In the immersive storytelling between Dragonheir: Silent Gods and Dungeons & Dragons, the legendary ranger Drizzt Do’Urden successfully thwarted his nemesis, Errtu the Balor, in the first phase of the storyline. As the adventure moves into its second phase, two arcane masters from Dungeons & Dragons, Elminster Aumar and Sammaster, will debut on February 23rd, offering players an exciting showdown.
Expanding Dragonheir’s Fantasy Multiuniverse with Classic IP Collaboration
Dragonheir: Silent Gods, also referred to as Dragonheir, is an open-world TRPG that incorporates several classic Western fantasy tabletop game mechanics. It includes dungeon duels, card mechanics, dice rolls, and a wide variety of races and professions.
Sagi, the lead producer of Dragonheir and head of SGRA Studio, shared his thoughts on the collaboration: “We look forward to embarking on an extensive collaboration with Dungeons & Dragons, a renowned western fantasy IP. Our goal with this collaboration is to provide players with an immersive experience as they explore the vast world of Dragonheir. We want players to enjoy the thrill of forming adventurous teams with iconic Dungeons & Dragons characters and engaging in strategic combat.”
Experience an Exclusive Storyline to Receive Limited-Time Rewards
In the storyline of this collaborative adventure, Dragonheir‘s multiverse welcomes the arrival of Elminster Aumar and Sammaster, two esteemed masters of the magic arts. In the original lore, Sammaster once studied magic under Elminster Aumar. However, after a heated argument, Sammaster’s irrationality led him to redirect his dissatisfaction towards Elminster’s existence, fueling his resentment. This divergence pushed him away from the path of righteousness, delving into necromantic arts, and ultimately opposing Elminster Aumar. Within Dragonheir, players will accompany Elminster Aumar to thwart the collaborative boss Sammaster from encroaching upon the world of Dragonheir.
In addition, the second phase collaborative event offers players new gameplay features, artifacts, and promotional benefits compared to the first phase:
Introduction of a limited-time dice skin exclusive to Phase Two Collaboration – [Arcane Dice].
Debuting the multi-phase gameplay for the collaborative Boss, presenting varied abilities and attributes, empowering players to tailor their strategies.
Presenting the limited-time artifact – [A Guide to Magic by Elminster], accessible through the Collaboration Token [Sage’s Chess Piece].
Unveiling for the first time, an exclusive collaborative promotion bundle containing multiple Heliolite Dice and Skill Scrolls, accompanied by the exclusive collaborative avatar frame [Sage of Shadowdale].
Players can delve deeper into strategic gameplay and reap additional benefits during this collaborative adventure. The expanded feature set promises a more immersive experience, with greater strategic depth and an enhanced reward system for players who participate in this event.
Dragonheir: Silent Gods‘ collaborationwith Dungeons & Dragonsis now available to play on Mac, Windows, Epic, Steam, iOS, and Android platforms. Click here to download the game now and enter IGN’s exclusive gift code ign223 to redeem limited rewards.
Join Dungeons & Dragons legends in Dragonheir and engage with the game’s community on Facebook, YouTube, and Discord for comprehensive information!
Microsoft has continued its custom console collection by creating an Xbox Series S based on ‘Pokémon with guns’ hit Palworld.
Revealed on X/Twitter, below, the Palworld Xbox Series S itself features a ton of Pals in colourful artwork, but it’s perhaps the controllers that will draw the most attention. The console comes with four gamepads, each one themed after different Palworld beasties.
A yellow controller features Electric element Pal Grizzbolt, a green controller features Grass element Pal Mammorest, a blue controller features Water and Ice element Pal Pengullet, and a pink controller features Neautral Pal Cattiva.
Imagine playing Palworld on THIS
Follow and RT with #PalworldXboxSweepstakes for a chance to win a custom Palworld Xbox Series S, 4 custom controllers, and a 3 Month Game Pass Ultimate Code.
Xbox isn’t selling the custom console but is instead giving it away in a sweepstake. Fans can enter for a chance to win by following the Xbox X/Twitter account and retweeting the post by March 17, 2024. The prize bundle comes with three months of Game Pass Ultimate, too.
Palworld is a smash hit, logging 25 million players since going on sale in January 2024, including 10 million on Xbox. It’s the biggest third-party launch on Game Pass ever. This might lower the chance of winning the special console, but someone’s got to win.
Steam survival crafting game Nightingale is getting an offline mode “as soon as is feasible”, with developer Inflexion Games deeming it a priority.
In a developer update posted to Steam, Inflexion said it built the game with a shared, connected universe in mind but didn’t realise players would want an offline mode too.
It updated the post later to say work on regular updates would be uninterrupted despite saying it was prioritising the unplanned single player mode. News on regular updates, pertaining to new content, fixes, bugs, and other work would arrive in the coming days, it said.
“We are now prioritizing and developing an offline mode that we plan to release as soon as feasible,” Inflexion said.
“Our vision for the game since inception was to create an interconnected series of Realms, with the idea of allowing for co-operative exploration in mind — a universe bigger than a single Realm or server. That meant we made a choice early in development between supporting co-op from day one or focusing development on an offline mode.”
It added: “Looking back on that decision, we misjudged what some of you were looking for in your experience.”
Nightingale launched on February 20 in Steam Early Access as a shared world survival crafting game set in an all new fantasy universe. Players are stranded beyond their own world, cut off by the sudden collapse of the arcane portal network.
“The gameplay loops of Nightingale look flexible, engrossing, and fun, though [we are] mildly worried about how much attention the base building can keep,” IGN said in our final preview. “[We’re] unsure of what else there is to do or maintain once it’s built the way you like. Of course, [we] do suppose creatures can also come wreck things and force you to build anew.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Cardy, Matt, and Dale have all finished Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and had a bloody good time playing it, too. Find out why, as well as why Dune: Part Two is a fantastic sequel and film you should see ON THE BIGGEST SCREEN POSSIBLE. Plus, there’s also time to try and explain how the new poker-based roguelike Balatro is taking over lives.
What’s the scariest kids TV show? What’s the best KitKat? Get in touch at ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.
Avatar: The Last Airbender star Ken Leung thought he was auditioning for a role in James Cameron’s Avatar instead of that of Commander Zhao on the Netflix series.
Speaking to Deadline, Leung admitted he hadn’t heard of the beloved animated series before he was awarded the role and laughed that, when he was told the role was for Avatar, he thought he’d “be blue”.
“I didn’t know the original at all,” Leung said. “Maybe it’s an age thing but I didn’t know about it. First of all, the audition, you couldn’t tell it was for Avatar, it was kind of disguised as a different project. And when I first heard it was for Avatar I thought I was gonna be blue.”
Leung said this served him well, however, as he didn’t have the pressure of knowing the original portrayal of Zhao and therefore could let his version of the character flourish.
“Looking back, I kind of love that I came in blank,” he said. “Because when you have ideas you can kind of corrupt a pure process. You come in blank, things will come into it that will inform your playing of it in a way that it might not if you came in with preconceived ideas or plans. So I was grateful for that.”
In our 7/10 review, IGN said: “The live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series enriches the original story with meaningful new material, but its breakneck pacing, exposition-heavy dialogue, and hit-or-miss effects aren’t precisely in balance.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth may not be available until February 29 but fans are already obsessing over Tifa’s appearance in the game.
A clip of the remade Costa Del Sol section of Final Fantasy 7 has gone viral, with Tifa trending alongside Aerith. The clip shows the party at the beach, with Cloud seemingly taken aback by Tifa and Aerith’s swimsuits.
The internet has already grown obsessed over it, with one post from X/Twitter user @Genki_JPN having clocked 1.6 million views by itself.
“We all know she is attractive and I understand that,” Harada said in a post on X/Twitter. “But as yet we have not decided anything about guest characters etc.”
The Costa Del Sol section of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is just one of several cities players can explore. Unlike the first game, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, the sequel takes place throughout a large portion of the world and also includes the likes of Gold Saucer and Junon. The latter can be explored in the recently updated demo too.
In our 9/10 review of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, IGN said: “Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth impressively builds off of what Remake set in motion, both as a best-in-class action-RPG full of exciting challenges and an awe-inspiring recreation of a world that has meant so much to so many for so long.”
Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has raised the game’s server cap to a whopping 700,000 concurrent users as it braces itself for another weekend of massive player numbers.
Helldivers 2 is a smash hit following its explosive launch across PC via Steam and PlayStation 5, but the co-op focused third-person shooter has suffered from significant issues as server capacity is hit time and time again.
Arrowhead has released a number of patches in a bid to combat the problem, including raising the server cap to 500,000 concurrent users, and indeed this week released a major update (Helldivers 2 patch 1.000.11) targeted at sorting out the most egregious issues. But now, Arrowhead has upped the server cap yet again as it prepares for another influx of players over the weekend.
Helldivers 2 patch 1.000.12 raises the server cap, and fixes an issue where some players would get stuck in cinematics for an extended period of time. In a tweet, Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt said the developer had updated the server cap to an incredible 700,000, but warned: “Unfortunately, we expect the CCU to reach that level.” Still, Pilestedt predicted “wait times will be much more bearable.”
In another tweet, Pilestedt insisted that this new server cap is “above what we have been able to support”, and that Arrowhead is “actively monitoring the situation.”
Helldivers 2 is Sony’s biggest PC game launch of all time, with a peak concurrent player figure of 457,649 on Steam. Helldivers 2’s success has even sparked renewed interest in Starship Troopers, the film from which it draws quite a bit of inspiration.
Arrowhead and the Helldivers 2 community will be hoping the servers are able to hold the line going into the weekend, when most expect that peak concurrent record on Steam to fall by the wayside, potentially multiple times.
Arrowhead is still working on a number of issues with Helldivers 2. Here’s the list:
No text is present for the Requisitions and Social Menu on the Player HUD
PS5 players may encounter error code 10003001 on the login screen
Login rate limiting when many are logging in at the same time
Players can become disconnected during play
Rewards and other progress may be delayed or not attributed
Various UI issues may appear when the game interacts with servers
Pick-up of certain objects in-game may cause characters to freeze in place for an extended period of time
Some games would not be joinable by others for a short period of time during heavy load
Other unknown behaviors may occur
Japanese VO is missing from intro cutscene and Ship TV
Armor values for light/medium/heavy armor do not currently function as intended
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.
Netherrealm has confirmed that the crossplay will be added to Mortal Kombat 1 in its upcoming patch next week. The studio will share more details about the feature early next as well.
Dubbed “Krossplay,” players will be able to link up with each other on other platforms, including PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC for both Steam and Epic Games Store. Unfortunately, it seems like the Nintendo Switch won’t be getting the crossplay feature in the next update.
Netherrealm has been consistently pushing out updates for Mortal Kombat 1 since its launch back in September 2023 and confirmed that Krossplay would be coming in early 2024. One of its most notable features already added is Wi-fi filter support. This allows players to decline matches based on the opponent’s internet connection. For example, someone who uses a wired connection can opt out against playing someone who uses a wireless connection.
Mortal Kombat 1’s latest DLC character, Peacemaker, will arrive on February 28 for those who purchased the Kombat Pack 1 and its early access. Everyone else will be able to purchase Peacemaker in about a week shortly after. A new gameplay trailer for Peacemaker was recently released, showing off his jetpack-powered fatality and a Janet Cage Kameo.
In IGN’s Mortal Kombat 1 review, we said, “The bone-crunching gameplay of Mortal Kombat 1 is some of the best the series has ever seen, thanks to the game-changing Kameo system. Netherrealm delivers a fantastic single-player story mode as well. However, the new Invasions mode is a grind and the online options feel dated.”
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey
2K Sports has revealed the final roster for WWE 2K24, and it’s impressive. Over 204 superstars are playable, including 70 Legends who are no longer on the main rosters and 8 managers, but there’s a couple notable absences from the playable roster: former WWE chairman and CEO Vince McMahon and 7-time WWE Champion and 3-time WWE Universal Champion Brock Lesnar.
Neither Lesnar nor McMahon’s removal is all that surprising. Lesnar has already been removed from 2K’s WWE Supercard mobile game after he was connected to allegations of sexual misconduct against McMahon. The reveal came after a former WWE employee filed a lawsuit against McMahon accusing the WWE co-founder of, among other things, sexual assault and sex trafficking. Lesnar was also implicated in the report.
In the wake of these allegations, Lesnar was reportedly removed from January’s men’s Royal Rumble and hasn’t been seen on WWE television since the lawsuit was filed.
While neither McMahon and Lesnar will be playable in WWE 2K24, that doesn’t mean that they are entirely absent from the game. A major selling point of WWE 2K24 is the Showcase of the Immortals, which will allow players to recreate 21 of the biggest matches in Wrestlemania history. Given his appearance on the Forty Years of Wrestlemania edition, it would make sense that at least one of those matches was set to feature Lesnar. He famously ended the Undertaker’s legendary winning streak at Wrestlemania 30. It’s not clear if any Showcase of the Immortals matches featuring Lesnar have been removed from the final game, or if he will simply not be playable.
WWE 2K24 will be released on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4/5, and PC on March 8.
Will Borger is an IGN freelancer. You can find him on Twitter @bywillborger.
The future of the planet may lie with a fusion of technology and biology, and mechs may one day roam our mega-cities. If you want to explore themes like this and explore a third-person shooter from the late 90’s, you are in luck! You can embrace the past by grabbing a key for Slave Zero, which we are giving out as part of the IGN Plus promotion for the prequel; Slave Zero X.
IGN Plus Monthly Game: Slave Zero
The upcoming Slave Zero X is a prequel to the Sega Dreamcast and PC game, Slave Zero, which originally came out in 1999. While the original had the player flying through cities in full 3D, third-person action, the prequel occupies a 2D left-to-right plane with 3D backgrounds bending left and right. The original Slave Zero had the player occupying a massive mech roughly 10 stories tall.
Slave Zero X takes place decades before the events of the original, but developer Poppy Works opted to go for a completely different genre. Slave Zero X is a sidescrolling beat ’em up focused on combos that juggle enemies until they are just chunks. The brutal futuristic, trans-humanist biopunk game draws inspiration from Guilty Gear (Justice much?), Strider, and Devil May Cry, and if that doesn’t get you excited, perhaps my recommendation will. There is a free demo available now on Steam, and I had a blast playing through it, all the way up to S-ranking the boss fight that caps it off.
Slave Zero X Developer Interview – Francine Bridge (Art Director) & Miles Luna (Writer)
Francine Bridge is an excellent artist who draws very evocative pieces from all kinds of franchises, as well as original pieces (you can check out her fantastic art here on ArtStation). She did much of the worldbuilding for Slave Zero X in addition to creating art for it, pulling inspiration from a wide variety of sources (including Guilty Gear’s ‘Justice’ for the main character).
Miles Luna has a history in machinima and animation, working at Rooster Teeth on major shows like Red VS Blue, RWBY, and more. He co-created and played David in Camp Camp and now works in the games industry as a writer, creating at Bad Robot Games and writing the story and dialogue for Slave Zero X.
I hope you enjoy the games, and this excerpt from our interview. Cheers!
Francine Bridge: My name is Francine Bridge. I’m also known online as a WitnessTheAbsurd. That’s probably where most people might know me from, if anyone knows me. I didn’t have an enormous profile before the game happened. But right now people probably best know me as the art director of Slave Zero X. I work as a freelance illustrator, concept artist, character designer, etc. I’ve published a couple of art books. I’ve worked on a couple of odd little things. I generally do work for freelance clients, Slave Zero X was one of my first large, long term projects like this, where I was able to be in a senior role and oversee development from beginning to end. And that was really gratifying. I like to summarize my entire career as ‘satisfying my desire and my lifelong dream to paint monsters for money.’ So that’s kind of me.
Miles Luna: That’s amazing. That’s so hard to follow. My name is Miles Luna. Most people probably know me from my years working at RoosterTeeth. I worked on shows like Red VS Blue… was kind of where I got my start. And then worked with my friends Kerry and Monty on a show called Rwby, which is spelled in a very silly way… as well as other shows, like Camp Camp and things. I also do voice acting, directing, and then yeah, primarily writing. And then in 2020, I made the decision to leave that company. Really interesting time to make that choice, by the way. And I had always had a fascination and an adoration for video games. And I had a chance to work with RoosterTeeth’s game studio for a little bit and that really continued to pique that curiosity. This is too long of an answer. [laughs] Now I work in the games industry. I’ve done some indies such as Slave Zero X and Kill It With Fire 2.
Brian Barnett: Oh, the spider game!
Miles: Yeah, Casey Donnellan is a good friend of mine. I’ve also worked with Gearbox and I am currently a writer at BadRobot games.
Brian: What’s one thing about game development, publishing, or whatever, that you wish players knew?
Miles: Oh, wow, that’s such a good question. Because the answer is so so SO much. Man… There’s too much to say there, so I’ll try and just keep it confined to the narrative point of view. Narrative is so much more than dialogue. It’s so much more than the things characters say to one another. It is working with the design team and asking, ‘how can we tell stories or how can we convey emotions through gameplay… through feel?’ Working with level designers on ‘how can we create moments of claustrophobia or unease.’ Sometimes intensity is throwing a lot of enemies at a player at one time. Sometimes it’s getting rid of all the enemies and forcing the player to ask the question, ‘Wait, what’s going on here? This isn’t normal.’ I think, like Francine said, everybody touches everything in video games. It is constant, constant collaboration. Making sure that something that you’re working on isn’t going to break somebody else’s thing, that they’re working on. Because both of these things are equally important to the success of the game. So I guess that’d be one thing I wish people understood is… it’s not just [combat] barks, or dialogue, or characters. It’s everything. Everything touches everything.
Francine: I think if there was any one thing that I would want people to know, especially since this was my first time being in development from beginning to end… I think it’s easy for someone to say, ‘I wish people understood just how much work is involved in even the simplest stuff.’ That feels like the obvious one. Implementing something that seems incredibly intuitive and basic, like a lift/elevator goes up and down, or whatever… depending on what the engine you’re using, and how we’re building this, it can actually prove to be immensely difficult. And then you have to answer all these other questions, and so forth.
Imagine a stage with a beautiful colored painting, and characters that mechanically move in front of it. Then behind the stage, there isn’t just like an engine that’s moving the characters, there’s an engine that’s like several miles long in that direction, and a million other engines are working on that one. And it’s the most incredibly complicated machinery to show something that seems like it should be very simple and intuitive. I think the more people are capable of appreciating that… that doesn’t mean that people should excuse any given flaw that they find in a game, or something that they find dissatisfying… the audience has to be capable of critiquing and examining something, but I think it would do the current dialogue around game critique a great deal of service, if people were capable of understanding or made a greater attempt to understand the enormous effort that’s involved in stuff that seems really simple and intuitive.
That’s the obvious one. The slightly less obvious one is… people often find cut content and stuff like that after the fact. They come across something like ‘oh, there’s this whole other boss that we found in the files!’ FromSoftware often has this, where there’s this dissection of stuff. People don’t often understand how much of a game exists beforehand, and then gets whittled down to this really pure, essential core. You have to cut away so much chaff. You have to get something that’s efficient, you have to get something that satisfies your technical goals, your creative goals, your narrative goals… losing something is not always bad. Sometimes you lose whole chunks of stuff that you would have loved to have in there. But it serves the game and it makes it better. I think a shorter, more efficient, higher quality game really trumps something that is overflowing to the seams with every single idea, not implemented as well. I don’t know… these both seem like very obvious things to say that I wish people knew about game development. But I loved working on the game. I loved working with the team. I loved the camaraderie that we had. I love the common jokes and memories and working in games is something that’s really special. And I don’t think there’s anything that’s quite like it.
Miles: If there are any readers out there that want a peek at what the machinery behind that ‘beautiful painting’ Francine described is like, just from a graphical level; there’s a wonderful 16-minute video on YouTube called ‘The Strange Graphics Of Lethal Company’ by Acerola. Watch it on a lunch break, and it will break down just how complex just making the pictures on the screen is, for games. I also think it’s a genuinely fascinating video, and he’s a great YouTuber.
Brian: You two occupied two major roles in development. Why make Slave Zero X? And not only ‘what inspired the team to make this game’ but why make it a prequel to a game that came out on PC in 1999?
Francine: The main answer to ‘why Slave Zero X’ is because we were able to pitch it and it was actually picked up by Ziggurat, but I’d say the reason that Slave Zero attracted us, and I talked about this before in another interview, so I’m sorry if I’m running over familiar territory here, but Slave Zero was part of this first wave of response in the West to the first huge influx of Japanese pop culture, stuff like anime OVA’s by Kawajiri Yoshiaki, and the arrival of Akira and Eva and all these other things that came over and were suddenly like… I kind of think of it as an algal bloom, when you dump enormous amount of nutrients and stuff into the ocean, and suddenly, organisms proliferate at a massive rate. Everyone wanted to respond. And there was this huge outpouring of creative fervor designed to echo and build on and represent the influence that they were feeling from Japanese pop culture at the time… the first anime boom and stuff like that.
I think for a lot of us in development, we grew up either seeing the very tail end of that first explosion, or we grew up watching anime and stuff ourselves. So it’s been 20 years of time between those two things. And working on Slave Zero X was an opportunity to echo that same sort of response, to share what has been special to us about growing up being able to see all these weird old super bloody 90s OVAs, and this particular flavor of really grimy, fascinating, weird, sometimes surreal cyberpunk that you get out of Japanese media, tokusatsu, all that stuff.
It was an opportunity for us to extend that conversation. To say ‘hey, 20 years on, here’s another part of that ongoing conversation between Western creators and Japanese creators.’ We’re doing the same kind of things, we’re drawing from the same influences, but we’re adding more stuff that has come over, even more niche influences. I had an opportunity to talk recently with Ken Capelli, who was the art director on the original Slave Zero. And I was really fascinated to learn that both of us were directly inspired by a garage kit, a specific garage kit, a model they made by a designer from Japan named Yasushi Nirasawa. There’s a particular kit he made, ‘Phancure’ (short for Phantom Core)… this huge, hulking, bio-mutant type of whatever with this massive upper torso and long arms with talons on the end. And you can see the ghost of Slave Zero (the original design) in there. And I spent ages thinking to myself, ‘I wonder if that inspired this.’
Then I had the opportunity to talk to Ken, and he started independently saying, ‘and you know, we were really inspired by this one kit called Phancure made by the designer…’ and both of us said at the same time; ‘Yasushi Nirasawa!’ And we were laughing and talking, and I was thinking, ‘This is a big part of what it’s about.’ It feels like we’re almost able to connect with that original moment. Because so much of what is special about that moment that raw, sudden interaction that ‘we’ve never seen something like this before…’ being able to respond to it and carry that enthusiasm forth. This is a very long, rambling, kind of abstract answer, I guess. But I think Slave Zero X is an outpouring of enthusiasm for the same kind of things that created Slave Zero. And it makes a great point for us to jump off and explore that particular kind of childlike wonder, seeing stuff like Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust…
Brian: I literally almost mentioned Vampire Hunter D, or Hellsing, or something like that, yeah.
Francine: Yeah! Later stuff that they wouldn’t have seen, but which I grew up with that’s from the same stable, like Takeshi Koyike made the movie Red Line.
Miles: One of the best, one of the BEST!
Brian: I’ve gotta get a running list of all this stuff I gotta check out.
Francine: That and so many other different things… manga and anime… Japanese artists have had a colossal influence on me. They weren’t the only ones who went into it. There was stuff there from other artists like Wayne Barlow, and even like a little bit of Mike Mignola, and stuff like that. But I think for us, it was, ‘hey, remember how cool it was when you saw EVA for the first time when you were a kid? And how brain-melting this experience was?’ It was about recapturing that moment, in part.
Miles: By the time I came on board, Francine and the team… they’d already had a lot of these conversations. And it was very apparent in the pitch that was made to me… I was given kind of a briefing of what the story was kind of going to be like, what the gameplay was going to be like, as well as some in-progress clips of the game in action, as well as a bunch of stills and concept art. Selfishly, I came on board this game because it looked tasty, man. It was this hyper-violent, melodramatic revenge tale in a biopunk setting. These are just words that got me so excited as someone who’s done a lot of comedy and young adult action/comedy, but who has like a love for things like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. And when I was told, ‘Hey, that’s a huge influence for this game,’ as well as Vampire Hunter D, Kamen Rider, all of this stuff… Things that I really, really enjoy and admire, and the opportunity to be a part of something like that was… I couldn’t say no. I saw what this game looked like, and it was like nothing I’d ever really seen before. And I was hooked. I just I couldn’t refuse after I saw it and heard about it. I was just excited to get in there and play.
Brian: Konami is not doing anything with Raiden right now. So Slave Zero X looks like ‘we have Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance at home,’ but in a good way. It looks I could go into a mall and find an old Alladin’s Castle that hadn’t closed yet and there was an arcade cabinet in the back corner that had this running on it or something.
Miles: Yeah, if Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is your ‘modern day, mass media Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,’ which is great… Slave Zero X is ‘the original two dudes, inking TMNT comics in their spare room’ version of it. It’s like the grunge, zine version of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.
Brian: And they’re murdering everyone.
Francine: They all have the angry scowl on their face, and the same red bandana, and everyone’s getting murdered and there’s a lot more Casey Jones doing weird sh** and stuff like that.
Brian Barnett: I have a bonus question that I ask people that I talk to. What’s one game you have played lately that really captured you?
Miles Luna: Knuckle Sandwich. I don’t know if any of you guys heard of Knuckle Sandwich. It came out last year, a year of so many great games, so I kind of understand why it flew under the radar. But oh my god, that game has a free demo. It’s like two hours long. That kind of sets up the story. That is so laugh out loud funny. I would describe it as Earthbound and Undertale. But the turn-based combat is settled through WarioWare minigames. The writing is phenomenal. The animation is fantastic. The music slaps. Please, please, please go play Knuckle Sandwich. I can’t shout it out enough.
Francine Bridge: I am very glad that I have an answer for this because I’ve actually had very little time to play video games over the last year. As it turns out, when you’re making video games, you suddenly get the play way less video games. But I want to shout out Angel At Dusk, which is available on Steam. It’s published by Henteko Doujin. And it’s by a developer… a single guy named Akiragoya, who’s done a lot of shmups, like bullet-hell style games, like Tohou. But this game was sent to me a bunch by friends who were all collectively saying ‘this looks like something you designed! Did you work on this? Did this guy steal your brain?’ Etc., although he’s been doing this a lot longer than I have.
And it is a shmup game in which you play as an angel, millions of years in the future, murdering millions of other angels, and all the angels look like they are made out of like a million human body parts, taken apart and put back together in weird ways. And the storyline is about the value of sentience versus non-sentience and the nature of time as an observable concept, and whether an observation of time makes the universe exist, and two factions of angels fighting it out to decide whether everyone should just let the sun consume them or whether they should leave the planet. It’s a real mess, but I’ve been kind of obsessed with it. And I’ve never played shmups before, they’re normally very brutally difficult. And this one is much more parseable and has a huge number of weird bio-ships and stuff to play as, so I highly recommend Angel at Dusk.
Miles: Listening to that description was like listening to the tastiest jazz solo. That was just like ‘Yes, say more, say more!’
Brian: This is like the Evangelion movie, but a conversation.
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Brian Barnett writes reviews, guides, features, & more for IGN & GameSpot. You can get your fix of his antics on YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Bluesky, & Backloggd, & check out his fantastic video game talk show, The Platformers, on Backloggd &Apple Podcasts.
