We’re just saying: We would play it.Photo: Netflix
Back on Sunday, we reported on a rather weird wrinkle in Netflix’s ongoing efforts to make the most of its relationship with TV mega-creator Shonda Rhimes: The news that the streaming service/content creator would also be developing video games and virtual reality experiences based around Rhimes’ projects. (“Now you, too, can thrill to the challenge of trying to get Regé-Jean Page to do one measly cameo for Bridgertonseason two!”)
As it turns out, though, Netflix’s gaming ambitions weren’t relegated to stories about ribald looks and ripped bodices; the streaming service has actually decided to get into video games in a fairly serious way. This is per The Hollywood Reporter(working, in turn, from a report from Bloomberg), which notes that Netflix has just hired Mike Verdu as its new vice president of game development. Verdu’s most recent gig was at Facebook-owned VR firm Oculus, but he was previously a bigwig at Electronic Arts’ mobile gaming division, helping to figure out ways to turn The Sims into a microtransaction-powered phone game, which, hooray.
But, hey: No fair judging the guy before he’s even had a chance to start developing all these fancy new Netflix games, especially when we have some pitches burning a hole in our heads. Give or take a few Stranger Things games, Netflix has a lot of untapped IP that’s ripe for gaming development, and we’d love to help Verdu tap it, whether it’s creating an Orange Is The New Blackprison escape simulator, or an Old Guardaction game, or maybe just that fake “Control Bo Burnham” video game from Inside.
Really, we can roll these out as quickly as we can scroll our way through Netflix’s gargantuan, memory-resistant labyrinth of original content. Queen’s Gambit chess simulator. She-Ra dating sim/action-RPG. BoJack Horseman career management sim. Maybe a Witcher video game (No; it’d never work.) And, oh, god, we’d actually play this one: A WarioWare-esque microgame collection where you get to play through every single sketch from I Think You Should Leave. Did we just The Secret that into reality? Fingers crossed!
That’s to say nothing of the possibility of meta games about Netflix itself. Take on the power of life and death in Show Canceler. Carefully maneuver your films into week-long theatrical runs in Oscars Bid. And run from the least comprehensible creatures in the universe in Yes, There Are Still People Who Make Us Send Them DVDs In The Mail. The possibilities are endless! We can’t think of any more right now, mind you, but we’re damn near certain that they are.
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Wait, no, don’t end the article, we just thought up an amazing idea for a Russian Dolladventure ga—
The Cyberpunk 2077 saga has been a long one but it’s still far from over. The latest development? Fans co-opting the game’s social media marketing campaign to dunk on things missing from the sci-fi RPG’s open world.
As first spotted by Forbes’ Paul Tassi, a number of posts have been blowing up on the Cyberpunk 2077 subreddit taking shots at CD Projekt Red’s current “Cyberpunk In Numbers” social media campaign on Twitter. In lieu of any updates on the games in the last couple weeks, theCyberpunk 2077 Twitter account has been sharing statistics about the playerbase.
“Since players were first unleashed on Night City’s streets, 13 billion people have been defeated by V. By comparison, the megalopolis has a population of 6.9 million,” reads one of the tweets. “Wellsprings is officially the most dangerous neighborhood in Night City with an average of 57 player deaths per day (real time),” reads another.
Now players are responding with memes of their own highlighting all the things you still can’t do in the game. The most popular on the subreddit so far with over 20,000 upvotes is “Cyberpunk By Numbers: V has modified its appearance 0 times!” Another one that’s blown up is “Cyberpunk By Numbers: 0 MILLION SPENT on car and truck customization!” My personal favorite is, “Cyberpunk By Numbers: Police officers have teleported 7,300,000 times behind the players’ backs.”
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These andmanymore each highlight a feature players have requested be added to the game since it launched over six months ago, or something they thought would be present in the game based on the years and years of trailers, interviews, and other marketing. A big one has been that despite the emphasis on character modding and customization, players can’t fundamentally alter their appearance after the game begins, not even by getting a haircut. While cars play a huge role in the world you can’t swap out paint jobs, shoot while driving, or buy a garage to house them in. And then there are Cyberpunk 2077’s cops, which despite subsequent patches can still act pretty wonky.
None of this is to say that CDPR developers were lazy, or that they should continue to crunch to try and expedite the game’s possible redemption arc. But it does speak to where some of the game’s most ardent players’ heads are at as they wait for DLC and PS5 and Xbox Series X/S upgrades.
Cyberpunk 2077 finally returned to the PlayStation Store last month, and has subsequently shot up to the top of the sales charts on PS4 as a result. At the same time, the roadmap for upcoming patches and content has gotten even more vague. The game may have finally reached a “satisfying level” of performance for CDPR executives, but players are still clearly desperate to see the game grow and evolve into the genre defining immersive sim they once thought it would be. And until it gets there, more memes.
A recent Scarlet Nexus update revealed that Bandai Namco’s stylish action RPG wasn’t rendering character and enemy shadows on PC if it was being played in several non-English languages. Even the biggest video games are technical marvels held together by hopes, dreams, and duct tape, but this takes the cake.
While the patch notes don’t go into specifics about which languages were affected, Scarlet Nexus players have been discussing the issue on the game’s Steam forums since it launched on June 25. Knowledgeable players eventually provided a workaround that got shadows working in French, Italian, and German by adding a simple text string to Scarlet Nexus’ launch options.
Kotaku contacted Bandai Namco for more information but didn’t hear back before publication.
Looking at Scarlet Nexus videos from the past few weeks, it’s clear the shadow bug not only affected the PC release but also the versions on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X. And from what I can tell, the problem only manifested after a certain point in the game, as shadows can clearly be seen in footage of Scarlet Nexus’ openingmoments. That said, until we get more details from Bandai Namco, it’s hard to pin down the scope and breadth of the issue.
Funnily enough, shadows are definitely intact in the footage Scarlet Nexus uses for in-game tutorial pop-ups, only to return to shadow-less gameplay moments later. It’s one of those things that might not have been immediately noticeable alongside the RPG’s slick, fast-paced combat but now sticks out like a sore thumb.
This graphical oddity also gained traction on Twitter following the update’s July 7 release thanks to French-speaker yaoilowell (great name, by the way), who joked that the bug was accurate since people in France don’t actually cast shadows in real life. The jury’s still out on that one, but at least the problem has been rectified in Scarlet Nexus. No more pretending everyone in the game is a vampire if you’re not playing in English.
Ubisoft’s forthcoming Avatar game needs more horsepower than the PS4 or Xbox One can provide.Screenshot: Ubisoft
Despite last year’s splashy release of next-gen consoles, it’s clear the gaming landscape is still in a transitional phase between console generations. Just look at blockbusters like Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six Extraction, Battlefield 2042, and Tales of Arise, which are planned for release on PS4, Xbox One, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. All the while, true next-gen exclusives, like Returnal or Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, remain rare.
Still, we’re fast approaching the point at which PS4 and Xbox One players are left behind, with more than a dozen major games on the horizon planned as next-gen-only releases.
Granted, most of those are also coming out on PC, since the technical capacity to run cutting-edge games has and always will be present on that ever-evolving platform. And while this list is based on currently-available information, platforms aren’t always set in stone. To wit: Godfall, which was initially released on PC and PS5, will come out on PS4 next month. So, yeah, anything can happen. Still, if you’re a console player—one who, like millions, has had difficulty getting your hands on a next-gen machine—don’t get your hopes up for the following games.
Screenshot: Rare / Microsoft
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Everwild (Xbox Series X/S)
Precious little is known about Everwild, the forthcoming adventure game from Rare, other than the fact that it’s very, very pretty and is currently plagued by development woes (which now suggest it might not come out until 2024). When it eventually comes to consoles, it’ll only do so on Xbox Series X and S.
Screenshot: GSC Game World
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl (Xbox Series X/S)
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’s console debut, out April 28, 2022, won’t happen on older consoles. Rendering the irradiated wastes of Chernobyl just seems like too much strain for the poor Xbox One. Last fall, based on remarks made by Xbox’s Matt Booty, it seemed Xbox games would release across generations for the first year or two after the release of the Series X and S. But, speaking to Kotaku, Xbox boss Phil Spencer couched that a bit, saying, “I think we’re going to take it on a case by case basis … we’re just trying to be transparent with people about the roadmap of games that would be coming for last gen.”
Image: Bethesda
Starfield (Xbox Series X/S)
Skyrim In Space is not a-go on Xbox One. It also won’t come to PS4 or PS5, for that matter. Pete Hines is so very sorry about that.
Screenshot: Arkane
Deathloop (PS5)
Despite a $7.5 billion dollar allowance from Microsoft, Bethesda will still publish some PlayStation-exclusive games. Chief among those is Deathloop, Arkane’s uber-stylish time loop shooter about eating the rich. It’s currently planned for release on PS5.
Screenshot: Tango Gameworks
Ghostwire: Tokyo (PS5)
Bethesda will also publish Ghostwire: Tokyo, the supernatural horror-adventure from Tango Gameworks, for PS5. Bethesda hasn’t confirmed an Xbox Series X/S release yet.
Image: Arkane
Redfall (Xbox Series X/S)
But Microsoft isn’t letting PlayStation nab all of the Bethesda-published exclusives. Arkane’s Redfall—a vampire game that caused everyone to summarily lose their marbles following its reveal at Microsoft’s E3 2021 event—will only come out on Xbox Series X/S.
Screenshot: I-Illusions
Shredders (Xbox Series X/S)
The Amped series of snowboarding games is long dead, but its spiritual successor, the realistic-looking Shredders, looks among the raddest snowboarding sims ever. It’s planned for Xbox Series X/S.
The Outer Worlds 2 (Xbox Series X/S)
The original Outer Worlds came out in 2019 on both PS4 and Xbox One. Obsidian, now under Xbox’s umbrella, won’t release the sequel on PlayStation. It’s currently planned as a next-gen Xbox exclusive.
Avowed (Xbox Series X/S)
Avowed, Obsidian’s other big RPG in the pipeline, is also planned as an Xbox Series X/S-exclusive. It’s fantasy-themed, set in a fictional world called Eora, but details are otherwise scant.
Image: Microsoft
Fable (Xbox Series X/S)
Good news: Fable’s coming back! Bad news: When the fantasy-RPG does return, it won’t come to Xbox One. And it might be a while until it does, as the developer, Playground Games, currently has Forza Horizon 5 in the pipeline, planned for a November 9 release.
Screenshot: Square Enix
Forspoken (PS5)
Square Enix’s Forspoken, née Project Athia, is planned for release some time next year on PS5. Last year, Sony said it’ll be console-exclusive to PS5 for “at least 24 months.”
Screenshot: Sony
Gran Turismo 7 (PS5)
At the moment, Gran Turismo 7 is listed as a PS5-only game. But comments made last month by Hermen Hulst, the head of PlayStation Studios, raise some uncertainty about a possible cross-gen release. “Where it makes sense to develop a title for both PS4 and PS5—for Horizon Forbidden West, the next God of War, GT7—we’ll continue looking at that,” he said in an obviously PR-approved PlayStation Blog Q&A.
Screenshot: Asobo Studio
A Plague Tale: Requiem (Xbox Series X/S, PS5)
A Plague Tale: Requiem, Asobo Studios’ eye-popping followup to A Plague Tale: Innocence, is planned for next-gen consoles—and, per publisher Focus Home Interactive, the Switch. That last one’s curious. Rumors have long swirled about a Switch model with 4K capabilities, to the point where the thing’s all but confirmed, though Nintendo hasn’t officially unveiled it. Requiem comes out next year.
Screenshot: Ubisoft
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (Xbox Series X/S, PS5)
Most Ubisoft games come out on as many platforms as possible. (Profits!) Not so with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. The first-person action game set in James Cameron’s reductive yet lushly beautiful world is planned for next-gen consoles.
Read More: Ubisoft’s Avatar Game Will Actually Flex Your PS5 And Xbox Series X
Screenshot: Capcom
Pragmata (Xbox Series X/S, PS5)
Capcom’s Pragmata—a game, based on its head-spinning announcement trailer, about hating Times Square so much you go to the moon—is coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2022. It stars a cat.
Cozy Grove is a daily dose of adorable. Screenshot: Spry Fox
Every week, Nintendo releases a list of new games coming to the Switch. It is, almost always, a very long list. This week’s list includes Spry Fox’s Cozy Grove, Switch Online exclusive Pac-Man 99, the Switch version of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV, and 28 more games, many of which you will care absolutely nothing about.
We started doing The Nintendo Download as a weekly post back when WiiWare launched back in 2008, then sorted petered off after a few years when the game selection became sparse. That is no longer the case. Nintendo regularly adds between 20 and 30 games to the Switch every week, so keeping track might be wise. Also, every week I marvel at the amount of crap dropped on the eShop, and now you can too.
Nintendo’s weekly press release generally highlights a few stand-out games. This week those games are the aforementioned Cozy Grove, Pac-Man 99, and Trails of Cold Steel IV, along with dark comedy RPG Don’t Give Up: A Cynical Tale and Say No! More, a fun game about learning to let people down.
Here’s what else is coming out this week.
See anything you like? Why or why not? What do you have against Delicious! Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire?
Star Trek Legends,recently released on Apple Arcade, plays a lot like Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, Disney’s Sorcerer’s Arena, DC Legends and countless other turn-based mobile RPGs. But without any energy meters or annoying microtransactions. As a result, it feels like a game and not a treadmill designed to ferry you to a store.
Star Trek Legends involves a large cast of characters, both good and bad, from various Star Trek shows. How are they all hanging out and fighting each other? The Nexus, that big energy ribbon thing from Generations, is back and Starfleet has a special new ship designed to enter it. It’s a bit of flimsy, hand-wavey way to set up the game’s narrative, but it works.
And once you are in the Nexus, interacting with other characters, the game takes great advantage of this setup. If you like Star Trek, which you probably do if you are reading this far into this post, there are tons of jokes and references that will make you go “Oh yeah…I know that.” None of the stories in Legends are masterpieces, but they tend to have some nicely written bits of dialogue with characters interacting with each other in fun and authentic ways.
Screenshot: CBS / Paramount / Kotaku
The gameplay is fairly bog standard for this type of game. You have a small team of characters, each with their own abilities and skills. You take that team into missions, which are made up of combat segments, short cutscenes and even some moments where you have to decide what to do next. Combat is again, nothing incredibly fresh or new, but it works. You attack enemies, taking turns back and forth until one team is left standing. Thankfully, you can speed up the animations during combat. They look nice, but eventually I’m just wanting to kill the baddies and move on.
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What really elevates Star Trek Legends, the reason I’m writing up this blog, is because the entire game is free from MTX or paid currencies. There is no way to spend money in this game. There are also no ads. This is standard for Apple Arcade releases, but it truly makes this type of game so much more fun to play. I still play Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, but each month it feels like some new thing has been added that is designed to make me grind of months or pony up a bunch of cash. And with energy meters, it quickly becomes hard to actually play the game unless you pay money. Or wait.
In Legends, however, you can just…play the game. Unlocking characters is fun, not a expensive chore. Completeing missions is exciting, not a grind.
Screenshot: CBS / Paramount / Kotaku
I can’t explain enough how weird it is, after years of playing these kind of mobile RPGs, to just be free to play it as much as I want. It’s nice. Plus the game is a lovely looking celebration of Star Trek, both old and new. It’s a game built specifically for me. It makes me happy.
Yes, I know. It’s on Apple Arcade. And yes, I know that means you or some folks you know can’t play it. Which sucks! I think Star Trek Legends is good enough that I’d love to see it warp over to other platforms. But only if it keeps out the mobile RPG bullshit.
Newly announced Astria Ascending sure looks pretty, but that doesn’t mean its world doesn’t need saving. As you do when your fantasy land is being threatened by big bads, Astria developers Artisan Studio have assembled a squad of heroes. Their upcoming turn-based RPG features development talent of Final Fantasy fame to help bring its world together. You can catch more of Astria Ascending down here in its new announcement trailer.
A couple months after release, Assassin’s Creed Valhallafinally has transmog, but not as some players had originally envisioned it. The feature falls short of how it’s been implemented in past games, and comes with a 50 silver tax on each transaction to boot, leaving a lot of us, myself included, scratching out heads.
Transmog, which lets players mix the stats of one piece of gear with the appearance of another, was implemented shortly after Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s launch as well. There, it was a simple and easy to use option available right in the gear menu. Not so in Valhalla, which requires players to go visit the blacksmith Gunnar, engage in some dialogue, and then pay him 50 silver to make the change. “Pleased transmog is finally added,” wrote one player in the patch notes thread over on the game’s subreddit. “Confused as to why it needs silver and can only be done at the settlement.”
The frustration has broken out into other threads as well, with players arguing that this potentially more immersive approach to changing your armor’s appearance is ultimately silly when it comes to a game about mythical gods and monsters that literally takes place inside of a simulation. A thread on Ubisoft’s forums, meanwhile, takes issue with the lack of transmog options, especially when it comes to seeing what your character will look like before you make the changes.
Screenshot: Ubisoft / Kotaku
And then there’s the issue of the 50 silver, an in-game currency you can collect throughout the world, but which is also sold for real money in Ubisoft’s microtransaction shop. On the one hand, 50 silver isn’t going to break the bank for most players, even if they’re going hog wild transmogging everything they own. On the other, why charge a nominal fee at all unless you think it might encourage some players to dip their toes into the game’s expansive microtransaction economy?
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Ubisoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but community manager domvgt wrote over on the game’s subreddit that players’ frustrations are being relayed back to the development team.
This week’s 1.2 update also came with a free “Godly Pack”, giving players 300 Opals (one of Valhalla’s special currencies) on the house, as well as access to the game’s recent Yuletide cosmetics and a new Altaïr armor set (the main protagonist of the first Assassin’s Creed). As Eurogamer points out, the free gift seems like “a bit of a recompense” for some of the other ways Valhalla’s microtransactions have occasionally muddied what is an otherwise very good single-player open world RPG. This includes the number of armor sets added to the game as paid DLC versus those included at launch, as well as the later addition of things like the infamous paid XP Booster.
It’s not surprising Ubisoft keeps trying to walk this microtransaction tight rope, even as Valhalla continues to top the sales charts month after month. Microtransactions, or as the French publisher likes to call them, “Player Recurring Investment,” is a major money-maker for the company, especially as it’s released fewer gamers in recent years.
Still, I doubt Valhalla’s transmog tax will end up contributing much to Ubisoft’s bottom line, which makes its addition all the more bizarre. The company released another open world RPG last year—Fenyx: Immortals Rising—and it had a brilliant transmog system that came with no strings attached. Why should Valhalla be any different?
The deck-building, dungeon-making roguelite RPG Loop Hero is getting some much needed quality-of-life improvements in an upcoming update, the game’s developers announced yesterday. The most important of these fixes? Finally letting you save your game.
Technically, Loop Hero does that already, saving all progress automatically as you complete expeditions. But there’s no way to save the game while you’re mid-adventure, which might not seem like a big deal until it’s 2 a.m. and you’re falling asleep at your computer grinding for resources unable to log out without destroying your progress.
One current workaround for this is simply leaving the game running all the time, which is what I’ve recently started doing and why Steam tells me I’ve now played nearly 150 hours of Loop Hero. Even this system isn’t full-proof though, subject to the nefarious whims of Windows update logic as well as user error when you think you’ve paused the game to go make dinner but actually it kept running and now your little pixelated sprite is dead and burred and you’ve lost an hour’s worth of loot.
So long story short: yes, a mid-expedition save feature will be great. Four Quarters also says that more speed settings, another often request feature since Loop Hero’s repetition can make its early game quite rote and tedious after a while, are also coming soon. “After that, you can expect to see lots more content added to the game, such as new cards, transformations, classes and new music. We can’t wait to share more updates with you all soon!” the studio writes.
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That’s awesome news because I love Loop Hero and can’t wait to experiment with weird new combinations of cards and classes. Its music is also top-notch. I just wish there was more of it. If you haven’t checked out Loop Hero for yourself yet, well, you should. It’s like Slay The Spire meets Dota Chess turned into an 8-bit version of SimCity for the NES.
Compile Heart revealed a new crossover game between the Senran Kagura series and Neptunia series. The announcement comes from the second day of the Game Live Japan livestream. Titled Senran NinNinNinja Taisen Neptune: Shojo-Tachi no Kyoen, the game will release for PlayStation 4 in 2021. [Thanks, Famitsu!]
The reveal trailer for the Senran Kagura Neptunia crossover game promises a fast-paced action-RPG with ninjutsu. The video showed off some of the game in motion, which played similarly to past Senran Kagura titles. The livestream also explained that there will be 2D segments of the game that focus on conversation in addition to 3D battles. There will also be a mysterious minigame that involves hot springs, peaches, and meditation. The Senran Kagura series is no stranger to puzzling minigames. The trailer ended by stating that there will be more details in the April 8, 2021 issue of Weekly Famitsu. Check out the promotional video during the stream below at the 2:31:00 mark.
Idea Factory, Compile Heart, Tamsoft, Marvelous, and Acquire are all involved in some part of the upcoming game’s production. Interestingly, this project was originally teased back in 2019 under the working title Game E Ninja Neptune. Check out some screenshots from the livestream below.
The Senran Kagura Neptunia crossover game, Senran NinNinNinja Taisen Neptune: Shojo-Tachi no Kyoen, will launch on the PlayStation 4 in Japan sometime in 2021. We will keep readers up-to-date when new details arrive in April 2021.
