Category: Video Games

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Is Getting Another Demo and Save Data Will Transfer Over to the Full Game

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, the upcoming Soulslike from Nioh developer Team Ninja, is getting a second demo on February 24 that will allow you to transfer save data to the full game.

Team Ninja announced the news on Twitter, and it confirmed that the demo will be released on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store. Furthermore, those who complete the demo will be able to obtain the “Crouching Dragon Helmet” DLC in the full game.

This will give fans another chance to try out Wo Long, which is especially great as Team Ninja took the feedback from the first demo to heart and, in our opinion, already vastly improved the experience.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty will be released on the above platforms and Xbox Game Pass on March 3, 2023, and will welcome fans to a darker version of China’s Three Kingdom period. However, don’t expect a warm welcome.

“Wo Long is more massive in scale compared to our previous games set in Japan, which allowed us to show a more severe and dark world,” Producer Fumihiko Yasuda previously told IGN. “The same can be said for the difficulty. There’s no doubt this will be an extremely challenging and demanding game, but we’ve come up with new ways to approach that difficulty.”

In our final preview of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, we said that we came away “realizing that it innovates on the exploration loop in Soulsborne games more than anything else. While the game’s challenging combat is as stellar as you would expect from a Team Ninja game, it is the Morale Rank system that truly feels like it’s shaking things up.”

If you are still on the fence, be sure to check out all of our exclusive IGN First coverage of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, including 10 minutes of gameplay, seven brutal new weapons, a boss battle with a new weapon type, high-level superplay with an epic boss fight, and a look at the game’s opening cutscene.

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

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Wins the First Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games Category

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok and its composer Stephanie Economou have won the first Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media.

This first award for the video game music category comes at the 65th Grammys, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok and Economou won over Austin Wintory and Aliens: Fireteam Elite, Bear McCreary and Call of Duty: Vanguard, Richard Jacques and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and Christopher Tin and Old World.

If you have yet to hear any of the music from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok or just want to listen again, here is a preview of the main theme from Ubisoft and a link to the full album on Spotify.

“I just want to recognize all of the people who fought tirelessly to bring this category of video game music into existence,” Economou said after she accepted the Grammy. “Thank you for acknowledging and validating the power of game music. This is truly such an honor, thank you.”

While this was the first time the Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media category was included in the Grammys, it isn’t the first time a video game has been nominated or won. In 2011, Christopher Tin’s Baba Yetu was the first song to be nominated and win a Grammy and it did so in the category of Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals.

In 2012, Austin Wintry and Journey were nominated for the Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media but lost out to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ work on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

In our review of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok, we said, “A fantastical setting and solid story can’t disguise the fact that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok has us running through the same motions as the main game a year and a half later.”

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

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Review: The Pathless – Slick, Open-World Traversal Transitions To Switch Solidly

A Link to the Path.

Having hit it out of the (water) park with its debut ABZÛ in 2016, Giant Squid landed The Pathless on PS5 just as the console launched in November 2020. The game provided the kind of audiovisual spectacle that would satisfy early adopters hankering after something to show off their next-gen kit, so you’d be forgiven for thinking a Switch port was entirely improbable. However, here we are, and Giant Squid, together with publisher Annapurna Interactive, has brought us yet another enormous open world squished lovingly onto a handheld screen.

The plot of The Pathless is not the most fantastically original, but provides just enough of a pretext to run really fast around a field doing cool stuff. In short, an evil force has overwhelmed a mystical land and your job, as the standard-issue saviour of everyone and everything, is to un-overwhelm it by firing arrows at huge cursed creatures. There’s a bit more to it, of course, but for all the snippets of text found on stone tablets or fallen NPCs in Breath-of-the-Wild-like remnants of battle, the story does feel rather contrived. The upshot of it all is that the creatures you must kill/save are each roaming their respective part of the world in the eye of a giant red fireball of a storm. To battle them, you must first collect magical tokens by solving puzzles around the region. These tokens can be used to unlock three towers, which will then enable you to start a hunt. Clearing the boss then grants access to the next region.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Saturday Night Live Casts The Last of Us’ Pedro Pascal in HBO’s Mario Kart in This Hilarious Trailer

In a hilarious fake trailer, Saturday Night Live has cast The Last of Us’ Pedro Pascal in HBO’s Mario Kart and tasks him with taking Princess Peach to Rainbow Road.

The trailer, which you can check out below, is roughly three minutes long and also features appearances by Bowser, Yoshi, Toad, and Luigi.

In this world, it’s been 10 years since Mushroom Kingdom fell and the only thing left is “hope.” Pascal’s Mario, who introduces himself with the iconic line, “It’s a-me, Mario,” is asked to take Princess Peach to Rainbow Road in an attempt to save humanity, and he’s given a kart to do so.

Instead of Clickers, our heroes have to face off against Goombas, but luckily they have shotguns with red shell ammo to keep them safe. We even see Mario eating a mushroom and, when Princess Peach asks why he’s eating poision, he responds with, “It makes me feel big, okay?! I need to feel big, because Bowser is out there, and he’s the main bad guy.”

The trailer is full of other Easter Eggs, the death of a major character we won’t spoil here, and even more.

One of the funniest bits also notes that this new series is from the “master storytellers behind Mario Kart 1-8.” As everyone knows, we all flock to the Mario Kart franchise because of its riveting tales.

Pascal’s appearance on Saturday Night Live arrives in the middle of The Last of Us’ first season. We gave the latest episode a rare 10/10, saying, “A masterfully told love story set in a world designed to leave them unwritten, episode 3 of HBO’s The Last of Us is a sensational hour of television.”

For more, check out our breakdown of the real version of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, why we said this third episode is adaptation at its finest, and the latest on Pascal’s return as Din Djarin alongside Grogu in Season 3 of The Mandalorian.

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

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Poll: Box Art Brawl: Killer7

Lucky for some..?

Hello folks, welcome to another edition of Box Art Brawl!

Last time, we perused over the three box art designs for Viewtiful Joe, one of the ‘Capcom Five’ titles for the Nintendo GameCube. North America came out on top this time, winning 57% of the vote. Japan took the silver medal with 24%, and Europe closing out with the remaining 19%. It seems that the yellow/pink variants in Europe didn’t go down too well with voters, after all!

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Video: MVG Checks Out “Awesome” Update For GameCube Emulator On Xbox

Can we have GameCube now, Nintendo?

The GameCube might not have had much success in terms of sales, but it was actually home to quite a lot of amazing first-party titles. To this day, many of them are still essentially locked off on the same Nintendo platform. This includes games like Eternal Darkness, F-Zero GX, and even third-party hits such as Sega’s Phantasy Star Online.

If you have lost hope of the GameCube library returning to a Nintendo platform any time soon, there’s no need to worry – as there are other ways to relive the glory days of the stylish purple system. Video game developer and YouTuber Modern Vintage Gamer has recently taken a look at the “massive update” for Dolphin (Version 1.1.2) on the Xbox Series X|S – including the new front end while showing off series like Metroid Prime.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Pikmin Bloom Celebrates Valentine’s Day With ‘Present Sticker’ Gold Seedlings

Love is in the air… and the ground.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and Pikmin Bloom is about ready to celebrate in style. Starting tomorrow (February 6th) until February 26th, you’ll be able to try out special Valentine’s Day missions and bag yourselves some ‘Present Sticker’ gold seedlings.

Here’s some more information from Niantic:

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Square Enix Rolls Out Chocobo GP Version 1.4.1, Here Are The Full Patch Notes

Download it now.

Square Enix released another update for its Switch-exclusive Chocobo GP. This is the first update of 2023, bumping the title up to Version 1.4.1. This patch contains multiple fixes, here’s the full rundown courtesy of the Square Enix support page:

Chocobo GP – Version 1.4.1 (1st Feb, 2023)

Thank you for playing “Chocobo GP”. The Ver.1.4.1 update for Chocobo GP is due for release on 2/1/2023.

*Please be aware that if the player is playing a game mode that involves online communications at the time the update is released, the system will quit out of that mode after the current race finishes and return to the title screen.

The content of this update is detailed below.

1. Fixes to an issue with multiplayer where settings would change from “mirror” mode to “master” mode if a lobby was created with mirror mode set and then play continued for a time without disbanding that lobby
2. Fixes to an issue on the Midgar short and technical courses, where racers would sometimes be judged to have gone off the course incorrectly.
3. Fixes to an issue when using Cactuar’s 1000 Needles ability in Time Attack mode where the ability is immediately forced to end if Cactuar touches a ghost while hit detection for the attack is active.
4. Fixes to an issue on the sticker select screen where the cursor moves to locations that should not be selectable if it is made to skip from a specific location.
5. Fixes to an issue on the LITE edition where options that cannot be selected are displayed as options that can be selected if transitioning between screens in a specific way.
6. Fixes to an issue where the correct colour is not shown when selecting the “Premium Gold” colour for the Kwackeys’ speed type vehicle.

An internet connection is required to apply these updates.

We hope you continue to enjoy “Chocobo GP”.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com