Game News

Dragon’s Dogma 2 Update Arrives On PC And PS5, Adding A Much-Requested Feature

Capcom is finally letting Dragon’s Dogma 2 players begin a brand-new game after previously starting an adventure, something that surprisingly wasn’t available when the action-RPG launched earlier this month. It’s one of the major focuses of an update that’s now available on PS5 and PC. The patch should arrive on Xbox Series X|S “in the next few days.”

Other notable tweaks to Dragon’s Dogma 2 as part of the official patch notes include being able to obtain a dwelling earlier in the game and new graphical options on PS5. For example, PlayStation players can now turn off motion blur as well as cap frame rate at 30fps in the options menu.

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Now Playing: Dragon’s Dogma 2 GameSpot Video Review

Earlier this week, Capcom revealed that Dragon’s Dogma 2 would receive the critical new-game option that previously wasn’t available. This omission led to negative Steam user reviews, since people couldn’t even delete their save to start up a fresh playthrough.

Looking ahead, Capcom has plans for “improvements to frame rate” for Dragon’s Dogma 2. Another sore subject for players has been microtransactions, though there is already a Dragon’s Dogma 2 mod letting people circumvent them.

For more, check out 20 things to know before playing Dragon’s Dogma 2. Don’t forget to read GameSpot’s Dragon’s Dogma 2 review, either.

Full patch notes are below:

PlayStation 5 / Steam

  • Adding the option to start a new game when save data already exists.
  • Changing the number of “Art of Metamorphosis” items available at Pawn Guilds in the game to 99.
  • Making the quest that allows players to acquire their own dwelling (where they can save and rest) available earlier in the game.
  • Miscellaneous text display issues.
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes.

PlayStation 5

  • Adding the option* to switch Motion Blur on/off in Options.
  • Adding the option* to switch Ray Tracing on/off in Options.
  • Adding the option to set Frame Rate at Max 30fps in Options.

Steam

  • Improving quality when DLSS SUPER RESOLUTION is enabled.
  • Fixing an issue related to the display of models under some specific settings.

*These options won’t affect frame rate significantly. Improvements to frame rate are planned for future updates.

Updates to Xbox Series X|S are planned in the next few days.

Popular Call Of Duty Warzone Theory Debunked

An enduring fan theory about Call of Duty: Warzone is that the battle royale mode is populated in part by bots. However, Activision has now come out to say this is a bunch of baloney.

In a blog post, the company set the record straight. The only bots in Warzone are in the Bootcamp training mode, which goes live with the Season 3 launch in April. Activision said Bootcamp is Warzone’s only mode that has bots. If the company does decide to add bots to other Warzone modes, it’ll only be after informing fans of this.

“We’ll ensure the community is informed ahead of time,” Activision said.

Fans have long theorized that both Warzone and Modern Warfare III include AI bots in some instances, but this is the first time Activision is debunking that rumor for Warzone specifically. The belief amongst fans is that bots are infiltrating matches so players can easily pound them and have a better experience that encourages them to come back and play more.

Not every Warzone match begins with a full roster of players, and some fans have suggested it would be nice to see bots added to matches in these instances to round things out. Whether or not Warzone ever officially adds bots to the main modes remains to be seen.

Epic’s battle royale game Fortnite features bots in its standard modes, and has for years.

For more, check out GameSpot’s rundown of everything coming to Call of Duty in the Season 3 update, including a bunch of 4/20-themed content, a mode that turns fallen foes into mines, and the newest BlackCell DLC.

Take-Two Buys Gearbox Entertainment From Embracer For $460M

After months of rumors that Embracer Group was looking for buyers for Borderlands developer Gearbox Entertainment, the studio is now officially being sold to 2K parent company Take-Two Interactive in a deal worth $460 million.

Gearbox was one of Embracer Group’s biggest acquisitions when it bought the company in 2021, in a deal worth up to $1.3 billion. As the deal was based on Gearbox reaching certain milestones, it’s unclear how much of that $1.3 billion Embracer ended up paying out beyond $363 million in guaranteed upfront payments.

Now, as reported by Brian Crecente on X, Take-Two Interactive has purchased Gearbox for $460 million, which will be paid out in Take-Two shares. The purchase includes Gearbox Software in Texas, Gearbox Montreal, and Gearbox Studio Quebec, and will cover Gearbox IP including Borderlands and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Risk of Rain, Brothers in Arms, and Duke Nukem.

The sale doesn’t include Gearbox’s publishing arm in San Francisco, which published Remnant 2, and has publishing rights to the upcoming Hyper Light Breaker and other upcoming titles. The sale also excludes a number of studios purchased by Embracer through Gearbox Software, including Cryptic Studios, Lost Boys Interactive, and Captured Dimensions.

Take-Two has said that Gearbox will operate as a studio within 2K, which has a long history of partnering with Gearbox on the Borderlands series. Gearbox will continue to be led by its founder and CEO Randy Pitchford and his management team.

“My primary interest is always Gearbox, including our talent and our customers,” Pitchford said in a statement. “I want to personally ensure fans of our games that this arrangement will ensure that the experiences we have in development at Gearbox will be the best it can possibly be.”

“We are thrilled to welcome Randy Pitchford and his team of passionate, talented developers to 2K and we look forward to releasing numerous projects in the future as colleagues,” said David Ismailer, president of 2K. “We have loved partnering with Gearbox on every iteration of the Borderlands franchise and are excited to be in active development on the next installment in the series.”

In its own statement, Embracer co-founder and CEO Lars Wingefors refers to the divestment as part of a “transition to becoming a leaner and more focused company,” saying the transaction will “lower business risk and improve profitability.”

After a spree of large-scale acquisitions in the last few years, Embracer has now started downsizing, resulting in company-wide layoffs, cancelled games, and divestment of some of its assets. Last month it was revealed that Saber Interactive, which is currently working on the Star Wars: KOTOR remake, would split off to become an independent company, following a sale to private investors worth $500 million.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 Buying Guide: All Editions, Delivery Estimates, And More

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is finally here, and it’s living up to the lofty expectations set by its predecessor. If you’re a fan of open-world RPGs, Dragon’s Dogma 2 offers a wonderful sense of adventure and a deep combat system that improves on the original. Before you pick up a copy, it is worth noting that the PC version has technical issues that Capcom is working on fixing, including steep drops in frame rate. With that in mind, we put together a roundup of where to buy physical and digital versions of Dragon’s Dogma 2, including details on shipping times, pickup in store options, and more. It’s also possible to get the game for less than retail price, if you know where to shop.

If you want to read more about the game before you buy, check out our Dragon’s Dogma 2 review, which awarded Capcom’s new RPG a 9/10.

Disclosure: GameSpot and Fanatical are both owned by Fandom.

Game Reviews

Open Roads Review – Quick Trip

I once read in a very profound article published in a very prestigious magazine (okay, it was a TikTok) that “daddy issues” make artists while “mommy issues” make writers. I can’t attest to the science–or lack thereof–behind this statement, but as a writer born into a long line of guarded women who wielded pens as weapons, I can absolutely relate.

As such, I have a particular fondness for mother-daughter stories and the catharsis they can offer. When I heard the team behind Gone Home would be tackling the subject in their upcoming game Open Roads, I braced for a beautiful cross-country journey that would inevitably hit too close to home. However, while Open Roads has moments of relatability that are powered by solid dialogue, charming characters, and nostalgia, I was ultimately left underwhelmed by the walk-and-click exploration game. With a runtime too short to truly pull players in and an abrupt ending that leaves things feeling hastily resolved, Open Roads feels more like a pit stop than an adventure.

That’s not to say the game’s premise isn’t interesting. Open Roads begins shortly after the death of the Devine family matriarch, Helen, and follows her daughter Opal and her granddaughter Tess as they cope with loss and what to do next. Throughout the entirety of the game, we play as Tess, a 16-year-old high school student who is every bit as strong-willed, cheeky, and hopeful as most 16-year-old girls are. On top of her grandmother’s death, Tess is also processing her parents’ recent separation and the loss of her home, as she and her mother lived with Helen but were not given the house upon her death.

While cleaning out her grandmother’s home, Tess and Opal stumble upon a suitcase buried within the attic walls and find what appears to be evidence of Helen’s secret life and a passionate love affair. With a week to go until the house is sold and an empty agenda, the pair set off on a series of short trips to get to the bottom of Helen’s mysterious life.

At each of the game’s handful of locations, you walk around as Tess and interact with objects from different time periods ranging primarily from the late ’60s to the early 2000s–the time the game is set in–that are sure to be familiar to many American millennials. Occasionally you’ll be able to pocket the items to use later, adding a slight puzzle element to what is otherwise a game driven by simple exploration, though these moments are few and far between. Certain items will also prompt you to call for your mom, who will chime in, add context, or mull over your findings with you. All this makes for straight-forward gameplay that can, unfortunately, start to feel a bit dull as the game goes on.

Outside of exploring the game’s dusty abodes and dimly lit motels, Tess spends most of her time riding shotgun in her mom’s late-’90s sedan. There, she’ll have the chance to cycle through mostly static-filled radio stations, chat with her mom, or use her trusty flip phone to text her father or best friend. Yet for a game titled Open Roads, your time spent on the road is extremely brief and only happens a handful of times, which ultimately takes away from the road-trip experience and doesn’t help to break up its repetitive gameplay.

This is a recurring issue, as the game in its entirety is too brief to effectively address everything it sets up or fully establish a deep sense of relatability and emotional connection. This is a shame considering the underlying plot is interesting and the game’s characters are very endearing. Though Kaitlyn Dever and Keri Russell might be known for their live-action careers, the pair bring a lot of personality to Tess and Opal respectively. Even Helen, who has no speaking parts and appears in the game only through grainy photographs, has a lot of personality. In fact, her vivaciousness is a frequent subject of discussion between Tess and Opal, who both exhibit her more free-spirited behavior, albeit in different ways. This is another aspect of the game I really enjoyed, as it’s all too often that mothers are written as protective, worrisome, uptight, and relatively flat–Open Roads avoids falling into that trap.

However, I also think Open Roads pivots a bit too far away from this mother-daughter tension. Sure, Tess and Opal do have their spats and Opal frequently expresses frustration towards some of her late mother’s actions, but for a pair going through grief, divorce, major life transitions, and betrayal, there’s a lack of drama that turns into a lack of evolution and catharsis. Between its overall brevity and hesitation to dig into messiness–humanness, even–Open Roads puts up a bit of a wall between the player and its story. As a result, I found I liked its characters, but I didn’t feel much towards them. While they were relatable enough, I didn’t find myself in them.

Sure, not all mother-daughter relationships are contentious or imitate Lady Bird, but in shying away from the emotional, you lose, well, emotions. For example, even with all the big plot points unraveling around them, the most impactful conversation in the game, to me, was the one Tess and Opal have after Tess accidentally leaves her phone at the hotel and demands they go back. As an adult, you’re able to see the situation rationally: It makes sense to finish up the drive and grab the phone on the way back–it’ll only be a night without it, after all. But Tess’s dialogue options are limited and a bit more intense than usual–she needs her phone. And despite being 30 years old, I still felt that desperation.

It’s clear that Open Roads wants to have meaningful conversations about generational trauma, the oft-dismissed complexity of mothers, and how humans have different ways of showing love, a fact that can lead to pain when misunderstood, and I wanted to have them too. Yet it doesn’t offer the time or vulnerability to dig into these interesting topics. And while some of its story beats are unique, or offer at least a slight variation on ones we’ve perhaps seen before, all of these stories end somewhat abruptly and without much fanfare or introspection.

Where the game does succeed in storytelling, however, is in its environments. Presumably thanks to the studio’s pedigree and history of working on exploration games like Gone Home and Tacoma, you can tell there is an understanding of how to make locations nostalgic without pandering, interesting but not overwhelming, and immersive but not disjointed. Though I’m slowly discovering that a lot of first-person exploration games make me a bit nauseous (definitely a “me” problem here, so I don’t fault Open Roads), I really enjoyed walking around the environments the studio created. There were so many objects and pieces of decor that reminded me of the ones I grew up with, and it was interesting to note how these objects–and the memories attached to them–moved me more deeply than a lot of the game’s conversations.

At every location, there were little reminders–be it newspaper clippings, a Blockbuster copy of Clueless, or a CorningWare-style casserole dish–of the time that had passed. Sure, this sense of place is aided by some of Tess and Opal’s conversations–I particularly loved the one in which Tess admits to her less-computer-inclined mother that her idea of a wild Friday night consists of pizza rolls and The Sims, because same–but a heavy amount of lifting is done by the artistry and detail put into creating these locations.

I also really enjoyed Open Roads’ character art, which feels inspired by the animated films ’90s kids grew up watching. The style stands out against the more realistic-looking environments and works well with the game’s voice acting, though the lack of proper lip-syncing did feel awkward at times. More awkward, however, was the game’s sound, which felt almost incomplete. I had expected to hear songs and sounds that would take me back to 2003, yet they were noticeably absent. While I wasn’t expecting to hear “Stacy’s Mom” or “Hey Ya!” pop on the radio, having multiple radios and TVs that you could interact with that did effectively nothing was a bit of a letdown.

It’s unfortunate that “letdown” and “underwhelmed” are words I’ve used multiple times when talking about Open Roads because there’s still so much about the game that works. The overall narrative touches on some meaningful topics, there’s a fair amount of intrigue, plenty of well-crafted dialogue, some interesting characters, and a lot of heart. Yet most things fall frustratingly short or are cut off far too early, making the whole experience slightly lackluster. Despite being a game about a mother-daughter road trip, the game doesn’t go too far and that relationship is left only slightly altered rather than meaningfully examined and changed.

Pepper Grinder Review – Short And Spicy

It only takes a glance to understand Pepper Grinder’s inventive gimmick. A small girl named Pepper–a pirate by trade–wields a drill named Grinder that’s roughly the size of her entire body. The gear allows her to grind through soft surfaces with ease, complete with the ability to launch out of the surface with a leap. That might have been enough to carry the game by itself, but what’s most surprising about Pepper Grinder is its sheer variety. Though it’s short, that brevity helps to make the campaign a no-filler thrill ride that continuously pushes the boundaries of its central mechanic.

It turns out Grinder is a pretty versatile tool, even regarding its most basic function. You can burrow through the ground, which immediately feels natural and smooth. At the same time, you can’t simply turn on a dime with an instant about-face like a typical platformer–you have to handle turns by curving an arc out of your drilling path. Additionally, when you pop out of the surface of the dirt, you won’t gain much distance unless you jump just before breaking through. Those little touches give the core mechanic a sense of finesse, imitating the feeling of a playful dolphin–or at least, a dolphin video game like the classic Ecco.

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Now Playing: Pepper Grinder GameSpot Video Review

Once you get the hang of it, drilling through soil and leaping out of the surface in a perfect arc, only to catch another piece of soft ground in the distance and continue your digging, feels thrilling and acrobatic. The drillable surfaces are nicely differentiated from hard environmental pieces, so you quickly learn to read a level and see the path through it, evoking a feeling similar to performing a great run in Tony Hawk. Collectibles like gems are scattered strategically throughout the stages to both subtly guide your eye along the path, while also sometimes setting traps for your greed.

Aside from being a traversal tool, Grinder is also your primary and often only weapon. It’s not enough to simply run into most enemies with a spinning drill, though–they often have their own specific approach to defeat them, like beetles with a hard upper carapace who need to be stabbed from the underside by burrowing underground. The main enemies, a breed of vicious narwhal-like creatures with horns on their head, are just as capable of hurting you with a head-on collision as you are of hurting them. None of the regular enemies are terribly tough by themselves, but they introduce new ways of approaching stages and obstacles as you need to get around them or through them to continue on your path.

A platformer with a standout hook like this one probably could have coasted on it, but Pepper Grinder doesn’t rest on its laurels. Instead, it consistently introduces new elements to master. These either integrate with your balletic burrowing or provide a change of pace from it. Grabbing a key with your drill will make it turn a lock, and you can use the kinetic energy to power machines. You’ll also shoot from cannons, drill holes into the bottoms of ships to make them take on water, carve through skyscrapers to make them collapse as you traverse through, and even pilot a giant mech. What appears at first to be a simple tool gives way to constant delightful little surprises.

A series of boss battles ramp up the difficulty nicely, taking the skills you’ve learned and putting them to the test. The first is relatively straightforward, as you dodge projectiles by moving through the soil and wait for the opportune moment to attack from the underside, while the second severely limits the amount of soft ground available and challenges you to leap high into the air to do damage. They progress from there, including one tough encounter with another human-like character that has roughly your size and agility. All this leads to a final boss encounter that is one of the most tense and difficult retro platformer bosses I’ve seen in a long time, which felt satisfying to overcome.

And on top of all this, Pepper Grinder carries itself with a cute, pixel-punk personality. Pepper’s diminutive sprite artwork has a charm to it, like how she revs up her trusty drill threateningly when coming face-to-face with a boss, or how she raises her pirate flag to declare victory in an area. The enemies can sometimes be seen doing their own pirate duties before you crash their party. And though story sequences are few and far between, they were just enough to explain what was going on with mimed, dialogue-free action. A short story sequence just before the final boss even made me laugh out loud.

This gentle giant is one of the fantastical creatures in Pepper Grinder.

Gallery

At such a breakneck pace of new ideas, Pepper Grinder doesn’t last very long, which is to its credit. I finished the campaign in roughly four hours, which is a relatively short playtime. Every stage also has a time-trial option, and there are still collectibles and cosmetics to unlock like stickers and hairstyles. The most important collectibles are Skull Coins, a limited resource–five per stage–that can be used to unlock special bonus stages in each of the four worlds. These are used to further explore gameplay concepts that had been introduced in the main stages. The first one, for example, takes the cannon mechanic to its logical conclusion with an entire stage built around ping-ponging from cannon to cannon, which felt pleasanlty reminiscent of Donkey Kong Country’s famous barrel stages.

Perhaps because of its brevity, I enjoyed every minute, and I appreciate the rare instance of a game that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Rather than slog through filler stages to pad its length, Pepper Grinder is bursting with new ideas for exactly as long as it can sustain that momentum. There’s something admirable about approaching its length with that level of confidence. I would have loved to play even more, if it could have sustained that pace, but this felt like a conscious choice to let the best ideas shine.

Pepper Grinder is here for a good time, not for a long time. Every piece, from the core drilling mechanic itself to the various ways it manifests with cannons and mechs and more, feels meticulously engineered to teach you a new concept, wring the fun out of it, and then move on to the next. That sense of propulsion makes every moment fun and engaging. It’s a great little gem of a game which, like its heroine, may be small in size but makes every bit count.

MLB The Show 24 Review – Base Hit

A lot of people will tell you that Hank Aaron is the greatest to ever play the game of baseball. Bob Kendrick, President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, is one of those people, and it’s easy to see why. You only have to look at Hammerin’ Hank’s stats–755 home runs and 3,771 hits in Major League Baseball–his outstanding consistency across 23 big league seasons, or the fact that he achieved all of this after such humble beginnings. Growing up, Aaron had few opportunities to play organized baseball. In fact, he had few opportunities to even use the right equipment. Instead, a young Henry Aaron would take his mom’s broomstick and use it as a makeshift bat to hit bottlecaps–it’s no wonder he ended up being so good.

I knew of Hank Aaron’s incredible career, but supplemental details like this are part of what makes Storylines such a captivating and enlightening experience. If last year’s game was all about introducing this brilliant and groundbreaking new mode, then MLB The Show 24 is more about fine-tuning the existing framework. This isn’t an uncommon approach for annual sports games, and while Sony San Diego’s latest baseball sim might not seem as fresh or exciting as last year’s offering, it still plays an excellent game of baseball while possessing a tangible reverence for the sport’s rich history and inherent romanticism. Players are more than just stats and numbers, after all.

This is where Storylines comes in, and it’s once again the highlight of the whole package. Like any good TV series, MLB The Show 24 returns with a second season of The Negro Leagues, exploring an era of baseball that has often been overlooked and forgotten. At launch, there are four stories to play through, shining a spotlight on the aforementioned Henry “Hank” Aaron, as well as Josh Gibson, Walter “Buck” Leonard, and Toni Stone, with more set to arrive in forthcoming updates.

MLB The Show 24

Bob Kendrick’s charismatic and insightful narration brings these tales to life, aided by slickly produced videos that weave in historical photographs, original artwork, and archival footage to paint a portrait of these players and their profound impact on baseball and American culture. In between these video packages, you’ll play through pivotal moments from each player’s career, from Aaron’s first hit as a member of the Milwaukee Braves to Josh Gibson’s decimation of MLB pitching in exhibition games–where he batted a ridiculous .426. Perhaps the most interesting collection of episodes focuses on the career of Toni Stone, a true trailblazer who became the first woman to play for a professional baseball team when she took Hank Aaron’s roster spot after he departed the Negro Leagues for the MLB.

Alongside these eye-opening tales, MLB The Show 24 also expands on the Storylines concept by adding a series on legendary New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter. By using a New York subway motif as the backdrop for Jeter’s story, the former captain recounts important moments from the first few years of his storied career as you travel along the tracks from 1996 to 2000. Starting with his first steps as an unheralded rookie to achieving legendary status as the Yankees won three consecutive World Series titles, Jeter gives you an insight into his and the team’s mindset during this monumental run. There are also three side stories that center on the other members of the Yankees’ Core Four: Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, and Andy Pettitte. These stories are brief, consisting of a single video package, but completing each additional mission unlocks their player cards for use in Diamond Dynasty.

As a Yankees fan, I enjoyed Jeter’s retelling of the era’s events, along with being able to recreate moments like his iconic jump-throw and a number of his clutch hits. Admittedly, however, it’s not the most interesting collection of stories. This is a team and player that won four championships in five years with little to no adversity, while Jeter himself was relatively drama-free off the field. It doesn’t make for the most compelling narrative, but the inclusion of Jeter’s Storylines does at least set a precedent for the series where we’ll hopefully see more engrossing tales in the future, whether the focal point is on a single Hall of Fame player or an entire team.

MLB The Show 24

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Road to the Show, meanwhile, lets you create and play as a woman for the first time. There are specific video packages that differ from those in the male career, with MLB Network analysts embracing the historical significance of a woman being drafted by an MLB team. A separate narrative based around you getting drafted alongside a childhood friend also differentiates the female career from the male side–which lacks any kind of story–while considerations like a private dressing room add an element of authenticity. The majority of cutscenes play out via text message, however, replacing the series’ previous narration with a hackneyed alternative.

The only other new addition to Road to the Show is the return of the Draft Combine, which gives you three games to improve your draft ranking by playing well against other prospects. While it’s good to see the combine back, it’s a fairly superfluous addition for those who simply want to choose which team to play for rather than leaving it up to fate. It also doesn’t take into account starting pitchers, dropping your draft stock because you’re only able to play in one of the three available games. The inclusion of women is a positive one, but Road to the Show is still in desperate need of an overhaul to its tired loadout system and bland presentation.

Franchise remains mostly the same, aside from one new addition with the potential to completely alter how you engage with the mode. Custom Game Entry Conditions is a setting that lets you simulate games until certain conditions are met, at which point you’re able to take control. You can customize these conditions based on how critical the situation is by tinkering with a situation-importance slider that ranges from low to very high.

You’re able to pick the earliest inning you’re willing to enter games, and can also ensure that you’ll always jump into player-highlight moments, such as finishing off a potential no-hitter or extending a batter’s hitting streak. With this setting, you might decide you only want to enter games during high-leverage situations in the ninth inning or play from the seventh inning onwards in tight games. This alleviates the grind of a full 162-game season while keeping you invested and making sure you have an impact on games that might mean the difference between making the playoffs or missing out on October baseball. The one side-effect of this addition is that Road to October and its truncated seasons now feel obsolete, but improving Franchise makes this a worthy trade-off.

Diamond Dynasty, the card-collecting and squad-building mode, is also not too dissimilar from last year’s game. The implementation of Sets and Seasons has been tweaked, with longer seasons giving you more playing time with season-limited cards. The amount of top-rated cards attainable at the beginning of a season has also been reduced to give you something to build towards.

Cards will now gradually escalate in power over the course of a single season so you won’t be rocking a 99-rated team after a single week. These are positive changes in what remains the most approachable of the many card-collecting modes in sports games, such is the ease with which you’re able to acquire great players without spending a dime. The plethora of single and multiplayer modes is also a feather in its cap.

MLB The Show 24’s on-field action remains stellar. For the first time, new rules like the pitch clock, slightly larger bases, and limited pick-off attempts have been implemented. Impact Plays, a new addition that emphasizes great defense, are also new, reinforcing the impact of spectacular diving catches and difficult throws. Impact Plays are possible anytime you’re player-locked, such as in Road to the Show. If there’s a possibility for a highlight-reel play, the game will slow down and task you with completing a quick-time event. How you perform here determines how successful the play will be. It feels great each time you’re able to rob a batter of a base hit by plucking the ball out of the air moments before it touches the ground or firing a laser beam to first base to beat a runner. I only wish Impact Plays were more frequent and were included as an option when controlling a full team.

The continued absence of an online Franchise mode and the stale nature of Road to the Show are disappointing aspects of this release, but MLB The Show 24 still maintains the series’ commendable output with fantastic gameplay and another collection of fascinating stories exploring The Negro Leagues and its players. A journey through the exalted career of Derek Jeter might not be quite as gripping, but it builds on Storyline’s established framework and lays down an exciting blueprint for the mode’s future. The addition of women in Road to the Show is another positive step, further reinforcing the overarching theme that baseball is for everyone, while the ability to customize how you play Franchise mode makes it a much more palatable proposition for those embarking on a 162-game season. MLB The Show 24 might not swing for the fences, but it’s still a great way to spend the looming summer months.

Princess Peach Showtime Review – Drama Teacher

Princess Peach, the prototypical video game damsel in distress, has had limited success with her own solo adventures. On the rare occasion that she’s playable, she has typically been a sidekick in a larger adventure, like Super Mario RPG. Though she did land a starring role in Super Princess Peach, the game and its core mechanic—in which her powers were defined by wild mood swings—were a miss. Princess Peach Showtime is the latest attempt to make her own story, with nary a Mario or Luigi in sight, and this time she has come more into her own as an adventurer. More importantly, this solo outing seems primed at introducing new players to a wide variety of game genres. While veteran gamers will likely find the pacing too lethargic, it’s nice that Nintendo is making such a clear overture to welcome new players.

And when I say that there’s no Mario or Luigi, I mean at all. Nintendo’s most iconic characters aren’t even present in the intro, when Peach receives an invitation to come see the Sparkle Theater in a land occupied by Theets, little yellow creatures with bulbous noses. Upon arrival, the theater is taken over by a sorceress named Grape and her Sour Bunch goons, who kick out Peach’s loyal Toad companions, misplacing her crown in the process, and proceed to corrupt all the plays. Peach finds a guardian of the playhouse, a fairy named Stella, who accompanies peach by taking the form of a ribbon in her hair. (When Peach puts her hair up into a ponytail, you know it’s getting serious.) Stella is Peach’s default weapon, letting you use a whip-like motion to magically change objects and enemies in the environment, and it’s also the enabler for Peach’s various transformations.

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Now Playing: Princess Peach: Showtime! – Transformation Trailer

When Peach steps into a corrupted play, she finds a spark that lets her take on the role of its hero. These are broad archetypes like Swordfighter, Cowgirl, and Detective, and the 10 costume types allow for a broad range of different gameplay types. Once you’ve found your costumes in the first version of a stage, future stages of that type will start you with it already equipped. Each floor has four plays to conquer, after which you’ll fight a boss and gain access to the next floor. It’s all very easily understandable and flows nicely.

Since every stage is a sidescroller, I found that the plays felt most natural and familiar when they hewed closest to familiar sidescrolling action game mechanics. But even within those, there was some variety at play. The Swordfighter plays are modeled after a very traditional action game, light parry system included. The Cowgirl, on the other hand, is focused more on ranged attacks with your lasso, and the Kung-Fu stages included some lightly rhythmic fighting game mechanics. My personal favorite was Mighty Peach, a cute take on the henshin hero genre like Ultraman, in which Peach gets a robotic-looking power suit that she uses to fly through the air, take out invading UFOs, and lift buses over her head to throw at enemies or use as makeshift bridges. Those stages played almost like a shoot-em-up, with a unique focus on ricocheting ships and aliens into each other.

Some stages are less combat-focused but still handle like simplified platformers. The Ninja stages are centered on stealth, letting you hold up set dressing to blend in with the grass, or duck underwater and breathe through a reed while sneaking up on enemies. The Dashing Thief is focused mostly on a grappling hook as you run across rooftops. Other stages stray further from the platformer formula, like the Figure Skater stages that let you glide gracefully across the ice as you hit icon-coded stunt points to grab collectibles and ultimately defeat the evil Sour Bunch figure skater rival. The Mermaid stages take place almost entirely underwater and consist mostly of directing your siren singing voice–either to direct a group of fish where to go for solving puzzles, Pikmin-style, or to collect special singing-note fish to compose a song. They’re all variations on a theme to some extent, but they have enough slight differences to act as a rudimentary introduction to disparate game genres.

Then there are the costumes that stray furthest from traditional platforming mechanics, to mixed results. The Patissiere (pastry chef) stages are modeled after timing-based cooking games, as you bake batches of cookies or carefully apply frosting to cakes. These are a nice change of pace that really show the flexibility of the concept. The same can’t be said for the Detective stages, which are the weakest of the bunch. These consist almost entirely of walking around, talking to Theets, and then holding a button to point out an inconsistency with some object in the relatively small room. Even keeping in mind that these mysteries are aimed at younger children, the pace of these segments is particularly dull. From your movement speed to tracking something with your magnifying glass to holding the button to call out an inconsistency, everything feels just a little slower than it should be.

That said, the Detective stages, like all of the stages, carry an excellent eye for set design. Princess Peach Showtime works on two levels, as you have to both visually understand the goals and mechanics of the stage itself, while also taking notice that these are ultimately supposed to be stage plays. Many of the props and backgrounds are designed to look like stagecraft, and moving parts like Mighty Peach’s alien enemies or your Cowgirl’s trusty steed are made to look like puppetry, with seams and barely-visible strings. It’s a lovely, subtle touch that really sells the worldbuilding of the Sparkle Theater. The boss designs are equally inventive, as they’re built to look like pieces of behind-the-scenes stage pieces that have been cursed into fearsome beasts, like a massive snake made out lighting rigging to make up its segmented body.

Purrjector Cat is one of the stylized bosses based on stagecraft.

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As you proceed through each stage, you’ll find coins, as well as sparks that are ultimately used to gate access to each boss. These are plentiful enough that I never had to backtrack for more, which is a welcome change from other recent Nintendo games with similar gating structures. Your coins, meanwhile, can be used to purchase additional dress designs for Peach and ribbon colors for Stella. This isn’t very impactful, given that most of your time is spent in plays where Peach will be changed into her stage-appropriate costume, but it’s nice to see your customized Peach when she’s exploring the main floors of the theater at least. As you progress, you’ll also unlock special stages to rescue Sparklas, the Theet embodiment of each of the play’s characters, as well as elements like timed challenge stages. These serve as the culmination of the individual stories, and while they still aren’t very difficult, they are among the most challenging parts of the game. That should be enough to give the target audience the sense of a difficulty ramp. Plus, all of these collectibles means there’s plenty to do for completionists, but the gating isn’t so aggressive that it’s likely to frustrate players–especially the younger players who seem to be the target.

And just as Mario games have never been known for their strong stories, Princess Peach doesn’t escape that issue in her own solo outing. Grape is a typical evil cackling villain with a barely-stated plan or motivations. We never even get a clear idea of whether she intended to attack the theater while Peach was there, or if that was happenstance. This is too bad because the final confrontation is a gameplay highlight, ending on a high note that would be even better if we’d been given a more compelling villain to defeat. If anything, the stories in the individual plays themselves are often more interesting, thanks in part to some great, so-goofy-it’s-fun writing and animation work.

Princess Peach Showtime is a friendly, inviting game that’s made to be easy to digest. Some of the genres work better than others in this format, but none of them are too tricky or off-putting, and most of it will come down to personal taste. None of these stages are fleshed out enough to support their own game, but they’re an invitation for novice gamers to explore a bunch of different game types, with a charming (and apparently polymath) princess offering her gloved hand to welcome them in.

Rise Of The Ronin Review – Long-Term Investment

If someone tells me a game takes several hours to “get good,” my immediate feeling is that I will never play that game. Who has hours to waste waiting for the good part of anything when there are so many other games to play? But my opinion of Rise of the Ronin changed drastically over the course of my 50 hours of playtime–in the first five or 10 hours, I didn’t really like it. By the end, I was planning to dive back in to clear out side quests and replay key moments to see how the story might change. It’s a game that takes its time getting good, but once it finds its footing in samurai-sword duels and character-focused missions, your investment pays off.

The thing that turned the tide for me is the way Rise of the Ronin focuses on telling small, character-driven stories that weave together into a large, history-shaping narrative. The entire game is built on its “Bond” system, where doing side quests big and small builds your relationships with everyone, from the different provinces of Ronin’s massive open-world Japan, to the many characters you meet throughout the course of the game.

Though the Bond system isn’t particularly different from building up faction reputation, liberating map segments, or growing relationship stats with characters like you might see in other games, the focus on investing in all those things and people is illustrative of Team Ninja’s approach to the entire game. Your personal connection to everything in Rise of the Ronin is what makes it work, and the reason it’s worth it to power through its learning curve and less remarkable opening hours.

Rise of the Ronin puts you into the role of a samurai trained alongside another warrior from childhood to be an unstoppable, sword-wielding fighting duo for a group called the Veiled Edge. It’s the 1860s and Japan is opening itself to foreign powers, including the United States and England, creating political strife. On a mission to assassinate a powerful American, your “blade twin” sacrifices themselves so you can escape. Soon after, the rest of the Veiled Edge is wiped out for rebelling against Japan’s government, the shogunate. You set out alone, a ronin warrior without a clan, but soon discover your blade twin is rumored to have survived. What ensues is a lot of politics, intrigue, and adventure.

With no clan to serve, you essentially become a sword for hire and lots of people want your help, which you exchange for leads in finding your blade twin. The main part of Rise of the Ronin’s gameplay is stealthily sneaking up on enemies to assassinate them, and fighting duels. Combat has a similar fast-paced feel to games like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Ghost of Tsushima, with an emphasis on parrying enemies at the right moment and using different fighting styles to counter your opponents. Fights are frenetic, but for that early portion, they’re also frustrating thanks to a combination of weird controls and enemies who will often deploy intense, overwhelming force against you.

Rise of the Ronin

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You and every fighter you come across have both a health bar and a Ki gauge, which is akin to a stamina meter. Ki powers every blow, dodge, and block, and if you run out of Ki and are struck while blocking, you’ll be dazed for a few seconds, opening you up to more punishment. Your goal in every fight–especially with tougher opponents–is to strike blows while parrying their attacks, breaking their rhythm and whittling down their Ki to stagger them. When staggered, most normal enemies can be executed, while tougher foes and bosses take a big hit, then get their Ki back to go another round. It sounds pretty standard, especially with the ubiquity of Souls-likes and similar styles of swordplay focused on parrying, stamina, and breaking an enemy’s posture. Rise of the Ronin has its own take on the approach, though, and it took me a while to build up the skill to actually enjoy it.

The main two elements of sword fights are Martial attacks, which are powerful special moves, and Countersparks, which are flowery parry moves. Like Sekiro and its posture system, your main goal in Rise of the Ronin is to parry enemy blows until you can stagger them. But Countersparks are kind of weird, especially at first. They’re not just straight parries; they’re fast, short-range attacks with their own forward momentum. Missing the timing on a parry usually means you still hit the opponent and the opponent hits you, but there are plenty of times when a Counterspark can move you past the enemy altogether. It creates a strange flow to your fight movements that takes a lot of getting used to.

Rise of the Ronin borrows a bit from Souls-like combat in that enemies will sometimes power through your strikes with their own attack animations, so you need to recognize when to attack and when to hold back. Yet Ronin wants fights to be fast and aggressive, so if you Counterspark certain attacks, you’ll knock the enemy off-balance and open up a brief counter-strike opportunity. This also creates an unusual rhythm–you can Counterspark most of a combo chain from an enemy to no benefit, because the only attack that truly matters for parrying is the last or strongest in the chain. That means your strategy should actually be to safely block your way through a series of attacks, and Counterspark only the final move.

That requirement makes Countersparks unintuitive because the urge to parry has to be strategically resisted. Sometimes you can skillfully parry a bunch of moves in a row and wind up being punished for it anyway; other times, you may be rewarded just for hammering the button against a tough opponent. Mostly, though, you’re spending the first few battles against any tough enemy trying to figure out when the correct time to parry is and getting demolished by quick, relentless strikes in the meantime. It’s not a bad parry system–I came to enjoy Rise of the Ronin’s approach quite a bit once I understood how it worked and could start to read its enemies and their attacks–but the extra motion and timing are at odds with similar games, so you’ll have to unlearn a few things to acclimate yourself.

Enemy Martial attacks are marked by a red glow that indicates you can’t just block them like you can with normal strikes. That means you have to avoid them with a well-timed dodge, or knock them down with a perfectly timed Counterspark for big Ki damage. You have Martial attacks of your own that are great as counterattacks when you successfully knock an enemy off-balance, but they’re not unblockable like enemy ones are and cost extra Ki to execute.

Martial attacks are cool additions to your repertoire, but in enemy hands, they add to the learning curve and pile on some frustration in the early game, as fighting in Rise of the Ronin is usually very fast. You’ll often get hit with a series of attacks you have to block your way through, taking a ton of damage to your Ki, only to get blasted by a devastating Martial attack that cuts your defenses and hurts you even more. Then you get staggered, leaving you open to further walloping, or knocked off your feet and subject to a standing-up animation that lasts just long enough for the enemy to lay into you again with no defenses. One screw-up can lead to a beatdown that’s tough to recover from.

Especially early on, this combat pacing is annoyingly brutal–one particular early boss fight had a massive difficulty spike that held me up for a couple hours. For a game that easily lasts more than 50 hours and has a similar fight at the end of every single mission, being stuck on the same boss for that long was grueling. Fortunately, Rise of the Ronin lets you change the difficulty whenever you want, so you can drop to its easier mode if a fight is giving you trouble, then increase the challenge once you’re over the hump.

It was only later that I started to appreciate the combat system’s combination of elements. That includes the timing of Countersparks, as well as things like the ability to change your fighting style on the fly once you’ve learned new ones. When you approach an enemy, an icon will appear next to their name that indicates both how tough a fight they’ll be and whether their fighting style is strong or weak to your own. You can have two main weapons equipped at any time–which include katanas, odachis, European-style sabers and greatswords, and spears–and three styles for each one, which can be quickly swapped to deal with just about any opponent. Picking the right style to deal with an enemy greatly enhances the effectiveness of your Counterspark, so once I got the hang of parrying and using the right styles and weapons for certain enemies, battles started to click, becoming intense, hard-fought duels that also made me feel like a legendary swordsman.

Rise of the Ronin

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Against the toughest of enemies, it also pays to make use of your allies. You’ll meander through the open world alone, but just about every major story mission or side quest is an instanced level where you have one or two computer-controlled allies backing you up, playing into the Twin Blade concept. You can play cooperatively with other humans in the place of AI buddies, but when you play alone, you’re able to swap between characters on the fly. The AI characters all have their own styles and moves that you can learn and take advantage of, but the best part is the way they enable you to overwhelm an enemy, quickly swapping around to get behind their guard and take advantage of their divided attention. It’s another aspect that takes a while to get good at using, but which sets apart Rise of the Ronin’s combat and makes it intense and chaotic in a good way–most of the time.

What makes fighting a bit wonky is Rise of the Ronin’s control scheme, which is convoluted and unintuitive. Blocking attacks is done by holding the left bumper, but parrying is done with the triangle button. The separation of your defensive moves requires specific training for your brain: Hold this button for this kind of attack, tap this other button for another kind, but mix the two together as well. It’s enough to jumble you up until you’ve spent time getting used to this specific approach.

The same is true of the swapping controls, which require various bumper holds combined with control stick movements or d-pad presses. Changing between loadout items, like healing pills and status-removing salves, is done while holding the left bumper, and so is swapping between characters. Holding the right bumper, on the other hand, lets you change your main weapons, your sub-weapons (like pistols, bows, and rifles), and your fighting styles. Again, it’s just a lot of really specific, esoteric controls to hold in your mind at once, and tough to mentally page through while a guy with a sword is slicing away at your face. Eventually all these controls became natural for me–but it took a while to get there.

The blade twin story isn’t a particularly compelling one, and while it’s the framing device that’s supposed to drive your character, it doesn’t get a lot of screen time. But Rise of the Ronin picks up quite a bit as your investigation pushes you to start making friends with various people, who either support the stability of the shogunate or think the country needs a new government. As time goes on, those different people develop into separate factions that will require your help, and which you can choose to aid.

However, it all leads to an open-world setup that’s somewhat unremarkable. A lot of the open-world content in Rise of the Ronin feels set to the standard of 2010s-era games, with some repetitive activities that will pop up randomly in front of you, some collectibles to chase down, and some side quests to complete that tend to end up with you killing some random baddies.

The more minor activities you do and collectibles you find in each of the small provinces in an area, the higher your bond with that location, which unlocks various minor bonuses. Later, completing these same activities will increase or decrease a faction’s hold on that location, which can have a bearing on story missions as you take them on–although that exact effect is somewhat opaque, especially because you change allegiances multiple times through the course of the story. Generally, though, the open-world activities of Rise of the Ronin are somewhat uninspired. It’s not particularly engaging to clear out yet another group of five bandits, two of which are mini-boss-like “formidable opponents,” to lower a faction’s hold on a province, but Rise of the Ronin will give you a ton of these activities to knock down, alongside small side missions and random activities like muggings. It’s a lot of stuff that seems like filler content in a game that’s already brimming with things to do.

Story missions and side quests are more interesting and involved, although they also get repetitive. Most of these put you into a level where you infiltrate a location, sneak around assassinating rank-and-file soldiers, get seen and fight some guys, and then defeat a boss. These missions suffer in part because Rise of the Ronin’s stealth is a bit undercooked. It can be unreliable, with enemies sometimes spotting you from far off with little issue, and other times being totally oblivious as you fight pitched, protracted battles with their friends 10 feet behind them.

Missions always end with excellent, challenging boss fights, though, and once you get good at Rise of the Ronin’s dueling system, every fight becomes a combat puzzle mixing twitch-reactions and strategic responses that continually make them exciting. Stealth breaks up the fighting just enough to help mission pacing, while rewarding you for analyzing the environment and planning your approach, even if it’ll sometimes annoy you by failing at key moments. Stealth is more a nice-to-have addition than essential to the formula.

The best of Rise of the Ronin’s levels are its Bond missions. You’ll meet a ton of samurai and join many of them in missions as allies, creating ongoing relationships. You can then enhance your friendship with those folks by completing side missions that flesh out their stories and engaging in conversations or giving them gifts. Building stronger Bonds unlocks new fighting styles as well as passive bonuses when you bring them on missions, but the most interesting part is the way each character’s individual stories expand across missions and add to the overall narrative. The characters are all well-drawn, dealing with their own principles and motivations, and their stories are worth experiencing on their own.

Having personal ties to all these characters makes the overall story a lot deeper. Rise of the Ronin tells a fictionalized version of the historical end of the shogunate and the samurai lifestyle in the 1860s, with the characters and events you’re engaged with eventually pushing Japan toward civil war, and your own principles and relationships causing you to switch sides numerous times. That means a character you brought as an ally on one mission might be a boss you have to face down in another, and your connection to all Rise of the Ronin’s characters does a lot to raise the stakes and make the entire narrative feel personally important.

So while Rise of the Ronin has some elements that can frustrate or require some investment to make sense of, and weaker elements like some open-world design that comes off as dated or some repetition in level design, it does a great job of getting you invested in what’s going on and the people involved. Bond missions in particular are a standout, but a mix of personal stakes and large-scale politics make the historical story compelling all the way through. The longer you play Rise of the Ronin, the more characters you meet and spend time with, and the more you learn about its combat and its world, the better it becomes.

It’s not without some flaws, but I finished Rise of the Ronin with much more left to do, and even after 50 hours, I want to head back in to see what I’d missed and attempt to change history. The parts of the game that work more than balance out its weaker elements. And while it took a while to find the rhythm of Rise of the Ronin’s combat, its speed, complexity, and intensity make for some phenomenal fights that always feel great to win. Rise of the Ronin is a game that might take a bit to get good, but the commitment is worth it.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 Review – Pawn Stars

Dragon’s Dogma 2 doesn’t have a traditional fast-travel system. For most open-world games, this would be a death sentence–an affront to the player’s valuable time. Yet somehow, Capcom has turned the absence of this quality-of-life feature into a resounding strength. It’s the game’s tremendous sense of adventure and discovery that accomplishes this. Every time you leave the relative safety of a village or city, there’s no telling what will happen; you just know it has the potential to be spellbinding and will be well worth your time.

As a sequel, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is an extension of everything the first game achieved 12 years ago. It’s an enchanting open-world RPG with varied, exciting combat and a player-created companion system that’s still unlike anything else. It doesn’t do much beyond what the original did, but advancements in technology have enhanced its anomalous strengths, breathing new life into its massive open world and the ways in which you and everything around you can interact with it. New ideas and innovation might not be at the forefront, but the things it does are still relatively distinct.

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Now Playing: Dragon’s Dogma 2 GameSpot Video Review

After a brief but intriguing prologue, your adventure begins in the country of Vermund, a land of lush green forests, alpine peaks, and the flowing currents of its many winding rivers. The royalty and noblemen of Vermund reside behind the fortified walls of its capital city, and it’s from this bustling location that you can board an oxcart to a small village in the north or a checkpoint city in the west. The latter sits on the border with Battahl, an arid land, home to the humanoid cat-like beastren, where gondolas provide an occasional route over the craggy canyons below. Beyond traveling via oxcart or climbing aboard one of these sky lifts, you’re left to explore this sprawling world on foot, traversing dense forests blanketed by canopies that blot out the sun, elven ruins carved into the sides of mountains, and shifting sands bathed in harsh sunlight and circled by deadly harpies.

There is a method of instant fast travel available, but it works in much the same way as it did in the first game. You can exhaust a costly resource known as Ferrystones to travel to any Portcrystal in the world, but these fast-travel points are few and far between–either as a permanent fixture or an item you can pick up and place anywhere you desire. You’ll use them sparingly and spend the vast majority of your time covering large swathes of land on your own two feet. Considering the 12-year gap between the original game and its sequel, this approach to fast travel and seamless exploration feels like an even bolder decision now than it did in 2012. The open-world genre has become more codified in the interim, yet Dragon’s Dogma 2 makes a concerted effort to ensure that the journey is just as important as the destination.

This is a game defined as much by the trek through an undulating gorge as it is the battle you encounter when you reach the bottom. The quests you embark on are diverse, tasking you with venturing off to rescue a boy who’s been taken by a pack of wolves or accompanying an elf on their rite of passage. These quests are sometimes generic but the way they play out is anything but. You’re never just engaging with one singular objective at a time; Dragon’s Dogma 2 is filled to the brim with emergent moments that consistently dazzle and surprise. I could regale you with myriad tales from my 40-hour adventure without even mentioning an actual scripted questline. Defined objectives might give you the impetus to head in a particular direction, but this then unravels a thread of distinct events that occur naturally, challenging you with enormous beasts to topple or piquing your curiosity with a cave tucked away to the side of the main pathway.

I once embarked on a lengthy journey that began with the usual ambushes from resourceful goblins and roadside bandits. I thought a first encounter with the three-headed, magic-wielding chimera would be the most noteworthy part of this venture, only for a monstrous griffin to swoop down and introduce an entirely new set of problems. After hacking at the chimera’s wailing goat head until it eventually collapsed in defeat, I focused all of my attention on the fearsome griffin. The immense force of this mighty creature made the nearby foliage rustle and shake every time it reared back and flapped its wings, but I managed to clamber on top of the beast and dig my sword into the back of its skull before it launched into the air and sent me spiraling to the floor.

After a time, the griffin made its escape, retreating back to the skies above, so I spent the night camping to recuperate my depleted health bar. I set out again in the morning, only to be interrupted by the same griffin, presumably with a newly formed vendetta against me. This time, after much hardship, I defeated the mythical creature before it could flee again, yet my journey was far from over. A pair of colossi sprang an unpredictable attack in the tight confines between two rocky outcrops, while the next night brought about a horde of undead skeletons whose glowing blue eyes pierced the suffocating darkness.

[Dragon’s Dogma 2 is] an enchanting open-world RPG with varied, exciting combat and a player-created companion system that’s still unlike anything else

None of these encounters related to one another or pertained to the quest I initially set out on, but that’s the magic of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s open world. You’re constantly pulled in numerous directions at once and it’s up to you to decide which avenues to pursue. It might be a quest given to you by a villager in need, an enticing structure looming on the horizon, or a locked gate and the potential to find an alternative way inside. Backtracking is fairly common, but no one journey is exactly the same as another, so it never feels like a chore when you’re retreading familiar ground.

Of course, none of this would work nearly as well if the game’s other elements weren’t up to snuff. Fortunately, combat is excellent across the board, providing you with a variety of unique vocations to choose from. These classes range from the sword and shield-wielding Fighter and long-range Archer, to new additions like the Mystic Spearhand–a melee/magic combo build–and the jack-of-all-trades Warfarer. It’s entirely viable to pick a vocation and play the entire game as that class, but you’re also rewarded for experimenting. Each vocation has special Augmentations to unlock which grant passive buffs that you can apply regardless of what class you’re currently using. This means you can make a Mage sturdier, or give a Warrior greater stamina usually reserved for the Thief.

Whichever vocation you choose, there’s a fantastic sense of impact behind your attacks. Axes and greatswords meet flesh with a glorious crunch–the game slowing down to let you bask in your most impactful strikes–while enemies burst into flames and tumble off cliffsides behind the power of a Sorcerer’s stave. There’s a hint of Devil May Cry to its most stylish and over-the-top moves, and hacking away at colossal beasts with slow but purposeful blows can’t help but bring to mind the protracted battles of Monster Hunter.

Even when you’re swirling through the air and conjuring piercing ice shards, the combat still feels grounded thanks to the world reacting realistically to everything that occurs within it. When I toppled a colossus and it stumbled towards a small chasm, it didn’t just fall down the gap, but grabbed onto the other side, creating a desperate, makeshift bridge. Only after hacking at its fingers did it lose its grip and tumble to its demise. The camera sometimes has trouble keeping up with all of this explosive action, usually because a mage has filled the screen with fire or ice. In that sense, it’s a somewhat acceptable trade-off. What’s not quite as forgivable is when the camera becomes unwieldy in tight interiors or when you’re clinging to the back of a terrifying beast, but at least these instances aren’t too frequent and are only a minor inconvenience when you consider the ensuing thrills of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s fantastic combat.

In terms of story, you’re once again cast as the Arisen, repeating a cycle that has occurred for generations. A fearsome dragon rules over the land and chooses you as a worthy challenger to its reign by plucking out your still-beating heart and consuming it. Your ultimate goal is to take up arms and slay the dragon, but before that can happen you need to build up your strength and contend with the disparate politics of both Vermund and Battahl. In Vermund, the Arisen is revered as a sovereign and champion of the people, tasked with protecting the land from the ominous shadow of the dragon. An imposter sits on your throne, however: a False Arisen, put in place by a queen who doesn’t want to lose her power. In attempting to claim what’s rightfully yours, you’ll gradually unravel a mystery that threatens to impact the fate of the whole world.

It’s a decent tale that propels your adventure forward, although it’s light on characterization, which contributes to a persistent feeling of detachment. This makes it difficult to care about the overarching narrative, aside from an interest in unraveling the core mystery. The awe-inspiring scale of its later moments somewhat makes up for its shortcomings, while exploring the differences between the cultures of Vermund and Battahl is also compelling. The beastren nation casts the Arisen as an outsider, fearful as they are of your entourage of pawns and the misfortune they portend.

Much like the first game, these user-created companions are the game’s most exceptional feature. Up to three pawns can join you on your journey, though one is a permanent fixture and your own creation. You can set their vocation and change it as you see fit, equipping skills and upgrades for them just as you would your own character. The other two members of your party are hirelings you can recruit and replace on a whim and are typically created by other players. Choosing which pawns to hire primarily comes down to a matter of party composition. Whether they’re leading from the front, imbuing your weapon with magic, or blanketing the battlefield in meteors, it’s hard not to love the impact they have on combat. But there’s also more to them than simply being hired guns.

The time a pawn spends with other players is retained in their memory. They might recall a treasure chest they opened in another Arisen’s world and then lead you to it, and they do the same when it comes to navigating quests as well. If you prioritize an objective and one of your pawns has completed it before, they’ll offer to lead you to wherever it is you need to go. Rather than being weighed down by having to constantly revisit the map, you can let a pawn naturally guide you, creating an ebb and flow to your adventure that removes the need for menu screens and waypoints. They can sometimes lose their way when you’re interrupted by combat, but I found that hitting the “Go” command would reset them back on the right path.

Pawns perform a similar function after defeating a certain number of a particular enemy type, too. If a pawn has sufficient experience beating, say, an ogre, they’ll relay pertinent information on weak points and the nature of their attacks. You can also find and then equip different specializations for your pawn, maybe granting them the ability to translate Elvish, or forage for materials so you don’t have to bother. They can still be overly loquacious at times, expressing child-like wonder at the world with a barrage of Ye Olde English dialogue. Their remarks are nowhere near as repetitive as before, though, and they’re much more personable this time around, chatting among themselves about other players they’ve traveled with and creating a palpable sense of teamwork and camaraderie.

Gallery

The most noticeable misstep derives from Dragon’s Dogma 2’s performance on PC. My current rig exceeds the recommended specifications (aside from the CPU), and the game generally runs at around 60fps using the game’s “High” preset. Sometimes it dips into the 40s and drops even lower inside villages and cities, but it’s certainly playable, if a little unstable. The problem is that this performance is consistent across all visual settings, which leads me to believe it’s a matter of poor optimization. I could’ve used the performance bump from lowering shadow quality and the like, but doing so has no effect. Ideally, this will be rectified with a day-one patch and driver updates, but it’s not ideal at the time of writing.

Even so, these performance issues did little to deter my love for this game. It’s not often that a cult classic gets the green light for a sequel, especially 12 years after the original game was released. Capcom hasn’t tried to make Dragon’s Dogma 2 more palatable to potentially attract a wider audience, either. It stuck to the first game’s core values and expanded upon them to create a bigger and better game that consistently delights in its approach to seamless exploration and the thrill of adventure. This means it feels very familiar in a lot of ways, but it’s a game for those who fell in love with the original, despite its flaws, and will hopefully find an entirely new audience who perhaps never gave the first game a chance. Even after 40 hours, my heart continues to grow fonder for this special game. It’s an exceptional achievement that’s quite unlike anything else, and I wouldn’t hesitate to place it amongst the pantheon of Capcom’s very best.

Anime News

Embracer Group Doesn’t Plan To Buy New Studios Yet Following Mass Layoffs

After a period of layoffs, game cancellations, and studio closures, Embracer Group says its restructuring period is now over. This process began last year and lasted for nine months, but now that it’s over, don’t expect Embracer to start acquiring new studios anytime soon. During a recent investor call, CEO Lars Wingefors said that it was “way too early” to start talking about mergers and acquisitions again.

“We are ending the restructuring program now, end of March, and the Gearbox restructuring process has been part of that program,” Wingefors said (via Rock Paper Shotgun). “Now we are getting approached, I would say not quite daily, but on a weekly basis, by companies that would like to acquire certain assets within the group. And I’ve been very clear that they’re not for sale, because they’re a very important part for the group and for the shareholders of the group going forward.”

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Now Playing: The Human Cost Of Layoffs | Spot On

Wingefors added that the companies Embracer sold had a “negative cashflow” and separating from them has made the company “cashflow generative”. Embracer won’t be going on a buying spree again for a while, as Wingefors added that the company will instead be focusing on increasing profitability by making “better products and games” using its available assets, IPS, and studios. “I think it’s way too early to start talking about restarting the merger and acquisitions engines again,” Wingefors said.

Since last year, there have been major changes at Embracer as Saints Row developer Volition and TimeSplitters studio Free Radical were closed, 29 games were canceled, and 1,400 people were laid off in six months. Recently, Saber Interactive divested itself of Embracer Group and Take-Two Interactive purchased Gearbox Entertainment from the company for $460 million.

All of these cuts and sales were partly made due to a major deal falling through, which was later revealed to be a pact with Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games reportedly valued at $2 billion.

Baldur’s Gate Dev Talks Appeal Of AI But Not As A Replacement For Human Developers

One of the most talked-about issues in gaming in recent times has been around the rise of artificial intelligence systems and how they may be further incorporated into gaming in the future. Larian Studios boss Swen Vincke has now weighed in with his thoughts. Speaking to Eurogamer, Vincke said Larian does not see AI as a “replacement for developers.”

But deployed the right way, AI could allow Larian to “do more stuff.” As an example, if an NPC in a game had just one line of dialogue, that might be a place for AI to step in to do the work.

“There’s not a lot of creative accomplishment to be had by putting the camera on a singular NPC that only has a couple of notes–I’m very happy for AI to handle that,” he said. “We’re not going to do that for the very complicated scenes because there, the artistry is going to shine through. So there’s uses for it.”

AI could also play a role in augmenting “reactivity and dialogues” in games if the AI systems become more advanced over time.

“So you would, for instance, have writers and a scripter and cinematic designer, and everybody that goes with it, you would have them make their entire scene, and then you would augment some reactivity into it, to things that you’ve done before,” he said. “So it is about, for instance, let’s say it’s a guard talking about a murderer that is free in the city. We don’t have to foresee all of the possible people that you could have killed in the NPC[‘s lines], but they could be talking about that, right? And say if it’s like multiple people, they could say, ‘Oh my god!’ and it’s like, literally a serial killer.”

Vincke said he thinks players would respond positively to something like this. Overall, Vincke said he sees AI as an “additional tool” that a developer can use to layer on top of other things in a game. Larian is “doing experiments with that” currently, he said. But it’s still early days, and any experimentations in this department are “far from being usable.”

Larian is not alone in embracing the possibilities that AI could afford game developers. For its part, Electronic Arts is a big believer in AI and recently found that about 60% of its game development processes could be positively impacted by using AI. Microsoft is heavily invested in AI and has said AI will be baked into every product it makes going forward, including Xbox.

EA and Microsoft both implemented mass layoffs around the same time of announcing plans to push further into AI. The possibility that AI could replace human jobs is a major concern raised by many, and EA has been up front in saying AI will likely lead to significant job losses.

Larian is not making any Baldur’s Gate 3 DLC or Baldur’s Gate 4. Instead, the company is working on a totally new, non-D&D game that Vincke is excited to eventually talk about.

“Still familiar enough, but different. I mean, like: tone, style, way of doing it, are for us certainly new. And I think very appealing,” Vincke told Eurogamer. “I would love to talk about it already because I’m excited about it but I can’t say more. But it’s new in that sense.”

The Witcher 4 Has More Than 400 People Working On It, Full Production Begins This Year

Development on the The Witcher 4–codenamed Polaris–has taken another step forward, as CD Projekt Red revealed that it has 403 employees working on it. Earlier this year, joint CEO Adam Badowski had mentioned how he was aiming to have “around 400” people on the next mainline Witcher game. This is roughly two-thirds of CDPR’s workforce, and according to joint CEO Michal Nowakowski (via VGC), this will allow the production phase of the game to begin later this year.

CD Projekt Red development teams engaged in ongoing projects.

Early in the development of Polaris, Nowakowski mentioned how the game had just 17 people working on it as most of the staff had been reorganized and sent to work on other projects following the release of Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty expansion. Cyberpunk 2077 still has 17 people providing support, while other projects like Orion, Sirius, and Hadar have 47, 37, and 20 people working on them, respectively. As of February 29, 2024, CDPR has 627 developers assigned to several games, services, and other projects.

Polaris is the fourth main Witcher game and will be the start of a new trilogy in the series. The first Witcher game is also getting a remake and CDPR is aiming to modernize it while also removing some of its more dated elements. During the development of Phantom Liberty, CDPR implemented an organizational overhaul. The company has aimed to create more open lines of communication and set up flexible teams that can quickly respond to any issues during the production of a game.

Halo And COD Support Dev Lays Off 25 People, Citing “Unprecedented Challenges”

Certain Affinity, an independent game developer known for assisting on mega-franchises like Call of Duty and Halo, has laid off a significant number of workers in just the latest example of mass layoffs in the video game industry.

In a blog post, CEO Max Hoberman said the video game industry has faced “unprecedented challenges” in the past 12 months, and Certain Affinity is not immune to those issues. In response, Certain Affinity is laying off 25 of its US-based workers. The majority of those impacted are on teams handling business operations, Hoberman said. Certain Affinity’s website said the company has about 250 employees, so 25 layoffs works out to around 10% of the company. That percentage might not be accurate given that Certain Affinity also operates in Canada, nor do we know when the website might have been updated last.

This was Certain Affinity’s first mass layoff in the company’s 17-year history. Explaining the cuts, Hoberman said the “most significant” element was the “industry-wide slowdown” of funding for the kind of work that Certain Affinity does, which includes co-development. Additionally, third-party investors are showing “reluctance” to fund games and game companies, and this has made it “exceptionally difficult to sign new work or secure other forms of funding.”

Affected staffers at Certain Affinity are getting severance pay and continuing benefits. Additionally, those being let go are having their vested stock awards made “portable” so affected staffers are still able to reap the rewards down the road.

“We have built an amazing culture where we all come together to support one another in times of need. We ask for your understanding and patience while we navigate this unprecedented event. Thank you,” Hoberman said.

Based in Austin, Texas, Certain Affinity has worked on huge franchises like Call of Duty, Halo, Mafia, Doom, World of Tanks, Hogwarts Legacy, and more. The studio has made its own games, too, including Age of Booty and Crimson Alliance. Looking ahead, Certain Affinity is making its own original FPS game, currently in the works under the codename Project Loro.

The company’s founder and CEO, Hoberman, was the multiplayer/online lead for the Halo series at Bungie before leaving to start Certain Affinity in 2006.

2024 has been another tough year for game developers, with a reported 8,000+ layoffs in the video game industry so far this year. Some are expecting the run of mass layoffs to continue. For more, check out GameSpot’s piece on video game industry layoffs and how we got here.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 Update Arrives On PC And PS5, Adding A Much-Requested Feature

Capcom is finally letting Dragon’s Dogma 2 players begin a brand-new game after previously starting an adventure, something that surprisingly wasn’t available when the action-RPG launched earlier this month. It’s one of the major focuses of an update that’s now available on PS5 and PC. The patch should arrive on Xbox Series X|S “in the next few days.”

Other notable tweaks to Dragon’s Dogma 2 as part of the official patch notes include being able to obtain a dwelling earlier in the game and new graphical options on PS5. For example, PlayStation players can now turn off motion blur as well as cap frame rate at 30fps in the options menu.

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Now Playing: Dragon’s Dogma 2 GameSpot Video Review

Earlier this week, Capcom revealed that Dragon’s Dogma 2 would receive the critical new-game option that previously wasn’t available. This omission led to negative Steam user reviews, since people couldn’t even delete their save to start up a fresh playthrough.

Looking ahead, Capcom has plans for “improvements to frame rate” for Dragon’s Dogma 2. Another sore subject for players has been microtransactions, though there is already a Dragon’s Dogma 2 mod letting people circumvent them.

For more, check out 20 things to know before playing Dragon’s Dogma 2. Don’t forget to read GameSpot’s Dragon’s Dogma 2 review, either.

Full patch notes are below:

PlayStation 5 / Steam

  • Adding the option to start a new game when save data already exists.
  • Changing the number of “Art of Metamorphosis” items available at Pawn Guilds in the game to 99.
  • Making the quest that allows players to acquire their own dwelling (where they can save and rest) available earlier in the game.
  • Miscellaneous text display issues.
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes.

PlayStation 5

  • Adding the option* to switch Motion Blur on/off in Options.
  • Adding the option* to switch Ray Tracing on/off in Options.
  • Adding the option to set Frame Rate at Max 30fps in Options.

Steam

  • Improving quality when DLSS SUPER RESOLUTION is enabled.
  • Fixing an issue related to the display of models under some specific settings.

*These options won’t affect frame rate significantly. Improvements to frame rate are planned for future updates.

Updates to Xbox Series X|S are planned in the next few days.

Fanatical’s New Steam Deck Bundle Is Full Of Cyberpunk Therapy And Kingdom Management Games

A new bundle deal is available from Fanatical, and this one is specifically aimed at people who enjoy their gaming on the go. Each game in this collection is Steam Deck Verified, so you’ll be able to install them on your device–or an equivalent piece of hardware like the ROG Ally–and start gaming right away. No muss, no fuss, and there’s an interesting selection of titles to choose from below. You can mix and match titles for this bundle, with pricing starting at $5 for three games, $8 for five games, or $10 for seven games.

Fanatical Play-On-The-Go Spring Edition Bundle

  • Metal Mutation
  • Trash Sailors
  • Dig: Deep In Galaxies
  • Sheepo
  • Gearshifters
  • Battle Axe
  • Silent Rain
  • Yes, Your Grace
  • Garden In!
  • She and the Light Bearer
  • Bosorka
  • Fight’N Rage
  • Mind Scanners
  • Amid Evil
  • Ephemeral Tale
  • Relicta
  • Road to Ballhalla
  • Far: Lone Sails
  • Party Hard 2
  • A Juggler’s Tale
  • Boomerang Fu

There are some good games here that might have fallen under your radar when they were first released. For example, Mind Scanners is a retro-futuristic psychiatry simulation in which you diagnose the citizens of a dystopian metropolis. You have to manage your time and resources, operate a series of arcade-style devices as you administer treatments, and deal with some tough ethical dilemmas. The game is essentially Papers, Please mixed with cyberpunk themes, and it makes for a fun mobile experience.

Another highlight on this list is Yes, Your Grace, a kingdom-management RPG where you have to address the needs of your local peasants while dealing with intrigue in the royal court. Everyone wants help, but you can only do so much, and the wrong decision could plunge your kingdom into war.

For something different and less focused on diplomacy, there are some great action games to consider here. Wield magical weaponry in the boomer shooter Amid Evil, kick some butt in old-school 2D brawler Fight ‘N Rage, and take down noisy revelers in Party Hard 2. You can see the full list of games above, and for more deals, check out the Fanatical Prestige Bundle for AAA delights, Humble’s celebration of boomer shooters, and Woot’s month-long video game sale.

Disclosure: Fanatical and GameSpot are both owned by Fandom.

Make Sure To Swallow Your Drink Before Looking At These Bugged MLB The Show 24 Faces

The newly released MLB The Show 24 has turned into a horror show after its latest patch, with multiple players sporting warped and distorted faces. From features clipping through players’ caps to eyes bugging out from strangely squished faces, the frankly hilarious glitch has added some unintentional comedy to San Diego Studio’s baseball sim.

Only certain players seem to have been subjected to the facial glitches, which seem to squish a player’s features in to result in weak chins and strange bug eyes. Multiple players have posted screenshots on X, formerly Twitter, of the warped players appearing in their games.

The glitches aren’t just present on the field, but also when a player’s likeness is blown up on the scoreboard, resulting in some hilarious imagery.

San Diego Studios tweeted to let fans know it is aware of the issue, with a fix already in the works. It seems that the glitch was introduced with this week’s Update 3, along with a number of other bugs that aren’t quite as fun as the goofed-up graphics, with players on Reddit reporting game crashes and even loss of progress since the patch landed.

MLB The Show 24 released earlier in March, and has received mixed to positive reviews, with an aggregate score of 79 on Metacritic at the time of writing. GameSpot’s review scored the game a 7 out of 10, saying: “MLB The Show 24 delights with another season of Storylines: The Negro Leagues and continued on-field excellence, but some modes are still in desperate need of an overhaul.” User reviews have been somewhat less positive, with a number of ongoing server and technical issues plaguing the game, and especially its co-op mode, since launch.

Dead Cells Studio Teams With Other Indie Devs For The Triple-I Showcase

30+ independent studios are teaming up to put on a showcase for their games. Called the Triple-I Initiative, this April presentation will reveal what studios like Mega Crit Games (Slay the Spire), Red Hook Studios (Darkest Dungeon), Heart Machine (Hyper Light Drifter), and Evil Empire (Dead Cells) are working on next, among many others.

The initiative was kicked off by Evil Empire, which first approached many of the studios at last year’s Gamescom to pitch the concept. “The goal is to have a straight-to-the-point show packed with announcements as a collective of studios, to speak directly to players, the people who have been directly supporting us since day one,” Evil Empire COO Benjamin Laulan said in a press release. “The show will run for about 45 minutes, featuring news by the most successful and creative folks out there. No hosting segments, no advertisements, no sponsorships, no extra fluff, just games.”

At GDC, I caught up with Evil Empire marketing director Bérenger Dupré and some of the folks at these other studios to talk about the Triple-I Initiative. First and foremost, with the seemingly rising number of showcases every year, I wanted to know why these studios wanted to make another one instead of preparing material for an existing virtual presentation.

“We’ve been known for the moment for working only on the live ops of Dead Cells for the past five years and–spoiler alert–we are also working on new games, and we had to announce one of these games at some point, and timing-wise, we couldn’t have the leisure to attach this announcement to a showcase because it was not matching with the dates,” Dupré said.

“It also allows us to experiment with visibility and another way of breaking through because sometimes you break through because you’re in the right spot at the right time or your game looks nothing like another game or its mechanics are so hooky that you just get a kind of a nice flashpoint.” Red Hood co-founder Chris Bourassa added. “But you can’t rely on a flashpoint every time you ship and none of us want to be one-hit wonders. So how you reach people and how you sell your game has a lot to say about how successful your game is going to be.

“And some of it’s timing,” Red Hook’s other co-founder, Tyler Sigman, added. “There’s been times in the past where I’m like, ‘Oh, we would consider being part of another showcase.’ But the timing didn’t line up. The common denominator there is you’re ultimately not in control–someone else is going to determine whether [your trailer is shown] and what I liked about this is [it] lets us just make our own [showcase]. If we make our own, no one can force us to turn it off because we are controlling the power button. So that’s good too just because [of] that level of making the opportunity yourself rather than waiting for someone to give it to you.”

In addition to these reasons, Dupré said that it feels like the games that will be featured in the Triple-I Initiative rarely fit anywhere else. “At Gamescom in August, we started meeting some friends [to discuss how] we felt that we could create [a showcase] because when you look at the showcase season, you have the big first party showcases, you have awards, and you have the more niche showcases for [specifically] wholesome games or VR, but you don’t have [a showcase] for the in-between space.”

It’s a sentiment that easily ties back to the idea of “indie” games having a very loose definition in the industry. Some think that so long as a game isn’t tied to a publisher, it’s indie. Others think having a publisher is fine so long as your team and the scope of your game is small enough, but then the definition of “small enough” varies from person to person. Thus the idea of a “triple-I” game and the Triple-I Initiative is born. These are games that aren’t large enough and don’t have the financial backing to contend with Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo triple-A first-party titles but they’re a bit bigger in scope and more well-known than a lot of other studios that are considered indie.

“Since using letters seems to be the trend in the industry, we figured that adding a couple of Is to indie was a fair way to describe this new format,” Dupré said. “Also, triple-I just sounds cool.”

“I’m trying to think of when [the term triple-I] first started popping up, but it often gets attributed to some of our games for that reason because it’s like, ‘Well [we’re] not triple-A and double-A is kind of a weird [because] it undersells it because it’s still indie, but how indie?'” Sigman said. “And it’s not a spectrum where there’s a good and a bad side of that. It’s more like we identify in a certain way and I think that often our games get mentioned a lot together by either players or friends and so I think the smart thing that [Evil Empire] did was realizing, ‘Wait, we already kind of work together,’ [and] I think that’s really good and it doesn’t come at the expense of anyone. We all benefit from more heightened awareness of our type of games.”

“It’s not [meant to be] a gatekeeping thing,” Mega Crit Games co-founder Casey Yano added, clarifying that even the triple-I label has nuance to it. But the hope is that fans will tune into the Triple-I Initiative knowing they won’t see trailers for huge games driven by the latest graphics. These are smaller passion projects. “Maybe [it’s a game] made by somebody [who] broke off from a big studio and wanted to do something a little bit smaller scale, or something doing something more experimental without any red tape. We’re all different. It’s not like ‘This is a triple-I, this is not triple-I.'”

Regarding what players can expect to see, all of the studios are currently keeping things close to the chest, but I was told that I can expect to be wowed by some of the announcements. “At least ours is not a small thing,” Bourassa teased. “[Evil Empire] was pretty adamant that these trailers, whether it’s a world premiere or whatever the content is, need to be impactful and noteworthy. Yes, this is an evasive answer, but basically, there’s a standard in terms of the impact.”

The Triple-I Initiative will premiere on April 10 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. You can watch it on YouTube and Twitch.

Get The Stellar PS5 Slim Spider-Man Bundle Deal Before It Expires This Weekend

The PS5 Slim Digital Edition hasn’t seen any notable discounts since arriving last year, making this an incredible offer. Along with the PS5 Slim Digital Edition console and a DualSense controller, you’re getting a digital copy of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Keep in mind that this version of PS5 can’t play discs, though you can add a disc drive at a later date by purchasing the $80 expansion.

The PS5 Slim Digital Edition bundle is out of stock at Amazon, so grab it at one of the other retailers below while you can.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Ending Explained

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire includes a metric ton of outlandish monster-on-monster action, which is obviously the main draw. But it’s also a movie that’s dense with story and lore about Kong and his people, and the seemingly timeless humans who used to live on Skull Island. And, on top of that, it sets up a new status quo in Warner Bros’ MonsterVerse that opens up some interesting possibilities for a franchise endgame, should they decide to go that direction from here.

Let’s talk about it.

Warning: This remainder of this article will consist of spoilers for the plot of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, including its ending.

There are three core plotlines in Godzilla x Kong: Kong and his fight against the Skar King in the Hollow Earth; the people from Monarch (Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Kaylee Hottle returning from the last movie, and new addition Dan Stevens) who are also exploring Hollow Earth and trying to figure out what Kong has gotten himself into; and Godzilla back on the surface, leveling up his powers in anticipation of the Skar King’s arrival.

Kong’s thread is the primary one that drives all the film’s action. He’s still exploring Hollow Earth in search of his people, and new pathways keep opening up–and one of these new holes allows him to finally find some other giant apes. But these are hostile, and they attack Kong, but he defeats them and escapes, with the unwitting assistance of a giant kid ape named Suka who ends up serving as his sidekick–a son of Kong, if you will.

With Suka as his guide, Kong finds the ape base and discovers the main villain, the Skar King, has enslaved a bunch of other apes for some nefarious purpose. Kong attacks, and the Skar King unleashes his biggest weapon: another Godzilla-like titan named Shimo, this one crawling on four legs and firing a beam of ice from its mouth. Kong escapes, barely, but more evil apes are in pursuit. Kong is very much overmatched.

Our human characters, meanwhile, are investigating some kind of signal that’s coming from beneath the Earth–one that young Jia, who is deaf, can’t stop seeing in her head. And so Ilene (Rebecca Hall) sets off into Hollow Earth with Trapper (Dan Stevens), Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry) and a Monarch military guy destined to be killed off quickly, to try to find out what’s going on.

It takes some time for them to learn anything, because the Monarch outpost they try to visit has been destroyed, but eventually they encounter more humans–members of the Iwi tribe from Skull Island. Jia was thought to be the last of them, but it turns out they had relocated underground in order to more closely monitor the Skar King, who had been imprisoned in a part of Hollow Earth that was completely closed off. The evil ape has made a lot of progress toward escaping, and the signal that Jia had felt was the Iwi’s distress signal, essentially.

It also turns out Jia, as the only surface-dwelling Iwi remaining, is the only one able to fulfill an important prophecy related to this situation, in which an Iwi from Skull Island would summon Mothra at an ancient temple. And Jia does just that.

That’s going to end up being a crucial contribution to the coming fight against the Skar King, but it’s not the only way the humans are able to help. Kong, after repeated fights against the bad apes, is pretty beat up and one of his arms is basically useless at this point. But Trapper has an idea–the folks at that previously mentioned destroyed outpost had in storage a mechanized arm brace for Kong that had never been used. They manage to fit it on the big guy (we’re not going to worry about how), and now he’s stronger than ever.

But he still needs more help. He needs Godzilla, who had killed another irradiated kaiju and absorbed its power, and is now even more powerful than before. So Kong heads to the surface to try to recruit him. It goes poorly at first. The two encounter each other near some of the Pyramids in Egypt, and proceed to completely wreck the ancient landmarks by fighting too close to them. Kong tries to stop the fight, but Godzilla ain’t hearing it. But that changes when Mothra shows up–when Mothra speaks, Godzilla listens. Mothra is able to get Godzilla on board, and they all head back down to Hollow Earth to face the Skar King.

A spectacular major battle ensues, but it’s just the prelude to the real thing. The Skar King escapes to the surface with Shimo during the fight, and this titanic battle continues in Rio de Janeiro. From here we get what we expect from this franchise: these giant beasts beating the crap out of each other and devastating an iconic world city in the process, with Shimo’s ice beam freezing the city’s famous beaches. (This is the second time a movie has frozen those beaches in the past decade, after Gerard Butler”s Geostorm.) It’s anybody’s game for a while, but the breaking point comes when the chain that the Skar King uses to control Shimo is broken. And Shimo responds appropriately, by sending an ice blast the Skar King’s way–the balance of the fight completely upended, Kong is able to use the Skar King’s new vulnerability to put him down.

And this leaves us with the titular new empire, and a new status quo with Kong, Godzilla, Mothra in some kind of alliance, and the humans of Earth left to continue to hope they don’t get stepped on.

Does Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire have a post-credits scene?

No, Godzilla x Kong doesn’t have any bonus scenes after the credits that might tease the direction that Warner Bros. plans on taking this franchise. It’s likely that the studio is in wait-and-see mode with this one, without much urgency to get the next one started–while these movies have been successful, they haven’t done well enough to warrant a sequel greenlight before the numbers have been crunched.

So for now, the situation after Godzilla x Kong is basically the same as it was after Godzilla (2014), King of the Monsters, and Godzilla vs. Kong, with titans running around everywhere and the humans unable to do much about it. That obviously leaves open the possibility for more, should Warner Bros. choose to make another movie or another season of the Monarch series on Apple TV. But this ending is open-ended, allowing for the possibility of doing more in this universe without broadcasting any specific intent. So we’ll have to wait and see.