It’s about time the title is on a Nintendo console as, well, it feels like a Nintendo game. Pizza Tower is a frantic 2D sidescroller that cribs a whole lot from the Wario Land franchise and, to a lesser extent, Mario and Sonic games.
You play as a balding chef named, and this is real, Peppino Spaghetti. The game tasks you with scaling the titular tower to fight a sentient pizza that is kind of like the Bowser of Italian food. The game was largely designed by someone named McPig and the soundtrack was created by a high school student. It’s an indie game miracle!
However, forget all of that. Gameplay is where Pizza Tower shines. The movement feels perfect so the platforming is, simply put, S-tier. It’s been polished to a Nintendo-like sheen, which is quite a feat for a high schooler and someone who goes by the moniker McPig. There are tons of fully-realized abilities and a dedication to speed pulled straight from Sonic. Also, Peppino can’t die, allowing for insane platforming experiments.
In other words, this is one heck of a game and now it’s on a Nintendo console. That’s gotta be quite a thrill for the development team.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/pizza-tower-has-surprise-dropped-for-nintendo-switch-152859625.html?src=rss
The incredibly popular (and addictive) poker-based roguelike Balatro just got an update that brings a whole bunch of other games into the party, as announced at the Nintendo Indie World showcase. This is separate from the forthcoming major gameplay update, which arrives in 2025.
Today’s update is called Balatro: Friends of Jimbo and includes crossovers with The Witcher 3,Vampire Survivors, Dave the Diver and Among Us. Basically, each of the aforementioned games will get their own themed deck of cards. For the uninitiated, you can choose from a bunch of decks when playing Balatro, and they all have their own perks and drawbacks.
It doesn’t look like the crossovers go beyond decks, so there aren’t any jokers based on the cook from Dave the Diver or anything. The developers did suggest that more cross-promotional team-ups would be coming down the line.
The good news? The update is available right now and it’s free. The bad news? It looks like it’s only for Nintendo Switch at the moment. The game’s Steam page makes no mention of the update, nor do the Xbox or PlayStation pages.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/balatro-is-crossing-over-with-witcher-3-and-a-bunch-of-other-games-143222539.html?src=rss
Nintendo fans have a lot to look forward to, including the company'snew museum, a Donkey Kong theme park expansion coming to the US and, of course, the follow up to the Switch. But everything all boils back down to the games, and we now have a clearer idea of what's coming to the Switch thanks to a double Nintendo Direct that the company streamed this morning at 10AM ET.
There were several announcements that could change your game plans today: A free update to Balatro brings custom decks to the smash-hit card game. The first decks are crossovers with The Witcher 3, Among Us, Dave the Diver and Vampire Survivors. There was also a surprise Switch release for Pizza Tower, a breakout platformer from last year which is one of the highest-rated games on Steam. Another same-day drop is Castlevania Dominus Collection, which brings together three DS titles — Dawn of Sorrow, Order of Ecclesia and Portrait of Ruin — into one title.
Further down the line, Sega will bring Yakuza Kiwami, a remake of the first Yakuza game released in 2016, to Nintendo Switch on October 24 — the same day as the quirky dating sim Date Everything. Neva, a platformer we adored at Summer Game Fest, will arrive the week before on October 15. Konami’s delayed Suikoden remaster will now launch on March 6, 2025. Capcom announced another fighting game collection, this one including the Dreamcast classics Power Stone and Power Stone 2 along with some solid 2D fighters including Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 Pro.
There are dozens more announcements to enjoy in the full stream, which is still available on Nintendo’s YouTube channel.
Update, 8/27/24, 1:05PM ET: This story was updated after publishing with details on the games announced at today's Nintendo Direct.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/the-biggest-announcements-from-the-august-2024-nintendo-direct-150333340.html?src=rss
It’s seemed like everyone this summer has been talking about Valve’s in-development MOBA shooter, Deadlock, except Valve itself. Thousands of people have reportedly played it, some of whom have leaked screenshots and gameplay footage. But Valve has remained silent on the subject. Now, the company has finally confirmed the game’s existence with an official Steam page, which notes that Deadlock “is in early development” and in the hands of playtesters. Unfortunately, that’s about it for the details.
Deadlock is still only available to play via invitation. There’s no release date or even release window on the page, and the 22-second teaser it includes isn’t particularly enlightening. But now that Valve is finally acknowledging this thing publicly, we could see more about it soon. Back in May, YouTuber Tyler McVicker, who has long reported on Valve, described Deadlock as what’s “meant to be Valve's next major competitive game. The next Counter-Strike. The next Dota.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/valve-finally-confirms-its-next-game-deadlock-with-a-bare-bones-steam-page-162836953.html?src=rss
One Btn Bosses does exactly what it says in the tin, but there's more to this tongue-in-cheek bullet-hell boss rush than you initially might suspect. You play as a small ship that moves along tracks and battles a string of bosses (quite literally, as you're fighting your way through the ranks of a peculiar corporation). The only real control you have at your disposal is a single button.
While the visual language draws from Asteroids, it plays a bit like Vampire Survivors, in that your weapon auto fires at your enemy but your agency is even more limited as you can't move wherever you want. At first, pressing the button will reverse your ship’s direction as you try to avoid attacks (generally, you can take damage three times before you lose a fight). But going the other way means slowing down both your movement and the firing rate. That adds a fun wrinkle to figuring out your approach: play it as safe as possible and take longer to defeat an enemy, or go high risk and try to win as quickly as possible so you can soar up the leaderboard.
As you progress, you’ll unlock different weapons and movement abilities, as well as different color schemes. You can choose your loadout for each round. On the movement front, you might opt to hold the button to dash through enemy attacks without incurring damage or keep it pressed down to build up speed and accelerate in the other direction. In terms of dealing damage, you might opt for a laser that grows more powerful as you pick up sparks or a pickup weapon that only fires when you run across an item on the track. Experiment to figure out works best for you.
Along with the campaign, there's a separate roguelite mode called Rifts & Developments that randomizes enemy attacks and layouts (it's possible to memorize the attacks in campaign levels). Here, you have a total of three lives and they aren't replenished between rounds unless you choose an upgrade that lets you do so. Nothing carries back over from the roguelite mode to the campaign except for XP, so if you're stuck on a boss and you're close to unlocking a new weapon, you can switch over to earn some juicy experience to expand your arsenal.
One Btn Bosses is tough, but it never feels unfair. The enemy attacks are as clear as day thanks to the clean art direction. I haven't felt that I've been boxed in between enemy attacks so that losing a life was inevitable — to my eye, all the damage I've sustained was my own fault.
In a weird way, One Btn Bosses kind of reminds me of the early days of Twitter, in that one could only be creative on that platform within the confines of a single 140-character message. The limitation that the studio, Midnight Munchies, placed on itself here forced the developers to come up with inventive ways of keeping One Btn Bosses engaging throughout its duration.
One side note: this is one of the first batch of games that received backing from Outersloth, a side project of Among Us developer Innersloth. The whole idea behind Outersloth is to offer indie developers an alternative funding model and to help "fun, original and clever games get made." One Btn Bosses definitely fits the brief.
One Btn Bosses is out on Steam now.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/one-btn-bosses-gets-a-ton-of-mileage-from-single-button-gameplay-140025604.html?src=rss
A new Zombies mode is headed to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. A new cinematic trailer released on Friday shows that the DLC will take players to a small town called Liberty Falls infested with the running dead.
The trailer starts in a picturesque piece of America with an old-timey song setting the tone. Then everything goes to hell and our unnamed hero wakes up in a post-apocalyptic world from what was just a nightmare all along. He receives a bulletin that the running dead are on their way so he picks up a shock rifle to start popping off some zombies’ tops. The big reveal at the end features some kind of menacing villain that feels like a cross between ZAX from Fallout 76 and GLaDOS from the Portal games.
This is just a premature judgment based on the trailer but it looks and sounds a lot like Fallout, another game that takes place in a world where humanity ends and mutant humans roam the landscape.
There’s no official wide release date for Black Ops 6’s Zombies DLC or any indication that it will or won’t be available when the game launches on October 25. The first gameplay footage of the Liberty Falls maps and story mode will premiere on August 28 at Call of Duty NEXT in Washington DC. Open beta access will start on August 30. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will also be available on Xbox Game Pass on launch day.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-trailer-for-call-of-duty-black-ops-6s-zombies-dlc-has-risen-191550462.html?src=rss
The best thing about the free games that the Epic Games Store offers is they're genuinely yours to keep forever. They're not locked behind a subscription of any kind. The only form of payment you provide is a little personal information in the form of your email address and whatever else is required to create an Epic account. It might be worth signing up if you haven't already, as this week's free games are pretty notable.
First up is The Callisto Protocol, a 2022 survival horror game from Dead Space co-creator Glen Schofield. It's cut from the same cloth as Dead Space, but — stellar visuals aside — we didn't like it much. (In fact, a Dead Space remake that arrived shortly afterward was much more warmly received.) Still, it can be yours for absolutely zilch right now.
What a week for FREE games!
Whether you're up for Gigantic: Rampage Edition's 5v5 MOBA action or The Callisto Protocol's futuristic take on pulse-pounding survival horror, now's the time to claim them both.
The Callisto Protocol hit Epic's free game lineup just as the studio behind it announced a spinoff called [REDACTED]. The upcoming title from Striking Distance, which is no longer led by Schofield after he stepped down last year, is a stylized, roguelike dungeon crawler in which you play as a prison guard.
You must try to survive the threat of infected inmates and escape a penitentiary on Callisto, an icy moon of Jupiter. [REDACTED] will arrive on October 31 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
This week's other Epic Games Store freebie is interesting too. It's a MOBA-hero shooter hybrid called Gigantic that has a long and convoluted history. To keep things brief, the game debuted in 2017, was killed in 2018 after failing to gain enough traction and revived under a different studio this year. I played it for a bit and found the matches to be fun and chaotic.
The original Gigantic was free-to-play. While the revival — dubbed Gigantic: Rampage Edition —typically costs $20, it has zero microtransactions. So you won't have to worry about being nickel-and-dimed after claiming this one.
You'll have until August 29 to snag those two games. There's some good stuff to look forward to on the Epic Games Store next week as well. Starting on August 29, you can claim a Fallout bundle that includes Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics for free, along with an arcade-style football game called Wild Card Football.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/the-epic-games-stores-latest-freebies-are-the-callisto-protocol-and-the-revived-moba-gigantic-192403774.html?src=rss
Hyper Light Drifter fans, you'll have to wait a bit longer to start playing its follow-up title. Heart Machine has announced that it has pushed back Hyper Light Breaker's Steam Early Access launch to "very early next year." In its announcement, the developer said that after many conversations with its publisher Arc Games, it determined that it needed more time to polish the title's gameplay experience. It didn't reveal the issues it's still fixing, but it explained that it didn't want to ship a game that's not up to its standards. The studio also said that it didn't want to rush and burn its team out.
"...we REALLY need to make sure that the core foundational units of the game are as strong as they can be, so that we can build on them during the Early Access period," Heart Machine wrote. The company originally aimed for a spring 2023 launch when it introduced the game two years ago. Since then, though, it has pushed back the game's early access launch date a few times, until it was supposed to come out this summer by the time we were able to play a preview of it.
Hyper Light Breaker is an action rogue-lite with a full 3D environment, unlike its predecessor that has 2D visuals. It's an open-world game set in a fantasy-cyberpunk universe, where you can explore a landscape called the Overgrowth and play with friends through online co-op. Engadget Senior Editor Jessica Conditt called it a "hoverboard sim" in her hands-on, though, because you can just explore its world on a gliding slab, avoiding enemy encounters and enjoying the scenery if you want to.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/hyper-light-breakers-early-access-launch-delayed-to-2025-110019909.html?src=rss
Genshin Impact is bringing its fantastical world to the Xbox this fall. During Gamescom 2024, developer HoYoverse announced that the free-to-play open-world game will be available on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox Cloud Gaming beginning on November 20.
With that release, Xbox players will receive all the same updates, cross-play and cross-progression as Genshin has on other platforms. It can be wishlisted today and Xbox Game Pass players can pre-install it today as well.
Since its debut in September 2020, Genshin Impact has gotten many content updates, arrived on additional platforms, and even spawned an anime series. HoYoverse followed up this international success with a similar science fiction title, Honkai: Star Rail, last spring and then with Zenless Zone Zero this spring.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/genshin-impact-is-coming-to-xbox-this-fall-224105925.html?src=rss
Firaxis Games announced the release date and shared gameplay for Sid Meier's Civilization VII at Gamescom 2024. The strategy game will launch on February 11, 2025. It's been a long wait for fans since Civilization VI arrived back in 2016, and today's announcements at Gamescom mark a few departures for the storied empire-building series.
For starters, the game will be released across platforms. It will be available on PC, Mac, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox and Nintendo Switch at launch. Past entries in the series have arrived on console much later post-release, and sometimes with very clunky ports. Hopefully this approach means a better console experience for Civ VII.
There are also some big changes in gameplay that the team highlighted during a Gamescom livestream. In previous Civilization games, you'd pick one famed leader from history and stick with them for the scenario, guiding their single empire across the decades and centuries. With Civ VII, you'll pick a new civilization at the start of each age that will continue building on what you've already accomplished.
Your options at the start of a new age will vary based on historical context and what you've already done with your current civilization. A full game will have three time periods – the Antiquity Age, the Exploration Age and the Modern Age – or you can opt to play a single-age scenario. For even more variety, players will also be able to mix and match, picking from the whole roster of potential leaders and pairing them with historically inaccurate locations. This should yield a whole new array of intriguing and entertaining situations for players to create.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/prepare-for-world-domination-when-civilization-vii-arrives-in-february-2025-213051202.html?src=rss