make the clock chime and unlock the way forward. This is just one example of a number of instances where the new Silent Hill 2 bogs down slightly in terms of story progression, and I have to admit that as I jumped through yet another elaborate series of hoops just trying to get my hands on the key to a locked door in the Wood Side Apartments, I did catch myself wishing the owner had simply left a spare under their welcome mat. To Cut a Short Story Long It’s because of the expanded puzzles and combat sections, that the new Silent Hill 2 is considerably longer than the original despite the fact it seems to stick to all the same story beats. The main campaign of the 2001 Silent Hill 2 can be completed in around eight hours, but my playthrough of this 2024 remake hit the credits at just over 15. While it’s almost twice as long, I don’t really feel it’s doubly as good. This remake is genuinely excellent for large stretches at a time, particularly during the escalating stakes of its climactic final third, but there are definitely moments throughout the early parts of the journey that are lined with more padding than the walls of the Brookhaven Hospital psychiatric ward. It also means that although Silent Hill 2 features eight different endings to unlock – two more than the original’s six – I can’t see myself investing the time for any repeat playthroughs because I’m slightly put-off by the protracted length. Although admittedly alternate endings aren’t the only incentive to return in Silent Hill 2’s New Game+ – there are also extra weapons to find, additional graphics modes with CRT scanlines and the like to try, plus numerous secrets and easter eggs to comb for in the town’s increased number of interiors – I don’t feel a huge pull to step face-first back into the fog anytime soon. Even so, although it might not completely trump the original in the same way that the ***** Space and Resident Evil 4 remakes did, Silent Hill 2 is still an incredibly high quality reimagining that improves on its source material in more ways than not. I really like the way it uses distinct hues of light and distant audio cues to subtly steer you along the right path, allowing the HUD to stay free of any immersion-breaking objective markers. It’s great how James automatically marks his map with any puzzles or locked doors you find, vastly reducing the amount of aimless backtracking that occasionally plagued the original game. Developer Bloober Team has also really emptied its full bag of tricks as far as taking tense situations and bringing them to near-nervous breakdowns. The timer-based light switches in the Toluca Prison, for example, are an extremely effective device for creating panic – the intensifying countdown beeps echoed my own escalating heartrate as I hurried to complete my search of each cell before the whole block was plunged back into darkness. It’s fantastically *****-inducing stuff. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

There’s another Masterwork Research available to Pokémon Go players for a short time. For this research, it’s all about getting the chance to get a Master Ball, a Poké Ball that always catches whatever Pokémon you want to catch with it. You can use this against any notable Legendary Pokémon you encounter while playing the mobile game. Many Pokémon Go players use this when attempting to catch the Legendary Galarian birds or on a Shiny Legendary Pokémon. You want to reserve this for when you don’t have any other choice, especially on rare Pokémon. Here’s what you need to know about how to complete all Masterwork Research: Master Ball tasks and rewards in Pokémon Go. This is a Premium Masterwork, and you need to buy it from the Pokémon Go store. View the full article

“In my restless dreams, I see that town… Silent Hill. You promised you’d take me there again someday,” and Bloober Team has finally done just that, with exceptional quality and faithfulness to the source material. Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 will never replace the original game and the survival horror zeitgeist it was a part of back in 2001, but the developer has ensured that nobody — be it veterans or newcomers — will forget about the eponymous series with its beautiful and ambitious remake of Silent Hill 2 and it’s story anytime soon. Read more View the full article

You never really know whether you’ll get an easy or complicated LoLdle quote, and today’s is undoubtedly tough if you don’t know your darkness-loving League of Legends champions. This quote from the Oct. 4 LoLdle is not easy to answer, but you won’t have to look too far to find the answer. View the full article

Watching superfans build ships may just be one of the best parts of Starfield, especially when those same creators highlight their designs in a flashy demonstration video. When it comes to bringing some of sci-fi's most iconic spaceships to Bethesda's massive RPG, one of the most popular franchises to draw from is Star Trek. The monolithic series has provided fans with decades of iconic vessels, many of which have appeared in licensed video games, but when they're used in Starfield, they just look even more impressive. View the full article

If you’re not familiar with storm drains, then knowing the answer to today’s NYT crossword clue, “Storm drain cover,” may seem impossible. But don’t worry; the answer to this Oct. 4 NYT Mini Crossword puzzle clue is below. ‘Storm drain cover’ Oct.4 NYT Mini Crossword clue hints and answer This clue is one down in today’s crossword. Screenshot by Dot Esports via the NYT Hint 1: It starts with a “G.” Hint 2: It contains two vowels. Hint 3: It ends with an “E.” Hint 4: It rhymes with “state.” The answer to the “Storm drain cover” clue from the Oct. 4 NYT Mini Crossword puzzle is “GRATE.” A grate is a barred frame that covers drains, collects and directs water, and ensures no debris or other large items enter the drain. View the full article

Diablo 4 has revealed new skills and passives coming for all classes in Season 6. The new feature is part of a range of changes that Diablo 4 will make in the next season, such as progression updates, a new Elixir, enemies, and more. View the full article

Two things are certain when it comes to video games. Fans will show up for a high-quality release, and fans will go to the ends of the earth to make their voices heard when they're displeased. Fortunately and unfortunately, Tekken 8 is going through both of those things. View the full article