Author: Game Infliction

Puzzle-strategy mashup Backbeat is coming to PS5 and PS4, demo available now

Today marks the apex of a long journey exploring the boundaries of what a strategy game can be. We are bringing our upcoming funky title Backbeat to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. When we started working on the first prototype in the spring of 2020, I knew there was a lot of potential in the project. It was our tiny indie studio’s second title, and we wanted to add some of the things that were cut from our first game, Hexagroove: Tactical DJ — an onboarding system to introduce our mechanics slowly over the course of the game, a story full of colorful characters, and an experience that feels as good as it sounds. Now refining our release candidate for launch this winter, I’m thrilled to have all those things possible on PlayStation.


Puzzle-strategy mashup Backbeat is coming to PS5 and PS4, demo available now

When we started designing the foundation for Backbeat, we wanted to carry over some principles from Hexagroove and introduce new ones as well. The game fuses the spatial challenges of a sokoban-style game along with the squad-based resource management of a stealth strategy title. Your challenge is to move a band of four characters through a series of isometric maps within a limited number of turns. How you spend those turns and which paths you choose affect a number of shared resources which grow and shrink over the course of the level. Each of the characters’ timelines are controlled separately but are interdependent. Opening doors and deflecting enemies must be done for the benefit of all four or they will preclude your squad’s successful strut to the stage.

To contrast with the synth-fueled EDM soundtrack of Hexagroove, Backbeat is built on a vast pool of live music riffs, improvisations, and solos recorded from the finest funk masters in Stockholm. Changing direction in the map, interacting with doors, or blowing enemies away with a mighty saxophone all enqueue unique audio clips which are played back together in sequence upon completing a level. This gives your unique solution its own personalized victory song.  Every strum, bang, and toot sounded so good I just had to find a way to help them shine extra bright.  After experimenting with the dev kit, I realized the PlayStation 5’s DualSense wireless controller was the perfect instrument to back up our studio musicians. 

I started by working with our composer Pete Fraser to bring a strong musical element to the most interactive parts of Backbeat: when you crash into something, warp through an oncoming car, manipulate time… I feel these brief moments of interaction, when you push a button and immediately something succeeds (or fails), these instants should all be gratifying… and musical! I copied bursts of chords, fanfares, strums, and drum hits all sampled from the studio musicians and fed them into the DualSense controller authoring tools to produce a haptic, musical harmony that reinforces the sound effects used at the same points in the game. Next, I adjust the vibrations using a stack of filters, amplifiers and equalizers to draw attention to the frequencies that we associate these kinds of flourishes with. After these small adjustments the DualSense controller plays a perfect chorus in time with the music and effects echoing from your hi-fi or headphones.

Great music is only part of the experience I wanted to deliver in Backbeat. The game takes place in 1995, paying homage to the great 32-bit arcade and console games I grew up with in smoky restaurant backrooms and our family den. We worked this in to not only the retro low poly style of our characters and environments, but the iconography and sound effects as well. Time manipulation is the key to understanding the core of Backbeat’s challenge, so we embraced analog technology and integrated sampled video cassette tape skeuomorphism into the UI and feedback. When you change characters, the game fast-forwards or rewinds to the point of time the active character has advanced to. This is accompanied with audio-visual tape distortion, and holding the rewind button in the game loops cassette samples including a speed up and slow down at every interaction. This is another fantastic place to use DualSense to increase the immersion and visceral nostalgia we’re going for in Backbeat. Hold down the circle button and commune with the soothing vibration of DualSense controller, built directly from those chunky, white, rotating spools.

Today we’re bringing you a small taste of the full experience that is soon to come to PlayStation. I hope you feel some good vibes from this short trip through some of the first levels of Backbeat, and follow along as we approach the crescendo of our studio’s sophomore title. Enjoy the show, you’re part of it.

Backbeat Demo Tape is available today on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.

AEW Wrestler Kenny Omega Gets a Cameo in Like a Dragon: Ishin! as the One-Winged Angel

If you somehow thought the Like a Dragon (formerly Yakuza) series wasn’t over-the-top enough already, a new addition to the upcoming remake of Like a Dragon: Ishin! might just turn the tables…or flip them. Developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has revealed that wrestler Kenny Omega will be making a cameo appearance in Ishin as a summonable character to aid in battle, complete with a wondrous crossover of a move: One-Winged Angel. He’ll be joined by Midnight Mass star Rahul Kohli.

Omega and Kohli’s appearances will take the form of a “Trooper Card,” effectively a summon similar to the Poundmates used in Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Trooper Cards are a feature new to the remake that allows players to summon other characters to aid them in battle with special abilities, attacks, or temporary stat boosts, and will include both celebrity cameos as well as visits from other characters across the Like a Dragon series.

Kohli’s Trooper Card is titled “Essence of Firestorm” and its in-game description reads as follows: “A chivalrous man who’s traveled through space, time, and reality to serve the Shinsengumi. Draws upon his experience in law enforcement to keep the peace.”

Meanwhile, Omega’s Trooper Card is called “Essence of the One-Winged Angel” and bears the description: “A strapping fighter who’s traveled through space, time, and reality to serve the Shinsengumi. It’s said that his elite skills can summon the stars themselves.” It’s a reference both to Final Fantasy 7 as well as Omega’s in-ring wrestling finisher, One-Winged Angel.

That said, wrestling fans shouldn’t expect it to look anything like his actual in-ring move, as he told IGN ahead of this announcement.

“It’s completely different,” Omega says. “It’s not a wrestling hold. It takes into account that we are heavily influenced by swordplay, magic, and gunplay. I thought it was a chance to do something a little different. As much as I do want, hopefully someday, to have some of my actual wrestling maneuvers in a game, for now I’m more than happy and thrilled to have a very unique and original attack that feels like it belongs in the universe.”

The AEW World Trios Champion is a known gamer and RPG fan, and has been a massive fan of the Like a Dragon series since he was a kid. He’s played every entry so far except for two: Kurohyō, a PSP game that was only released in Japan, and the original Ishin.

His favorite? Omega loves Yakuza: Like a Dragon because it’s an RPG, but he also wanted to shout out Yakuza 2.

“I feel like there’s a nostalgia factor, and I feel like that captured my imagination the most,” he says. “I knew so much about Tokyo and the sights and sounds, so to take the adventure to Osaka and then see just how quirky and cool and fun Osaka was without ever having a hope of going there. Yeah, it always has a special place in my heart.”

It was Omega’s love of the series that netted him the cameo, too. He was initially just helping out with advertisements for Ishin, but that opportunity eventually evolved into a Trooper Card. His appearance in a Like a Dragon game has been rumored since last fall, when Omega shared on Instagram that he had his likeness scanned into the engine. And the wrestler is clearly stoked, comparing his love of Like a Dragon to Yakuza: Like a Dragon protagonist Ichiban’s love of Dragon Quest.

The more time that goes by and the more installments we get, the more honed to our reality that the games become.

“That caught me off guard,” he says of the cameo. “Huge surprise. Very, very, very happy about that news. Looking very forward for people to get their hands on the card, and I’m happy to report that even if you’re not a wrestling fan, even if you’re not a Kenny Omega fan — I know, geez, wow, boy, would that ever be sad if you weren’t? — but if you’re not, totally understandable, because I’ve helped design a card that I think will be useful across the board, and just make your time in Ishin a little more fun and a little more overpowered.”

Omega isn’t just thrilled about his own inclusion in Ishin, but about what it means for the franchise. While past Like a Dragon games have had occasional cameos of popular Japanese celebrities and even wrestlers, his appearance coincides with ongoing growth in popularity for the series in the West. That means we might see more cameos from Western celebrities in Ishin or future games…and maybe even more of Omega.

“I do feel like the more time that goes by and the more installments we get, the more honed to our reality that the games become,” Omega says. “We’re starting to see more real-life people. More real-life restaurants, intellectual properties, landmarks. It’s getting to become very similar to the world that we live in, or at least the Japan that we have in our world.

“And who knows? Who knows where their travels will take them? Maybe they’ll end up somewhere else one day. But yeah, for now, the world is starting to feel more and more familiar, and also more and more relatable. So if there’s any sort of collaborative effort, I’m definitely throwing my name in the hat, and hopefully this will not be the end of Kenny Omega in the RGG universe.”

I close our conversation by asking Omega if he thinks he could take the protagonist of Like a Dragon: Ishin!, Ryoma, in a fight, and the champion is surprisingly humble…perhaps even a bit villainous?

“No, of course not,” he says. “I don’t know what kind of answer anyone was expecting. No, I’m just a showman. I’m a bad guy, too. I’m the guy that needs to get his butt whipped, I think.”

Like a Dragon: Ishin! is planned for release on February 21, 2023 for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Dead Space remake devs confirm that, yep, there’s a secret ending

Dead Space remake stalks onto PC tomorrow, nearly a decade and a half after the original made us collectively need to buy new pants. Earlier this week, I reported on the possibility of this new take on Dead Space getting an alternate ending. The Reunion ending was leaked by an achievements list for the remake, but now the Dead Space Twitter account has confirmed that the game does indeed feature a secret ending. That’s not all, either.

Read more

Gulag 1v1 mode is returning to Warzone 2 Season 2

Call Of Duty: Warzone 2 and Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer both begin Season 02 on February 15th, and the battle royale will see the return of the first Warzone’s 1v1 Gulag. Raven Software and Infinity Ward have shared details about how that’s going to work in a new blog post, along with some info about more changes to battle royale, DMZ, and Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer. The post doesn’t go over incoming maps, modes, and features that players can expect to see in Season 02, but the devs say they’ll be sharing more on those nearer to the new season’s kick-off time.

Read more

Tactical Turn-Based RPG ‘Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2’ Marches Onto Switch This May

Cuddly on the surface.

CyberConnect2 has revealed that it’s bringing the surprise sequel to its hit RPG Fuga: Melodies of Steel to Switch on 11th May 2023 (thanks Gematsu!). Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2, and its predecessor, are part of the Little Tail Bronx series, and both games act as prequels to the PS1 game Tail Concerto and its DS spiritual successor, Solatorobo: Red the Hunter.

Fuga: Melodies of Steel traded the previous games’ action-based combat for an on-rails turn-based take on strategy RPGs. The sequel uses the same system and looks to build on the same emotive story that the first game employed.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

The Xbox Direct Delivered the Optimism Xbox Fans Have Waited For

I went at Microsoft pretty hard for the company’s baffling no-show at December’s massive Game Awards event. As such, it’s only fair I give them credit where credit is due: its first-ever Developer_Direct – aka Xbox Direct for those of us who don’t have the patience to type that damn underscore every single time – was a success. The 40-minute broadcast wisely mimicked the hostless format that Nintendo pioneered and Sony smartly stole, and as a result we saw five games, got four release dates, and perhaps most of all, took away some optimism for the months to come.

Microsoft managed to pleasantly surprise everyone by dropping a new Tango Gameworks rhythm-action game on us called Hi-Fi Rush. It immediately looked like a delightful mashup of Sunset Overdrive, Ninja Gaiden, and Guitar Hero. Even better, Tango released it right after the Direct ended, making this one of the first same-day announcement+release combos in quite some time. It’s not a stretch to say that such a surprise would not have been possible without Xbox Game Pass, where word-of-mouth can build up over time, and a game’s success is not as heavily dependent on a pre-order campaign and months of marketing hype.

Meanwhile, Redfall was the headliner, closing things out with a deeper look at Arkane’s vampire-themed FPS. It still clearly retains Arkane DNA, but it’s also decidedly different from the studio’s previous emergent-gameplay offerings like Dishonored and Prey. Instead, you’ll do a lot of shooting with a lot of cool weapons and against a lot of wild enemies, from vampires that shroud the battle arena in darkness to huge bosses that almost resemble Strikes from Destiny. It’ll be out on May 2 – which should be just enough of a head start before multi-decade-old franchise juggernauts like Zelda, Diablo, Street Fighter, and Final Fantasy clog up the Summer (not to mention Rocksteady’s long-awaited Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League).

We saw five games, got four release dates, and took away some optimism for the months to come

In fact, the only real disappointment of the day was from Forza Motorsport. Not the game, mind you. Once again, it looks incredible. The Forza series has never been lacking visually and the rebuilt-for-next-gen-only reboot (i.e. there will not be an Xbox One version) wowed us with its paint reflections, dynamic day/night cycle, and realistic dirt accumulations on its 500 cars. And that was just in the compressed 1080p livestream. It’ll look even more glorious in its native 4K/60fps. Instead, the letdown took the form of Forza Motorsport’s release date, or, more accurately, the lack of one. Given that Microsoft made it clear up front it would be focusing on four games for this Direct, and that all four of them were expected in the first half of the year as per the company’s decree at last Summer’s Xbox Showcase, it was fair play to expect to learn exactly when we’d get to play each of them. But unfortunately we didn’t even get a season to expect Forza in – a generic “2023” was all we got, all but confirming that the next-gen racer will slip to the second half of the year.

In summary, if Microsoft takes away anything from its first Direct, it should be these two things:

1) Keep using this format for non-E3 showcases. It works. Never break out the overproduced, overly long Inside Xbox format again.

2) Keep underpromising and overdelivering. It was made clear that Starfield would get its own Direct later and not be a part of this one. That helped calibrate audience expectations going in, and those expectations were exceeded when Hi-Fi Rush hit the screen, and then again when it released on the same day.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

Disney Dreamlight Valley’s roadmap reveals multiplayer is coming this year

Disney Dreamlight Valley has revealed the life sim will be going multiplayer this year. Along with the option to drag your mates into bothering popular Disney characters and creating a magical kingdom of your very own, Dreamlight Valley’s roadmap shows that Encanto’s Mirabel, Frozen’s Olaf, and Simba from animated classic The Lion King will be coming to the game in free updates over the next few months. The roadmap also promised more new characters, realms, and gubbins such as clothing and furniture to stuff your house full of.

Read more

Splatoon 3’s Mobile App SplatNet Has Received A Minor Update

View your Big Run results.

If you’re a Splatoon 3 fanatic, you may make use of the NSO mobile app ‘SplatNet’ on a regular basis. If you do, you might be interested in this neat little update. You’ll now be able to see all your previous Salmon Run ‘Big Run’ games that you’ve played, along with your highest score and highest pay grade.

Here’s a closer look, courtesy of video game dataminer OatmealDome:

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Mojang’s New Action-Strategy Minecraft Legends Arrives On Switch This April

Save the Minecraft universe (again).

During Xbox’s Developer Direct, Mojang confirmed Minecraft Legends would be arriving on April 18th, 2023 on Switch.

In case you missed it, this is a new action-strategy game where you’ll lead your allies into heroic battles and defend the famous Minecraft overworld from mobs of destructive piglins. You’ll even be able to challenge or team up with friends. Here’s a bit about the gameplay trailer above:

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Xbox Direct Reactions and Analysis – Unlocked 579

We recorded Unlocked immediately after Microsoft’s Xbox Developer Direct presentation this week, so these are our in-the-moment reactions to the excellent presentation, from the deep-dive on Redfall (including a May 2 release date to look forward to) to another look at the gorgeous Forza Motorsport (though it came without any release date attached) to the surprise new game from Tango Gameworks, Hi-Fi Rush, that’s available right now! And in our final segment, we spent some time discussing the current uncertain state of Halo in the wake of the layoffs at 343 Industries.

Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 of this week’s episode. For more awesome content, check out our interview with Todd Howard, who answered all of our Starfield questions after the big reveal at the Xbox Showcase:

For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.