Author: Game Infliction

High on Life: Squanch Games Brings the Hit Franchise to Comics

High on Life is one of the most memorably absurd first-person shooters to come along in years, and it’s a game that’s practically tailor-made to work in other media. Thankfully, that’s just what’s happening, as Squanch Games and Titan Comics join forces for a new High on Life comic book series.

IGN can exclusively debut one of the new covers for High on Life #1. Check it out below:

The High on Life comic is written by Alec Robbins, a veteran of the game who also created the web comic Mr. Boop. The series is drawn by Kit Wallis (Wonderland) and colored by JP Jordan (Plough Man).

Here’s Titan’s official description for the new series:

Though they restored peace to the cosmos by killing Garmantuous, there’s no rest for the Bounty Hunter when a brutal new threat to Humans shoots its way onto the scene. Armed with plucky & determined Harper – and the rest of the Gatlian gang – the series will take them on an explosive, twisting adventure across the cosmos.

A story of GUTS, GORE, REDEMPTION, and lost love, this brand-new miniseries will be a rollercoaster romp in the world of the eponymous video game.

High on Life #1 is priced at $3.99 and will be released on June 12, 2024.

The High on Life game scored an 8 out of 10 in IGN’s review, with Travis Northup writing, “High on Life is an irreverent, absurd shooter that manages to shine with its outrageous humor, silly setting and story, and some really goofy, foul-mouthed guns that pull the whole thing together for the vast majority of the time. Combat is a bit sloppy, especially during the first act, and the whole sci-fi adventure sometimes has an unpolished feel to it, but once you get some new tools of destruction and movement options, it rises to the occasion. Not all of its jokes find their punchline, but with memorable boss fights, unique alt-fire abilities and exploration, and way more terrible movies to watch than I expected, this wacky journey is definitely worth your time.”

More recently, the game received its first expansion in the form of the DLC campaign HIgh on Knife.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Riot’s League Of Legends MMO has been “reset” and likely “going dark for several years”

If you’re an MMORPG fan who’s been waiting patiently for news of Riot Game’s swing at the genre, then I’m afraid you’ll probably have to wait quite a while longer. Riot co-founder Marc Merrill announced that the project has been “reset” and won’t appear for “likely several years”, with one of the main reasons being a “need to do something that truly feels like a significant evolution of the genre”.

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Assassin’s Creed Jade Reportedly Delayed to 2025 Amid Tencent Pivot

High-profile mobile game Assassin’s Creed Jade is reportedly delayed from this year to 2025 as part of a significant strategic shift at developer Tencent.

Reuters reported that Tencent, the world’s largest video games company, has redeployed hundreds of staff from the team developing Assassin’s Creed Jade onto its recently launched party game DreamStar.

Assassin’s Creed Jade is a mobile spin-off set in ancient China that has been in development for at least four years, Reuters said. IGN has asked Ubisoft for comment.

The delay is part of a pivot at Tencent, which is now looking to move away from developing Western franchises for mobile due to thin margins. Instead, Tencent wants to focus on making games like NetEase’s smash hit party mobile game Eggy Party, and miHoYo’s phenomenally successful Genshin Impact using its own intellectual property so it can keep the bulk of the profits.

Assassin’s Creed Jade is the first full game in the franchise to be made exclusively for mobile devices. It’s in the works at Level Infinite, a Tencent subsidiary, in partnership with Ubisoft. Meanwhile, Assassin’s Creed Codename Red, the next mainline Assassin’s Creed game, is due out by the end of March 2025.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Typing dungeon crawler Cryptmaster announces release date during IGF award acceptance speech

In a powerful move, one of the two devs behind Cryptmaster announced the delightful typing-based dungeon crawler’s release date last night during his acceptance speech after it won the Independent Games Festival award for Excellence In Design. Powerful. May 9th is the day, so you have time to practise your touchtyping with Mavis Beacon. I really enjoyed playing Cryptmaster’s Steam Next Fest demo, so I’m excited for the full game.

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Dreams Dev Media Molecule Says Layoffs Impact Planned Community and Curation Support

Media Molecule has said the layoffs at the Sony-owned studio have affected plans for ongoing community and curation support in PlayStation 4 game Dreams.

The Guildford, UK-based developer, also known for creating the LittleBigPlanet series, entered into a consultancy with staff last year. That process ends spring 2024, when Media Molecule will lose its Curation Team.

In a new blog post, Media Molecule said that the impact to its teams means “we will be unable to deliver on all the promises” outlined in a 2023 blog post discussing plans for ongoing community and curation support in Dreams following the end of live support. This included The Impsider editorial, which will now not happen. However, Media Molecule said it will continue its streams and support of the Dreams community via social channels.

As announced, live support for DreamSurfing and DreamShaping will end in mid-April. Media Molecule said this will coincide with the launch of new playlists alongside spotlighting the Dreams Recommender playlist providing “tip-top” recommendations based on what players recently played in Dreams.

“Overall, the plan here is ensuring that Dreams transitions into a self-sustaining platform, with these changes helping to filter new creations through to regular Dreams players whilst creators reach their deserved audience for their games, animations, music and everything in between,” Media Molecule said.

Fans have expressed concern about the future of Dreams ever since Media Molecule announced the redundancies in October. Media Molecule insisted there are no plans to take Dreams offline, while admitting the last 12 months have been “tough” for the studio.

“We see a lot of talk and a lot of worry about the future of Dreams in our streams and on social media, and while it’s impossible for anyone to predict what the future might hold, we want to reassure you today that there are currently no plans to take Dreams offline, restricting access to the thousands upon thousands of amazing creations brought to life by all of our fabulous creators,” Media Molecule said.

“This was an incredibly tough time for the studio as a whole and it meant the world to see support from folks on our social channels. While we’re still working through the process, the studio as a whole continues to work on our exciting new project which we’ll talk about when we’re ready.”

The redundancies at Media Molecule were announced months before Sony confirmed plans to lay off around 900 staff, or about 8% of its global PlayStation workforce. The devastating wave of cuts affected a number of PlayStation studios, including Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla, Firesprite, and, most significantly, PlayStation’s London studio, which is to close. Alongside the layoffs, a number of in-development games were canceled, Sony said.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Venba wins IGF Grand Prize for 2024

The winners of the 2024 Independant Games Festival were announced at GDC last night, and it was Visai Games’ Venba that came home with the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. The cooking adventure was up for four IGF awards in total, including nominations for Excellence in Audio, Narrative and Visual Art. But there was no runaway winner at this year’s IGF Awards, with all prizes going to completely different indie games. Come and celebrate the full list of winners below.

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Review: Princess Peach: Showtime! (Switch) – Peach Breaks A Leg In A High-Class Production

Bend and slap.

It’s kinda hard to believe, especially given how ridiculously popular the whole Mushroom Kingdom thing is, that we’ve had so few games starring its actual ruler as the protagonist over the years. Yes, there was Princess Toadstool’s Castle Run on Nelsonic Game Watch back in 1990, Princess Peach’s very first leading role (which you probably don’t need to rush out and buy), and Super Princess Peach on DS, but nothing that feels like a proper turn as the core of a full-on adventure. Until now, that is.

Yep, whilst we were fully expecting this to be a throwaway sort of experience given the above track record, it turns out Princess Peach: Showtime! is easily Ms. Toadstool’s finest hour (shocker), and a far more engaging romp than we had prepared for. It’s still 100% a game aimed squarely at children, mind, and there’s really not a whole ton of challenge for those seeking it, but for younger gamers, for relatives or friends sitting down to have a good old Nintendo sesh with some smaller kids, there’s a whole lot of fun to be had with this one.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Helldivers 2 Dev ‘Deep Down in the Trenches’ Digging Into Current Crash Problem

If you’re playing Helldivers 2 and finding the game crashes more than usual, you’re not alone. Developer Arrowhead has said a lot of players are currently being affected by a crash issue, which is linked to the release of a recent patch, and it’s on the case.

The crash problem began with this week’s release of patch 1.000.103, which nerfed planet hazards and patrols spawning on players, among other things. A crash causes the game to freeze and forces a restart. Given Helldivers 2 missions can take around 40 minutes to extract with all obtained resources and objectives complete, getting a crash towards the end is extremely frustrating.

In a post on the Helldivers Discord, Arrowhead community manager Twinbeard addressed the crash problem, and said the developer is on the case.

“We know that many of you are experiencing a lot of crashes at the moment (seemingly linked to the patch deployed earlier today, which at least resolved the persistent friend request issue for a lot of players),” Twinbeard said. “Our team is deep down in the trenches digging into the issue as we speak. We are on alert ready to update on any changes here. We’re very sorry @everyone for not being able to supply you with the glorious feeling of bug and bot stomping and hope to have the game more stable as soon as possible.”

Helldivers 2’s problems don’t end there. A rare message from Game Master Joel, who pulls the meta narrative strings as players fight to liberate planets from the Terminids and Automatons, revealed the Galactic War is not tracking player contribution properly.

“A message for @everyone from the Game Master,” began the post on the Helldivers Discord. “Helldivers! We’re aware of an issue with the Galactic War not tracking your effective spread of Liberty properly. We are investigating this urgently and will keep you posted as soon as we understand the issue and have a fix to communicate to you. Thanks very much for your patience while we squash some software bugs.”

Yesterday, March 20, Arrowhead deployed additional fixes to the game’s backend to address Eagle kill stats not increasing as expected and missions completed stats counting twice per mission. Three fixes were made for the pesky friend invites problem that Arrowhead said should resolve some of the issues there.

These problems come amid Helldivers 2’s latest Major Order, which tasks players with liberating a number of planets controlled by the Terminids. Players are hoping Arrowhead will extend the Major Order deadline as a result.

If you’re looking for more on Helldivers 2, check out IGN’s feature on the Let Me Solo Her of Helldivers 2, a player who has answered over 100 SOS Beacons as part of a mission to help others. Helldivers 2 has become one of the surprise hits of 2024 since launching in February, topping the charts on Steam and reportedly selling around three million copies. According to at least one analyst, it’s still growing. Check out IGN’s Helldivers 2 review to find out why it’s going down so well.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

ARK: The Animated Series’ First Six Episodes Are Now Available on Paramount+

In a surprise drop, the first six episodes of the long-awaited ARK: The Animated Series are now available to stream on Paramount+.

ARK: The Animated Series is based on ARK: Survival Evolved and you can check out the new trailer right here. It was also confirmed that part two of this first season will debut at a “later date” with seven episodes.

Before we get to what the show is actually about, we have to talk about the absolutely stacked cast that is led by Michelle Yeoh, Russell Crowe, Gerard Butler, David Tennant, Jeffrey Wright, Elliot Page, Madeleine Madden, and Vin Diesel. Now, back to the story.

“An animated adaptation of the hit video game featuring Yeoh, Butler, Crowe and Diesel, ARK: THE ANIMATED SERIES is a sweeping saga spanning eons of human history,” The official description reads. “When 21st century paleontologist Helena Walker (Madden) finds herself resurrected on a mysterious primeval island populated by prehistoric beasts, she must learn to survive with new allies from throughout time, while trying to uncover the true nature of their strange new world.”

This series was first announced in December 2020 during The Game Awards and followed the reveal of ARK 2, which also stars Vin Diesel. We received a new trailer for ARK: The Animated Series at the end of 2022, but news has been mostly quiet on the project until the surprise release of the first six episodes today.

As for ARK 2, it is currently on track for a late 2024 release and was described by Snail Games CEO as the company’s “next masterpiece.”

In the meantime be sure to check out all the details of ARK: Survival Ascended, the remake of ARK: Survival Evolved that is currently in Early Access.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on TikTok.