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Pokémon Go Fest Madrid saw as many as 190,000 players come together from all around the world this past weekend for the game’s biggest event of the year. After Sendai (May 30 to June 2), Pokémon Go Fest made its second stop in Madrid, Spain (June 14 to 16) to celebrate the debuts of rare Pokémon like Necrozma, Dusk Mane Necrozma, Dawn Wings Necrozma, and Marshadow, along with other cool perks. The three-day event drew in 190,000 players, with 70 percent of ticket holders coming from outside the country. For comparison, last year’s Go Fest had around 194,000 attendees in total between the events held in New York, London, and Osaka, according to Niantic. In other words, Madrid was just short of matching those three cities combined. View the full article

Metal Slug ******* Reloaded has just shadow dropped on multiple platforms. While many fans are already aware of the upcoming Metal Slug Tactics game coming out, a surprising announcement was unveiled by SNK that a different Metal Slug entry has been released without too much fanfare. The tower defense game was previously released on mobile in 2016 and was shut down in early 2023. View the full article

Zheyu Li, producer of the upcoming urban fantasy gacha RPG Zenless Zone Zero, has said he would eventually like to see his game released on "all platforms". The game is due to launch on July 4 for PC, PlayStation 5, and mobile devices. Zenless Zone Zero's devs have been coyly hinting at the possibility of a Switch port for a while, and indeed it's not the first HoYoverse game to generate rumours of further console releases down the line. Genshin Impact has been vaguely anticipated for other platforms ever since its massively successful launch on PC, mobile, and PS4 in 2020; the PlayStation 5 version arrived in 2021 after a comparatively short wait, but there's been very little word on the Switch port since the announcement that it'll be coming at some point. As with both Genshin and Honkai: Star Rail, nothing as firm as a release window for any further upcoming platforms Zenless Zone Zero might hit has materialised yet, with each new HoYo launch seemingly targeting mobile, PC, and PlayStation in roughly that order. And while the company's ongoing relationship with PlayStation has been clear for a long time - Genshin Impact even enjoyed an official crossover with Horizon Zero Dawn at one point - it's been far less apparent whether other consoles will ever really see a HoYoverse release. Read more View the full article

Given I've got the influenza—and can envision a stat debuff bar over my head, not unlike being poisoned in Elden Ring—I'll be intro brief. Shadow of the Erd Tree review embargo lifted in the wee hours this morning, and the verdict is more or less wall to wall 10s. If you're after a cheap copy, my preorder guide exists here. Otherwise, scroll on, dear reader, for the other best bargains you can bag today. In retro news, I'm celebrating the 23rd birthday of NBA Street, the progenitor of a small b-ball empire that launch PS2 owners like myself dug a little bit more than we ought to (because ******* all games to buy). While it was no NBA Jam TE, we sure did love doing triple-*****-up alley-oops, and dunking the ring into utter disrepair by match end. Also, unlike the aforementioned arcade darling, NBA Street held a pretty sweet Michael Jordan cameo. This Day in Gaming Aussie birthdays for notable games. - NBA Street (PS2) 2001. - Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two (PSV) 2013. - Jak and Daxter Collection (PSV) 2013. - Outlast (XO) 2014. Table of ContentsNintendo SwitchPCXboxPlayStationNice Savings for Nintendo Switch Expiring Recent Deals Hardware Watch How much to make the switch to Switch? [/url] Back to top Purchase Cheaply for PC Expiring Recent Deals Hardware Watch Slay your pile of shame. [/url] Back to top Exciting Bargains for Xbox Expiring Recent Deals Hardware Watch How many bucks for a Box? [/url] Back to top Pure Scores for PlayStation Expiring Recent Deals Hardware Watch How much you'll pay to Station. [/url] Back to top Adam Mathew is our Aussie deals wrangler. He plays practically everything, often on YouTube. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

The launch of Zenless Zone Zero looms large for gacha fans and invested players within the multiple HoYoverse offerings that dominate this space. As an "urban fantasy" game that focuses heavily on its presentation - that description came up fairly often while speaking to producer Zhenyu Li - it's taking a unique ****** to the way its developer often presents its games, which feels pretty story- and character-first. While those elements are certainly present within ZZZ based on its past closed betas, its city life and its environmental design are the standouts thus far. View the full article

Developer Marvelous has revealed the official release date for Farmagia, a new original hybrid of farming sim and fantasy action game. As detailed in the latest Nintendo Direct broadcast, Farmagia will arrive on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and PC on November 1, 2024. View the full article

Members of Kick’s leadership team have today denied allegations of misconduct within the company leveled by an ex-employee. Head of strategic partnerships Andrew Santamaria stated the recent claims from an alleged ex-staffer, specifically around plans to take advantage of a streamer’s medical condition, were “belittling the amazing work” done behind the scenes at Kick. View the full article

Video game publisher Bandai Namco has shadow-dropped Baten Kaitos 1 & 2 HD Remaster on Steam, and at a temporarily discounted price. Consisting of Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean and Baten Kaitos Origins, the pair of Monolith Soft and tri-Crescendo-developed RPGs - bundled together as Baten Kaitos 1 & 2 HD Remaster - were originally released in 2003 and 2006 exclusively for the Nintendo GameCube, are now available on PC for the very first time. Players can again step into the shoes of Kalas and Sagi on their respective journeys to stop the nefarious Alfard Empire. View the full article

Mizkif is the latest Twitch streamer to beat Elden Ring, naming it “probably the greatest game of all time” after a marathon broadcast and a staggering number of deaths. Many popular streamers, including Kai Cenat and Ludwig, have streamed themselves playing through the entire campaign of Elden Ring in the build-up to Shadow of the Erdtree, challenging every boss until they beat the game. Mizkif is the latest to take on this gaming gauntlet, streaming for 96 hours and staying awake for 40 hours at a time. View the full article

Older games in the Fallout series won’t be seeing remakes or console ports, Bethesda’s director Todd Howard has said this week, despite the franchise enjoying a huge revitalization with the release of Amazon’s TV adaptation. The company’s priority is to keep the games playable, but “anything is possible,” he explained in a June 16 interview with YouTuber MrMattyPlays, before adding his main idea is to keep Fallout 1 and 2 in their original states. Those games should be played with a mouse and keyboard, he went on to argue, with the setup of the games right now accurately capturing “the way it was” and their symbols from among the PC RPG craze of the ’90s. View the full article

BioWare has revealed the Mage specializations in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, in addition to showcasing some of the game's skill trees. Following this move, all of Dragon Age: The Veilguard's class specializations have now been confirmed. View the full article

Skate Story’s vibe gripped me right away. Its liminal, Vaporwave-inspired levels mix hyper-realistic concrete textures, lighting effects, and objects like a chain-link fence or The Moon with engrossingly impressionistic flourishes like The Skater’s body, which is made of kaleidoscopic glass, or the on-looking, ever-judgemental eyes whose disembodied voices screech in unison in disdain for your quest. It’s a lot to take in, but never too overwhelming. These levels felt just wild enough to imbue each moment with its own distinct sense of cool without distracting me from the mission at hand: skating. Skating might be the most normal thing about Skate Story. That’s not to say it’s bad or uninteresting, but it does feel exactly how you’d want a skating game to feel. It has a great sense of speed as you accelerate by holding down or mashing the A button to go as quickly as humanly possible. This game’s tight camera really emphasized that sense of speed too, focusing on your crystalline avatar as they lean into any momentum they can get a hold of. I saw a pretty early section of the game, so tricks and jumps—while fun—were pretty simple. Holding down a specific button controls one of The Skater’s feet, and hitting another button initiates the trick itself. Each trick and jump works on a timer, with a little notch sliding around the outline of an organic shape. Releasing the button for a trick or jump while the notch is floating around in the thicker part of said outline will ******** it perfectly, and reward you with better air time. Doing a trick with imperfect timing didn’t seem to cause that much of an issue, but I’m certain it will become increasingly important later on in Skate Story. It shot up to the top of my Steam wishlist after my hands-on demo at Summer Game Fest this year. The levels I played had me zooming down tight corridors, exploring a courtyard, jumping over deadly neon red nettles, and visiting museum gift shops at the behest of verbose statues. Although that speed demonic camera worked wonders for Skate Story’s feel, it sometimes betrayed its flexibility of movement and occasionally even fought against its own sense of speed and pace as it obscured certain objectives or obstacles in some levels. Obstacles are usually easy enough to vault over, even with a split-second’s notice. But The Skater is made out of glass, so even the slightest error can set you back a spell, making the camera problem a tad more frustrating than it would be otherwise. Unreliable camera aside, each level presented a satisfyingly diverse approach to design and pacing with repetition cleverly punctuating important moments while twisting what I’d already seen into something new and fresh thanks to its unexpectedly charming writing. Developer Sam Eng told me that this semi-autobiographical story is inspired by true events, but didn’t go much deeper than that. The chunk I saw was so strange and impressionistic that I can’t wait to see where Sam takes the story next. In my half hour with the demo, I watched as The Skater set out on their quest to shatter the moon. Culminating in a trial to prove their worth—and their skating chops—Skate Story’s writing and sense of humor stand in a league of their own. This isn’t just because its metaphorical approach is weird, but because it had me chuckling all the way through. With a promising story, absorbing vibe, and responsive skating controls, Skate Story has so much potential as both a distinct story and a ***** cool skating game. It shot up to the top of my Steam wishlist after my hands-on demo at Summer Game Fest this year, and I can’t wait to see the weird places this wildly expressive skating game goes. View the full article

With the blurb “Gear up, get in, and get out”, Exoborne elegantly sets out its stall as an extraction shooter. But they left out the most important part: “Get blown around by a massive tornado”. While Exoborne bears all the features you’d expect from the likes of Escape from Tarkov and Call of Duty: Warzone’s DMZ, the most exciting part of a presentation I saw at Play Days was when developer Sharkmob talked about the weather. Exoborne’s setting is not postapocalyptic, but rather midapocalyptic, with the world falling apart all around you – the result of mankind’s meddling with the climate. Project Rebirth’s attempts to provide limitless clean energy have backfired somewhat, and now Mother Nature is taking her revenge. Extraction shooters live or **** on emergent gameplay, and there’s nothing as emergent as a twister, flood or tsunami. The weather during a session of Exoborne can change from clement to hellscape in minutes – all of which has profound effects on gameplay, according to Sharkmob. A 10-minute walkthrough video based on a pre-Alpha build of the game began with a short cutscene where a group of teammates known as The Reborn assemble in a dropship and prepare to jump. The character models are based on whatever skins and loadouts each player has selected, so this is a nice chance to show off your flair before the action starts. The players then skydived from the dropship, parachuting in to the map below. Action kicked off immediately, as this area of Colton County in the Southeast USA was infested with ******* robotic machines and human enemies. Over a longer play session, you can expect a dynamic range of climates to impede your progress. The rain apparently gets so heavy you can no longer hear your teammates, their comms drowned out by the deluge, forcing players to rethink their strategies. *****, loot, equip – so far, so extraction shooter. Entering a base located nearby required some teamwork, and the destruction of some AT-ST-like ****** walkers, while at another point the squad clambered aboard a Warthog-style armored vehicle with open top/sides/back for ease of blasting. Maps are as vertical as they are wide, with towers connected by huge Rebirth Cables that snake through the environment, placed by the architects at Rebirth without regard for the scenery or the human residents; these industrial eyesores allow players to ascend with grappling hooks and ****** on higher ground. Burned-out school buses and a busted motel sign litter the deserted streets of what might long ago have been an idyllic rural town. Sinkholes offer the chance to explore underground. And then came the tornado warning. Once the weather hit, the squad cut their mission short, calling in the dropship and climbing aboard with the loot before things got hairy. But a Sharkmob developer explained that over a longer play session, you can expect a dynamic range of climates to impede your progress. The rain apparently gets so heavy you can no longer hear your teammates, their comms drowned out by the deluge, forcing players to rethink their strategies. While the risk may be high in any given session, Sharkmob has designed Exoborne to be more forgiving in the longer term. That is, extraction is not always guaranteed, and you may lose items in a given session if you don’t make it out alive – but the game makes it possible to rebuild your arsenal over future games, improving your character from game to game as you loot and progress. The idea is to make the game as approachable as possible for newcomers, who may find the high risk of other extraction shooters off-putting. Throw in a bunch of cool near-future weapons, tech gear and Exo-Rigs, and of course a mix of PVP and PVE scavenging action, and Exoborne is shaping up to be a cool addition to the genre. View the full article

Riot Games is adding another repeatable mission to the League of Legends Hall of Legends pass today to ensure even ARAM and League Arena-mode enthusiasts can earn experience twice as fast and complete the pass in less time. The League development team announced the significant update to the event pass mission addition on June 18 in a short post on X (formerly Twitter). This new repeatable mission, which has been designed to benefit all players, means everyone can earn experience twice as fast. As a result, you should be able to complete the pass a whole lot quicker than you usually would when compared to a standard pass from past League events. View the full article

Critter Cafe embodies coziness. From its rescue cafe premise to its no-holds-barred approach to customization and decoration that encourages players to express themselves, the brief demo I watched and played pointed to a consistent, refined vision that I have a feeling will be a big hit for fans of monster collecting games who are looking for something cozy to sink their teeth into. Blending monster collecting, management simulation, and puzzle-based dungeon crawling sounds a lot more overwhelming than it actually is in Critter Cafe. That’s not to say that this comfy game from Sumo Digital and Secret Mode is oversimplified, just that it’s chill and approachable. Like any sim worth its salt, customization is the name of the game here. With in-depth customization options (that can be changed at any time) for my chibi avatar and full-on cafe customization, the world is your aesthetic oyster in Critter Cafe. I was blown away at how much I could do to precisely mold the cafe to my liking. From wallpaper and floorboards to furniture—even the materials it was made from—I felt a sense of control and freedom over the cafe in a way that can often elude some games in this genre. To give you a proper sense of what I mean, let’s look at Animal Crossing: New Horizons, for example. It’s a stellar game to be sure, but one whose customization suite leaves a lot to be desired. Changing your island or house takes a lot of work. Beyond the steps to actually unlock the recipe for something, you’ll often need tons of resources to craft said piece, which can be gated based on the real-life passage of time. But even without the progressive aspect of unlocking new recipes, clothes, etc. the process of customizing a home gets really tedious really quickly. Not so in Critter Cafe, where customization options are available to you from the get-go. This allows for other mechanics and parts of the game to shine while still letting you express yourself to the fullest without jumping through extra hoops. Redecorating isn’t just for fun, though. Instead, you’ll often need to change the cafe at a customer’s request for special events. Indeed, these events are one of the ways you can grow and improve your cafe. Let’s say a customer wants to have a movie night. You can redecorate with movie theater-themed furniture to cater to your customer’s desires. They might also share other aesthetic preferences and even tell you what kind of critter they’d like to spend time with. If you hit a high enough mark for a customer, they might even tell you where to find a portal that will take you to a new critter to befriend. These adorable little beasties are mostly amalgamations of real-life and mythical animals with some kind of endearing twist or change. My favorite looks like a kit-bash between a dinosaur and a duck. But making a new feathered friend isn’t as simple as walking through a portal. Instead, you’ll need to complete a small block-pushing puzzle to find your new buddy at the end of a *****. Normal service is a little bit more complex than the special events, and will help you and your critter deepen your bond as your reputation grows. Growing your reputation is the other main way that you’ll progress in Critter Cafe, so it’s important to balance leveling up your reputation while also making sure to make new friends. These adorable little beasties are mostly amalgamations of real-life and mythical animals with some kind of endearing twist or change. My one gripe with what I saw of Critter Cafe was how simple those puzzles seemed. Yes, this is a cozy game first and foremost, so they’re probably not going to be Portal-level brain busters, but they seemed potentially lacking in diversity. That said, the puzzles I saw weren’t bad. In fact, they seemed like the perfect level of challenge to give me something to do in between running a cafe and hosting special events, but these same puzzles didn’t seem to promise much in the way of verticality or evolution based on what I’ve played and seen in trailers and screenshots. If in fact they don’t grow or change much, they could seriously undermine the wholesome creature-befriending scenes at the end of each puzzle. Part of what made this demo special was how exciting it was to meet a new critter. If that gets pulverized into something tedious or repetitive, that could very easily dampen Critter Cafe’s otherwise exuberant nature. I’m really interested in seeing what kinds of whimsical combinations Sumo Digital has in store for the rest of Critter Cafe. I hope the next time I hear about it brings more stuff to do while befriending critters and tells me a little bit more about its story, which seemed pretty light in the demo. But even if there’s no overarching plot to speak of, I’m certain its deep customization suite and critter designs will almost definitely appease the most rabid cozy gamers looking for their next obsession. View the full article

Much can be said about popular streamer Asmongold, but he’s never been one to shy away from speaking his mind. Recently, he went to bat for political streamer Destiny, railing against the Twitch moderation policies that resulted in Destiny’s ban from the platform. In a stream this week, Asmongold took a break from World of Warcraft to react to Destiny’s appearance on the Iced Coffee Hour podcast, where the YouTube streamer explained his own thoughts on his ban and the underlying reasons. View the full article

Ghost of Tsushima is an action-adventure game out of ******* Punch that places players in the role of Jin Sakai. This is easily one of the most cinematic games to come out of ******* Punch, and the wide array of audio options reflect this intent. Players are given plenty of choice regarding the games audio and language settings. Before diving into Ghosts of Tsushima, it might be best to survey your options. View the full article

The biggest take from this new release is the new official Western localization for the second entry. View the full article

A new Mario & Luigi is coming to Nintendo Switch, later this year. View the full article

Grand Theft Auto Online has offered the first official look at its upcoming content update, Bottom Dollar Bounties, which is set to land on June 25. A brief video gives players an idea of what they can expect when they hit the streets as bounty hunters. View the full article

An ex-employee of Kick has posted a video detailing her complaints towards the company, where she lambasts the staff for racism, homophobia, and “consistent disrespect.” Kick, a streaming company that looks to rival popular fan broadcasting platforms like Twitch and YouTube, has earned a mixed reputation in recent years, especially after hiring several controversial figures. Now, Kick’s employees have come under ***** after an ex-staffer, who says she resigned in May, claims other staffers mistreated her, disrespected streamers, and “consistently” used hate speech while in the office. View the full article

Both the base game and the Binding Blade DLC will be available on the eShop separately, though can be bundled together with the Oblivion bundle. View the full article

Xbox Game Pass subscribers flocked to social media to voice their discontent regarding the lackluster advanced graphical options in Still Wakes the Deep. Studio The ******** Room confirmed the PC versions of its recently released survival horror title did not share the same features across all platforms. While Still Wakes the Deep is part of the Xbox Game Pass library, subscribers noticed their PC copies of the game lacked several upscaling and super resolution options that were included for the Epic Games and Steam versions. View the full article

A Destiny 2 player has shared a hilarious clip in which they lost a chest by accidentally throwing it into the water. Chests in Destiny 2 are spawned in different locations to help players obtain useful materials, as long as they don't push them beyond reach. View the full article

Today's Nintendo Direct had several great announcements, some of which already had rumors circulating, while others were complete surprises. Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics falls into the latter category, but what a welcome surprise it was. Out of all the collections Capcom has released over the past few years, none of them have touched on their very popular crossover of Marvel characters and their expertise in tournament fighters. First the first time, these gems, which include the fan favorite Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes will be available on modern platforms. View the full article