Game News

Monopoly Go Devs Spent More On Marketing Than It Cost To Develop The Last Of Us 2

Free-to-play mobile game Monopoly Go has been a surprising success story in the mobile space, coming out as 2023’s most successful mobile launch with $1 billion in revenue. Developer Scopely has revealed in an interview that the game has now brought in over $2 billion in its first 10 months–and that the game has spent an eye-watering $500 million on marketing and user acquisition.

Scopely’s senior VP of publishing Eric Wood revealed the marketing numbers in an interview with Game File, after Monopoly Go’s $2 billion milestone was announced by the CEO earlier this week. To put the $500 million marketing budget in perspective, a poorly redacted document last year leaked a set of budgets for some of PlayStation’s biggest AAA titles, which revealed that The Last of Us Part 2 cost $220 million to develop, and Horizon Forbidden West cost $212 million to develop.

Scopely co-CEO Javier Ferreira delved a little deeper into where that marketing spend went in his blog post, revealing that Monopoly Go’s marketing tem created localized marketing for every region where the game was available. “Our marketing team was a fierce advocate for taking a hyperlocal approach,” Ferreira said. “In turn, much of our upfront marketing investment went to developing individualized creative that reflected the language and culture of every country where the game is available.”

Ferreira also revealed that the game’s approach to marketing helped it recoup its spending in days or weeks, something that usually takes months or years for comparable titles. “We didn’t set out to create a blitz campaign, but as the game rapidly grew, so did our marketing efforts,” he explains. “For much of the title’s first six months, we were fully recouping our spend in a matter of weeks, something not often seen in games today.”

The game’s marketing budget gives an idea of the massive scale some mobile games operate on, with its revenue figures also far beyond what even big blockbuster AAAs make in their lifetime.

Steam Families Is A New And Improved Version Of Steam Family Sharing

Valve has announced Steam Families, a new Steam feature that wraps up the pre-existing Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View, as well as some brand-new family features. The new feature allows Steam users to create a family of up to 6 household members in order to share games and implement content controls.

Users can create a family and invite up to 5 other members, who can be assigned as either an adult or a child. All users in the family will have their games shared in a family library, which works similarly to Steam’s old Family Sharing feature.

Anyone in the family will be able to play any game in the library provided someone else isn’t playing it already. If two people want to play the same game at the same time, then two members of the family have to own a copy of the game. When playing shared games, each member will have their own save games, unlock Steam achievements for their own account, and have access to workshop files.

If someone in your family is banned from a game while playing your version of the game, your account will be banned too–so be careful who you’re sharing with.

Steam Families also includes an option for parental controls, where adult family members can manage access to games, Steam community features, and monitor screentime for child accounts. Children also have the option to request more playtime or games that are otherwise restricted, and can also request adult accounts to purchase new games for them by sending a cart directly to the adult’s account.

The new feature is currently in beta, and getting access now requires all potential members of a family to opt into the beta version.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor’s First Update Releases Soon After Hitting 1M Sold

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor continues to mine its way to success following its Steam early access launch in February, with developer Funday Games announcing the auto-shooter recently passed 1 million copies sold.

It previously took Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor a week to hit 500,000 copies sold, a result Funday Games at the time said exceeded the studio’s “wildest imagination,” and that the team was “humbled, grateful, and very, very busy working on the game.”

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Now Playing: Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor – Release Date Announcement Trailer

That work is about to come to fruition, as Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor’s first content update is set to arrive on March 20. The update will introduce a fourth biome, the Salt Pits, and will allow for players to use the environment to their advantage by dropping stalactite clusters on hordes of enemy bugs. Two new enemy types, Huuli Hoarders and Q’ronar Younglings, are also being introduced, with the former dropping a load of minerals when killed.

Funday Games estimates Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor will be in early access for 6-12 months, during which it will introduce additional modes, biomes, bosses, and items. Other additions planned to come over the course of early access include Biome Mutators to add more challenges to each environment and a revamp of the mining robot Bosco to make it “an integral part of the game by giving him separate upgrades and making Bosco-builds possible,” according to the roadmap.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor’s formula of combining the dwarves-in-space aesthetic and class-based shooting of the original Deep Rock Galactic with the roguelite elements of the popular auto-shooter Vampire Survivors looks to be a winning formula, and the franchise as a whole seems to be having a moment. Earlier this year, developer Ghost Shit Games announced Deep Rock Galactic sold more than 2.5 million copies in 2023 alone, bringing its lifetime sales total to over 8 million.

Yet another Deep Rock Galactic spin-off, Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core, is also in the works from Ghost Ship Games. Rogue Core puts a roguelite twist on the original game’s core mechanics, with players starting from scratch for each procedurally generating mission and collecting resources and upgrades over the course of a match to power-up. Rogue Core does not yet have a release date.

Unicorn Overlord – All Romance Options And How To Get Married

Unicorn Overlord features a few dozen unique characters, many of which you have the option to romance about halfway through the campaign. In order to romance and marry the character of your choice you will need to max out your rapport with that character and complete a specific story quest before you can pop the question. Here’s how to quickly max out your Rapport, get married, and who you can get married to.

How to build Rapport

There are three main ways of building rapport between characters in Unicorn Overlord. First, characters in the same unit will build rapport every time they fight an enemy unit, earning a small amount from each encouter. If you’re looking to romance a character, that means they will need to be in the same unit as Alain and you will need to use that unit in combat. This method is pretty slow compared to the other two options, but it doesn’t require money or items.

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Now Playing: Unicorn Overlord — Official Launch Trailer

The second method is eating at a tavern. Taverns can be found in the bigger towns and kingdoms around the map. If you are looking at a town on the overworld map, the tavern icon is a beer with food. At the tavern you will have three food options, each of which offers a different amount of rapport and a different number of characters you can include. Some meals offer over 100 rapport, which can quickly get you to the max rapport level of three.

The final option is to give gifts. Gifts can be obtained from both battle and stores at various towns. While some characters like some gifts more than others, there are no disliked gifts and the higher value gifts, like gems, will give any character triple-digit rapport, making this the fastest way to boost rapport. To give a gift to a character, they will need to be stationed as a guard at a town. If you station the character you want to give a gift to somewhere and don’t remember where, you can assign them to whatever town you are currently in.

How to marry someone

In order to marry someone, you must acquire the Ring of Maiden, which is obtained after completing the story quest “The Witch’s Word.” This is the final story mission in Elheim, the region to the southwest, where the Elves live. Elheim is likely to be the third region you complete after the starting section of Cornia. You’re given the option to go to either Elheim or Drakenhold after Cornia, but Elheim missions start five levels higher than Drakenhold.

Once that quest is completed you will get the quest “Unicorn and Maiden,” which is found on Palevia, the starting island. You can travel there using the port at Ouvrir Harbor, off the western coast of Cornia. Once there you can see a list of the characters that you have reached max rapport with and have the option to do the ritual with, cementing them as your romance option.

All romance options

Once you reach max rapport with a character, you can choose to give them the Ring of Maiden in Palevia.

There is an abundance of different romance options in Unicorn Overlord, both male and female. However, if you choose to do the ritual with a male character, Alain will not marry them in the story, even though they will be your partner. Below is a list of all characters you can romance, but keep in mind some characters are only available via side quest and some are missable depending on your story choices.

Every character you can romance

  • Yahna
  • Berenice
  • Selvie
  • Fran
  • Virginia
  • Berengaria
  • Hilda
  • Leah
  • Primm
  • Celeste
  • Rosalinde
  • Adel
  • Aubin
  • Auch
  • Bruno
  • Clive
  • Colm
  • Hodrick
  • Josef
  • Lex
  • Mordon
  • Rolf
  • Travis
  • Renault
  • Gilbert
  • Ithilion
  • Gailey
  • Scarlett
  • Chloe
  • Sharon
  • Tatiana
  • Miriam
  • Kitra
  • Monica
  • Ochlys
  • Melisandre
  • Nina

Game Reviews

Unicorn Overlord Review – A Rare Beast

There are few gaming experiences more engrossing, engaging, and satisfying than a quality strategy-RPG. They offer the joy of building up a little ragtag army, bit by bit, into a gang of storied warriors with precision-specialized skills; the tension of seeing what sort of wrenches the next combat stage will throw into the mix; the utter thrill of eking out a victory with a wild strategy–or having an army that works so well together that they lay waste to all before them. Unicorn Overlord, the latest collaboration between developer Vanillaware and publisher Atlus, seeks its place among strategy-RPG royals–and, despite a few small missteps, lays claim to an honorable spot among its peers.

In its narrative, Prince Alain was spirited off to a faraway island a decade ago as his mother, the queen, was deposed from her throne by the wicked tyrant General Valmore and the Zenoiran Empire. Now, the Empire has all but conquered the continent of Fevrith, and an older Alain sets out to reclaim his throne and liberate the populace from their oppressors, all while bolstering the ranks of his Resistance army. But a mystery lies at the heart of everything: How did the Zenoiran Empire conquer all of the kingdoms so easily? Is there a much darker power at play?

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Now Playing: Unicorn Overlord — Official Launch Trailer

The visuals in Unicorn Overlord dazzle right from the opening cutscene, with Vanillaware’s well-loved 2D art bringing a detailed fantasy realm to life. There are a great many characters and environments throughout so there’s plenty of variety to the eye candy–but even if that hadn’t been the case, it would be hard to draw your eyes away from the attractive character designs, exquisite backgrounds, and weighty battle animations that are there. Occasionally, things can get a bit cluttered and confusing–some parts of the UI are messy to navigate–but after a while, it becomes no big deal.

You can’t just stare at the pretty visuals, however–not while evil is afoot. Fortunately, if you want to take your time with seeing all the game’s sights, you can go straight through the crucial story battles, or stop and do all manner of side-questing. Taking the time to explore and help those in need is a good idea, too: When you begin Unicorn Overlord, Prince Alain’s army consists of a handful of close companions, and it feels like the entire world is against you. Only through fighting small skirmishes, liberating towns, forts, and cities from their Zenovian captors can you gradually reclaim territory. Many of these places are decimated from years of war and neglect–but the prince can bring the materials needed to repair the damage, often with a bit of careful overworld exploration. As you do this, your Honors and Renown grow, and you can recruit and hire more soldiers for your army–as well as expand the number and capacity of your current units. It’s a fun gameplay loop that encourages you to explore and rebuild.

But ultimately, games in this genre live and die by how fun the actual strategy and combat is, and Unicorn Overlord passes this test with flying colors. Battles are a mix of real-time unit movement and turn-based battles that play out whenever two units engage one another. Unlike many other games in this genre, each unit consists of a group of up to six different characters, arranged in a 2×3 grid. A designated leader determines elements like map movement speed and what kind of assistance they can provide allied units: If you want to move fast to intercept an enemy or conquer a garrison, a cavalry leader is an ideal choice, but if you want to be able to provide combat spell or projectile backup to a nearby squad then you’ll need an archer or magic user leading the way.

Movement and positioning is critical, since many fights revolve around taking control of key areas on the map–usually towns, forts, watchtowers, or other structures–and using them as recovery, defense, and deployment stations. Sometimes you’ll be blessed with devices like catapults and ballistas that a unit can man and cause serious damage with–if the opposing army doesn’t get there first and cause you a massive headache. Buildable barricades and traps can hold forces at bay while you muster strength, but a winged unit can fly right over them without a care. Finally, stamina determines how many times in a row a unit can attack, be attacked, or assist–run out of energy and that team can’t move until they rest for a while. There are so many options and factors to consider when it comes to something as simple as map movement, allowing you to devise your own unique approaches to combat. When an allied and enemy unit engage, the view switches to a side-view, turn-based battle that plays out automatically. Units will take turns attacking and using skills based on the abilities and criteria you’ve set for them.

The characters themselves come in a variety of classes, each with its own unique traits, abilities, and weaknesses. For example, a Hoplite is a tremendous tank that can significantly reduce damage from many physical attacks and protect other characters, but they suffer when up against defense-lowering Housecarls and armor-penetrating magic users. A spear-wielding Knight cavalry unit can attack a row of enemies at once, while a similarly mounted Radiant Knight is strong against magic, but both are vulnerable to weapons and skills targeting horse-riders. When crafting units, you can carefully concoct a balanced mix of defense, offense, mobility, and support–or you can go all-in on an ultra-specialized team designed for a singular purpose. Weapons and accessories can grant extra boosts and abilities to individual characters, which you can then further customize by setting specific criteria for when and how skills are used in battle. Micromanaging so many factors can be very daunting at first, but Unicorn Overlord is excellent at encouraging experimentation and discovery, and it offers you myriad opportunities to test out new units or character builds outside of key battles.

Team-building is a delight, but what also helps keep your attention rapt is how the combat scenarios you face keep on evolving throughout the game. Besides adding elements like new units and assorted traps and hindrances over time, the unique scenarios of major story battles often present surprises that require you to change your approach. You’ll just be marching along, only to be greeted by a siege of surprise reinforcements, or perhaps a new ally drops in and wants to help–or needs your protection. And maybe, just maybe, that enemy general can be reasoned with if you have the right person speak to them.

Gallery

Unicorn Overlord’s combat is the standout element of the game–which is good, because it manages to carry the weight of a disappointing story. If you’ve played any RPG where a group of rebels reclaims the land from a despot with the powers of darkness fueling him, you probably know where the story is headed. I frequently found myself wishing that the cutscenes were less frequent and wordy so I could get back to the fun of moving a bunch of little guys around a map. The individual characters aren’t much better, with one-note personalities and motives that don’t offer much in the way of development or interesting interactions. There’s a whole affection system among characters that opens up brief little side conversations when relationships reach a certain point, but even these typically fail at making the characters appealing beyond mere utility like “that dude looks cool and hits like a truck, so maybe I’ll use him more.”

But even though the story is lackluster, the core gameplay of Unicorn Overlord is more than compelling enough to make you want to see the story of Prince Alain to its conclusion. There’s so much satisfaction and gameplay depth here to sink your teeth into that you may find yourself thinking deeply about the game’s team dynamics even when you’re not playing. When the primary feeling a game leaves you with is wanting to play more of it, you know you have a gem on your hands.

Contra: Operation Galuga Review – Corps Run

More than almost any other game from its era, Contra made its name on being brutally difficult: a legacy with an impact that can still be felt today. Even cultural touchstones like the Konami Code owe at least some of their fame to the Contra series–after all, half the reason we memorized that particular sequence of button presses was to get extra lives for our battle against the alien hordes. With Contra: Operation Galuga, WayForward had a peculiar challenge: Sand off the rough edges of the original Contra to make it tolerable to modern audiences without losing the mystique that owes so much to its absurd difficulty. Thanks to some smart improvements, it’s found an enjoyable balance, although it’s not enough to elevate Galuga to greatness.

This is a retelling of the first game, which means that once again you’re Contra operatives Bill and Lance dispatched to the island of Galuga to get to the bottom of strange goings-on there. After a slightly too-wordy introduction in Story mode, you’re dropped right into the run-and-gun action, and despite looking and feeling very similar to the first game, the differences will quickly become apparent to series veterans. To start, you have a double jump by default, as well as a dash maneuver that can be used on the ground or in mid-air. Together, these make you much more nimble at dodging enemy fire, allow more room for error when crossing chasms, and turn combat into a quicker, more acrobatic experience.

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Now Playing: Contra: Operation Galuga | Character Trailer

Despite borrowing the most iconic weapons from the first three games–the Machine Gun, Spread, Laser, Flame Thrower, Homing, and Crush weapons–your arsenal has gotten an upgrade, too. Each signifies a considerable power boost from your default gun by itself, but each can also be upgraded by stacking another weapon pick-up on top of it. Picking up another Homing power-up when you already have Homing equipped makes it a Homing Lv 2, for example. Sometimes this extends the range or breadth of the weapon, like in the case of the Spread and Flame Thrower, while other times it can change a weapon’s behavior more significantly. An upgraded Laser will ricochet off targets, while the upgraded Crush changes the weapon from an explosive missile to a firearm that opens small black holes that do continuous damage. And in a welcome quality-of-life tweak, picking up a new weapon will automatically replace a blank weapon slot if you have one. I spent half the game manually switching out of habit before I realized that little nice-to-have.

The weapons all feel rewarding and powerful, but in true Contra tradition, that also makes you feel all the more vulnerable if you happen to lose them. By default, if you’re playing with the life bar option, getting hit once will downgrade your weapon, and fully dying and losing a life will cost you the weapon altogether. This encourages you to think and fight somewhat strategically or potentially contend with Contra’s difficult fights without an upgraded arsenal.

This also feeds into Operation Galuga’s other major update: a shop to buy various perks with the credits you earn during missions. You earn more credits the more risks you take, like playing on higher difficulties or turning on one-hit kills. Then you can use those credits to expand your health bar, purchase extra lives, or even start with a particular weapon–all of which you can buy for a relatively low sum. The bigger purchases, however, are absolute game-changers. I immediately saved up for the upgrade that automatically transforms any weapon you pick up into the upgraded version. With that secured, I began saving for another that would let me keep that upgraded weapon after sustaining a hit. Another, which I considered but ultimately bypassed, lets you keep your weapon even upon death. You can only equip two perks at a time, but finding a combination that suits your play style adds a light layer of character customization to what is otherwise a very straightforward action game.

The game balance feels built around these perks, finding a sweet spot of challenge that was satisfying. Even with everything working in your favor, it can be tough dodging reams of enemy fire while taking out various aliens who are both firing from a distance and charging straight at you, all at once. At the best of times, combat can be breathless and exciting. But the ability to select stages individually in Story mode makes it easy to fail out of a stage, reorganize perks, and try again. It also has a fairly generous checkpoint system, so even if you do mess up, you may not lose all your progress. The result is a game that recalls the feeling of overcoming the tough Contra challenge of yesteryear, without venturing into becoming too frustrating or reliant on perfecting a single run.

For those who do want the challenge, though, you can play with classic mechanics, including one-hit kills and even 8-direction aiming rather than the default omnidirectional aim. A separate Arcade mode skips the story sequences and just presents the levels back-to-back, granting a high score, with an increasing multiplier of credits to spend on the in-game shop the further you get. Finally, there’s also a set of optional Challenge stages to fulfill objectives like getting through an area or beating a boss within a time limit, usually without ever getting hit.

The story is nonsense, but it’s an enjoyable kind of nonsense. The original Contra was inspired by over-the-top action movie tropes of the 1980s, and this runs with that premise with anachronistic glee. Many of the story sequences go on at least a little too long, but it plays its absurd machismo for laughs and packs some strangely amusing surprises. If anything, it could stand to be even more on-the-nose with its satirical inspirations.

Gallery

Throughout the story, you’ll meet other characters fighting on the side of the Contra, and for the most part, they’ll ultimately become unlockable characters–either through the course of the story itself or as purchasable characters from the shop. Each character has a single specialized ability to buy in the shop as well–like a short dash invulnerability window for Bill, or a higher double jump for Lance–which makes a series of mostly identical army-men action figures play somewhat differently. The special abilities at least invite some mechanical reasoning for choosing a favorite playable character, but for the most part, your chosen character will likely only come down to which character model you like to look at the most. There’s not enough difference between characters for any true strategic benefit.

And like action figures, these character models look shiny and plasticine, along with their backgrounds. The visual style is perhaps the least attractive aspect of the entire presentation because it often looks so generic and dull. There are individual moments in some stages that appear more visually distinct and interesting, and you can occasionally sense there may have been a seed of an idea to make these oily-looking character models reminiscent of a walking G.I. Joe. On the whole, though, it fails to show the panache that WayForward has become known for, which is disappointing for the revival of such a storied franchise.

Still, Contra: Operation Galuga has it where it counts. It feels like classic Contra in all the ways that matter, and a series of changes and upgrades–from minor tweaks like auto-equipping weapons to major new elements like the perks shop–are just enough to make it feel smooth and modern. This may not be a modern classic, but it shows how a classic series like Contra can feel fresh again.

Disney Dreamlight Valley Review – Great Game, Grueling Grind

I was a bit apprehensive before playing Disney Dreamlight Valley. Although I’ve been a huge fan of Disney’s animated films since I was a kid, developer Gameloft is primarily known for developing mobile titles, some of which have egregious microtransaction systems, such as Disney Magic Kingdoms. After playing Disney Dreamlight Valley for roughly 30 hours, I realized that it wasn’t microtransactions that I had to be concerned about, as there were no paywalls or progress-blocking instances that required me to pay cash. The more prevalent issues with the game were the extremely grindy progression system and restrictions coming from the real-time systems.

Disney Dreamlight Valley begins just as my character was whisked away into a magical fantasy kingdom. Approached by Merlin, it was revealed that a curse known as the Forgetting turned the once-whimsical land into a realm of despair and darkness. Merlin provides a tutorial through the basic mechanics such as removing obstacles called Night Roots and using tools like the pickaxe, shovel, and fishing pole.

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Now Playing: Disney Dreamlight Valley – A Festival of Friendship Update Trailer

At first, I was worried since regular tasks like mining ores with the pickaxe or removing clumps of roots quickly drained my character’s stamina. My initial concerns were quickly assuaged, as stamina is regularly refilled whenever I leveled up, ate food, or spent just a few seconds in my character’s home.

Needless to say, I was surprised at how player-friendly this mechanic is. From here, the game opens up, as you collect more resources used to craft new items, find ways to decorate the village, and sell materials to earn additional coins. The village itself can be redesigned to your fancy, as you can move around buildings and objects to make way for other structures.

The best part about Disney Dreamlight Valley is its inclusion of fan-favorite characters, along with their respective themes or locations. The initial batch consists of Merlin, Mickey, Goofy, and Scrooge McDuck (Goofy and Scrooge act as vendor NPCs, too), but you soon gain access to the Dream Castle, which has portals that lead to realms populated by other notable characters from Disney and Pixar films. These include Simba, Nala, and Scar (The Lion King); Moana and Maui (Moana); Ariel, Eric, and Ursula (The Little Mermaid); Elsa, Anna, Kristoff, and Olaf (Frozen); Mirabel (Encanto); and many more.

These short romps have fairly straightforward tasks, such as planting crops in a dried-up oasis to help Nala trap the hyenas, which then led to using the shovel to find bugs that she and Simba could eat. In Moana’s case, you collect resources to repair her boat and then remove obstacles so you can sail to another area together. The vast majority of quests in Disney Dreamlight Valley lean more toward the easy or leisurely side of things, but there were also a few tricky puzzles which I liked.

Completing quests in these mini-realms allows the corresponding characters to be recruited to your village, where they become villagers or potential companions. They also provide a source of additional side quests after befriending them by giving them gifts. For example, after Kristoff moved to the village, I found him in the forest biome where he gave me a quest to rescue Donald Duck in a portal zone.

This gameplay loop–one where you meet characters, max out their friendship levels to unlock new quests, leading you to meet even more characters–kept me engaged. As I ventured forth into certain areas, I also wanted to tackle the tasks therein, and perhaps gain new villagers or companions along the way. My village, once a rundown and cursed place, eventually became a busy locale, full of people just milling about and interacting with one another. Interactions that added to the ambience and atmosphere also happened regularly. For example, characters like Ursula and Ariel might show up while I was fishing, or Simba and Nala might play around only for Merlin to scold them. These ambient interactions also include photo mode, which causes characters to pose for selfies. There truly were moments in Disney Dreamlight Valley that gave me a sense of wonderment as I recalled my younger days of first seeing some of these characters, thinking of what it’d be like if they were all in the same place.

Sadly, Disney Dreamlight Valley has its own share of fundamental issues. Chief among these is that the overall progression of unlocking realms and characters, while also doing quests, remains unclear and downright confusing. This is compounded by realm and biome unlocks that primarily require a currency called Dreamlight, which often comes from general tasks listed in a panel. Examples include mining X number of rocks/ore deposits in Y biome, preparing a certain number of meals, bringing gifts, adding decorations in a particular biome, catching/cooking/selling different kinds of fish (sometimes in a specific biome), buying/planting specific types of seeds (and harvesting them), and many more.

I recall when I amassed a lot of Dreamlight to unlock a new realm in the castle. Although biomes and realms have their respective Dreamlight costs, I opted to prioritize the slightly more expensive Frozen Realm. I met up with Elsa and Anna and thought I’d be done with the objectives in a jiffy. Unfortunately, I needed Iron Ore to progress. It just so happened that Iron Ore comes from other biomes in the village that I hadn’t unlocked yet. That meant I had to redo the aforementioned gathering and mining tasks to earn more currency.

This checklist-based approach turned what could’ve been a grand adventure into monotonous drudgery. While there’s no strict method of progression, there’s still an optimal one. A single mistake–unlocking realms in the wrong order–was all it took to turn my relaxing playthrough into a by-the-numbers grind where I repeatedly looked at the Dreamlight panel to ensure that I could still amass as much currency as possible. In other instances, I accidentally used a material for a particular task or craftable item, not knowing that it’s also needed for various quests. The biggest factor that bars progress now is something none of us can avoid: time.

The in-game time in Disney Dreamlight Valley is synced with your local real-world time. Certain crops need to be watered repeatedly, and you can only harvest them after many minutes have passed. In other cases, you might run out of a particular resource, only to realize that these nodes also won’t respawn until later.

Worse, characters follow a particular schedule. You might see them roaming around the village, in which case you’d be able to talk to them, give gifts, do quests, or ask them to hang out with you (which nets you bonuses based on an assigned task). However, if they’re asleep, you have no choice but to wait, as there’s no in-game option to advance time. Although it’s possible to set your system clock further ahead, doing so can cause adverse effects, such as mineral/resource nodes no longer appearing.

There were instances when I could only play late at night and found the NPCs that I wanted to interact with weren’t available, as each one followed a predetermined schedule. While this added a degree of reality to the village, it just didn’t make sense that I had to adjust my schedule because Buzz Lightyear and Mirabel are asleep from 10 PM. to 2 AM These restrictions negatively impacted my progress and enjoyment with the campaign overall.

In the end, Disney Dreamlight Valley still managed to captivate me thanks to its wonderful cast of characters and their magical worlds. The cozy life-sim concept allows you to gather, farm, and build at a leisurely pace. Unfortunately, I was also disappointed by the decision to have a real-time sync feature and an unclear progression path that’s compounded by repetitive tasks. The quests that you undertake aren’t skill-based either–they’re patience-based, so to speak, as any mistake made when unlocking biomes or spending materials can be downright exasperating. Two concepts clash here: the delightful and whimsical themes that spark the joy of your inner childhood, and the frustrations of time management as you experience the monotonous daily grind as an adult.

Balatro Review – One More Blind

Poker has endured as a popular and immensely enjoyable card game because of how malleable it is. The purest form of poker is predominantly played in your hand, with you deciding on cards to discard and redraw in the hopes of creating a better hand than your opponents. Texas Hold’Em, by far the most popular variation on poker, eschews these rules by giving all players five shared cards on the table, and two cards in their hand to try and outwit other players with. A small change like this has a dramatic impact on how the game ultimately plays out, inviting the assumption that other small tweaks might have similar effects. Balatro operates directly in this space. It creates distinct scenarios through both deck building and randomization that force you to think about poker hands differently during short, captivating runs in its roguelite structure. It injects new life into the fundamental rules of poker without requiring any previous knowledge of the game, feeling deftly balanced for both newcomers and experts of the card game alike.

Balatro is deceptively straightforward. Each round you play features a blind, which here is a total score you need to beat in order to progress. Each card has its own chip value, while different poker hands add on multipliers to the total score you hand tallies to. Play better hands with better cards, and you’ll progress from the small blind to the big blind and ultimately a boss blind before the ante is raised and you’re challenged to repeat the process with more challenging totals to topple. You’re limited to a certain number of hands you can play during each round, as well as a limited amount of discard opportunities that let you toss away cards you don’t want to use. A handy glossary makes the action approachable even if you’re unfamiliar with the basics of poker, and the means to progress through each round aren’t fundamentally rooted in a deep understanding of the odd differences between each hand.

Knowing the odds of different poker hands and why you might want to pursue simple straights and flushes over the combination of the two will probably help initially in earlier rounds, but as you go on, Balatro exposes its random roguelite elements to great effect. Joker cards are Balatro’s big modifiers, offering a suite of effects that can quickly define a build that will ultimately influence the theme of your run. The combination of a joker that adds multipliers for playing Club cards with another that rewards the use of only face cards (Kings, Queens, and Jacks) can turn otherwise simple flushes or straights into incredibly high-scoring hands–a strategy you may need to progress through more challenging blinds. Other jokers can be delightfully chaotic, like one that randomizes its multiplier each time you play a hand or another that consumes other joker cards and adds their value to its overall multiplier. The game quickly starts encouraging you to strategize around the jokers that you’re given access to (each new one you purchase gets added to the pool of potential reappearances) and adjusting the hands you play around them in order to progress, making each run feel distinct in spite of the simple mechanics underpinning them.

A shop that’s available between rounds stocks jokers for you to purchase with money you earn based on your performance during each blind. In addition to jokers, there are a variety of different card types that can have an equally important impact on your run. Arcana cards are consumables that you can use for a variety of effects, many of which alter the nature of cards in your deck. Some might swap the house that a card belongs to or promote a card up a rank. Others can turn cards into different materials entirely. Glass cards provide higher multipliers when played but have a chance to shatter permanently, while steel cards have their rank and suit stripped but provide chip and multiplier bonuses. These are just a handful of examples, and knowing when to use certain Arcana cards is as important as knowing which to discard depending on the balance you’ve formed with your inventory of jokers.

Planet cards provide more holistic changes, increasing the rank of particular poker hands which provide more chip and multiplier bonuses when you play them. Like Arcana cards, Spectral cards are consumable, but have much greater effects on your deck, sometimes altering numerous cards at a time at the expense of one, as an example. The combination of Arcana and Spectral cards, coupled with the effect of Planet cards, provides a deck-building element to Balatro that is engaging to interact with. It’s far less involved than many other deckbuilder roguelites, especially when you consider that all deck construction is determined by randomization throughout each run, so it’s more a system to complement your growing collection of potential joker pulls rather than the fundamental strategic element throughout each run.

Each ante consists of three rounds: a small blind, a big blind, and a boss blind. The boss blind is the only one where the rules can be twisted and changed, with the modifier exposed at the start of each ante. This gives you the chance to acknowledge and prepare for the boss ahead, but the two blinds and their associated shops sometimes don’t offer the tools for you to adequately change your build if you foresee a big challenge. Some bosses nerf entire suits, which can quickly end runs that depend on that for big scores. One particularly nasty one limits you to just playing a single hand, which has been the death of many of my own runs when appearing in early antes. You can opt to skip blinds (including the cash you might earn and a trip to the shop) in exchange for tokens that can, in some cases, completely change the boss modifier before you reach it) but given that this and, seemingly, the modifiers that bosses are assigned are completely random, it can be frustrating to have an otherwise great run ruined by what seems like rotten luck.

But as much as any roguelite is rooted in random (but carefully calculated) luck, you can have runs where you feel virtually unstoppable. Each element, from jokers to Planet cards, has a substantial impact on both how you approach each new round and the scores you’re able to obtain with single hands. They also force you to vary the way to play each run, as simply sticking to the same traditional poker hands will very quickly prevent you from reaching higher antes. A run where you focused on transforming all your cards into hearts and using jokers that rewarded the use of them could be followed by one where the emphasis is instead on playing just three cards with each hand, with a joker and Planet card both synergizing with that. Throw in a joker that allows you to complete straights with just four cards and another that lets you skip missing cards to create one and you’ve got a whole other avenue to try and beat the game’s finale, the eighth ante. It is immensely satisfying to watch your score soar upwards as multiplier upon multiplier is added to each of your hands, with the scoreboard being set ablaze when you’ve conjured up a particularly gigantic one. But ultimately the variety keeps each of Balatro’s runs surprisingly fresh given the simplicity of its underlying mechanics, urging you to take on another run immediately after you’ve completed one.

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Overall progression doesn’t end once you’ve beaten the game’s eighth ante either. Instead, you can continue onwards through an endless run and see just how far you can get, with each new ante getting exponentially more challenging to pass. As you unlock jokers, pass certain milestones, and use particular cards, you’ll unlock additional decks that provide new starting parameters to experiment with. Some might be as simple as increasing the number of hands of discards at your disposal, while others activate abilities at the start of each run to help you predetermine what direction you can take it. Once you’ve completed Balatro with five different decks, a challenge tab unlocks that provides even more reasons to continue running through it. All of this is to say that Balatro provides enough reasons to stick with it for hours on end even after clearing it, making it a great game to both be continuously engaged with and one that you can return to periodically for a long time to come.

Balatro ticks all the boxes for a roguelite that creates a feedback loop that’s difficult to draw yourself away from. Its fundamentals are incredibly easy to understand, even if you’re unfamiliar with poker, but the ways in which it works within the game’s boundaries (and often breaks free from them) injects a level of depth to each hand to play that’s both challenging and rewarding to continually engage with. It’s a game that will melt away time as you hit play on one run after the next, with each defeat never stinging long enough to dissuade the possibility of victory on the next. While a handful of boss antes annoyingly end runs prematurely, they’re nowhere near detrimental enough to take away from the immensely satisfying balance that Balatro strikes in every other aspect.

WWE 2K24 Review – Long-Term Booking

The WWE 2K series has had a multi-year arc not unlike something you’d see watching WWE’s shows on TV. Its 2020 installment was so broken, poorly received, and ultimately meme-ified that the team actually took a year off to fix its jobber-esque series–a rare sight in the world of annualized video games. But since then, it’s been on the rise, getting pushed like a WWE superstar to the top of the card, and though WWE 2K24 doesn’t yet finish the story, it seems like it’s well on the path of cementing a new legacy for itself.

WWE 2K24 adds appreciable, albeit not revolutionary, improvements to last year’s solid foundation across the board. The in-ring action is paramount, and WWE 2K24 thankfully builds on the already-excellent mechanics in that regard. There’s more fluidity to chaining moves together, and it feels like, at any point in which your character has the upper hand, you can reliably emulate the escalation of a real-life match, with a deep assortment of move sets depending on where you are in the ring. An intuitive control scheme lets you set up a rival sitting atop the turnbuckle, staggered on the ropes, or lying on their back in the middle of the ring for an ankle lock with similar ease. The game simply always feels great to control.

Pairing those contextual attacks with a deep move set for every wrestler in which the left stick and face buttons combine to create excellent variety, 2K24 feels like it rolls out much of what made 2K23 already fun in my hands, but with a few new touches that I enjoy. This includes top-rope maneuvers onto a group of opponents rather than just one; Super Finishers, like Rhea Ripley’s belt-winning Riptide from the second rope at last year’s WrestleMania; and the ability to throw weapons. These are subtler changes than the complete overhaul the series received when it emerged from its darkest days a few years ago, but they’re each welcome to the game and help further emulate the real-life product.

One thing the in-ring action still needs to be fixed is the way wrestlers can warp to complete animations, particularly during top-rope maneuvers. In real life, when a superstar goes to the top rope before a dive attack of some kind, what you don’t usually see on TV (due to the cameras purposely hiding it) is how the wrestler receiving the attack will shift their body to help their rival perform the move safely–this avoids things like knees to the head or groin, for example. But WWE 2K’s top-rope maneuvers still include a lot of awkward warping of the leaping wrestler to stick the landing. This is not only backward from reality, but often looks janky. This has been in wrestling games for years, and though 2K24’s in-ring action is overall excellent, these moments do betray the otherwise commendable level of realism.

WWE 2K, like Cody Rhodes, went away for a while before it came back ready to climb to the top.

The wrestlers themselves usually look good or even great, albeit with the long-present issue of long hair behaving erratically once again rearing its head. The degree of how authentic an in-game model of a WWE superstar looks rises and falls in step with how long their hair is. Baldies like Kurt Angle and Stone Cold Steve Austin look excellent. Short-haired folks like Cody Rhodes and Rhea Ripley benefit from their less-than-luscious locks, and the longest-haired wrestlers like Becky Lynch and Roman Reigns tend to express the most jank atop their domes, with strands often flailing around unrealistically or clipping through their clothes. Like the warping top-rope maneuvers, hair is a long-standing problem in WWE games.

The roster has now ballooned, welcomely I should say, to 200+ current and past talents. Almost anyone you would expect who is not tied up in real-world issues–like being on another brand or otherwise scrubbed from wrestling’s all too commonly shady history–is present. A few big current-day talents are sorely missed, but in most cases, they seem to be tied to late arrivals to the brand during the game’s dev cycle, such as CM Punk, Naomi, and Jade Cargill. Punk has already been announced as a DLC character, which stings given how important he is to the roster. Naomi and Cargill may one day be on that same tier, but for now, I find their inclusion as DLC characters to be more acceptable and in line with past WWE DLC packs. Punk, however, feels like he should come via a free update.

Several gimmick-heavy match types have been added, including ambulance, casket, special referee, and gauntlet matches. These match types have been present in some past wrestling games, and I think their returns are worthwhile. Though I don’t feel a strong fondness for any of them except special referee–which allows for some hilarious multiplayer betrayals–it’s nice to have them all back, mostly for some of the game’s longer-tailed modes or PvP online where usually everyone wants to put on something more than a standard exhibition match.

Nearly every game mode has improved, but for me, it starts with GM mode. It gamifies running the business more than actually fighting the matches, though that’s an option for those who want to do both. In 2K24, GM mode is awesomely deep. Signing free agents now uses a scouting system in which you hone in on the type of superstar you want–say, an established star working as a brawling babyface in the women’s division. It costs money to do this, so you’re motivated to have a plan, because ideally, you’ll spend money to identify someone who fits your needs, and then sign them on the spot.

You can acquire superstars via other new means too, such as trading with rival brands after each premium live event. I’ve not found the CPU offers me trades I want to execute, but I can initiate my own, and I honestly think I was universally opposed to their offers because I get so attached to my roster and the stories I’ve created. Still, it’s nice to be able to offer cash for wrestlers in trades, like contract buyouts, letting me lose no personalities in the exchange.

Several new gimmicky matches re-emerge in 2K24 and serve as welcome side attractions.

The mode’s economy is also fleshed out with an overhaul of how you improve the production of your show. Before, you’d need to spend money per show to improve things like the pyrotechnics or lighting, but now you save up to permanently unlock these over the course of the GM mode’s multi-season, multi-year arc. I prefer it, because while spending on scouting and trading makes the mode more money-hungry in other ways, it feels like increasing the production value is ultimately less costly and balances out some of that spending, which, by the way, is never done using paid currency, thankfully.

Each superstar in GM mode also now has their own skill level that you upgrade by putting them to use. It essentially measures how good they are in the ring, and they’ll unlock new match types for you to use across your show as they level up. This combines with the previously established popularity and stamina systems to help guide (and challenge) your booking as you seek to be the best weekly product in the WWE machine. I’ve always loved drafting my superstars, creating rivalries, and telling stories over many months just like I see on television, and the new skill system adds more ways for me to feel like I have a clear direction for my show. When I strapped the proverbial rocket to Tiffany Stratton, improving her in-ring work and her popularity with the fans, her value to my show was obvious and rich with rewards, both monetary and otherwise.

For those who want a less business-focused sandbox in which to play, Universe mode returns and is, like GM mode, better than last year’s, though its new toys aren’t as important as GM mode’s. Universe mode is designed as the ultimate WWE simulation, allowing you to book every show, every week, make roster decisions, tell stories with new in-game mechanics you play out like run-ins and post-match beatdowns, and essentially pour over every aspect of the WWE name.

I love the addition of double title matches since this is something common in real life that wasn’t available until now. You can also perform Loser Leaves Town matches as a way to write a superstar off your show for some time or even permanently. Like GM, Universe mode asks you to bring some headcanon to the mode–a rivalry has an in-game metric, but you don’t actually see the promos being cut, so it’s best enjoyed by the players already in deep with wrestling as their weekly hobby who enjoy fantasy booking. With unique mechanics like momentum and power rankings, it scratches a different itch from GM mode even as they both appeal, at the highest level, to players who want to book matches like they’re heading up the creative team.

GM and Universe modes are heavy on player-driven and emergent narratives, but for players who prefer their storylines to come scripted like an episode of Raw or Smackdown, MyRise returns with two new storylines and some nice touches to both. The Undisputed and Unleashed storylines offer players story modes in the men’s and women’s divisions, respectively. They both benefit from a lot more voice work this year, which can vary in quality, but since these are wrestlers and not, say, football players, the delivery isn’t usually distractingly bad and sometimes it’s even good.

Wrestling fandom is full of fantasy bookers, and WWE 2K24 has multiple modes to sate that appetite.

Better than the voicework is a new side-questing system that allows you to work shorter programs with rivals off the main path, like briefly feuding with Kevin Owens in exchange for a permanent skill increase before you return to your mainline feud regarding the WWE Universal Championship. The rewards are so worthwhile that I skipped none of them in my playthroughs.

Of the two stories, the women’s storyline is more compelling. It sees you start as a Face That Runs The Place-type of star for an indie promotion before you get poached to the big leagues of WWE. I love indie wrestling and attend shows often, so I found myself smiling at how well these cutscenes painted the picture of such a show. It’s meant to have an ECW-like quality to it, and the story drills that home with a small but raucous crowd and the DIY nature of the entire promo. The men’s story is good too, but its focus on a mid-carder finally getting their push to main event status is just inherently less interesting since it feels much more commonplace in reality.

For the best scripted storytelling in the game, Showcase mode is where to spend your time. Like when NBA 2K revisited its concept of a Michael Jordan legacy mode, WWE 2K foregoes spotlighting a single superstar and opts instead to run back the Wrestlemania-centric Showcase mode it previously attempted 10 years ago. 21 matches across four decades are given the Showcase treatment, which this year includes narration by WWE commentator and former in-ring star Corey Graves, lots of archival footage, and a few talking-head segments with folks like Hulk Hogan and Kurt Angle. I wish there were more interviews to contextualize each match by the people who lived it, as there seemed to be too few even once the mode carries into the modern day where wrestlers are still alive to speak on their matches.

On the bright side, the stylish delivery of Showcase mode returns for a third consecutive year. The matches seamlessly transition from in-game action to live-action footage from years gone by. It never gets old, and I found myself routinely mesmerized by how the matches would blend gameplay and real-life footage. The result is a playable Wrestlemania documentary that caught me up on some of my historical blind spots.

A lot of what makes WWE 2K24 is its best-in-class creation suite, which further separates itself from the field with create-a-referee and an immediately meme-heavy create-a-sign. The WWE 2K community is incredibly dedicated to bringing in every famous face not there today using create-a-wrestler, like MJF, Sting, and Guilia, to reviving old shows like WCW Monday Nitro in create-a-show, to even creating custom championship belts or Money In the Bank briefcases.

The tools run so deep that every creation sub-suite is full of amazing content for the larger community to enjoy thanks to the work of a small percentage of players. With all of these tools, it’s entirely possible to use WWE 2K24 to play out entirely different brands like NJPW or AEW, unofficially making it the best game based on those brands, too. It’s truly astounding. A lack of custom music continues to hinder the mode slightly, but I sense this is due to the complexity of music rights in the streaming age, so even as its absence is felt, it’s also forgivable.

MyFaction returns as the card-collecting live-service mode meant to keep players logging in daily for XP rewards and the lure of spending real money. Given how much else there is to do in 2K24, it feels like an afterthought to anyone but the mode’s already-established fans. MyFaction uses similar progression loops as counterparts in other games like Madden Ultimate Team or NBA 2K’s MyTeam. It’s rife with predatory and uninspiring economies where you can slowly grind through ladders of endless content to marginally improve your faction of superstars, or quickly buy randomized card packs for real money and enjoy much faster gains.

Showcase mode spans four decades and many of WWE’s most memorable moments.

There are ways to target specific superstars and ensure you get what you want, but both the grind of the mode and the dizzying nature of its four separate currencies leave a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t have any desire to engage with my faction, The Fudgement Day, beyond what it took for me to review this aspect of the game. Like most sports games doing this kind of content, it feels like meaningless busywork, where the reward is not the gameplay, but watching the numbers in the menu get bigger.

It’s meant to activate some probably intensely researched parts of our brain where we’re compelled to repeatedly run these mazes to find crumbs of cheese at the end, spending money as we go, and my only hope–since this mode is still relatively new and not as embedded as it is in Madden or EA FC–is that the WWE 2K team can drop this mode or outsource it, thus freeing up more time for meaningful parts of the game. It’s already doing so much so well, and yet MyFaction’s disappearance would be an addition by subtraction for the series.

It was last year’s WWE game that rekindled a years-absent obsession for pro wrestling within me. I’d not be writing this review if that game weren’t impressive, and so as a rejuvenated fan of the medium, I’ve been elated to see how this game improves on the high bar set last year. As both WWE and the wider format of pro wrestling live through a new golden age, it’s fortuitous timing for fans that this year’s game is so great. While the MTX-heavy mode feels tacked on like a publisher mandate, there are thankfully several other modes that each feel like they deserve to be played for many months ahead, making them the true centerpieces of your personal WWE universe.

The Outlast Trials Review – Immersion Therapy

One of the hardest reviews I’ve ever had to write was for Outlast 2. The game was so unnerving that it was hard to psych myself up enough to play it sometimes. The Outlast Trials, Red Barrels’ first game since then, doesn’t consistently reach those same heights, but it is memorably scary at times, and when it’s not frightening, it’s plenty rewarding in other ways. Taking a single-player horror series like Outlast and repurposing it as a four-player PvE game sounds like the kind of publisher-mandated live-service experiment too many teams have been tasked with lately. But as an indie team, Red Barrels seems to have steered its own course, and that may be why The Outlast Trials still feels like Outlast rather than a cynical project bearing the name.

The Outlast Trials is set in the Cold War, where you’ll customize your figurative guinea pig for a lengthy series of vicious experiments within the Murkoff Facility. The game’s opening moments, along with the lore, paint a scene so gruesome and wicked that’ll be familiar to series veterans, but disquieting to those new to the Outlast universe.. After training to become sleeper agents who are psychologically deconstructed, tormented, and then brainwashed, you’re eventually let back out into the free world awaiting your activation as a secret weapon. The context of your overarching mission is at least as dark as anything this team has done before–and it’s set its bar quite high previously.

In practice, these experiments play out on various large maps like a police station, a courthouse, a carnival, and more. Each one is propped up as a facsimile of the real thing as you run through the Murkoff-made mazes like a lab rat. This involves many signature Outlast elements, none more emblematic than carefully crawling through the dark in first-person while desperately seeking salvation–or at least batteries–before your night vision runs out of juice.

The gameplay loop is reimagined, but the aesthetic of classic Outlast remains.

Like its predecessors, The Outlast Trials is still very often set in the dark, but it uses the light more than its predecessors. It’s a clever way to torture you. Though you’ll often wish you could find that next battery pack before you have to resort to feeling around for walls in the dark, oftentimes you’ll also need to move through well-lit areas, which betray you in the opposite way of making your escape obvious to patrolling enemies. It reminds me of how, in brutal heat, one may wish it were winter, but then in the snow, they may dream of summer. The light and dark are used to diversify the obstacles in your path, much like the noise traps, failed minigames, and naked giants looking to smash you into the carpet. Yes, what would an Outlast game be without monstrous men swinging their pendular arms and penises alike?

The minigames will seem familiar to players of other multiplayer horror games, like Dead By Daylight and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Starting generators or picking locks quickly but quietly is nerve-racking but implemented fairly, so that your screw-ups feel like your own and not the game forcing drama where it ought not have been. The minigames are challenging enough to provide the drama already, and the idea of a masterful or even perfect run–avoiding traps or failed minigames, taking no damage, and perhaps even never being sighted by enemies–is a fun reward to chase for players who play long enough to get acquainted with the game’s more frightening bits.

You’ll need to contend with all manner of vile AI enemies, including a prison guard all too happy to use his baton, a supernatural entity called The Skinner Man which haunts you whenever your mental state deteriorates, and Mother Gooseberry, a grotesque shattered-mirror version of a nursery school teacher who dons a face akin to Leatherface’s Pretty Woman mask, but supplements it with an unnerving hand puppet duck with a menacing drill hidden in its bill. In Outlast, nearly every villain is an icon–this has long been true and continues in The Outlast Trials.

Furthering the game’s uneasy feeling is the level of nauseating detail found in every corner of every map. Bodies are left crammed into trash cans, or quartered like a butcher shop’s display. The walls are plastered with propaganda furthering your in-universe descent toward submission and brainwashing. Creepiest of all, and something I find to be a true stroke of horror genius, is that every map features Murkoff researchers clad in white lab coats observing you from behind safety glass. So while you may be running for your life, losing your mind, or bleeding out on a bathroom floor, the cold and cruel scientists simply observe and report. The Outlast Trials continues to prove its studio has a knack for being sincerely sinister.

One new wrinkle to this reimagined Outlast is that you can throw bricks and bottles to distract or briefly stun enemies. That’s the simplest means of self-defense in a series that has only ever let you run and hide before. But the more evolved version of fighting back, built for a game that wants to be infinitely replayable like this does, is your rig–a cooldown-enabled special ability of your choosing with many upgrades to unlock slowly over time. There are a few different rigs, such as abilities to heal your team or throw mines that deploy smoke to cover your tracks, and the best use of any one of them is to combine it with those belonging to other players who may be loading into matches with different rigs than yours. Collectively, you are whole as a group.

There’s strength in numbers, but that can also just mean more victims in the end.

This design winds up revealing that a more traditional Outlast is tucked away inside this multiplayer-focused prequel. Though many mission objectives scale for your team size, such as needing to turn on multiple generators in a pitch-black basement when you’re on a team rather than needing to activate just one as a solo player, the game is nearly as scary as I found Outlast 2 to be when played alone. That’s a good thing, as it means anyone turned off by the new direction of this series can still find something close enough to the classic Outlast experience if they want it.

Missions can take much longer when played this way too. A mission that might take 90 minutes solo can reliably be completed by a full team in a third of the time, in my experience. I’m fine with either case, depending on how I want to play at a given time, but it’s frustrating that the always-online nature of the game means I can’t truly pause it even when playing alone. I resorted to hiding in lockers, barrels, or under beds if I needed to step away for a moment, but that ran the risk of being kicked for inactivity.

The Outlast Trials becomes less scary with each additional person you add to your group. It’s a little bit “strength in numbers” and a little bit “misery loves company.” Simply put, the unimaginable horrors this game throws at you become more digestible the bigger your group is. When played with people you know, it can take the shape of a haunted hayride–the screaming becomes equal parts laughter and fright. It’s fun to be vulnerable with your friends. The Outlast Trials isn’t as scary with multiple people playing along, but it becomes a memorable time in a way previous Outlast games weren’t intended or able to be.

Still, I do find this to be a strange outcome; the game designed for four players loses a lot of its horror luster if it’s actually played that way. This review is based on the game’s 1.0 build that launches on March 5, but both this week and in earlier sessions–some of them from months ago during the game’s Steam Early Access run–I’ve experienced some missions in which everything was trivially easy because the three players I joined up with were, on some occasions, experts. It was like they had figuratively broken out of the boundaries set by the wretched facility and were able to game the system to max out rewards. To them, it became not a game of co-op horror, but a climb up a steep rewards tree.

That’s not as satisfying to me, as someone who wants to play an Outlast game to be terrified, but it hasn’t been common, thankfully. It’s possible to have such an experience, but more often my team was composed of a few unlucky souls who struggled to do just enough to limp out of the exit doors before they shut for good. That’s more like it, and thankfully more common.

Mother Gooseberry is a new icon in a series already boasting many of them.

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Still, if you’re going to chase that skill ceiling for the game’s rewards, there are plenty. As each player builds up their character, unlocking new cosmetic decor for their personal “sleep room” and character, as well as new passive skills and rig abilities, it’s quickly obvious just how numerous they are. There’s not one skill I felt like I could do without, from learning to slide, to bashing open locked doors more quickly, to increasing my stamina or battery life. For most players, the odds will feel stacked against you, so choosing a new skill is both hard in a choice-paralysis kind of way, and also somehow easy too, since ultimately you really can’t go wrong. Every improvement is welcome when you’re otherwise so powerless. I wanted them all, and continue to chase some of them today.

Rewards are earned each time you level up, which would turn your victim into an overpowered super lab rat in time, except the missions do well to advance in difficulty alongside you, with endgame content and weekly limited-time missions that serve as out-of-reach rewards for many hours and eventually become the long-tailed excuse to return to the game regularly.

The game even uses an almost Call of Duty-like prestige system, in which you graduate a character through the endgame trial and release them into the world–in the lore this allows them to join society and await their activation phrase, which I find deliciously dark. You’ll retain your unlocks and start anew with another character, or Reagent, which means this process is light on both rewards–the only such example in the game–and consequences, but at least the story justification is creepy. I only wish there was more story put front and center. Beyond this contextual understanding and an opening cinematic, you’ll consume the narrative only via collectible text logs found in each level randomly.

The Outlast Trials is a surprisingly rewarding multiplayer horror game. It’s capable of being as terrifying as previous Outlast games, and though you’ll trade away some scares when playing with a bigger group, they’re likely to be replaced by nervous laughs as you and your allies narrowly evade monsters in the dark. Surviving and returning to the hub facility means you’ll then unlock great metagame content like more punishing missions and skills that are helpful no matter what you unlock. These gameplay loops are hard for seemingly most live-service teams to figure out, so it’s especially impressive that a small, traditionally single-player horror studio found a formula that works so well.

It’s initially jarring to witness an Outlast with things like cooldown abilities, cosmetic customizations, and upgrade trees, though it doesn’t take long to appreciate this new look. The Outlast Trials, like the lineup of villains at the heart of it, wears many faces, but each of them is memorable.

Anime News

Monopoly Go Devs Spent More On Marketing Than It Cost To Develop The Last Of Us 2

Free-to-play mobile game Monopoly Go has been a surprising success story in the mobile space, coming out as 2023’s most successful mobile launch with $1 billion in revenue. Developer Scopely has revealed in an interview that the game has now brought in over $2 billion in its first 10 months–and that the game has spent an eye-watering $500 million on marketing and user acquisition.

Scopely’s senior VP of publishing Eric Wood revealed the marketing numbers in an interview with Game File, after Monopoly Go’s $2 billion milestone was announced by the CEO earlier this week. To put the $500 million marketing budget in perspective, a poorly redacted document last year leaked a set of budgets for some of PlayStation’s biggest AAA titles, which revealed that The Last of Us Part 2 cost $220 million to develop, and Horizon Forbidden West cost $212 million to develop.

Scopely co-CEO Javier Ferreira delved a little deeper into where that marketing spend went in his blog post, revealing that Monopoly Go’s marketing tem created localized marketing for every region where the game was available. “Our marketing team was a fierce advocate for taking a hyperlocal approach,” Ferreira said. “In turn, much of our upfront marketing investment went to developing individualized creative that reflected the language and culture of every country where the game is available.”

Ferreira also revealed that the game’s approach to marketing helped it recoup its spending in days or weeks, something that usually takes months or years for comparable titles. “We didn’t set out to create a blitz campaign, but as the game rapidly grew, so did our marketing efforts,” he explains. “For much of the title’s first six months, we were fully recouping our spend in a matter of weeks, something not often seen in games today.”

The game’s marketing budget gives an idea of the massive scale some mobile games operate on, with its revenue figures also far beyond what even big blockbuster AAAs make in their lifetime.

Steam Families Is A New And Improved Version Of Steam Family Sharing

Valve has announced Steam Families, a new Steam feature that wraps up the pre-existing Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View, as well as some brand-new family features. The new feature allows Steam users to create a family of up to 6 household members in order to share games and implement content controls.

Users can create a family and invite up to 5 other members, who can be assigned as either an adult or a child. All users in the family will have their games shared in a family library, which works similarly to Steam’s old Family Sharing feature.

Anyone in the family will be able to play any game in the library provided someone else isn’t playing it already. If two people want to play the same game at the same time, then two members of the family have to own a copy of the game. When playing shared games, each member will have their own save games, unlock Steam achievements for their own account, and have access to workshop files.

If someone in your family is banned from a game while playing your version of the game, your account will be banned too–so be careful who you’re sharing with.

Steam Families also includes an option for parental controls, where adult family members can manage access to games, Steam community features, and monitor screentime for child accounts. Children also have the option to request more playtime or games that are otherwise restricted, and can also request adult accounts to purchase new games for them by sending a cart directly to the adult’s account.

The new feature is currently in beta, and getting access now requires all potential members of a family to opt into the beta version.

Sand Land Demo Out Now, Unlocks Rewards For The Full Game

A Sand Land demo is now available on PC, PS5, PS4, and Xbox Series X|S ahead of the game’s launch at the end of April. The reveal came via a new trailer you can watch below.

Although the 56-second-long trailer doesn’t give too much info away, it does tease some of the game’s action featuring the series’ signature vehicles like Battle Tanks, Battle Armors, and motorcycles.

Publisher Bandai Namco revealed that those who play the demo will receive 30 B-grade steel and 30 B-grade bolts when the full game launches. These in-game items can be used to enhance vehicles whenever players visit Spino.

For those unaware, Sand Land is a popular manga the late Akira Toriyama created. In it, a desert world shared by humans and demons suffers from a water shortage. The story follows a demon named Beelzebub, who travels to find a hidden water source with the help of some friends.

Sand Land is scheduled to come out on April 26. It’ll be playable on PC, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. For more Sand Land content, be sure to check out our preorder guide to ensure you secure some exclusive goodies.

How To Save $100 On Samsung’s Upcoming TVs, Projectors, And Soundbars

Earlier this year, Samsung unveiled its lineup of new TVs and audio devices launching in 2024, including the next Neo QLED 4K and 8K TVs, a new 8K projector, two new sound bars, and more. Preorders for all the new devices will be available soon, and Samsung its giving customers $100 off their orders ahead of time. All you have to do to get this special promo is sign up to receive preorder notifications for the upcoming products on Samsung’s online store by March 21. Signing up also enters you in for a chance to win a free second-gen Samsung Freestyle portable projector.

The $100 credit can be applied to one of the new devices during checkout once the preorder period begins on March 21. The credit must be used before the preorder window closes on April 10. Samsung’s preorder credit deal is limited to US customers 18 years of age or older, and signups require your name, email, and phone number.

Samsung Neo QLED 8K TV 2024 model

As for the new devices you can use the $100 preorder credit on, the most notable are this year’s Neo QLED 8K and 4K TV models that feature AI-powered upscaling and motion enhancements, and run on Samsung’s new 2024 Tizen smart TV OS. Multiple size options will be available, starting at 43 inches and going up to 98 inches.

There is also Samsung’s new The Premier 8K wireless projector and a new version of Samsung’s The Frame display, which resembles a picture frame and displays a rotating selection of artwork and your own personal photos.

Samsung HW-Q990D and HW-S800D soundbars

Finally, the new audio devices include the ultra-thin HW-S800D soundbar, the beefy HW-Q990D soundbar with Hi-Fi audio and 11.1.4-channel Dolby Atmos support, and a new wall-mounted speaker of The Frame display called The Music Frame.

You can learn more about all the new displays and audio products at Samsung’s official website. Pricing and release dates for all the devices will be announced in the coming days.

TMNT: Mutants Unleashed Preorders Come With A Bunch Of Free Extras At Walmart

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed is an upcoming 3D brawler set in the same universe as the 2023 film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. It lets you dive into the gritty streets of New York as one of the four turtles as you fight off a new enemy that’s threatening the city. Local co-op is also supported, allowing you and a buddy to fight side by side as you unravel the latest TMNT mystery.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed doesn’t have an official release date beyond Q4 2024, but preorders are already open. Here’s a look at all available editions and preorder bonuses up for grabs.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed preorder bonuses

There are no universal preorder bonuses for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed. However, Walmart has an exclusive edition that comes with a steelbook, pin set, art book, and keychain–all for the same price as the standard edition.

Zack Snyder’s Dawn Of The Dead Has One Of The Greatest Openings In Horror History

The 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, written by James Gunn and directed by Zack Snyder (in his directorial debut!), celebrates its 20th anniversary this week. Both critically praised and commercially successful at the time of its release, the film, along with 28 Days Later, helped popularize the concept of sprinting zombies over their shambling, slouching, Romero-made counterparts. They created panic and urgency, and they made for an opening sequence that was worth the price of admission by itself.

Like many great horror films, Dawn of the Dead doesn’t start with horror. Our main character, Ana, is a nurse, and she’s wrapping up a long shift at the hospital. What’s great about this opening sequence–of her talking with co-workers and killing time–is how mundane it is. This is not load-bearing dialogue, and the actors don’t deliver it theatrically, as if to imply narrative stakes. We know that Ana is about to have the worst day of her life. But she doesn’t know that. Nothing feels urgent or pressing, because from her perspective, it isn’t.

She doesn’t know it’s the last time she’s going to see her co-worker, or the neighborhood girl, or her husband. Even the shower sex between them, tastefully filmed behind the steaming glass, feels domestic and perfunctory.

The neighborhood also looks perfect–a little too perfect. The ground is spotless, the lawns are immaculate, and the colors are a little too bright and saturated. It’s an old trick that lots of horror and thriller movies use. In Blue Velvet, David Lynch filmed the neighborhood of Lumberton in this manner to communicate its falsehood–that beneath the surface, there is a rot and evil.

The manicured nature of Ana’s life prompts the viewer to consider the suddenness with which life can go completely, irreversibly to shit. There’s no warning–it simply happens, with no chance for closure or to say goodbye. Instead, you just have to react and, hopefully, survive.

With enough attention paid, we can tell something terrible is unfolding. A patient at Ana’s hospital is likely a zombie victim. We hear bits of an emergency broadcast on the radio and television, although, of course, our characters don’t pay enough mind to it. This particular element is borrowed from the original Night of the Living Dead (1968), in which we heard about the zombie epidemic via radio–first in Barbara’s car, and later in the barricaded house.

Then the shit hits the fan–not in the middle of the night, like a more typical horror movie might have done, but in the wee hours of the morning. There’s something unseemly about getting one’s throat torn out before breakfast.

The neighborhood girl tears a hole in the husband’s neck, he bleeds out, and Ana goes into professional nurse mode–she tries to staunch the bleeding, and she gets on the phone to dial 911. Neither works, and in a matter of seconds, her husband’s corpse reanimates and attacks her.

The scene communicates several key points through staging and non-verbal communication. First, we get a rudimentary idea of how the zombies in this universe work. You get attacked, you die, you come back. Second, Ana realizes her training will have limited practicality. And third, she needs to divorce herself of emotional attachments. This is not a scenario where she has time to grieve or seek closure. She needs to kill or be killed. Everyone has been reduced to an animal state; the zombies are the predators, and the uninfected are the prey.

Then Ana goes outside, and everything she sees reinforces the prior points. A neighbor points a gun at her before he’s hit by an out-of-control ambulance. (How’s that for irony?) This is a world where panic will kill people as easily as the zombies. We see a gas station blow up, which has all sorts of long-term implications. The infrastructure of this world is quickly coming undone, which will affect people’s ability to contact and reach each other.

And Ana’s a quick learner–a woman asks for help, and she drives on by. She can’t trust anyone. And when a man attempts to steal the car, it only underlines this idea. Not only can she not help other people, but she has to worry whether those people are openly hostile.

In the ensuing scuffle, she loses control of her car and crashes into a tree. The screen goes black. And what ensues is one of the finest opening credits scenes of the last 20 years.

The song, for starters, is “The Man Comes Around,” by Johnny Cash. It’s the first track on American IV, the final album that Cash released in his lifetime, and his final masterpiece. The recording sessions were marked by morbidity. Cash was dying slowly; he was mostly blind, and diabetic neuropathy and pneumonia had ravaged his body.

His voice, one of the strongest in country music, had been diminished to a shaky rasp. Covers and traditional Americana made up the bulk of the album, but “The Man Comes Around” was the lone original song written by Cash, inspired by the Book of Revelation. It is a terrifying song, written by someone who knows the end is near. But despite its morbidity, it still has the rhythmic back beat that often defined Cash’s career. It’s a hell of a juxtaposition. And it communicated something subliminally: We’re about to watch a movie that’s horrifying, but a whole lot of fun.

The images that play over the music are a combination of original zombie footage and real-life footage of riots and urban warfare, and they’re edited together so seamlessly that you’re not entirely sure where one ends and the other begins. This strikes at the principal fear that contextualizes all zombie media: It’s your neighbors, your loved ones, and your fellow citizens who are the monsters. And this blurring, between what’s fake and real, makes it plain that humanity’s savagery is closer to the surface than we’d care to admit.

Romero, despite liking the remake overall, criticized the film in several interviews after its release. “… It sort of lost its reason for being,” said Romero in an interview with Uproxx. But there’s one thing that Romero and nearly every horror fan agreed upon. The first 10-15 minutes–from the opening scene at the hospital to the conclusion of the opening credits–are near-perfect. They throw you into a state of confusion and excitement for what’s to come. Then they ground a ridiculous premise in reality, by seamlessly editing news footage and zombie footage together over an upbeat Johnny Cash tune. It’s the end of the world. But we’re going out with a bang.

New On Hulu In April 2024: Vanderpump Villa, Mission: Yozakura Family, Shazam 2, And More

With March more than half over, Hulu has released its schedule of all the new movies and shows coming to its streaming platform in April 2024.

On April 1, viewers can watch the series premiere of Vanderpump Villa, a Hulu original. According to a press release, the upcoming show will be an “unscripted docu-drama” that follows the Lisa Vanderpump staff as they work/live at an exclusive French estate called the Chateau Rosabelle.

But if you’re looking for something with a little more action, don’t worry. Shazam! Fury of the Gods will also be dropping on April 1. The superhero film set in the DCEU tells the story of Billy Batson and his family teaming up to save the world from a pack of angry gods.

Anime fans may be excited to hear that Mission: Yozakura Family will premiere on April 7. The upcoming anime is based on the manga of the same name, written and drawn by Hitsuji Gondaira. The show tells the story of a young boy named Taiyou Asano who gets lured into a world of espionage

Below is a full list of everything coming to Hulu in April 2024:

April 1

  • Vanderpump Villa: Series Premiere
  • Annie – 2014 (Movie)
  • The Big Lebowski – 1998 (Movie)
  • Blair Witch – 2016 (Movie)
  • Blockers – 2018 (Movie)
  • Boys on the Side – 1995 (Movie)
  • Capone – 2020 (Movie)
  • Captain Phillips – 2013 (Movie)
  • Copycat – 1995 (Movie)
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days – 2012 (Movie)
  • Don’t Worry Darling – 2022 (Movie)
  • The Fifth Element – 1997 (Movie)
  • The Fog – 1997 (Movie)
  • Get Him to the Greek – 2010 (Movie)
  • The Grudge 2 – 2006 (Movie)
  • Hellboy – 2004 (Movie)
  • The Host – 2006 (Movie)
  • The Huntsman: Winter’s War – 2016 (Movie)
  • Jack The Giant Slayer – 2013 (Movie)
  • The Karate Kid – 2010 (Movie)
  • Letters to Juliet – 2010 (Movie)
  • Made in America – 1993 (Movie)
  • The Next Karate Kid 30th Anniversary – 1994 (Movie)
  • Ocean’s Eleven – 2011 (Movie)
  • Ocean’s Thirteen – 2004 (Movie)
  • Pacific Rim – 2013 (Movie)
  • Runaway Jury – 2003 (Movie)
  • Seven Years in Tibet – 1997 (Movie)
  • Shazam! – 2019 (Movie)
  • Shazam! Fury of the Gods – 2023 (Movie)
  • Take Shelter – 2011 (Movie)
  • Wonder Woman – 2017 (Movie)
  • You Don’t Mess With The Zohan – 2008 (Movie)
  • X2: X-Men United – 2003 (Movie)
  • 50: First Dates – 2004 (Movie)

April 2

  • iHeartRadio Music Awards 2024: Special Premiere
  • The Interrogation Room: Complete Season 1
  • Jumanji: The Next Level – 2019 (Movie)

April 3

  • UFO Factory: Complete Season 1

April 4

  • FX’s American Horror Story: Delicate: Part 2 Premiere
  • American Pickers: Complete Season 24B
  • Best in Chow: Complete Season 1
  • Dark Marvels: Complete Season 1
  • Mountain Men: Ultimate Marksman: Complete Season 1B
  • Lord of Misrule – 2013 (Movie)

April 5

  • Dinosaur: Complete Season 1
  • She Came to Me – 2023 (Movie)

April 6

  • The Fable: Series Premiere

April 7

  • GO! GO! Loser Ranger!: Series Premiere
  • Mission: Yozakura Family: Series Premiere (Subbed)

April 8

  • Ishura: Complete Season 1 (Dubbed)

April 9

  • The Grudge – 2020 (Movie)
  • Teen Titans Go! To The Movies – 2018 (Movie)

April 10

  • Blood Free: Two-Episode Series Premiere
  • Grand Cayman: Secrets in Paradise: Series Premiere
  • The Incredible Dr. Pol: Season 24 Premiere
  • Sand Land: The Series: Two Episode Premiere (Dubbed)
  • Curtain Call: Complete Season 1
  • Kusama: Infinity – 2018 (Movie)

April 11

  • Cold Case Files: The Rifkin Murders: Complete Season 1
  • Scraps: Complete Season 1
  • #TextMeWhenYouGetHome: Complete Season 2
  • Immediate Family – 2022 (Movie)
  • Trapped in the Farmhouse – 2023 (Movie)

April 12

  • The Channel – 2023 (Movie)
  • The Greatest Hits – 2024 (Movie)

April 13

  • Alone – 2020 (Movie)

April 15

  • A Kind Of Murder – 2016 (Movie)
  • The Strangers – 2020 (Movie)

April 17

  • See You in Another Life: Complete Season 1
  • Under the Bridge: Series Premiere
  • Drain the Oceans: Season 6 Premiere
  • Dr. Oakley, Yukon Vet: Season 12 Premiere

April 18

  • All You Can Eat: Complete Season 1
  • Secrets of Miss America: Complete Season 1
  • 60 Days In: Complete Season 8
  • Amish Stud: The Eli Weaver Story – 2023 (Movie)
  • Blacklight – 2022 (Movie)

April 19

  • FX’s Welcome to Wrexham: Season 3 Premiere
  • Tattoo Fixers: Complete Seasons 1-4

April 20

  • High Hopes: Complete Season 1
  • The Marijuana Revolution: Complete Season 1

April 22

  • Hip-Hop and The White House: Documentary
  • Secrets of the Octopus: Special Premiere
  • Little Women – 2019 (Movie)
  • Yes, God, Yes – 2019 (Movie)

April 23

  • The Meg – 2018 (Movie)

April 24

  • Wonderful World: Complete Season 1
  • Talking Sabor: Complete Season 1

April 25

  • Booked: First Day In: Complete Season 1
  • Mountain Men: Complete Season 11
  • Wahlburgers: Complete Season 7
  • Barber – 2023 (Movie)
  • Boy in the Walls – 2023 (Movie)

April 26

  • Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story: Complete Docuseries

April 27

  • FX’s The New York Times Presents: Broken Horses: Special Premiere
  • American Woman – 2018 (Movie)

April 28

  • Isn’t It Romantic – 2019 (Movie)
  • Stars at Noon – 2022 (Movie)
  • Welcome to Smelliville – 2021 (Movie)

April 30

  • FX’s The Veil: Limited Series Premiere

Xbox Expansion Card Gets Nice Discount, Will Sell Out Quickly

Best Buy has a great deal on the Western Digital Black 1TB C50 Expansion Card for Xbox Series X|S. As part of the retailer’s “Drops” program, you can snag the card for $125 (was $150). This matches the best price ever at Best Buy and is the cheapest offer since Black Friday. Best Buy Drops is a relatively new initiative that is essentially the equivalent of Amazon’s Lightning Deals. It’s used for restocked items that will sell out fast and limited-time deals that are particularly good. At the time of writing, Best Buy still had roughly two-thirds of its inventory left–but the deal will likely disappear within a day.

Deals on Xbox Series X|S expansion cards are rare, and we typically only see them during major sales events like Black Friday and Prime Day.

Though you can plug regular USB external hard drives into your Xbox Series X|S, you can only use them to store Series X|S games. You can’t launch new-gen games from proprietary storage devices unless you insert the officially licensed Seagate or Western Digital expansion cards into the dedicated slot on your Series X|S.

Thanks to the Xbox Velocity proprietary technology, there’s no loss of data transfer speed either as you’ll still enjoy really fast loading times on your games and the Quick Resume function to switch between them in mere seconds.

Apex Legends Streamers Hacked During ALGS Tournament, And The Suspected Cause Is Ironic

The Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS) regional finals have been delayed for North America after two players were hacked mid-game over the weekend, and ironically, it seems the Apex’s anti-cheat software may be to blame.

DarkZero’s GenBurten (real name: Noyan Oskoze) was hit first, when he mysteriously gained the ability to see enemy players through walls in the middle of a match. Later, TSM’s ImperialHal (Phillip Dosen) suddenly found himself unintentionally aimbotting.

“I’m cheating! I’m cheating! I’m cheating!” Dosen exclaimed in shock when he realized what was happening. “I’m f***ing cheating, I have aimbot!”

As for Oskoze, the words “Apex hacking global series by Destroyer2009 & R4ndom” began to scroll across the screen as the streamer quickly took his hands off the controls, announcing, “I can see everyone!”

The Anti-Cheat Police Department–a volunteer-run organization that is unaffiliated with ALGS but specializes in “gathering intelligence on cheats to detect and disrupt cheating vendors”–weighed in on the situation on Twitter. It advised players competing in the event to protect their personal information by changing account passwords and putting other safeguards in place, like reinstalling their operating system.

The volunteer organization suspects that Apex’s Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) could be the source of the issue, with hackers using remote code execution (RCE) to inject cheats into streamers’ PCs. The Anti-Cheat Police Department also stressed that this exploit could be used for other nefarious purposes beyond disrupting ALGS–like remotely installing ransomware and other malicious software onto competitors’ machines.

Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment also made a statement on the incident via its official esports Twitter account, announcing that the North American regional finals would be postponed, and promising to share more information soon.

LinkedIn Is Getting Into Gaming

LinkedIn has confirmed that it is adding games onto its social media platform. However, no launch date has been announced yet.

“We’re playing with adding puzzle-based games within the LinkedIn experience to unlock a bit of fun, deepen relationships, and hopefully spark the opportunity for conversations,” a LinkedIn spokesperson told TechCrunch. “Stay tuned for more!”

According to leaked screenshots from web developer Nima Owji, the three games that look to be in development are “Queens,” “Crossclimb,” and “Blueprint.” They all seem to be rather simple puzzles games you’d see on platforms such as Wordle from The New York Times. Players can track of how often they play in order to keep their daily streaks.

LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, but it’s unclear how much involvement it has over this initiative. Microsoft bought LinkedIn back in 2016 for $26 billion, a number that has since been dwarfed by Microsoft’s own acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $74.5 billion in October 2023.

Social media apps have experimented with gaming, including Facebook. But the Facebook Gaming app was shut down in October 2022. Since then, its parent company, Meta, has focused on virtual and augmented reality with the release of various headsets. TikTok has also ventured into the gaming space as well, as it has already conducted tests in Southeast Asia.