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In Cleanfall you essentially play a Roomba that is trying to reverse the apocalypse because the apocalypse is messy. A Roomba capable of tunnelling through miles of procedurally generated, monster-infested crust so as to reorganise the Earth's core and bring about its ultimate objective - a sparkling living room. I enjoy the militant reductiveness of this character motivation. There are sprawling underground ecosystems to discover, yes, weird plants to harvest, fractious clumps of tentacles to appraise, avoid or **********. But all of these things are contemptible details to be swept up and bagged and thrown in the dumpster. Read more View the full article

As the first Something Of Mana game to come out in 15 years, Visions Of Mana is bound to be exciting some of you out there. Well, funnel all that anticipation into your mouse-clicking finger, because developers Square Enix have just put up a playable demo of the bright JRPG on Steam. I'm not sure how much the demo offers, as we're only told it includes "a section of the story, battles and exploration." But that's better than nothing, and with a full month before release, you have plenty of time to scope it out. Read more View the full article

Edwin spotted this game called Beta Decay that's not got a release date yet or anything, but looks very cool. It's being developed by Rotoscope Studios and it's a low-poly, 90s-inspired mix of dystopian RPG, survival, third and first-person shooter, with some roguelike bits slapped in there, as well. Whew, that's a lot. Potentially too much. But hey, I am here for something ambitious and interesting, of which it ticks both boxes. Read more View the full article

A playable demo for Visions of Mana has been released. The Square Enix published game, which will be the fifth in the main Mana series, will be released on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4 and PC on August 29. The demo is available on all formats, and players who try it out can unlock three extra weapons in the full game. Read More... View the full article

Space and spicy felines are on the agenda today thanks to the “****** cats and red moons, supposedly” clue in the July 30 edition of the popular NYT Mini Crossword puzzle. One of my two cats is called Luna, which makes it fitting I’m writing about the “****** cats and red moons” clue, and if the power of the ********* isn’t in you, allow me to set you flea. View the full article

Pop into the Call of Duty subreddit on any given day, and you're almost certainly going to trip over a few people complaining about SBMM, or skill-based matchmaking, and how it's ruining Call of Duty. But according to a recent study by developer Activision, getting rid of SBMM would be far, far worse for the game as a whole, and it's got the data to prove it. In a 25-page white paper published last week, Activision reveals that it actually conducted an experiment in 2023's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 where it reduced SBMM for some of its players, resulting in more players quitting games or not coming back to the game for more sessions. Matches Made in...Heaven? Currently, Activision says the way matchmaking works in Call of Duty is by taking into account a number of factors. Top priority is player connection quality and the time it takes to enter a match, but other factors including skill, platform, recent maps and modes, and other things are considered too. And skill itself is a complex equation that takes into account individual match total ******, *****/****** ratios, and ******/deaths by ****** ratios (to ensure players can't drop their skill levels on purpose by self-********). Skill levels are recalculated after every match, and Activision says it's constantly trying to find a happy balance of ensuring players aren't seeing wild swings in where the game thinks they're at, but also to adjust quickly if a player's having an off day or trying out a new loadout. In short, it's skill calculations and matchmaking are finnicky processes, but Activision is doing the best it can. In the study earlier this year, Activision ran a "deprioritize skill test" where the developers decreased skill's importance in matchmaking in the algorithm, but did not shut it off entirely. It ran the test for 50% of its North ********* playerbase for a two-week ******* in early 2024, and the results are... pretty conclusive! In Figure 3 we can observe the percent difference in the number of players returning after 14 days between the treatment and control groups. With deprioritized skill, returning player rate was down significantly for 90% of players. The 10% of highest skilled players came back in increased numbers, but in aggregate, we see meaningfully fewer players coming back to the game. This effect may appear small, but this change was observable within the duration of the test. This will compound over time, just like interest, and will have a meaningful impact on our player population. This is a concern for all players, including the top 10%, as if this pattern is allowed to continue, players will exit the game in increased numbers. Eventually a top 10% player will become a top 20% player, and eventually a top 30% player, until only the very best players remain playing the game. Those original top players will become increasingly likely to not return to the game. Ultimately, this will result in a worse experience for all players, as there will be fewer and fewer players available to play with. While single-digit percentages might not seem like a lot, given the sheer volume of participants over a relatively short ******* of time, this is a fairly significant difference in drop-off. What's more, Activision expects that based on other studies it has done over time, this would compound. If left unchecked, the lowest-skilled players would disappear at higher rates, meaning only players of higher skill levels would remain. Maybe that sounds great for the higher-skilled players, but in the smaller pool of players, those who had previously been mid-level would now be the lowest-skilled, and would themselves start to drop off at higher rates. Basically, it's bad news for player retention all around, and retention is necessary to keep an online game alive. Skill Issues The paper details other data as well, including a similar survey where Activision tightened the skill constraints in matchmaking and saw inverse results: higher-skilled players dropped off at higher rates, but lower-skilled players stuck around more frequently. It also saw a higher rate of "blowouts" (when one team wins a match with a significantly higher score than the losing team) when skill was deprioritized, which players find less fun, and lower *****-per-minute rates with lower-skilled players. Basically, when SSBM was turned down low, the vast majority of players had less fun, and didn't come back to play the game more as frequently as when SSBM was on. In response, players have expressed skepticism about the study. Some point out that the algorithm is too aggressive and shouldn't recalculate skill after every single game, while others point out that a matchmaking system based on wins/losses would be better than the numerical system Activision uses. It's a controversial subject, one that online gamers and Call of Duty players in particular have been debating for years. Much of it boils down to, it's fun to win and less fun to lose, and losing a lot feels exceptionally bad. Should players who are very good at the game be rewarded by being allowed to win a lot against random pools of players, or should games like Call of Duty try to balance the experience by pitting players against others of relatively equal skill so everyone wins and loses a roughly equal amount over time? Activision, at any rate, is erring on the side of keeping more players playing Call of Duty for longer. You can read the entire white paper here for some fascinating data on how Call of Duty matches players against one another, and there was another paper from back in April that examines the impact of matchmaking based on ping. In our review, we gave Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer a 6/10, saying it "reheats and reserves the same multiplayer from Modern Warfare 2 with some extra maps and tweaks as garnishes." And Activision just dropped its Season 5 update last week, with a long list of balance change and improvements for that multiplayer mode. Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected]. View the full article

Throughout your journey in ***** of P, you find ringing phones scattered across Krat. When you pick up the phone, Arlecchino, the “King of Riddles” gives you a riddle to solve. Answer it and to get a Trinity Key that opens one of five locked Trinity Rooms hidden around Krat. There are valuable treasures inside Trinity Rooms like cosmetic items, puppet parts, and Quartz to upgrade your P-Organ, so you should always be on the lookout. Whenever you get a Trinity Key, make sure to backtrack to a locked Trinity Door and open it to claim its loot. View the full article

Bud can be used to describe the small part of a plant that develops into a flower, a friendly way of addressing someone, or cannabis. It has a happy trio of meanings. But today’s NYT Mini Crossword clue, “close bud,” refers to just one. ‘Close bud’ July 30 NYT Mini Crossword hints and answer Five across. Screenshot by Dot Esports Hint 1: It begins with the letter “H.”Hint 2: Slang for a close friend.Hint 3: It rhymes with “Naomi.”Hint 4: Homeboy or girl. Stop scrolling! I’m about to give away the answer. View the full article

A ********* visual novel creator has decided to take legal action after their latest game was streamed in its entirety on the day of release. Game creator and novelist Takiya Iijima wrote a lengthy thread on X (as reported by Automaton) explaining that their latest visual novel was streamed on day one, despite requests that content creators refrain from streaming the game until a week after release. Following the success of Iijima’s visual novel Apathy: Narugami Gakuen ***** Fushigi on Switch, a new visual novel called Apathy ******* Club was released on Steam at a reduced price of ¥990 ($6.39) to celebrate. Read More... View the full article

In Behaviour Interactive's post-apocalyptic multiplayer FPS Meet Your Maker, you raise grim forts of rusty blocks, pop-out manglers and ****** ambushers from the desert sands. Each base harbours a cannister of genetic material and other resources, and the idea is to fiendishly arrange traps and defences to stop people taking your precious genmat while doing your best to clean out their bases. Sound like good wholesome fun? You might want to check out the current free trial on Steam. Read more View the full article

Fortnite regularly provides players with a to-do list of quests to earn experience and rewards, which has been ramped up a notch in the Cursed Sails event. If you need to know how to find and beat a boss, we’ve got you covered. Bosses in Fortnite provide unique loot that can be a game-changer during a match and push you towards a valuable win. They are, however, available for anyone to challenge, so there’s often a race to beat them. View the full article

The sports game market is easy to predict. Every year, a fresh title is released that enjoys high sales but offers little difference from its predecessor. Largely, it’s rinse and repeat every 12 months. A mantra of “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it” comes alongside a market dominated by big studios. From EA Sports to 2K, the sports game market is cornered whether your sport of choice is soccer, basketball, wrestling, or ********* football. But that could be about to change. View the full article

“Finely grate, as a lemon peel” is a great clue featuring a lot of zing and gives the July 30 NYT Mini Crossword an acidic flavor. You need to eat your five a day to keep a lot of the bad away, and, thankfully, this doesn’t apply to lemons because if you’re of a disposition where so much as licking a lemon segment has your eyes curling up into a ball (like me), we’d be in trouble! But lemons are key to four down in today’s daily NYT Mini word game. View the full article

If you want to get Victory Royales using a controller, having aim assist turned on in Fortnite is an absolute must. Sometimes, however, players worry that their aim assist might be bugged or somehow has been turned off. If you’re playing Fortnite on the controller and think your aim assist might be turned off, here’s how to turn it on. View the full article

Forgotten Gems is a regular column about notable games that have moved out of the public eye and may not be easily accessible anymore. To see all the other games I've covered so far, be sure to check out the 13 previous issues of Forgotten Gems in our Columns section. First-person shooters. Roleplaying games. Action adventures. Even though they’ve evolved significantly alongside the gaming hardware they run on, some of today’s most-popular genres are multiple decades old and are likely here to stay for good. It’s hard to imagine people not playing a Call of Duty game in 2030, just as it’s unlikely that fighting games like Street Fighter and Tekken will just be over and done with in the foreseeable future. But some some genres have definitely diminished over the years to the point of almost disappearing entirely. Real-time strategy games – like StarCraft – at one time filled entire sports arenas of people eager to watch esports competitions. I haven’t heard anyone mention the “brain training” genre in years. Some bygone genres come complete with physical relics – literal skeletons in our closets: plastic guitars, fake drumkits, or even turntable controllers One of you – yes, I’m talking to you – even still has that Tony Hawk skateboarding controller in his attic. We Have The Olympics at Home As a ****, I couldn’t have imagined that The Games would ever end. When we didn’t know what else to do, a “quick game” of Epyx’s Summer Games or Winter Games would inevitably fill an entire afternoon. As you may be able to guess just from their titles, Epyx’s sports games simulated events you would find at the Olympic Games or in Track & Field competitions, with different control styles depending on the style of each event. If you don't want any additional hardware in your home, Pixel Games *** licensed the rights for some of Epyx's games and put out a 2022 Summer Games compilation on Steam -- but there's a catch: it collects only the inferior ports (from Atari 2600 to ZX Spectrum), not the classic C64 edition or the decent Atari 8-bit conversion. The famed Atari Lynx version of California Games saw a re-release this year via The Epyx Collection: Handheld on Nintendo Switch, courtesy of the same publisher. The lack of an IOC license is actually an advantage for game preservation as it’s much easier for the games to get reissued without changes, so we're bound to also see the C64 originals in more places in the future. The idea behind Summer Games lives on. I’m hopeful that someday, someone will pick up the torch and assemble an ensemble of talented game designers to create the most realistic take on the world’s most enduring athletic competition. Until then, you may just have to travel back to 1984 to relieve the genre’s glory days. Or watch the real Olympics on TV. Peer Schneider leads game guides and tools strategy across IGN, Map Genie, RockPaperShotGun, VG247, and Eurogamer. When Epyx didn't work on a version of Winter Games for Atari computers, he started work on making his own. He got as far as creating all the background graphics and player animation for the biathlon event. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Apex Legends continues to face significant backlash from its community, despite developer Respawn Entertainment’s decision to revert the controversial battle pass changes that sparked the negative feedback. The battle pass clearly isn’t the only thing fans are unhappy with. For a long time, players have been complaining about Apex Legends’ anti-cheat and servers, and now they’re unhappy with its lackluster new content, too. View the full article

Soccer fans have plenty to look forward to with a new season rapidly approaching, and the good news is you can enjoy UFL again soon, thanks to its imminent second open beta. UFL‘s initial open beta earlier this year attracted a staggering 1.6 million players worldwide, providing a hands-on experience with the title. Those who missed out (or are craving more) don’t need to wait much longer. View the full article

There’s nothing like opening the Access Info menu in The First Descendant, finding the resource you need, and seeing it’s only available in a mundane, repetitive early-game mission. Finding this dull, some players are pleading with Nexon to make the grind “*******” but more rewarding. One player sparked discussion about The First Descendant‘s repetitive grinding pattern in a July 29 Reddit post. “Doing normal content at level 40 is dull,” the player said, but given the resources they’re chasing come from the normal mission, they’re suggesting Nexon significantly boosts drop rates for completing a more difficult version of the mission. View the full article

In a bizarre turn of events that can only rival the initial virality of the Skibidi ******* meme, Dafuqboom—the original creator of the viral internet phenomenon—has had to deny sending a copyright notice to Garry’s Mod creator Garry Nelson. An alleged copyright strike notice was first spotted and shared on X (formerly Twitter), with the supposed claim coming from Invisible Narratives, a movie company owned by Michael Bay and Adam Goodman that recently acquired rights to make a Skibidi ******* franchise. The alleged strike, which has since been strongly refuted by Dafuqboom, calls for Garry’s Mod to deactivate all corresponding assets. View the full article

The ****** of XDefiant‘s diehard fanbase is beginning to waver. Concerns have continued to grow over the state of the game, with some failing to see how Ubisoft’s highly-touted shooter can survive beyond 12 months. Ubisoft doesn’t provide concurrent player counts to prove a drop in interest around the title, but there are other signs, such as dwindling Twitch viewership, as pointed out by members of the community on X (formerly Twitter) on July 29. The game launched in May with over 75,000 tuning into various streamers, according to TwitchTracker, but the dropoff in viewership has been sharp with just over 1,000 watching, as of the time of writing. View the full article

For today’s LoLdle quote, we’ve moved away from the hungry champion theme to something a little more mysterious: A League of Legends champion with a penchant for grooving. If you’re unfamiliar with League champions who like to cut shapes on the Rift or have wracked your brain trying to solve the July 30 LoLdle quote to no avail, have no *****, as the answer to today’s LoLdle quote is below. View the full article

The Sims 4 Lovestruck expansion pack is all about romance and relationships, offering new ways for your Sims to connect and create memorable moments. With features like Cupid’s Corner and the Date Planning System, you can now design the perfect date that matches your Sims’ personalities and preferences. The Cupid’s Corner app might be a bit tricky to navigate at first, but it opens up a world of possibilities for planning the perfect date. Here’s how to make the most of these features and create a custom date in The Sims 4 Lovestruck. View the full article

Amazon is reportedly having regrets about its $1 billion Twitch purchase, which went through in 2014, with internal metrics apparently now pointing to the streaming titan already well on its way to becoming a “zombie brand.” Streaming (and therefore Twitch) is still one of the most popular forms of entertainment online, but that hype alone doesn’t guarantee the live broadcast brand turns a profit. The Wall Street Journal this week published a report revealing the biggest spenders on the website are showing less interest. Views are down and cash is trickling into Amazon’s pocket slower and slower as engagement crashes. View the full article

New hero shooter Marvel Rivals will conclude its beta on Aug. 5, but not before players across the globe will battle in the War of the Realms, a free tournament for all players with cash and in-game prizes to earn. The tournament is entirely run inside the Marvel Rivals client and includes randomly seeded brackets and even a dedicated live stream for the knockout stage. Here’s everything you need to know about Marvel Rivals War of the Realms, kicking off July 31. View the full article

Unless you’re hip or up to date with modern slang, today’s NYT Mini Crossword clue, “Style, charm, or attractiveness,” per a modern coinage,” is one you’ll never guess just from the clue alone. And I tried—I must just not be that cool anymore. The clue “Style, charm, or attractiveness,” per a modern coinage,” is from the July 30 NYT Mini Crossword. Without a few helpful hints it’s going to be tough to unravel, especially for those of us with a few more years on our meters. View the full article