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Final Fantasy 14’s crossover with Final Fantasy 16, as teased last year, arrives tomorrow. The crossover between the MMO and latest single-player entry in the RPG series has the usual selection of goodies up for grabs, including a very cute minion, a not-so-cute (but still kind of cute) mount, some Clive-cleavage armour and more.
XDefiant, the free-to-play arena-shooter – a la Apex Legends, Overwatch 2, Valorant or the multiplayer team-based game of your choice – built around classes and factions from across the Ubisoft universe games from Splinter Cell and Far Cry to Ghost Recon and Watch Dogs, has been delayed. Originally outlined for a launch before the end of March – you’ll note that we’re now in April – the upcoming FPS will apparently now decide a release date after an upcoming stress test for its servers.
CD Projekt Red are no stranger to releasing buggy games, but they’re less keen on microtransactions – at least for singleplayer games. In an interview with a Polish investor site, CDPR’s chief financial officer Piotr Nielubowicz said that they “do not see a place for microtransactions in the case of singleplayer games”, but they wouldn’t rule it out for multiplayer.
The Oculus Quest launched back in 2019, just five years ago, but come May new apps released in the Quest Store won’t be playable on the Quest 1. This isn’t because the Quest 1 isn’t powerful enough to play them anymore, but because developers will no longer be able to upload them and players won’t be able to see them.
It’s part of the planned obsolescence of the Quest 1 which Meta announced last year.
TimeSplitters Rewind, a fan-made remake of the zany shooters’ multiplayer in a single game, might well represent the last gasp of the beloved first-person shooter franchise following the closure of resurrected original developers Free Radical – who were working on their own TimeSplitters reboot – at the end of last year. With over a decade of work already invested in the fan project, however, the team have now released a call for help to overcome development hurdles caused by the ongoing troubled state of the games industry.
CD Projekt Red are continuing to bulk up the team developing The Witcher 4 – officially codenamed Polaris – with two-thirds of the studio now working on the follow-up to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Meanwhile, the team working on Cyberpunk 2077 has shrunk to fewer than 20 people, less than half the number working on its upcoming sequel.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 has dropped its first update, addressing one of the fantasy action-RPG’s most baffling decisions – the inability to start a new game once you’ve begun your first adventure – and letting you acquire a home of your own earlier, providing a reliable place to rest and save. There are some other small tweaks too, while Capcom dare to raise the question about future DLC in the wake of the game’s controversial microtransactions.
So, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, eh? I liked it a lot. 150 hours a lot. I big cried at least twice and welled up, much like a well, many other times. As much as I’d like to wax emotional about the plot and characters in an endless lifestream-of-consciousness ramble, articles need both headlines and subjects (truly an act of conspiratorial violence targeted at my personal dadaist instincts). So, let’s talk about just the minigames, because I think they’re wonderful for all sort of reasons that might not be immediately apparent. Naturally, big spoiler potential ahead if, like me, you consider everything you haven’t experienced in the RPG game a spoiler.
I think one of OG Final Fantasy’s 7 best tricks is how it doesn’t just dish out its strangest distractions as a palette cleanser to the main meal of its action and drama, but actively works them in as an indispensable part of the menu. It also does this all without a shred of shame or self-consciousness, resulting in a cinematic video game with no inner turmoil or resentment toward either part of that equation – a characteristic I feel is suffered from by many of the games for which FF7 lead the way. Take the Gold Saucer. It’s an excuse to dick around and ride motorbikes, sure, but it’s also an essential story beat while the party takes time to relax and enjoy each other’s company away from the stress of travel and battle.
I think its reasonable to say that the term ‘fetch quest’ is well passed the point of being a neutral descriptor and has moved firmly into the realm of full pejorative. You won’t see many games tout ‘epic fetch quests’ on their Steam Page, and you’re much more likely to hear the term lodged between the words ‘not a bloody’ and ‘again’, like two slices of exasperation-enriched bread stuffed with a shit-tier filling. Cucumber, perhaps. Not so, at least not for me, when it comes to Dragon’s Dogma 2. The action RPG game has more or less solved the fetch quest problem. All it took, it turns out, was some interesting world design.
