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SMITE, a free-to-play MOBA featuring deities from different cultures, has more than 100 gods to choose from, each with their own playstyle, strengths, and weaknesses. Each of these gods fulfills a role in a team, such as Mage, *********, Hunter, Warrior, and Guardian, and requires different strategies to optimize their skills. Choosing the right **** to play is extremely important for success in matches. View the full article

I recently returned to The Sims 2 after primarily playing The Sims 4 during the last ten years, and I found that it has several qualities that I prefer to those in The Sims 4. Considering it'd been so long since I returned to play a main game in the series other than The Sims 4, I suspected that it was the nostalgia of The Sims 2 that had me remembering it as being more fun, and perhaps a result of playing the game during a time in my life with fewer responsibilities. In the end, it wasn't just nostalgia influencing my opinion. View the full article

Patch 7 of Baldur's Gate 3 has arrived on PC, and many people are wondering when it will be available for consoles. Updates for the game usually roll out for the PC version first, giving both console and Mac players some time to wait until they can experience any additions and changes. Despite this, the team at Larian Studios is always ahead on keeping Baldur's Gate 3 fans updated on progress in all areas of its beloved RPG title, even with this newest update. View the full article

Take a look at the Arlathan Forest, Hossberg Wetlands, Minrathous, Rivian, and Treviso. View the full article

This update also includes optimizations for the TV mode, squad preset, time and stamina systems. View the full article

There is no progress carryover, but those who play the demo can receive a bonus in the main game. View the full article

The defending League of Legends World champions T1 have finally ended their LCK playoff losing streak, triumphing over KT Rolster in a thrilling five-match “Telecom War” to book their tickets as the final team for Worlds 2024. The reigning Worlds champs have narrowly avoided a repeat of 2020 and 2018 where the star-studded Korean roster couldn’t qualify for the prestigious tournament. With today’s win, Faker also becomes the only player in the history of League of Legends to advance nine times to Worlds, surpassing the likes of CoreJJ, Deft, Impact, Doublelift, and many other veterans. View the full article

Have you ever tried your hand at yoga? I do it regularly and it helps you become healthy! Today’s NYT Mini Crossword clue “Cat or cow, in yoga,” asks you to know more about these yoga asanas and figure out the word said to denote these postures. If you’re struggling with the clue, here are some hints and answers for the NYT Mini Crossword on Sept. 14 to breeze through the crossword. View the full article

Another day, another round of LoLdle, the Wordle-like challenge that tests your League of Legends knowledge by handing you a random champion quote. All you’ve got to do is pick the matching champ—and today’s clue couldn’t be much easier. Here’s the answer to the Sept. 14 LoLdle quote “More of a dog person, huh?” View the full article

As Destiny 2 guardians turn away from primary weapons and prioritize special weapons, many have shown a vested interest in finding a good trace rifle—and Chronophage might just fit the bill. This Void trace rifle, first available during Episode: Echoes, has a few great perk combinations up its sleeve with one standing out above the rest. Here’s the **** roll and best perks for Chronophage in Destiny 2. View the full article

Like in most traditional sports, having raw talent in Rocket League can only get you so far on a competitive level. If you’re looking to stomp the opposition, you’ll need to master your field vision and team play. Having a bird’s-eye view of the field will help you become a better team player since you’ll know everyone’s positioning at a given moment. Rocket League can look simple at first, and optimizing your settings may feel like a waste of time. Once you start climbing up the ranks, however, the game shows its true potential and high skill ceiling. View the full article

Custom games with friends in Deadlock are the perfect battlegrounds to earn bragging rights. While you can challenge any of your friends to a one-on-one with the new private lobbies, it also allows competitive players to test new strategies and hero builds and strengthen synergy with their teammates. For a long time during Deadlock‘s “open” beta, there was no such way to set up a custom lobby, but now it’s possible. Here’s everything you need to know to start custom matches in Deadlock. View the full article

The Dragon Quest III HD-2D remake is clearly the most anticipated title in Japan as of this event, as it will also have multiple streams. View the full article

One of the former Basiscape composers who worked on Elden Ring and Vanillaware games is creating this game's soundtrack. View the full article

Satisfactory has a huge open world with lots of space to build and expand a factory. However, traveling can take up a lot of time due to the scale of the map and resource nodes spawning on opposite ends. Thankfully, a Parachute can solve this issue—among others. The full release of Satisfactory brought tons of new features to the game while expanding and improving several existing ones. While we still don’t know what SAM ore is used for, the addition of Tier Nine and Alien Technology paved the way for more buildings and structures you can build for your factory, but that also means you’ll need more land to place and maintain them. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Danil “donk” Kryshkovets truly came alive at IEM Katowice 2024, where he decimated tier-one opposition on-stage in the Spodek Arena and cemented his name with one of the greatest individual Counter-Strike 2 performances ever. Naturally, CS2 players are rushing to copy the prodigy—right down to his CS2 in-game settings. Here are donk’s mouse, video, crosshair, and viewmodel settings in CS2. View the full article

Nikocado Avocado has confirmed fellow creator Asmongold was the only person who came close to figuring out why he became morbidly obese over many years only to shed all the weight in what appeared to be a few months—leaving many viewers to deem the viral video to be a part of YouTube history. While showering Nikocado Avocado with praise after his incredible “transformation” reveal last week, Asmongold defended the mukbang creator against chatters calling him a sociopath during a Sept. 7 stream. He stated that Nikocado is “an artistic person” and he did the social experiment as a “manifestation of that art.” A week later, Nikocado revealed this to be true on a now-expired Sept. 11 Instagram story, crediting Asmongold’s theory to be the only one to resemble his ideology. View the full article

In inZOI, Krafton’s ambitious all-in-one life simulator, you aren’t a **** but rather an omnipotent office worker performing HR for miniature worlds under the tutelage of an adorable cat overlord. In addition to managing the needs and relationships of customisable avatars called Zois, you can build a metropolis with bespoke homes, businesses, and public parks. A slew of complications, like citywide mood sliders, weather conditions, and the potential for wild animals, juice up your all-seeing agenda, leading to a sumptuous simulation full of moreish chaos. It’s a gorgeous, formidable, system-filled world that, as of right now, still feels a little hollow. Before jumping into the deep end on my first day on the job, inZOI ushered me in with a slick, hyper-realistic character studio that, if time permitted, could have easily swallowed my entire preview session. There was plenty of pushing and pulling as I warped my avatar’s facial symmetry with incredible freedom, like a **** making a beautiful monster out of Play-Doh. But any sincere attempts to create a stylish virtual self disappeared as I stumbled onto all of the Zoi Presets crafted by other creators – nightmare-fuel recreations of cultural icons like Shrek and Handsome Squidward. “We want to give (players) as much agency as possible,” explains Hyungjun Kim, director and producer of inZOI. “I grew up making custom content, and I made a lot of custom content when I was playing The Sims”, they continued. “I know what the players are feeling, and I've been in their shoes, so I wanted to give them as much agency as possible so they can make things as easy as possible.” You’ll choose a character’s gender expression, age range (child, young ******, ******, middle-aged, and senior), and personality before getting stuck into inZOI’s holistic anatomical putty parlor. “At first, we were looking at the option of stylising like The Sims, but we thought that making it realistic would help players become more immersed,” says Kim. “I wanted people to look at life in a more serious light, and if I have one vision for this game, it's that I want people to live meaningful lives and really think about life in general.” “We want to give (players) as much agency as possible,” explains Hyungjun Kim, director and producer of inZOI. inZOI’s fashion suite is a tour de force of customisable streetwear and abundant accessories. I could pick a cute top or skirt and adjust its length and colour using a rainbow palette, recreating some of my favourite archival fashion aesthetics like McBling and Indie Sleaze with ease. inZOI’s sizable wardrobe is refreshingly modern and mostly androgynous, too. “When making the game, we asked for help from clothing companies and brands,” explains Kim. “We asked a clothing designer who's worked with a lot of Korean singers and K-pop artists to help us, so with their help, we were able to make our own style,” they finished. There is an unfortunate elephant in the room, though, and that’s inZOI’s integration of Generative AI. Players can upload a custom design to apply to their avatar’s clothing or toy with the plentiful built-in settings. However, a separate button opens up a prompt box where you can input word salad and receive a synthographic digital pattern based on your request. While it’s not all that surprising to see, given current technological trends, it does put a damper on what I feel is a compelling and inspiring character creator. It would cultivate a better community for inZOI if everyone were compelled to flex their unique visions, design skills and cultural milieu to make and share cool textures for other players to use rather than allowing a machine to speedrun creativity for them and produce shabby work. There is an unfortunate elephant in the room, though, and that’s inZOI’s integration of Generative AI. Once I had completed my household, I was thrust into inZOI’s Seoul-inspired city, Dowon, ready for my digital me to embed themselves in this impeccably dressed world. It’s here that I could start seeing the seams of this ambitious project. inZOI’s open world is enormous but feels very early. It’s chock full of intersecting people, places, and activities, but despite having so much to do, a haunting emptiness persists in the background, one that needs remedying before the game’s full release. Starting in my Zoi’s brand-new apartment, they pottered around their gorgeous digs, cooking a frittata and chatting with their roommate. Communication in inZOI is divided between Love, Friendship, and Business, and as you start to talk, you can cycle through the different categories, prodding the relationships in your desired direction. Throughout, the Zois bantered in a Simlish-adjacent style of speech that was made especially for the game. “We have a language for inZOI, for the Zois,” Kim says. “We have a language for Dowon, and then we have Bliss Bay, which is based on America, and we need language for that. But the problem is, if you use English or Korean, you need to get voiceovers and actors.” they continued. “ And if you localise English to Korean, there might be a lot of difficulties, so that's why we made our own language. It’s written in Korean, but the voice itself is just independent. It's just a language that exists in inZOI.” Kim explains. It’s a convincing package of interactions at first glance, even if the movement sometimes feels abrupt and goofy between activities. The physicality of a Zoi's animations often makes up for this, though – I was enamoured by the way they took and cracked the viscous eggs into a bowl. As my Zoi meandered around the house, they took a few selfies before spending a lengthy amount of time on the ******* – perhaps that frittata was a mistake. Either way, it was time to take my Zoi on the road, so I left the apartment to see what was outside. In the open world, my Zoi could walk the length and breadth of the city with barely any barriers. I could also instantly tinker with the environment's settings, turning my pristine and sunny landscape into a post-apocalyptic nightmare with a few clicks. Even with the occasional bout of texture pop-in, I was thoroughly impressed by how free I was to mould Dowon and torment the people of my world – and how intuitive it felt to do so. To balance out the complete freedom you’re given, friction in inZOI stems from the Karma system, which tallies your Zoi's actions and punishes them when they do bad things. Performing a social faux pas like littering or theft could cause your social standing to drop, with other Zois starting rumours about your misdeeds. I also ‘secretly farted’ in the kitchen next to my imaginary husband, which almost definitely made an impact, too. Much of inZOI feels borderless and determined to get out of your way, so I was pleased to see explicit boundaries to consider, even if the specifics of these systems were still a mystery to me. I could also instantly tinker with the environment's settings, turning my pristine and sunny landscape into a post-apocalyptic nightmare with a few clicks. With my time running out, I took a minute to try the build mode, filling my Zoi’s space with indiscriminate assets. Cycling through a collection of menus, I could easily shift the position of doors, build new walls, and add premade furniture. You can also modify the open-world environment in a similar fashion. “Right now, our Build Mode isn't complete—it's only 80% complete—but our rendering is pretty good,” says Kim. “I have big ambitions for Build Mode. I want the player to be able to build high-rise buildings with dozens of floors.” they continued. “Maybe later, we're going to add the ability to edit terrain.” You can tweak almost every detail of a piece of furniture, too, from the wood type to how glossy you want it to be, or, if you wish, upload one of the aforementioned custom textures instead. It feels like an excellent foundation for criteria-based building challenges, and I’d love to try outfitting a low-budget or tiny-square-foot home with the available mechanics. Going forward, Kim told me that the team would observe what players were doing with the tools and try to nurture that however possible. “We have Unreal Editor that you can download from the shop, and you're going to be able to mod using that,” Kim said. “And we're not going to insert ourselves in any way.” Kim is also thinking hard about the contentious topic of DLCs and add-on packs and how Krafton will support inZOI. “I think we might have to release DLCs, but we want to be careful around that,” Kim says. “I bought a lot of add-ons [for The Sims], but when you make DLCs, what's important is that when you buy it, you need to feel that it's really worth it. You want to feel that it's a cool addition to your game.” But before we think about the future, we need to focus on the experience of playing inZOI right now. The game’s world is extremely beautiful but somewhat empty in motion, permeated by a lack of grounding lore. It can sometimes feel like a playable version of a high-end real estate render or a picture-perfect Pinterest board. It does paw towards a playful narrative with its cat mascot and AR company framework. Still, it doesn’t transfer that same magical realist charm to its more minor interactions to imbue them with a sense of meaning or humour. But we’re still a while off the full game, and I’m hopeful it can carve out a chaotic corner for itself in this ever-fascinating and difficult genre, a space ripe for innovation which inZOI plans to evolve. View the full article

Spoiler warning: This review contains spoilers for the story of the base game, Persona 3 Reload, but avoids spoilers for the DLC itself. What does it feel like when grieving the loss of someone you loved? Or when trying to move on from someone important who’s no longer in your life? For one, it’s painful. In its seemingly infinite emotional complexity, you perpetually mull over what you could have done differently or how great things would be if they were still around. In the constant cycle of getting lost in your thoughts while trying to go about your normal life, it’s as if you’re reliving the same day over and over again. In the best moments of Episode Aigis: The Answer – the epilogue DLC for the RPG Persona 3 Reload – it portrays these struggles thoughtfully and candidly. And by the end, it poetically shows that so long as we have the means to do so, we can still carve a path forward no matter how hard it might be. This is a faithful remake of the PlayStation 2 version of The Answer that came with Persona 3 FES in 2008, and uses the framework of Persona 3 Reload to bring its modern graphics and much-needed quality-of-life improvements to retell its story. Although it’s not a particularly great gameplay experience, largely focused on RPG dungeon crawling that overstays its welcome, its key story moments are a bittersweet stamp on Persona 3’s already emotional ending. More importantly, it’s a poignant lesson on living with grief and heartbreak shown through the lens of the series’ best cast of characters. To understand The Answer is to also give away crucial parts of Persona 3’s original conclusion, since it picks up right after its ending. Even though you are not required to finish Persona 3 Reload to access this DLC, you don’t really have any business with it if you haven’t. It centers around the SEES crew coming to terms with the passing of their good friend (the original protagonist), which comes with a certain melancholy in the way every character conducts themselves. Sometimes that creates an awkward tension that intensifies because these are characters with fresh wounds that barely had time to heal. As the DLC’s name would indicate, you now control Aigis as the main character – accounting for her arc in the base game, she’s wielded tremendously as the vessel for how The Answer examines how ugly yet necessary the healing process is. It’s also just really nice to see her in a leadership role as she works through her own personal struggles. And through her perspective it’s made clear that nearly everything in The Answer, from its very premise to the actions you take, are an extension of its broader message. With the Dark Hour and Tartarus having been conquered by the end of Persona 3, what could possibly happen now? Well, time is at standstill on March 31st, the day before everyone has to move out of the Iwatodai dorm, your de facto headquarters. And beneath the dorm spawns the Abyss of Time, an ethereal plane underground with 100+ floors that are functionally the same as Tartarus. It traps everyone within the dorm with nowhere to go but through each door that leads to sets of floors to get to the bottom of the mystery. And the newcomer Metis, an android who’s a direct contrast to Aigis, pops up to make a strong first impression by mistakenly wreaking havoc on the crew and the dorm. This sets up a lot of questions that don’t really come into focus until the very end; at that point, it leads to an incredible payoff that you definitely have to work for. Aigis is the perfect character to represent what it’s like to bounce between the stages of grief. Since there isn’t a daily structure, day-night cycle, or time-management element, The Answer’s gameplay focus is on the grind of its turn-based RPG combat and dungeon-crawling exploration. As you do in the base game, you ****** against shadows sprinkled throughout its randomly generated, maze-like floors that make up the Abyss of Time. As a consequence, playing through The Answer can get monotonous without the other gameplay elements that help complement combat for a full Persona experience. However, the reward for trudging through its floors are the bits of story at the end of each block. These are relatively brief cutscenes that peer into critical turning points in each character’s past – while not often revelatory, they build toward something greater and leave just enough of a breadcrumb trail to motivate you to push through the Abyss of Time. Combat in The Answer is still built upon Persona 3 Reload’s tried-and-true turn-based system where you account for elemental affinities, hit weaknesses for extra turns, and tactically knock down enemies to set up all-out attacks. With Aigis as the new lead, she also obtains the power to wield multiple personas, and the Pokemon-like nature of building her roster via persona fusion ******** intact. It’s as sharp as it's always been, but when that’s what you’re doing for a large majority of your time it can start to wear thin, especially when blocks of dungeon floors were clearly recycled to pad out the roughly 25-hour runtime. I didn’t necessarily mind going through the motions, since I do enjoy the act of playing Persona 3 Reload, and the art style and personality of its characters still shine through in combat. Whether intentional or not, it is thematically fitting, I just wish it did more to mix up the gameplay dynamic throughout. While you don’t get the kind of management and social sim elements typical of a Persona game here, there are charming little interactions you can initiate in the dorm that are new to this version of The Answer. Throughout the Abyss of Time you’ll find items in special chests that unlock cutscenes between Aigis and specific party members. Some of them are a bit tacky, for sure, but this is also how you earn additional perks that offer substantial benefits in combat. If anything, I was just happy to spend more time with this cast and fill a void from The Answer’s original version, even if these new interactions didn’t really lead to anything narratively crucial. The message of The Answer is a very thoughtful one that comes together elegantly. When I look back at The Answer, I find its gameplay secondary to what it’s actually about, despite it taking up most of its runtime. The interstitial cutscenes and character moments help flesh out the SEES crew a bit more, but also sets up a ******* picture for what Aigis is experiencing as someone who’s wrestling with her feelings, having lost the very person her life revolved around. From the growth she demonstrates in the original story to the final monologue she gives before the credits roll in Reload, Aigis is the perfect character to represent what it’s like to bounce between the stages of grief. And sharply written lines with an extraordinary performance from voice actor Dawn Bennett bring Aigis to life as she ponders the big questions about life, ******, and purpose. I also appreciate the fact that while The Answer tries to give equal stakes for each character, it very clearly puts specific ones in the spotlight. While the rest of the party shares an intense sadness, the dynamic of Aigis and Metis also spotlights the internal struggle that happens when the pain seems too great to manage. Even though I am disappointed that Metis is still somewhat underdeveloped as a character, her role as a storytelling device and a foil to Aigis is so effective towards the end. And while the rest of the SEES crew have their moments, it’s Yukari who’s given a more prominent role in the story as an example of how tragedy changes a person. It's superb not just because she is my favorite of the bunch, but also because her arc feels very real. All of this doesn’t really come into focus until the last few hours of The Answer, so for as tedious as it may be to get there, the finale is worth it to see just how powerful the Persona series can be. And for all its metaphorical devices through its gameplay structure or overall premise – the time loop, the repetitive dungeon floors, chasing the shadow of someone who’s no longer there – the message of The Answer is a very thoughtful one that comes together elegantly. In a year filled with games that have made me confront my own mortality and the untimely exit of those dear to me, it’s kind of poetic for The Answer to bookend the bunch. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, 1000xResist, Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail, and of course, Persona 3 Reload have all provided their own unique perspectives on life’s big questions, which I’ve expressed in each of my reviews of those games. And they’ve all been anchors as I learn to live with loss, whether it be from ****** or circumstance. At a time when I’ve needed these lessons most, having become a demonstrably different and more emotionally exhausted person, Persona 3 has come back around in 2024 to take on a new meaning, even as the story ******** the same. And of all the aforementioned games, The Answer is the one that gives the most definitive answer for what it means to move on. Admittedly, I put a lot of stock into the story of The Answer, not to absolve it of its shortcomings, but because that is what I will remember most. It’s one of the tools I’ve been able to use as I experience the healing process myself since its strongest moments so closely represent what it's been like. At some point in the story, Aigis says to herself, "If this is what it’s like now, then I wish I could just be a machine again." When you’re going through it, it’s tempting to give into apathetic thoughts such as this. But by having a support system, taking action, and giving herself the space to seek clarity, she’s afforded the opportunity to redefine closure, breaking free from the cycle of feeling trapped in time and forever in remorse. And so, the answer isn’t to forget the pain or let it consume you – because it never really goes away – but to accept it as an important piece to the mosaic that makes you who you are. It’s so much easier said than done, but sometimes you just need to see it to believe it. View the full article

Nearly 10 years ago, former Need for Speed developer Ghost Games copped a kicking for making its 2015 series reboot online-only, even in single player. In response, its 2019 follow-up Need for Speed Heat did not require a persistent online connection. Earlier this year, Ubisoft decommissioned The Crew, making it impossible for owners to play from now on – even by themselves. The move wasn’t received well. This very week Ubisoft has confirmed The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest will now get offline modes. In contrast to these course corrections, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown arrives in 2024 as another online-only racing game that seems to have little interest in being something that’s satisfying to play solo. It’s a baffling start and, despite a nice handling model and a lot of effort on display in its unique open world, it unfortunately doesn’t get any better. The original Test Drive Unlimited was a pioneer of MMO, open world racing. It was the pioneer, really, and remarkably ahead of its time. However, despite being fondly remembered for its trendsetting online philosophy, 2006’s Test Drive Unlimited still had a dedicated single-player mode (one that ******** accessible and playable offline today). It simply layered its multiplayer mode over the top of it. The always-online Solar Crown is not built like this, and it’s infinitely poorer for it. There are AI opponents, but there’s no dedicated single-player mode to speak of – just a map full of events that other players may or may not hop into at the same time as you. During my time with it, prior to the standard edition release date, another player joining my race has actually been an extremely rare occurrence. But the threat of it is always there, because there’s no way to opt out. This puts Solar Crown in a very weird place. It means that, even though my experience has almost exclusively been competing solo against the AI, I’m still burdened by all the foibles of online racing. This means lobby countdowns I can’t fully skip before starting a race, even though I don’t want to wait for anyone else and wish to start by myself. It means races I can’t even pause, which is an absurd problem to have when playing entirely against AI – and totally contemptuous of parents and anybody else with the audacity to ever need to… stop what they’re doing for a moment. It also means races don’t even have a simple, quick restart option; to restart you need to abandon the race entirely, re-enter the event, and sit through the same lobby *******. Even when you’re the only human in an event, if there’s a connectivity issue during your race, you’ll be kicked out. If there’s a problem in free roam, you’ll be kicked out to the menu screen. *****, if there’s some sort of server maintenance or technical snag when you boot up, you won’t be able to play at all. In my most recent session I haven’t been able to play for more than a few minutes at a time before being kicked out. Every online-only requirement feels like a punishment for playing it by yourself. You don’t want to play with other people? Too bad, you’re online anyway. Turn That Crown Upside Down Unfortunately, the racing itself is not strong enough to make these online quality-of-life sacrifices worthwhile. At its best, on Solar Crown’s most well-plotted race routes, the racing is… fine. At its worst, however, it’s tedious and unsatisfying. The AI opponents are a constant sore point, and they undermine the experience by being rubbish in some conditions and supernaturally gifted in others. Solar Crown features a handful of named difficulty levels for its AI opponents but, unlike other racing games, it does not let us manually select their strength. This means Solar Crown automatically bumps up the difficulty as we progress. The spike, however, from ‘Experienced’ to ‘Expert’ is hideously ill ********* – so your reward for good performances against the ‘Experienced’ opposition is simply a bad time. Now, I should stress that you don’t actually need to win, or even podium, in Solar Crown’s races to earn credits; a better finishing position just results in a little extra gravy on top of a base payment for completing the race. There is, however, a list of secondary objectives that regularly do require you to be at the pointy end in specific events. This can be daunting against rival racers who – on some courses – will simply gallop away from you in cars that ostensibly have the same performance level as yours, recording race times that can be faster than the quickest human players on the current global leaderboards. This is a ridiculous problem to have, and it’s one you can’t solve by simply opting out of the Expert AI setting. Again, we don’t actually have the ability to adjust it. It’s also not as straightforward as selling a car you’ve discovered is uncompetitive in the current class you’re grinding through and buying something that seems quicker, because you can’t sell cars. If you’ve just dropped a ton of credits on something that’s not working out, it’s back to the grind until you can amass enough to try again. It’s set to be quite a grind, too; some of Solar Crown’s hypercars are priced at over 10 million credits, whereas a typical win only nets you around 20- to 30-odd thousand. There are no driving missions here like in the old TDU games; it’s just basic racing, repeated. As far as I’m concerned, if a game starts to feel like a job, something is amiss with the pace of progression. At any rate, the only solution is to complete and lose races, and wait until the automated difficulty decides to do you a favour and bump things down a notch – to a place where the AI racers aren’t capable of driving faster than the entire player base. This is a total waste of time, but it gets worse. After being stalled chasing the objective on one particular race, Solar Crown started slashing my payouts and XP for subsequent attempts. By the time I eventually completed the goal, the credits and XP had been cut to a pittance and were virtually worthless. Several days later I noticed the payouts had returned to normal, but nothing about an apparent cooldown ******* on rewards is communicated to us in-game. Why are we being strung along with come-back-later mechanics like mobile gamers? Solar Crown just doesn’t feel like it respects your time. The racing isn’t unsatisfying because it’s tough; it’s unsatisfying because it’s inconsistent, and it often feels like the AI is cheating. At the other end of the spectrum, in wet weather conditions, off road, and on certain circuits, AI opponents can be counted on to be much weaker. The counter intuitive thing here, however, is that these instances of slow or boneheaded AI tended to arrive as moments of relief – especially in the wake of a race I’d lost by, say, not being the single fastest person on the planet. To clarify, the racing isn’t unsatisfying because it’s tough; it’s unsatisfying because it’s inconsistent, and it often feels like the AI is cheating. There’s nothing fun about sinking a huge amount of credits into a car to put it at the top of a performance window and having it totally unable to compete against opponents at the exact same level. It’s even worse when cars with lower performance ratings are gapping you on straights. There are clearly strings being pulled to make this happen, and that’s just cheap. Is it better against humans? I can’t issue a verdict on that. While special edition Solar Crown buyers have been playing since last week, I’m really not encountering anybody. Only once have I started a race and been grouped with someone else apparently starting the same race a few seconds later. If anything, the racing was worse; the AI bots that filled the remaining six slots in this case seemed twitchier, heavier, and drove like I wasn’t there. But beyond that, nada. There are dedicated ranked races on the map, but they don’t appear to be attracting anyone yet. I’ve sat in the lobbies for those and have seen no one join me. While other racing games will pool interested players into quick races, Solar Crown seems like it’s relying entirely on people just… deciding to trigger the same race at the same time. Stressed Drive Levelling up will eventually unlock new tyre compounds and pre-set driving modes that let us **** some more speed out of our cars, but there’s so much contradictory information in these options it’s hard to know what will ultimately help. At level 30, I decided to purchase a Nissan GT-R and scanned the driving modes before my first event. Dynamic mode, which claims to boost acceleration, only lowered my acceleration stat. Sport mode, which Solar Crown reports will lower my acceleration, actually raised it. So what do I go with? What’s going to help? Well, it’s slower than the rest of the field in either configuration, so who can say? It’s a mess. The annoyances continue. The world is particularly handsome at night in the neon bathed streets, but there are sections that suffer reproducible pop-in, or objects cars can clip through. When on foot, button prompts disappear the instant you run too close to the door you want to open or person you want to speak to. You can’t easily invert the camera – you have to manually remap the controls for forward and back on the stick. Locations I’ve already discovered and have unlocked fast travel to are becoming unavailable. I can no longer use them for fast travel, despite the roads around them clearly indicating I’ve been to them before (and Solar Crown ultimately knowing I’ve been there before, because it won’t re-reward XP for “re-discovering” them). Driving to places I’ve already unlocked is more wasted time, so it’s a bug a game that’s already filled with time-sucking, always-online caveats and non-adjustable difficulty settings definitely didn’t need. On top of that, roads driven on during races don’t actually count as driven on in your game; you have to drive over them in free-roam to add them to your tally. Is this intentional, or just another bug? Hard to say, but either way it’s more double handling. There are a lot of things I enjoy about Solar Crown’s Hong Kong, but it lacks atmosphere overall. It may sound by now that Solar Crown really gets nothing right, but that isn’t true. Crucially, it boasts a predictable and approachable handling model that’s easy to get to grips with. It’s arguably a little understeery, and the drastic speed reduction from hitting roadside destructables feels too heavy-handed for an arcade racer, but it drives quite well and is definitely a step up from the divisive feel of Test Drive Unlimited 2. There are also a lot of things I enjoy about Solar Crown’s Hong Kong map. There’s a good mix of variety in terms of road width, from extremely narrow one-way alleys and accessways, to snaking hillside roads reminiscent of KT Racing’s own WRC games, to wide freeways and tunnels. There’s an eye-catching level of complexity to Solar Crown’s on- and off-ramps, and I really love the look of the many underground, polished-concrete parking garages that lurk everywhere under the city – complete with working ***** gates. Unfortunately, it lacks much in the way of atmosphere overall, and this version of Hong Kong certainly doesn’t feel like a living city in the same way it does in the likes of Sleeping Dogs. Sure, it’s an adjacent genre and the driving physics in Sleeping Dogs are sloppier than a soup sandwich, but it stands up as a world. In Solar Crown, people are rare and the futuristic augmented reality overlays are an eyesore. Virtual parking lane notifications are constant, ugly screen clutter, and the giant, identical AR lettering over key locations just makes everything feel the same. Of course, when you do enter dealerships – with their enormous layouts and sparse arrangements of cars – it’s evident they all look the same inside, anyway. They look nothing like the convincing dealerships in TDU1 and TDU2. On top of that, traffic is light and doesn’t ever seem very authentic; too many of the NPC vehicles are just the same small handful of cars from Solar Crown’s drivable garage, so there’s no authentic variety. The car selection is a letdown, both compared to its current peers and the original Test Drive Unlimited games. In 2006’s Test Drive Unlimited, for instance, a majority of the cars featured were current models released within a few years of its arrival. Classic cars still appeared, but the line-up felt fresh and cutting edge. Solar Crown doesn’t really have that same flavour. Only a tiny sliver of the cars here are even from this decade, so there’s an unavoidable staleness. ********* cars have always been significantly underrepresented in TDU, but if you were thinking the geographical proximity at play with Solar Crown might trigger an increase, it absolutely has not. We get a 2011 Nissan 370Z, and a 2009 GT-R. That’s it. There are some details I do really like, though, and there’s been some impressively granular work done regarding car sound. The hiss of wet asphalt or the bark of your exhaust note changing tone and volume as you wind down the window during the rain or in a tunnel is particularly lovely stuff. The visual effects for rain in cabin view still aren’t as good as the ones in the 10-year-old Driveclub, but I’ve been saying that about all racing games for a decade now. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Let’s be honest: quidditch is not a good sport – or at least it’s not one that was ever designed to actually be played. Its role in the Harry Potter series was just to show off how special Harry is, to the point where you might as well call it “Harry Potter the Seeker and Some Other People on Broomsticks, I Guess.” So the team at developer Unbroken Studios had their work cut out for them with Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions, having to both honor the source material while also adapting quidditch into a real game. Surprisingly, they’ve done a pretty good job at that, with moment-to-moment action on the quidditch pitch that’s actually pretty great. But once you land between matches, Quidditch Champions doesn’t have much off the pitch to keep you coming back. On the surface, the quidditch in Quidditch Champions is just like the stuff in the books and films. There are still four positions: Chasers grab the Quaffle and ****** it at the opposing team’s goals, scoring ten points if they manage to get it in; Keepers defend those goals; Beaters launch Bludgers to satisfyingly stun members of the opposing team, and when that fails they can whack them with their bats directly; and Seekers chases the Golden Snitch, a small, hard-to-catch winged ball worth a lot of points. But Unbroken has introduced a few rule changes that make things work better – most notably among them, the Seeker is no longer the only one of these positions that ultimately matters. Matches end either when one team scores 100 points or a time limit is reached, and they don’t just stop the moment someone catches the Snitch. Speaking of, the Snitch itself is only worth a much more reasonable 30 points instead of 150, and it can appear multiple times (usually about twice) per game. That smartly makes the times you can switch to Seeker a fun little (optional) bonus during a match rather than the do-or-**** moment of the entire thing. There’s also only one Beater per team, not two, which makes a lot sense given how they can force other positions to play around them. The end result of all these tweaks is, frankly, a better game. It allows Chasers to matter just as much, if not more, than Seekers, while keeping the hunt for the Snitch important, especially in tight games. It lets the Beater, who can incapacitate a member of the other team if they deal enough damage, be a strong and strategic part of a whole match without entirely dictating how it plays out. It makes every shot on goal matter, and, most importantly, it ensures matches don’t go on for six months. Smart changes make for a better, more fun version of quidditch. So yeah, smart changes make for a better, more fun version of quidditch, but what kept me coming back was the way the on-field action feels. Flying around the pitch is awesome, especially if you master Quidditch Champions’ movement techniques. Managing your boost meter and learning how to dodge and drift properly are the differences between accidentally blowing past the other team as a Chaser and faking out a Keeper to land the perfect shot or keeping up with the Snitch during tight turns and taking a Bludger to the skull before contemplating your choices while face down in the pitch for the next twenty seconds. Mid-match commentary will chime in alongside those plays either way, though it’s unfortunately pretty stilted and generic – whether it’s Lee Jordan at Hogwarts or Rita Skeeter during the Quidditch World Cup, there’s good lines here and there, but they’re usually reserved for the beginning and end of a match while the mid-game stuff is… dry, to say the least. Thankfully, every position has a fun role to play. I loved playing Keeper because I enjoyed the chess match between myself and the opposing Chasers, reacting to their shots, and dropping Playcalling Rings that restore my Chasers’ energy and give them speed boosts; Chasers are constantly tackling each other to steal the ball, moving up and down the pitch, and testing themselves against the Keeper; a well-played Beater can pick apart the other team, disrupting a Seeker at the last second or taking the Keeper off the board to allow a game-winning goal; and because Seekers can’t just grab the Snitch — they have to stay close to it and fill a meter before they can finally ******* it — every ****** for those bonus points is essentially a race with another Seeker. And since you can switch positions on the fly, you can spend as much (or as little) time in each role as you like. It’s great. It’s even better, of course, when you’re playing with friends. You can play cooperatively with two other players or take on human teams in 3v3 action online, though switching positions there works a little differently. In that case, you choose a pair of positions — Chaser and either Keeper, Seeker, or Beater — and swap between those. What you lose in position flexibility you make up for in the ability to coordinate with your team. In my first online game, I mostly played Keeper, making saves, using the Playcaller Rings to set up shots on goal, and passing to my friend so they could score as a Chaser. It was a close game, but we won because we worked together. So Quidditch Champions is great on the field, but unfortunately it’s pretty mediocre off it. There’s really nothing to do besides play these straightforward quidditch matches, be that online or alone. You’ve got a limited career mode with four Cups to win, with the opening Weasley Cup serving as a (very good) tutorial. The other three are the House Cup at Hogwarts, the Triwizard Quidditch Cup, and the Quidditch World Cup. After a series of preliminary matches, you’re seeded into a single-elimination bracket, winner-take-all – and while that may sound like it could be exciting, there are a couple of issues here. First, the Triwizard Cup and the House Cup only feature three and four teams, respectively, so the bracket stage is pretty short (and in the case of the Triwizard Cup, only consists of one match because a team is eliminated in the prelims). Second, while you can play Career in co-op (and the menus encourage you to do so), Quidditch Champions doesn’t actually track your progress if you do, meaning I ended up playing the House Cup three times to unlock the Triwizard Cup. My first two attempts, made in co-op, weren’t saved. I didn’t get credit for any games I played on my Challenge screen either, which tracks your daily, weekly, and career-wide progress across games and offers rewards once you complete them, which meant I missed unlockable cosmetics as well. That feels bad. Beyond career, multiplayer, and an obligatory practice mode, there just isn’t much to do in terms of modes, which leaves the whole package feeling thin. The character customization, however, is at least quite good. You can customize your team, allocate per-position stat points, and upgrade the several brooms you can choose from, all of which have different stats. This tinkering is welcome; there are a lot of options for your custom characters, letting you choose their look, how commentators refer to them, and plenty of cool bits and bobs like robes, wands, emotes, and such, though it’s a bummer that the co-op progression problems mean you will have to grind single-player games to unlock a decent chunk of those items. Don’t want to use custom characters? You can unlock Harry, Ron, Hermoine, Cedric Diggory, Draco Malfoy (ew), Cho Chang, and the rest if you save up enough currency or, say it with me, level up your battle pass. While your eyes might already be rolling upon reading that, the good news is it’s totally free so far, and you earn everything just from playing. There are no microtransactions in Quidditch Champions; at least, not right now. After all, this is Warner Bros. – do you trust it to build an in-game shop and not ask you to open your wallet at some point down the line? I don’t. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Looks like Amazon Games is trying to catch up with the competition in the MMO scene: New World: Aeternum is the next biggest thing in the studio’s flagship title, with tons of promotional trailers to show off the new and exciting features. The problem is that these cinematic trailers do very little to explain what Aeternum actually is or what it means for existing players. With the emphasis on solo RPG-like features in Aeternum’s preview at Summer Games Fest and the open beta, there’s been a ton of speculation on whether it’s a single-player reboot or remake of the game. View the full article

In a detailed interview with CNET following the reveal of Sony's PlayStation 5 Pro console, designer Mark Cerny confirmed rumors that the device's ray tracing capabilities are built on an architecture not yet available in AMD's PC graphics cards. While Cerny didn't explicitly name RDNA 4, no other viable candidates are known. Read Entire Article View the full article

At this point it almost seems that licensed Funko Pop figurines are being birthed into the world at a greater rate than actual human *******, so it makes sense that someone finally scooped up a bunch of these block-headed bookshelf warmers and stuck them in their own video game. Funko Fusion structures its campaign around seven beloved TV shows and films, including Masters of the Universe and Jurassic World, and stuffs it with iconic pop culture cameos from everyone from Marty McFly to Mega Man. However, despite the fact it certainly appears faithful to the distinctive Funko style at first glance, its meaningless story, mind-numbingly repetitive mission design, and maddening game-breaking bugs cause the whole thing to topple over like a doll with a head that’s too big for its body. Effectively a third-person shooter spin on the tried-and-tested LEGO videogame formula (à la LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga) right down to the way literally every object around you can be belligerently smashed into studs – sorry, chunks of vinyl – Funko Fusion’s eclectic handful of familiar stories can be played in any order. I opted to open with Hot Fuzz and close with Scott Pilgrim vs The World, but the sequence I chose didn’t really seem to have any impact on the paper-thin overarching storyline, which centres around a good-versus-evil battle between Funko Freddy and the evil Eddy Funko. These two Funko faces may be familiar to the more dedicated Funko collectors, but from where I’m sitting having owned just a handful of them, the less said about these thoroughly uninteresting and underdeveloped arch rivals, the better. Each substory runs for five stages and gives you four characters to switch between. In some cases there’s a strong incentive to do so, particularly in The Umbrella Academy where I found myself using Allison to persuade certain vulnerable NPCs to do her bidding and then swapping to Number Five for his ability to blink through the air to otherwise out of reach areas, but more often than not there’s not too much discernable difference between each character other than basic attributes, such as the rate of ***** of their weaponry. Across each of the seven substories, levels typically rehash the same ******* missions and fetch quest formats, and also tend to copy and paste encounters to artificially lengthen each stage to frankly offensive degrees – like the Scott Pilgrim vs The World encounter that forced me to ****** the same few variations of a cloned stunt double ****** in three or four near-identical scraps in a row. This is before each substory culminates in a boss ****** that is each structured in the same enormously unsatisfying way, where you must blast purple blobs off a big bad’s body while fending off its crowding minions until you have enough purple goo to fill a towering Funko flask. At this point you can trigger the arrival of a super-sized Pop, like Battle Cat or a T-Rex, to finish the monster off while you ****** vinyl chunks out of its body on autopilot and try not to look bored until the cutscene comes. I found combat in general to be pretty arduous for the most part. In fact, I found combat in general to be pretty arduous for the most part. At first it feels satisfying enough to Funko pop the ****** Funko heads off their little Funko shoulders, but it quickly becomes tedious as you plough through these big-headed hordes in waves that are limited at certain times, and annoyingly neverending in others. The only substantial difference to each encounter is that some enemies you need to ******, some you need to whack with your sword, and some you need to ****** until they’re stunned so that you can whack them with your sword. It gets old pretty Funko fast. Puzzle solving fares a little better, at least in parts. There’s still plenty of basic timed switch-********* and crank wheel-turning to be done, but there are some standout moments like the portal-heavy He-Man sections and using guitar amps to blast through fragmented glass windows in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. That is, provided these puzzles work as they should – but more on that later. Vinyl Fantasy Credit where it is due, the team at developer 1010 Games has done an admirable job at recreating the super deformed vinyl idols and placing them in some attractive little toy towns to roam around in. I was initially delighted to follow that meddling swan through the quaint village streets of Sandford when I started the Hot Fuzz campaign, and round up the huskies scattered amidst the cold steel surfaces of Thule Station in the Antarctic surrounds of John Carpenter’s The Thing. A vibrant bowling alley battle in The Umbrella Academy was particularly dazzling (even though that’s the series here I’m least personally familiar with) and the swirling cartoon explosions in Masters of the Universe’s Eternia were also a welcome touch. There’s clearly been a lot of work poured into crafting the look and feel of Funko Fusion, and plenty of Easter eggs to hunt for in its various worlds, too. Yet while Funko Fusion is absolutely teeming with recognisable characters and locations, it possesses surprisingly little of its own personality. Whereas I’ve regularly chuckled through the likes of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga or LEGO Marvel Super Heroes in the past as a result of the many clever comedic touches they bring to each adventure, I can recall laughing at Funko Fusion precisely once during its entire campaign – when the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica nod in approval at Knight Rider’s KITT after noticing the strobing red light on its grill mirrors the one on their visor lenses. For the most part, the absence of character voices and complete lack of facial expressions makes it very hard for these figurine fighters to seem like anything but charmless empty vessels in place of where some of my favourite fictional characters should be. When Adam raises the Power Sword with a completely nonplussed look on his face, it’s the accompanying He-Man theme song that’s really doing all the heavy lifting. Mission objectives are incredibly obtuse and lack signposting. Outside of the odd static speech bubble its cast of characters don’t really speak at all, and Funko Fusion itself is equally poor when it comes to communication. Mission objectives are often incredibly obtuse and lacking in any signposting. This often led to copious amounts of backtracking, especially since some of its environments, like the Jurassic World shopping district, are quite sizeable, yet you’ve got no minimap to assist in navigating them. I found myself routinely retracing my steps purely in order to find one of the vending machines to craft health potions and bits of puzzle-solving equipment like jump pads and gas cannisters with. In fact, I think I visited more virtual vending machines in Funko Fusion than I have in every Like a Dragon game combined. It’s also a little annoying that to change character you have to schlep all the way back to find a Funko Pop display box – I don’t see why we couldn’t have been given a menu button to just swap characters on the fly with. It’s also not particularly good at giving feedback as to why some of your shots inflict damage on larger enemies and others don’t. I spent ages blazing away at the glowing red weak spot on the back of a big samurai mini-boss in The Umbrella Academy, continually registering as ineffective red X’s onscreen, only for it to suddenly change to hit point numbers flying off him with zero change in my approach. That was baffling, and not the only case of this unintuitive quirk with Funko Fusion’s combat. Worse still, Funko Fusion doesn’t make it clear early on that you need 45 golden crowns in order to unlock its final story battle. After completing the seven main story quests, I had only accrued 38 of them, which meant that I had to turn heel and go back through levels I’d already completed searching for special cameo quests to harvest the extra crowns from, which put my story progress on pause for a full three hours. Then, when I did trigger the final encounter, I was forced to slog through an overly long final boss ****** that had the audacity to make me pump round after round into its eight different forms for around 45 minutes before cutting to an unexpected and entirely anticlimactic endgame cutscene that closed the story with less of a Funko Pop and more of a burst bubble. Arriving just a week after the launch of Astro ****, a masterfully crafted adventure overflowing with invention and playful surprises at every turn, Funko Fusion’s rigid adherence to backtracking, bog-standard ******* missions, plodding horde mode blast-a-thons, and bullet-spongey boss fights makes it seem instantly and disappointingly out of date by comparison. That’s to say nothing of the absolutely obnoxious invisible walls that make exploring its environments regularly mystifying, if not downright irritating. Just because you can use a jump pad to successfully leap above the height of a gate that’s blocking your path in the Shaun of the ***** bonus stage, doesn’t mean that Funko Fusion is going to allow you to clear it. What’s the matter, Funko Fusion? Never taken a shortcut before? Go Funk Yourself While most serious collectors like to keep their Funko Pops pristine, Funko Fusion has unfortunately arrived in stores a bit box-damaged, at least if the launch PlayStation 5 version that I played is anything to go by. In addition to relatively minor presentational problems like cutscenes freezing while the audio continued to play or background music just dropping out entirely for long stretches of a level, I’ve had puzzles break and prevent me from progressing, vending machine screens freeze up and not let me leave, and multiple crashes during boss ****** loading screens, among many other annoyances. At one point in a Masters of the Universe stage I needed two portals in order to solve a certain puzzle, however after crafting the first portal I was told by the vending machine that it was out of stock. After trying for about half an hour in vain to somehow solve the puzzle using just one portal, I ended up restarting the level only to find there were now multiple portals available, which was utterly infuriating. During the aforementioned Shaun of the *****-based level, I was completely baffled as to why the car I was escorting just completely refused to move while I was bombarded with endless waves of zombies, only to eventually determine that a zombie had glitched inside a piece of scenery within the danger radius of the car, which was preventing it from getting a move on. Naturally, it was aggravatingly immune to my attacks and the level had to be restarted from the beginning. A lack of checkpoints makes game-breaking bugs hard to bear. What makes a lot of these game-breaking bugs particularly hard to bear is the lack of any checkpoints in each chapter. If you meet a progress-halting glitch or even just lose your three lives towards the end of a stage, then you have to start that chapter all over again. Of the 20 hours it took me to complete Funko Fusion’s story, I’d estimate that close to a quarter of that time was just me redoing the levels that managed to break during my first time through. The developers have assured me that they’re working on patch fixes to remedy some of the issues I encountered during my playthrough, yet even with these rough edges smoothed out, I can’t really see Funko Fusion appealing to any particular audience because it’s so hard to figure out exactly who it’s intended for. Its button-mashy combat and cutesy characters make it seem like it’s targeted towards more junior players, but some of its most prominently featured licenses like Hot Fuzz and The Thing makes it seem far more skewed towards adults who’ve actually seen those mature movies. Unlike the LEGO video games that typically take the darker moments of Harry Potter or Star Wars and spin them into a cheeky moment of slapstick, Funko Fusion just presents the grisliest moments of these licenses, more or less as-is. The villainous Simon Skinner impales himself on a miniature ******* steeple at the end of Hot Fuzz, while Copper’s hands get violently bitten off by Norris’ teeth-filled torso in The Thing. The only difference is that they’re *****-eyed doll versions of these well-known characters, but the blood still sprays the same – which doesn’t exactly seem appealing for youngsters. Additionally, I don’t know too many grade school kids who are into the 2004 Battlestar Galactica, let alone the 1978 original which has been curiously reproduced here. The absence of any cooperative play at launch means Funko Fusion can’t even be tag-teamed by a parent and a child, which is how I’ve enjoyed many of the LEGO games with my kids in the past. While co-op functionality is promised to be rolled out in piecemeal, starting with Jurassic World in October, according to the developers it will be online-only and therefore won’t facilitate families playing it on the couch together anyway. I’m really struggling to figure out exactly who Funko Fusion is for, but what I do know for certain is that it’s definitely not for me. View the full article

A group of around 20 developers formerly of Ascendant Studios, including its former CEO, have joined Dan Houser's Absurd Ventures to form a new studio in San Rafael, California: Absurd Marin. In a press release today, Absurd Ventures announced its new studio would be led by Ascendant Studios founder and former game director on Immortals of Aveum Bret Robbins. The team will work on a "story-driven action-adventure" game that will be separate from Absurd Ventures' other projects, which collectively take place in the A Better Paradise universe. Absurd's addition of around 20 Ascendant employees comes after Ascendant was hit with dramatic layoffs last fall, following the launch of Immortals of Aveum. Nearly half the studio was let go, around 40 people total, due to poor sales of Immortals of Aveum. At the time, the cuts were said to have been necessary to keep the studio open. However, earlier this year, reports circulated that nearly all of the remaining staff at Ascendant had been furloughed as well, just months after Robbins [Hidden Content] that the "story of Immortals isn't written yet." It is unclear whether or not Ascendant Studios still exists now that its CEO and most of its employees have seemingly moved on. The studio and game's official X/Twitter account's last post was on August 13. IGN has reached out to Ascendant Studios for comment. Absurd Ventures was founded by Rockstar co-founder and GTA writer Dan Houser after he left Rockstar back in 2020, working alongside radio host and former GTA writer and producer Lazlow Jones. We spoke to Jones back in August about the venture, including his exit from Rockstar, his partnership with Houser, and how A Better Paradise will explore themes of artificial intelligence and addiction. Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected]. View the full article