It's been about a decade since Nintendo released a new game in the Donkey Kong Country series — and while there isn't a new one coming any time soon, there is a port of one you may have missed on its way. Donkey Kong Country Returns, originally released for the Wii in 2010, is hitting the Switch on January 15, 2025. It was a fine game for its time, and I'm hopeful it'll hold up well some 15 years later. At the very least, the controls should be simpler, as Nintendo won't be forcing motion controls into the mix with this remaster as they did with the Wii original.
This game joins Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze as the other modern-ish interpretation of the franchise. Tropical Freeze was first released for the Wii U in 2014 — but since no one owned that poor console, its arrival on the Switch in 2018 meant that a much larger audience got to give the game a shot. That's not exactly the case with Donkey Kong Country Returns, which sold well for the original Wii. Still, Donkey Kong Country fans are starved for a new game, so this will have to do for now. I'm sure it's been years since many people have checked it out, so hopefully it'll feel somewhat fresh.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/donkey-kong-country-returns-originally-released-for-the-wii-in-2010-is-coming-to-the-switch-153629092.html?src=rss
After 18 years and a complete reboot, Samus Aran will return in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond next year, Nintendo announced today. The company also gave us our first glimpse at the game, which sees Samus duking it out with alien hordes on distant planet. At first glance, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond could easily be mistaken for a Halo game, though there's a bit of enemy scanning and morph ball action, as you'd expect. The teaser ends with the reveal of a new big bad (wearing a suit like Samus's), flanked by two floating metroids.
It's hard to read too much into a teaser, but as someone who adored the original Metroid Prime on the Gamecube, I'm certainly excited. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is currently slated as a Switch title, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it appear on Nintendo's Switch successor as well.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/metroid-prime-4-beyond-lands-on-switch-in-2025-145927227.html?src=rss
Nintendo kicked off its latest Direct showcase with quite a surprise. The company has revived the Mario and Luigi RPG series with the first new entry in nearly nine years. The upcoming title is called Mario and Luigi: Brothership, and that title just about melted my darn heart when I saw it pop up.
The reveal trailer shows Mario Mario and Luigi Mario working together to explore islands, overcome obstacles and stomp out enemies. They'll be able to use "evolved bros moves" to take out bad guys and as in previous entries, it seems like you'll control both brothers simultaneously. It all looks extremely adorable. Mario and Luigi: Brothership is coming to Nintendo Switch on November 7.
The last entirely new entry in the series came in 2015 with Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam on the 3DS, a game that also drew inspiration from Paper Mario. Mario and Luigi: Brothership is the first game in the series made for the Switch, though Superstar Saga is available via Switch Online + Expansion Pack. It's not clear which studio is developing the latest game — Nintendo has been keeping strangely quiet about such details of its first-party games recently — but original studio AlphaDream shut down in 2019.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mario-and-luigi-brothership-is-coming-to-nintendo-switch-this-november-142509633.html?src=rss
Black Myth: Wukong is gorgeous. It’s built up a lot of momentum, feeding trailer after gorgeous trailer, and at Summer Game Fest this year, I finally got to play it. Is it just a gorgeous tech demo with a heavy dose of Chinese mythology or your next gaming challenge?
A Chinese folk story, Journey to the West, inspired Game Science Studio’s action RPG. You play as the “destined one,” a monkey hero wielding an extending bo-staff and a handful of magic spells. I was given the higher-specced (though undisclosed) PC rig to play on, ensuring all that Unreal Engine 5 eye candy had a fighting chance of running smoothly. While less than an hour with a game won’t give the definitive answer, Wukong ran smoothly despite my chaotic play style. The game has been held up as a major example of next-gen graphical tech, so I’m relieved it didn't chug during my demo.
I played a relatively early part of the game, starting with the Forest of Wolves and the Guanyin Temple. I fought my way through several typical wolf-humanoid enemies, a bigger mid-level boss and then a giant wolf creature. On the way, I unlocked the ability to transform into one of the monsters, summoning their flaming weapon and opening up new attacks and skills. Midway through the demo, an old man with a head like a ginseng root gave me an immobilization spell with its own cooldown meter and offered me a brief reprieve against more dangerous foes, like the final giant wolf. He also briefly transformed me into an insect, able to fly over enemies' heads. This was fun but will apparently only be available at certain points in the game — you won’t be able to dodge all the fights.
However, you won’t progress (or even stay alive long) unless you get a handle on the basics. Attacks are separated into light and heavy, with the ability to charge the heavy attack for even stronger blows. Given how stamina drains during attacks, you’ll need to keep on top of defense, too, with jumps and dodges. Dodge perfectly, and time slows a little, an extra illusion of yourself appears and you get to pull a few extra moves before an enemy realizes what happened.
As you progress, you earn points to unlock new skills from a talent tree, which teases three staff styles to switch between. I unlocked the ‘pillar’ style, so my character could vault up to the top of his staff and ‘grow’ it by holding the strong attack button. This way, you avoid ground-level attacks. But if enemies hit your staff, your stamina (but not your health) takes a hit.
Releasing the button unleashes an extra strong move that seems to daze enemies if it interrupts their attack. It’s high risk, high reward and, like the best action RPGs, there’s nothing more satisfying than nailing the timing and move choice. Wukong’s battle system means you can’t just spam attacks and dodge rolls, as both burn through a stamina bar, which sits next to your health bar. The destined one also carries a rechargeable health potion, but he has to pause to use it. More risk and reward: If you don’t use it in a timely way, you’ll die and get reincarnated a few minutes down the mountain and have to face (or run past) most of the enemies you’d already dispatched — the fundamental backbone of soulslike games like Wukong. The battle system seemed responsive, and the biggest challenges came from groups of warriors: I had to combine evasion with prioritizing, say, the archer, before other enemies.
Game Science
It’s all elevated by how good the environment looks, the bizarre monster design and the quiet, unsettling soundtrack. The giant wolf boss I encountered was small potatoes compared to other enemies the developer teased in earlier trailers — I want to fight that dragon. While the protagonist was entirely taciturn during my demo, Game Science, the studio behind the game, says the player will “uncover the stories behind various characters, understanding their love and hate, greed and anger, past lives and present.” I’m intrigued to see how that goes.
Black Myth: Wukong is, finally, almost here. It launches on PC and PS5 on August 20, 2024.
Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/black-myth-wukong-hands-on-preview-sgf-2024-133059684.html?src=rss
It’s time for another Nintendo Direct, where the company teases, hypes and previews its upcoming slate of games. You can watch the June Nintendo Direct right here today at 10AM ET.
One thing we can rule out in advance is news about the Nintendo Switch successor. Last month, the company finally confirmed that it will unveil its next console by March 2025. However, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa quickly dashed any hopes that we’ll hear about it in today’s Direct. And the stream’s YouTube description box reiterates that as plainly as possible: “There will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during this presentation.”
So, Nintendo clearly wants us to think about one of the last waves of games for the Switch before we start drooling over new hardware. Let’s see what it has in store.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/watch-the-next-nintendo-direct-here-at-10am-et-120054935.html?src=rss
Are you more than your past? This seems to be the question at the heart of Penrose, a short but impactful psychological horror game for Playdate by Liza Olson. The answer will ultimately be determined by the choices you make as you try to find your way out of the strange titular town.
Much of the experience in Penrose is exploration, and the game plays from start to finish like an eerie, emotionally challenging walk down memory lane. There are things your character might encounter, like an old playground, that’ll spark a tinge of fondness, while others — a mirror, a locked bedroom door — seem linked to more painful events. As you make your way out of the house where you started and through the seemingly abandoned town, things get progressively weirder.
You’ll encounter some creepy entities, not to mention a deeply unsettling mall that is, for some reason, oozing (I really appreciated the design of this in a love-hate kind of way). The names of the stores in that mall are also pretty fun, each being a play on some real-life chain, like Not Tropic. There are a few puzzles in Penrose, but the catacombs stands out as the only area of any real difficulty. It tripped me up for a good minute, which made me feel all the more clever once I figured out how to crack it.
Penrose beautifully captures the complicated nature of nostalgia, and there are multiple possible endings to the game that play right into that complexity. Penrose is available on itch for Playdate and the Playdate Simulator on PC, Mac and Linux.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/in-the-playdate-game-penrose-your-past-has-come-back-to-haunt-you-214104554.html?src=rss
PlayStation Productions and Screen Gems have announced the cast for the upcoming movie adaptation of the interactive horror game Until Dawn. According to Deadline, the ensemble will include Ella Rubin, who stars alongside Anne Hathaway in Amazon Prime's The Idea of You, and Michael Cimino, who played Victor Salazar in Hulu's Love, Victor.Expats' Ji-young Yoo and Sitting in Bars with Cake's Odessa A'zion have also signed on to play characters in the game revolving around eight young adults who have to survive the night at a remote mountain lodge while being hunted by a killer.
Supermassive Games got some pretty well-known actors to provide motion capture and voice acting for the game's characters, including Rami Malek and Hayden Panettiere. They're no longer the right age to play their original roles, so it doesn't come as a surprise that they're not involved in the project. But since they're not unknown motion capture actors, the filmmakers are dealing with a unique situation in that famous people's faces are tied to the characters other people will now portray.
"At PlayStation Productions, we are always looking to find creative and authentic ways to adapt our beloved games that our fans will enjoy," Asad Qizilbash, head of Sony's production company, told Deadline. "Alongside Screen Gems, we’ve assembled a fantastic cast of new characters that builds upon our already stellar filmmaking team and their vision for the adaptation."
The game itself is getting a remake for the PS5 and for PC. It was built in Unreal Engine 5 for the newer console, and it will add a third-person camera mode, new locations and new interactions to the original. Until Dawn's remake is coming out sometime this fall.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/until-dawns-original-actors-will-not-star-in-its-film-adaptation-110036254.html?src=rss
Metaphor: ReFantazio has been a long time in the making. It was announced in 2017 as Project re Fantasy through a weird long video that said very little. Since then, Atlus has swapped the Project for Metaphor and scoured Google Translate to find a cool way to say ‘fantasy.’ It’s also made a giant fantasy JRPG — and after rolling through a demo at Summer Game Fest last weekend, I’m dying to play it.
ReFantazio is the first original title by Studio Zero, a relatively new Atlus division headed up by Katsura Hashino. As the director of the third, fourth and fifth Persona game, Hashino is responsible for the Persona series’ pivot towards social simulation elements. After finishing up Persona 5, Hashino left P-Studio to work on all-new titles unrelated to Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series.
Atlus and Hashino are both known more for (semi-) grounded urban fantasy than wizards and elves, and ReFantazio in that sense represents a big departure. This is an epic, sprawling story covering a whole nation, the United Kingdom of Euchronia. The Euchronian king has been assassinated, and the people of the land must elect (!?) a new one.
Euchronia is home to eight “tribes” (fantasy races) and our hero is trying to reunite them. There’s also a cursed prince who everyone thinks is dead, a royal tournament for the throne in six months and monsters everywhere. To make matters worse, Euchronia is being invaded by hideous, Hieronymus Bosch-inspired creatures called humans, which function as the game’s bosses. Humans, huh? Wonder if it’s a… metaphor?
Given Atlus’ storytelling history, the broad strokes of ReFantazio will probably make more sense than the moment-to-moment beats. Best to just let it wash over you.
The game takes place over the course of six months, and you’ll be traveling across Euchronia in a Gauntlet Runner (a cool ship designed by the Evangelion mech guy) trying to rally support for your entry into the royal tournament. Each town in the game has a tavern where you can grab a bite and gather information, a recruitment center where you can accept quests, various shops and an inn where you can rest. Completing quests and making friends along the way will gain you supporters among the various tribes, which is key to both the overarching story and the combat.
Atlus
Atlus’ Summer Game Fest demo was segmented into three 15-minute chunks. The first was a training sequence of sorts, story-heavy and light on combat. This felt mostly like a showcase for ReFantazio’s cinematics, which were gorgeous, despite the TVs in the demo area being set to interpolate frames. Atlus has a tradition of showcasing top-quality anime in its games, and the demo clips were among the best I’ve seen. What I appreciated more than the quality of the animation was how closely the character designs and vibe of the game matched the cinematics.
Also memorable is the voice acting. For the English-speaking cast, Atlus is taking the “United Kingdom” of Euchronia very seriously, as everyone I ran into had a totally over-the-top British accent. As the owner of an English accent, I found the characters beyond theatrical but nonetheless enjoyable. At one point in the demo I met a hyper-cockney cat girl that could've been auditioning for Oliver.
Atlus
In another segment, I fought alongside an adorable floppy-eared fellow from fantasy Liverpool who sounded like he was analyzing a soccer game. If none of this excites you, the Japanese voice cast seems to be shooting for a typical fantasy vibe. Personally, I can’t imagine playing this game in anything other than English at this point.
Not everything is voiced — as in a lot of JRPGs, key lines and conversations play out in full, but many interactions will be confined to text, with the voice actors emoting a little along the way for flavor. As a speed reader, this is absolutely fine by me.
Atlus
Segment two was all about dungeon-crawling combat — time for the Persona comparisons! The setup here will be familiar to fans of Atlus games: It’s a turn-based JRPG, with various types of physical and magical attacks, status effects and ailments. ReFantazio’s version of the classic JRPG class system is Archetypes — there are 14 lineages containing over 40 unique Archetypes, including some familiar roles like Mage, Thief, Knight and Healer.
There’s also a tactical element to party composition, with a front and back row playing a part in combat, and Synthesis moves that allow you to combine your party’s Archetypes for stronger attacks. Everything has a little Persona and SMT to it — you manage Archetypes in an Akademeia (similar to a Velvet Room), they can evolve through experience, and their proficiency in battle is linked to your bond with your supporters.
Atlus
A twist on the classic turn-based formula — and one I’m very pleased about — is the Fast battle system. When you come across an enemy, you’ll be able to gauge their strength before initiating combat. The Fast system lets you target a particular enemy and strike them; this can insta-kill underpowered foes, which allows you to avoid turn-based battling entirely when grinding low-level enemies. For stronger foes, you can use Fast to butter them up and start a squad battle with advantage, but if you mess up this engagement you could start the turn-based combat on your ass. Other Atlus games have a similar risk-reward system to allow players to gain an advantage, but this is more nuanced and satisfying.
The interface for all of this is a typically gorgeous menu system and UI that feels more refined than ever. Simple actions are assigned a face button on the controller, which means less time spent in menus. It’s all pretty intuitive, and towards the end of my short demo I was already speeding through the turn-based combat without wondering what button did what. Taken as a whole, the combat system feels like a natural evolution to the classic formula Atlus is known for.
Atlus
The final demo section starts inside the Gauntlet Runner. It’s a claustrophobic space, more submarine than super yacht, but filled with things to do. There are people to talk to, activities to partake in, and routes to choose. Similar to Persona, the game occuring over a fixed period means you likely won’t be able to do everything you want to, and instead need to decide how best to spend your time each day. You might try to level up one of the main character’s five traits — courage, wisdom, tolerance, eloquence and imagination — or perhaps focus on fighting monsters or earning cash. I played to type and read a book, which was sadly not enough to raise my courage from “craven.”
My cozy book session led immediately into the main show: a face-off against a giant human. This began with an anime sequence, which gave way to classic four-on-one combat. The human designs in this game are buckwild. This one was called, “Sea Horror Homo Sabara” and here are the Cliff’s Notes:
Long violet beard and eyebrows.
One yellow eye, one white eye, both glowing.
12 ears arranged in two rows? Edgy piercings.
Crown of thorns. Actually, make that two crowns of thorns.
Top half of head has been scalped. There seems to be a human heart sticking out.
Also, eight giant bejeweled tentacles as weapons.
It’s not like I haven’t seen crazy bosses in a JRPG before, but this octodad was a lot of fun to fight. There was no major challenge: Take out the tentacles, wail on the body, tentacles regenerate, repeat. But he hit hard, and the demo clearly set me up for success. It’s easy to see this guy wiping your team if you don’t come properly prepared.
Of all the things Atlus squeezed into the short Summer Game Fest, the human battle was the most memorable. From the lore being drip-fed to fans, it seems like the humans are actually from our world, and are being Isekai’d into Euchronia as these messed-up monsters. Here’s hoping a lot of them made it over.
Atlus
At first blush ReFantazio feels like a real auteur moment for Hashino — as if, after the worldwide success of Persona 5, he’s basically been given a blank check. Hashino’s Persona titles bend over backwards to show you how cool and edgy they are, but the only concern for ReFantazio is how loud, confident and unique it can be.
Yes, there are elements borrowed from almost every Atlus RPG you can think of, but it's all been remixed and refined. I left my brief time with ReFantazio filled with this wonderful milieu of nostalgia and surprise, a warm familiarity from something unlike anything I’d played before.
Metaphor: ReFantazio comes to PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox Series consoles on October 11.
Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/metaphor-refantazio-feels-like-a-jrpg-free-from-restraint-and-sanity-185129361.html?src=rss
Looking for more games to play this summer? You can pick up three months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $35 via Woot, which is a discount of $10 and close to a record low price. Single months are also on sale for $12, instead of $17. It’s a veritable cornucopia of digital subscription codes.
Game Pass Ultimate is, well, the ultimate way to access the service. You can play hundreds of games on Xbox consoles, of course, but this membership also allows for cloud gaming on other devices like PCs and tablets. It even includes a free EA Play membership, which opens up even more games.
The reason why Game Pass has been so successful is that the catalog isn’t filled with shovelware and ancient relics, like the gaming equivalent of $1 Blu-Rays in the back of a Walmart somewhere. The catalog is overstuffed with actual games, from AAA exclusives to indie gems. Wanna check out the expansive JRPG Octopath Traveler and its sequel? They’re both on Game Pass, in addition to the indie equivalent Sea of Stars. The same goes for Minecraft, Forza Horizon 5, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and just about every EA sports title. It’s a pretty deep bench.
Game Pass is also the home to Xbox first-party titles, and most of these release on the platform at launch. This means the catalog includes Bethesda games like Starfield and the Rare pirate-sim Sea of Thieves. This also means that subscribers will be able to play upcoming titles the day they release, like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and a little war sim named Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Xbox just had a fantastic showcase of upcoming games and many of the announced titles will be day one Game Pass exclusives.
There are no two ways about it. Game Pass is the best subscription service around. PlayStation Plus Premium is decent and does its own share of day one launches, but the catalog just isn’t as exciting. Nintendo Switch Online is, uh, great for people who want to play a middling SNES port once every three months.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/get-three-months-of-xbox-game-pass-ultimate-for-only-35-151745145.html?src=rss
All four wheels reconnect with the glowing pavement in a slap of crisp plastic and crunching wood.
Push, push, push, push, jump kickflip —
Another slam, a quick screech.
Push, push, push, ju —
A shattering crash. The world flips on its head in an explosion of glittering blacks and iridescent pinks. I let out a small laugh, adjust the controller in my hands, and lean forward. Reset.
Push.
In a hyper-chilled demo space at Summer Game Fest, Skate Story creator Sam Eng drew a picture of a flaming skateboard on a business card while I played his game, occasionally lifting his head to giggle at my crashes and answer my questions. He described Skate Story as an attempt to capture the feeling he often has while skateboarding, invincible in one moment and utterly vulnerable the next. Fragile, like glass.
Skate Story absolutely crystallizes this feeling. You play as the glass skater, a demon made of translucent pain, and your goal is to skate to the moon, eat it, and escape this hell. The game takes place in a series of surreal playgrounds in the Underworld, offering long catwalks for gaining speed, winding pathways lined with lethal red shards, and open areas dotted in concrete ramps, gaps and waxed ledges. The Devil and his minions are your enemies, and their only weaknesses are your sweet tricks.
Sam Eng
Skate Story is coming to PC and I played the demo with a standard Xbox controller: Press Y to hop on the board, A to gain speed, X to powerslide and B to ollie. Holding A pushes the glass skater forward in a steady rhythm, holding B does a higher ollie, and combining the trigger and bumper buttons with a jump executes a trick. I leaned heavily on ollies, kickflips (left trigger + B) and grinds (near a ledge + B), but I also landed a few moves that included these inputs plus a nudge of the right analog stick, swapping stances.
As I ollied my way through the Underworld, I encountered a variety of floating stone heads — some friendly, some vicious — and I collected items to unlock new progression areas, slamming my board into the ground to solve little puzzles. There was a shop with custom decks and parts for sale, and wide-open spaces for practicing tricks. The demo’s concluding boss fight, versus a giant stone philosopher’s head no less, provided a concrete arena for me to perform tricks and deal damage with my rad skateboarding prowess.
Sam Eng
I’m craving a few uninterrupted hours with the game, ideally at home and after a few edibles, so I can perfect its mechanics, unlock upgrades and learn new moves. I crashed a dozen times in my 45-minute demo, often in the same spot repeatedly and always with a magnificent, shattering explosion — but resets were swift and not too punishing. The crash always hit harder after I’d found a flow state, holding down A to push and jumping smoothly over neon spikes embedded in the shimmering black asphalt, taking a risk and landing a kickflip, reaching peak velocity, feeling completely free. And then I’d clip a sliver of concrete and the ride would be over, sudden and harsh. In Skate Story, sidewalk-high edges are just as dangerous as glowing-red obstacles, and the game requires a constant buzz of situational awareness. A lot like skateboarding in real life, I’d wager.
Skate Story induces a limbo-like haze through its mechanical rhythm, VHS-filtered visuals and the constant, low whoosh of the glass skater's wheels rolling across the Underworld's concrete. Strategy becomes impossible and the only option is to feel your way through the brutalist, pearlescent landscapes. The game's soundtrack is provided by New York artist Blood Cultures and it's a soothing, lo-fi vibe fest, like OlliOlli’s flow music but with a distorted edge. It feels like a perfect fit.
Skate Story encourages you to enter a peak state early on, only so you can chase that feeling the rest of the game. It’s an incredibly compelling loop, with room for payoff or failure in every push.
Sam Eng
The Underworld is so much larger than the slice I explored in Skate Story’sSummer Game Fest demo. The full game has more than 70 tricks to learn, fresh gear to acquire and a leveling system to unlock. Skate Story feels like a game that will easily swallow hours upon hours of my time. As easily as eating the moon, at least.
Skate Story is due out this year (not 2023, as suggested by the top trailer) on Steam, developed by Sam Eng and published by Devolver Digital.
Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/skate-story-hands-on-kick-push-shatter-120051976.html?src=rss