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First off, I really want to stress that Guardians of the Galaxy is a genuine surprise, an exceptional game and a visual tour-de-force. It often looks stunning - and that starts with the locations. The Quarantine Zone, a planet of derelict machinery fused with a pink crystalline gel, is a perfect backdrop for the Guardians’ first mission. Materials come out beautifully in the midday sun. Light shafts seep from behind pillars of dense scrapyard tech, giving the world a rich, opulent look....

Both the 128GB and 256GB versions of the headset will rise in price by $100, Meta said in a statement last night, from $300 to $400, and from $400 to $500, respectively. These are serious price increases - for the 128GB model, it represents a rise of 33 percent! - for hardware generally considered a good entry-level VR device. As something of a deal sweetner, Meta has said it will bundle in a copy of the popular Beat Saber, usually $30, with new headsets purchased from August until the end of the year....

In a statement shared across its social media channels, the developer said that because of said confusion, it has “decided to reward” all Vault Edition owners - current and prospective - 10 hours of double XP tokens and 10 hours of double weapon XP tokens. “We understand there has been some confusion about an in-game-store exclusive award for the Vault Edition,” the statement reads. “Therefore, we’ve decided to reward all players that currently own or purchase any version of the MWII Vault Edition with 10 hours of double XP tokens and 10 hours of double weapon XP tokens....

I loved Monster Hunter World but am not ashamed to admit that hard-edged expansion Iceborne kicked my arse, so I was heading into Monster Hunter Rise’s own hard-edged expansion Sunbreak with some trepidation. Here’s an expansion that is loosely in line with G-Rank or Ultimate editions of previous games, introducing new monsters, new locales and most importantly that all-important Master Rank that brings with it an all-new level of challenge....

Capcom’s Mega Man crossover - the fourth post-launch collaboration update to release for Monster Hunter Rise since its launch back in March - follows cameos for the likes of Okami’s Amaterasu and Street Fighter 5’s Akuma. This time, though, players will be able to unlock a brand-new piece of layered armour turning their trusty Palamute companion into the Mega Man series’ robo-canine Rush, even replacing the standard Palamute dash animation with the Rush Jet ability....

A fresh gameplay trailer for Moss: Book 2 is also now available, showing mouse hero Quill in the game’s opening sections - which pick up right from the end of the original game. As you’d expect, it’s still adorable. I chatted with Bungie and BioWare veteran Joshua Stiksma, design director on Moss: Book 2, about the project after it was announced back in the summer. “Our structure works well for a linear story, but that doesn’t mean our geography has to be completely linear,” Stiksma said of the sequel....

Those of you with a discerning ear may find the voice very familiar. As a lot of people have pointed out, it sounds a lot like Mark Hamill. The datamine comes from Twitter user LaisulMV, previously known as AisulMV. LaisulMV is the leaker behind rumours of a battle pass sharing feature, Beetlejuice and the Wicked Witch of the West, and The Matrix. Their new discovery has revealed files of voice lines for the Joker as an announcer in MultiVersus....

Night School has gained a reputation for creating engaging, sharply written adventures with a strong focus on narrative across the four games it’s launched since its founding in 2014. After 2016’s critically lauded Oxenfree, the developer released a well-received Mr. Robot tie-in, 1.51exfiltrati0n, followed by pub-crawl-through-hell adventure Afterparty and the Apple-exclusive space escapade Next Stop Nowhere. Notably, given the acquisition news, the studio was also reported to have been developing an unannounced Stranger Things project in conjunction with Telltale Games at one time, before the latter company’s collapse....

Right now you can only participate in the aforementioned summer fun via the Public Test Realm (PTR), but the event should be rolling out to all players later in July. As revealed last month, the Summer Medleyfaire includes musical games, fishing - you can show off your best catches at home - and the chance to unlock new items, including starter instruments. Oh, and there’ll be pirates, too. As for how the event will encapsulate lazy summer days?...

However, all is not well on Isle Delfino, as fans have noticed thr track’s cars before the final turn are now static. The dissatisfaction amongst some fans became obvious when Nintendo tweeted a promotional clip of Coconut Mall (thanks, Nintendo Life). But the most bizarre observation made by fans is that the map, which has also recently been ported over to Mario Kart Tour, does have moving cars on mobile....

Content creator SynaMax revealed that nine of his videos have had to be taken down, after Nintendo sent in the big guns and flexed their legal muscles his way. “On 31st May, a lawyer representing Nintendo called me and asked me to take down nine videos off the channel,” SynaMax explained in a new video (spotted by VGC). “I’m really disappointed in Nintendo that they would force me to take down these videos because they want compulsory licenses....

No patch notes have been released, but the N64 app is now at version 2.3.1. Finally, Kirby can swim once more. ORIGINAL STORY 27/5/22: Following reports of a “game breaking” bug for the Switch Online version of Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, Nintendo has confirmed a patch to fix the issue will arrive “early next week”. Kirby 64 launched as part of Nintendo’s Switch Online + Expansion Pack retro collection last week, and players soon began reporting a bug in underwater levels - not seen in the 2000 original - that permanently stunned them after taking damage from certain sources....

Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering how well it’s doing its own thing, Nintendo’s boss said no. “Our brand was built upon products crafted with dedication by our employees, and having a large number of people who don’t posses Nintendo DNA in our group would not be a plus to the company,” Nintendo boss Shuntaro Furukawa told investors today (translated by Bloomberg [paywall]. Nintendo has only occasionally purchased external developers in the past - and certainly not with the same speed as Microsoft and Sony’s acquisitions over the past two years....

Despite a drop in sales of around 23 per cent year-on-year - chiefly due to the tech industry’s ongoing shortage of semiconductor parts stifling manufacturing - Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa told Nikkei that Nintendo wanted to “avoid pricing people out”. “We’re not considering [a price increase] at this point, for two reasons,” Furukawa said (thanks, NME). “In order to offer unique entertainment to a wide range of customers, we want to avoid pricing people out....

Since the game’s reveal, fans have made the comparison with Nintendo’s adventure due to Sonic Frontiers’ lush green open setting and that hero shot of the hedgehog looking out over a wide landscape. But in an interview with Shacknews (spotted by TheGamer), Iizuka has clarified that Sonic Team’s game is more linear and - for the millionth time - open zone, not open world. Watch on YouTube Sonic Frontiers - Combat & Upgrades “From the development [team’s] perspective, they’re going out and making an action game....

Joe Danger Touch and its sequel Joe Danger Infinity (which initially came to iOS in 2013 and 2014 respectively) both fell foul of Apple’s decision to end support for 32-bit apps with iOS11 back in 2017. However, over the last few years, Hello Games has, as detailed in its new announcement, been tinkering on the titles to get them playable again. “It’s always been a secret shame of ours that the success of No Man’s Sky left Joe Danger unloved,” Hello Games’ Sean Murray explained of the studio’s attempts to resuscitate the series on iOS....

While Betrayal At Club Low promises more of the same off-kilter energy that helped make The Norwood Suite and its follow-up Tales from Off-Peak City Vol. 1 so memorable (and don’t just take my word for it), things are a little different this time around. Betrayal At Club Low takes its inspiration from “short, punchy, independent zine RPGs” and is designed to evoke the feel of a one-off tabletop session....

What’s so significant about this particular project is that it’s built on completely reverse engineered source code of Grand Theft Auto 3 and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. It’s also been ported over to the Nintendo Switch, Playstation Vita and Nintendo Wii U. Under US law, reverse engineering is generally legal. To further minimise encroachment of the law, the developers avoided using any leaked source code, and any copyrighted assets such as music, dialogue and images....

Its recent financial report revealed the company fell short of Wall Street’s Q3 expectations, blaming “challenging market conditions” for this setback (via CNBC). Two weeks ago, Nvidia predicted it would not meet Wall Street’s finacial estimates, commenting that it had seen a significant slow down in growth driven by “disappointing” sales. At this time, Nvidia also stated it would see a decline in its gross margin. This has turned out to be accurate....

First of all, I think it is important to stress that the power level of this product shows a leap in performance that surrounding components within a gaming PC may struggle to fully access. 1080p and 1440p metrics with this product are essentially meaningless - even with my Core i9 12900K overclocked to 5.2GHz on all performance cores, I’m finding frame-rates hitting the CPU limit. This happens even on some 4K benchmarks without ray tracing in the equation....