Your favourite game for eShop Selects.
It’s back! We’re almost at the end of February already — yes, even with the extra day in this fine Leap Year.
Our monthly Nintendo Life eShop Selects will be landing this coming weekend for February, but for 2024, we also want you lovely readers to pick your favourite eShop game from that we’ve missed out on at NL Towers.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Hey Xbox Insiders! We have a new Xbox Update Preview releasing to the Alpha Skip-Ahead ring today.
It’s important we note that some updates made to these preview OS builds include background improvements that ensure a quality and stable build for Xbox consoles. We will continue to post these release notes, even when the noticeable changes to the UI are minimal or behind the scenes, so you’re aware when updates are coming to your device.
Details can be found below!
Thanks to all the great feedback Xbox Insiders provide and the hard work of Xbox engineers, we are happy to announce the following fixes have been implemented with this build:
System
While known issues may have been listed in previous Xbox Insider Release Notes, they are not being ignored! However, it may take Xbox engineers more time to find a solution. If you experience any of these issues, we ask that you please follow any guidance provided and file feedback with Report a Problem.
Audio
Guide
Networking
As always, be sure to use Report a problem to keep us informed of any issues you encounter. We may not be able to respond to everyone, but the data we’ll gather is crucial to finding a resolution.
If you’re an Xbox Insider looking for support, please visit the community subreddit. Official Xbox staff, moderators, and fellow Xbox Insiders are there to help with your concerns.
When posting to the subreddit, please look through the most recent posts to see if your issue has already been posted or addressed. We always recommend adding to existing threads with the same issue before posting a new one. This helps us support you the best we can! Also, don’t forget to use “Report a Problem” before posting – the information shared in both places helps us understand your issue better.
Thank you to every Xbox Insider in the subreddit today and welcome to the community if you’re just joining us! We love that it has become such a friendly and community-driven hub of conversation and support.
For more information regarding the Xbox Insider Program follow us on Twitter. Keep an eye on future Xbox Insider Release Notes for more information regarding your Xbox Update Preview ring!
The post Xbox Insider Release Notes – Alpha Skip-Ahead (2408.240221-2200) appeared first on Xbox Wire.
Talk to two different board game fans, and you’ll likely get two completely different all-time top-10 lists to pick through. But talk to enough gamers, and you’ll find patterns start to emerge. Some of the common games will be all-time classic board games. Others will be fondly remembered older games that topped the market in their respective eras. And of course you’ll get a sprinkling of recent titles that are soaking up all the limelight at the moment.
All of those categories can rightly be called the best of all time. So we’ve included all of them in our list below, from a genre-defining title that dates back to 1977 to some of the biggest, boldest titles of the last couple of years. Every one a bona fide classic in its own way.
Don’t have time to scroll? Here are all the games you’ll find below.
Ever since Wingspan – another entry on this list – designers have realised the value of giving heavyweight strategy games widely appealing themes. The latest and greatest example is Ark Nova, in which players design and run a modern, environmentally-minded zoo. Doing so involves navigating a smorgasbord of the most popular and interesting mechanics of recent years, from action cards that vary in power and timing depending on how you arrange them to spatial and economic elements as you build and populate your wildlife park to attract visitors and plough the cash back into the project. The combination of winning theme, deep strategy and a smidgen of luck has won this legions of fans and acres of acclaim since its 2021 release.
Lots of games that revolve around grabbing territory tend to involve the kind of tentative alliances and festering enmities that mimic real-world diplomacy. Back in 1977, the designers of Cosmic Encounter had a brainwave: why not get rid of the territory and cut to the chase? The result is this hilarious game of shifting alliances where every player has a game-breaking alien power to leverage in the race to win colonies on five of your opponent’s planets. Crammed with variety, tactical decisions and more dramatic reversals than a prime-time soap opera, Cosmic Encounter may be the only negotiation game you need.
Brass: Birmingham is a redevelopment of the earlier game Brass – now renamed as Brass: Lancashire – a fascinating combination of history and economics in board game form. Players take the role of business magnates at the dawn of the industrial revolution and must build mills while also constructing the transport networks that supply them with raw materials and export their products. That takes money, of course, which you get from your mills in a delightful yet punishingly tough arc of circular strategy. It’s especially interesting when you start buying and selling raw materials to other players, in a realistic simplification of supply and demand economics. Birmingham adds a new industry – beer – and gives players a bit more control over their hand of cards for a tighter, richer strategic experience.
The lords of the board gaming pile got that way through an ingenious bit of genre-blending. If you like old-fashioned dungeon crawls with a strong narrative, well, the huge campaign of fantasy adventure has you covered. If you’re a sucker for tactical combat, then its cunning, card-driven face-offs against a staggering variety of foes will thrill you. But if you want heavyweight strategy, then deck-building and resource gathering over the campaign plus the in-scenario exhaustion mechanic gives you plenty of meat. Truly all things to all gamers — even fans of the best solo board games — Gloomhaven and it’s bigger, better sequel Frosthaven deserves their staggering level of acclaim. And if the cost is a bit much, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion offers a smaller campaign at a much smaller price tag. And not for nothing, all of these titles also made it on our best board games for adults list as well.
This one’s not for everyone, but if it’s for you then you’ll absolutely love it. If you’re one of the rare few who not only have seen everything Gloomhaven has to offer but also remain hungry for more, Frosthaven is the banquet to satiate you. Bigger, bolder and better than the original, if you can find time for it in your life it’s an epic gaming experience like no other. Newcomers to the series, however, would be better suited to Jaws of the Lion, above. In the meantime, check out our Frosthaven review for more info.
If combat-based narrative campaigns aren’t your thing, how about working together to purge the world of infectious diseases? Building on the success of the original Pandemic, this introduces “legacy” concepts to the game, in which components are added or removed as you progress through the game, based on your decisions, successes and failures. After a few plays, your copy will be a unique record of your group’s play. So in addition to offering a very personal tale to engage you, Pandemic: Legacy also individualizes your strategic experience. It’s a magical combination that has spawned two further seasons, creating an epic arc of story and strategy to enjoy with a gaming group or even as one of the best family board games.
Billed as a cold war simulation and with bullet-pointed rules, Twilight Struggle can appear daunting to the uninitiated. But there’s a reason it was widely acclaimed as the best game of all time after its 2009 release. Players have hands of event cards that replicate key moments from the conflict, keyed to either their side or their opponent. If you play an opponent’s card you can still make moves on the board but their event also occurs. This makes every hand a thrilling, tactical dance of play and counterplay as you try to move your plans forward while also nullifying enemy events. In addition to the superb strategic workout, you might even learn some history too with this war board game.
Another game that spent its time in the “best game ever” limelight is this unlikely game about farming. Stepping back from the theme, however, growing a family to work on a family farm is a dead ringer for the popular Worker Placement mechanism. As a result, Agricola conjures a real sense of growing and developing your humble plantation into a thriving stead, with plenty of interesting strategic bumps to navigate along the way. Its particular genius is its huge decks of cards, only a handful of which are used in each game, which ensures lots of strategic variety and allows you to tailor things like complexity and interaction to your group’s tastes.
The genius of The Crew: Mission Deep Sea is in taking a very familiar gaming concept – trick taking card games – and using it to build something entirely novel but easily accessible. In this case, the competitive card game concept you know from classics like Whist and Bridge becomes cooperative. Players get a series of goals to distribute, indicating that they must win tricks in certain patterns or containing particular cards. The players must then work together to ensure those people fulfil those goals without being able to tell each other what’s in their hands. The result is a fascinating game of unlikely depth, rippling with tension and missed cues. And because it’s also simple and cooperative, it’s as much fun around the family dinner table as it is in a hardcore gaming convention.
By marrying the sensibilities of Dungeons & Dragons with the mechanics of modern board games, Lords of Waterdeep made a smash hit to last down the ages. Players take the roles of power brokers in the Forgotten Realms’ biggest city, hiring adventurers to defeat perils threatening Waterdeep while building new facilities in the town. It’s these additions that take this unusually thematic worker placement game to the next level, with the new buildings entering play ensuring that new strategies are required each time. Throw in a modicum of minor “take that” cards to spice things up and you’ve got a brilliant game with very wide appeal.
One of the few hobby board games to cross over into full mainstream sales, Ticket to Ride is a steaming success story. It’s a combination of familiar concepts with players collecting cards, like a Rummy game, in order to try and claim matching routes on a map of the US. But beware: it’s a tight board with relatively few potential connections between the cities that you’ll need in order to complete your allotted routes. And if another player gets there first, you’ll lose potential points instead of gaining them. Easy to learn and exciting to play and with a wide variety of versions and expansion maps, Ticket to Ride is great fun for all ages. It also works well as a two-player board game, or with a group.
While conquest games involving ancient Rome are ten a penny, Concordia instead has you manoeuvring a noble family to gain wealth and contacts during the height of empire. Play is conducted using a deck of action cards that you can expand, using wealth from your trades, as the game progresses, allowing you to tailor your strategy accordingly. But the kicker is that your final scoring is also depending on those cards, with different cards earning you points in different ways, from goods in your storehouse to colonist pieces on the board. This creates a fascinating, rich, wheels within wheels layer of strategy, while the resource management elements also let you mess up your opponent’s plans while advancing your own.
Blasting onto the scene in 2015, Codenames changed the face of party games forever. In place of trivia quizzes or trivial tasks, it challenged players to come up with clues to interlink a series of apparently unconnected words. So you might link “Trip”, “Rome” and possibly even “Embassy” with the clue “Holiday”. The concept proved so accessible and addictive that it launched an entire new genre of synonym-based word games, each giving different spins on a similar formula. But for ease of teaching and wideness of enjoyment, the original is still the best.
Coming into this game of estate-building in medieval France you could be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed by the options to grow your castle. Fortunately, it’s a dice-based game where the roll each turn limits your choices of where you can take actions. But don’t be fooled into thinking this is a random game: rather, the dice are there to keep throwing you curveballs you have to dodge around as you build a strategy. A classic case of having too much to do and too little to do it with, every action of every round feels weighted with impossible priorities, keeping you stretched right up until the points are tallied.
Looking for more ideas not covered here? Check out our rundown of the best board games for kids.
Wingspan is often sold as a family board game but in truth, it’s a little too complex and challenging for kids and is generally more for board game enthusiasts. It has a perfect weave of tactics and strategy together with a winning theme as you try to attract birds to a nature reserve. Different birds need different foods and habitats but will contribute to your growing ecosystem which becomes a kind of engine, generating resources to allow you to play bigger and more beautiful birds.
Read our review of Wingspan.
There’s so much choice in modern board gaming that picking a game can be overwhelming, not to mention expensive! So to help winnow down the selection, here are a few things to look out for when making your picks.
Perhaps the most important one is whether it’s likely to see much play. Aspects of this are fairly obvious: whether it appeals to your friends, what’s the target age, if it’s a long game, will you have time for it, and so on. But there’s still more to these facets than may be immediately apparent. You may feel comfortable learning a very complex game, for example, but will your fellow players, and will you be able to teach it? Do you want a game to play with your partner, or your wider family, or does it need to be flexible enough to cater for both crowds?
Even then, these are often vexed questions. The play times listed on box sides are often hopelessly optimistic. Similarly, a game’s advertised player count can be very different from the ideal. A good tool to clear this up is the game information database boardgamegeek.com. If you search on a game there then, at the top of the page you’ll find, beneath the player count, a “best” suggestion for the optimal player count according to the site’s users.
There are other many other considerations. Some games take up a lot of table space, for example, which is no good if you play on a coffee or smaller board game table. Others can take a long time to set up and put away. These issues are often mentioned in a review if they’re problematic. And they can stack: you may be able to play a much longer game, for example, if you have space to pause and leave it out on the table to resume later.
Some genres of game require greater research than others. Increasingly, games are being released as lifestyle choices with a steady stream of expansions and new content. Which is great if it appeals to you, but you need to know what you’re getting into. Other games merge into miniature modelling which is a whole other hobby in it’s own right. Editions and versions are another thing worth checking out as many modern games come in standard and deluxe editions or may, in fact, be reprints of older titles.
You also need to think about how a game might fit in with your existing collection, both aesthetically and physically. For the former, consider what makes it different enough, mechanically or thematically, from games you already own to make it worthwhile. For the latter, remember that board games are big, and you’ll need to find space to store it!
There’s a always a stead stream of new board games to check out as the year progresses. We’ve reviewed a couple of the biggest board games of the year below:
Matt Thrower is a contributing freelance board game and video game writer for IGN. (Board, video, all sorts of games!)
Honkai: Star Rail predecessor Honkai Impact 3rd will drop its massive Part 2 update later this week, shifting the hack-and-slash action RPG’s story to the new planet of Mars, introducing a new main character and revamping its aerial combat.
Two years ago, we learned of one of the greatest video game heroes of all time: a man wearing nothing but a jar atop his head.
His name? Let Me Solo Her. His job? Exactly what his name says he does: standing outside the doorway to Elden Ring’s most difficult boss, Malenia, and offering to take down the punishing, scarlet rot-infested warrior on behalf of players who were struggling to do it themselves.
Now, almost two years later, Let Me Solo Her (LMSH) is still fighting Malenia on behalf of the people. But his Malenia-murdering days may soon be at an end, thanks to the recent announcement of Elden Ring’s first major story DLC: Shadow of the Erdtree.
We first spoke to LMSH way back in April of 2022, and caught up with him again over email following the DLC announcement and yes, he’s still fighting Malenia all this time later. It’s not all he does, but he tells us he has about 1200 hours in Elden Ring at this point, and has “probably defeated her about 6000-7000 times by now.” Last April, he even beat the game using a mod that turned every single enemy into Malenia.
But when Shadow of the Erdtree drops in June, LMSH concedes it might finally be time to move on from Malenia. For one, he wants to play the new DLC. He calls the new trailer “spectacular” and says it “did not go the way I thought it would be.” His excitement is understandable — he’s a big fan of other FromSoftware games and their DLC.
“Soulslike games have a history of their DLCs being the best part of the game, and I trust that Mr. [Hidetaka] Miyazaki [Elden Ring game director] will give us another masterpiece to enjoy,” he says.
In particular, LMSH is intrigued by the unfamiliar enemies throughout the trailer, particularly the mysterious red-headed character near the end. Miyazaki confirmed for us that this character is called Messmer, and that he is a “key figure” of the DLC who “stands on equal footing to these other demigods and children of Marika.” LMSH picked up on the alleged prowess of Messmer, too, telling us that “the new boss is especially exciting as he might be a lost sibling to Malenia and equal in terms of difficulty.”
I ask him what he thinks of this absolute atrocity:
To which LMSH replies, “I feel like he will be an enemy that can steal helmets lol.”
He’s also excited by some of the new items shown, such as the armor sets, because he “loves knight aesthetics,” and he’s really into the “throwing pot/jar that explodes” — appropriate given LMSH’s usual choice of headwear.
When Shadow of the Erdtree drops, it’s absolutely no question that LMSH will be playing it all the way through. Though he’s made a number of different characters, he expects he’ll play on his main account “Let me solo her” because “I like to collect everything in one account.”
But if Messmer or another boss proves to be a second Malenia in terms of difficulty, will he offer to solo them, too? He’s not sure yet. “Everyone knows that FromSoft likes to make the DLC bosses the strongest (for example, Gael),” he says. “I welcome the challenge and hope newer fans of the genre will also enjoy the difficulty as well. I’m not too sure if I will solo the newest boss yet. I will have to see what the boss will be like.”
Whatever awaits him in the DLC, it does sound like Let Me Solo Her is finally about ready to move on from the activity that made him a community legend. He calls his adventures fighting Malenia a “great joy,” but admits that after thousands of attempts, “I’ve had my fill of fighting Malenias lol.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Helldivers 2 developers Arrowhead have said they will be able to get back to working on future “improvements” for the superb bug-stomping, bot-blasting shooter after finally resolving the weeks-long server struggles caused by the game’s immense popularity.
Elden Ring players are flummoxed over FromSoftware boss Hidetaka Miyazaki’s tease that one final secret still exists within the two-year-old game.
Speaking to IGN last week, Miyazaki commented on the myriad twists and turns Elden Ring takes throughout its pieced-together story that demands players interpret items, landscapes, bosses, and beyond. This style of storytelling naturally leaves a lot to player investigation and interpretation, but despite more than two years of myriad fans analysing, Miyazaki said there’s still more to find.
He and his team at FromSoftware “are always surprised and delighted by how much the players do discover, and how much these communities work to uncover these secrets”, he said, before dropping the bombshell. “For me personally, there is a small element that I feel has not yet been discovered. So, whether that’s up to user interpretation or up to just further investigation and playing, that’s something I’m looking forward to.”
The famed director, who also led the likes of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, therefore didn’t give much away as to what this secret is, but those embedded in the world of Elden Ring don’t expect it to be a grand or revolutionary discovery.
“Obviously it’s more exciting to think there’s some grand treasure hunt we can embark on to find Elden Ring’s last secret, but I don’t imagine there’s any way we, or even FromSoftware, will ever conclusively know how much is left to find,” said YouTuber Zullie the Witch on X/Twitter.
Her contemporary Sekiro Dubi agreed, adding it’s something that may even require multiple languages to learn. “Like Zullie says in other tweets, I doubt Miyazaki is like, ‘They didn’t see I left a such and such in this or that armour’. Add the ingredient that he probably knows Elden Ring mostly in Japanese and some stuff might be lost in translation.”
Sleuths on Reddit discussed the possibilities too, with some suggesting a deep analysis of item positioning in the open world being necessary. “There is a lot of trickery in the environment that is not being remarked upon,” said Miirshroom. “Items are placed and the landscape crafted very deliberately.
“Probably untapped analysis potential. These are things that are invisible to data mining because there is no flag in the programming indicating that something notable has been found. It’s just use of careful observation.” Miirshroom offers a few examples but notes there are literally hundreds in Elden Ring.
The time of day could change things too, as noted by setfunctionzero. “There’s the whole encounter system at specific times of night,” they said. “Gurranq’s night roaring is one off the top of my head, but I recall one that only occurs at a specific time in the dead of night, so you have to spin the clock, travel to the place, and wait 22.5 minutes in real time, and at 3am in the Elden Ring universe.”
These fans will likely be eager to discover the secret before June 21, 2024, when Elden Ring’s expansion Shadow of the Erdtree arrives, a DLC larger than any released by FromSoftware previously. Hundreds, if not thousands, of new threads will be added to the game to connect and follow, burying, or perhaps bringing to light, this last secret even further.
In our 10/10 review of the base game, IGN said: “Elden Ring is a massive iteration on what FromSoftware began with the Souls series, bringing its relentlessly challenging combat to an incredible open world that gives us the freedom to choose our own path.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
What the Car? is a zany racing game in which you are a car with legs that must race around various courses to get the best time possible. Except sometimes you’re not just a car with legs, you’re also a car with a jetpack. Or with wings. Or swimming. Or singing. It’s from the folks behind the similarly absurd What the Golf?, and it’s coming to Steam this year.
Back soon!
Inti Creates has today announced that its recently released musical rhythm game GUNVOLT RECORDS: Cychronicle has been temporarily removed from the North American Switch eShop.
Revealed in a tweet from the studio, Inti Creates stated that the removal was down to a “change in ratings”. The team is endeavouring to get the issue sorted and the game reinstated on the eShop as soon as possible.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Introducing game hubs
Earlier this month, we started rolling out game hubs to Xbox Insiders on PC and a subset of Xbox App on PC players worldwide. Game hubs were built on your feedback around depth, progression, and more ways to connect with your games. With game hubs, you’ll be able to track your progress over time, discover the latest content and add-ons, connect or compete with your friends, get the latest news from developers, and more. This version of game hubs is just the beginning. We have another wave of updates coming soon, including ways to view your local game captures and browse other games from the same publisher. We can’t wait to hear your feedback on what’s there now and what you’d like to see in future updates.
You can access game hubs from the Xbox App on PC — just click on the game in your library or the left sidebar. Now, let’s run through some of the exciting content you will find here:
The essentials. At the top of the page, you’ll see the essentials like game info alongside options to play, install, or update the game. You’ll also see a quick link back to the details page, where you can purchase the game to own, see reviews, or add it to your wish list. Lastly, you’ll find information like when you last played, your total playtime, an achievement summary, and friend overviews. This area will also be used for important notifications like letting you know when a game is leaving Game Pass so that you can use your discount before it’s gone.
Featured content. We want to make sure you don’t miss what’s new, so you’ll see the latest available add-ons at the top of the game hub when they release with pricing info and a link to purchase.
Friends who play. No more shuffling through the app. Compare progress, view profiles, see who’s in-game, and even send your friends a party invite all from the same place.
Achievements. Easily track your overall achievement and Gamerscore progress, any hero stats you might have accumulated, and your next closest unlocks with the help of the achievements section. To see the full list of achievements you’ve earned and the ones you’re missing, you can always click ‘show all.’
All add-ons. Whether it’s the newest car pack in Forza Motorsport or more Ancient Coins to stuff your coffers for Sea of Thieves Season 11, we have you covered. You can browse available and owned add-ons directly from the game hub.
HowLongToBeat. We heard how much you enjoyed this feature on the details pages for participating games, so we made sure to bring it over to game hubs, too. Whether you’re looking to finish up the main story or going for a completionist run, HowLongToBeat will help you compare your playtime against community sourced completion data.
From the developer. Here, you’ll get the latest updates, announcements, tips, and tricks from the game’s developers. Find the latest news related to your favorite games directly from the teams behind them.
Until March 9, a Quest will available in the Xbox Insider Hub (open or install clicking here) for players enrolled in the PC Gaming preview. As a reminder, you can always give us suggestions for the app or leave feedback by clicking on your Profile card inside the Xbox App and then selecting Feedback from the dropdown menu. We can’t wait to hear from you as we work to bring more improvements to game hubs and the Xbox App on PC.
If you’re an Xbox Insider looking for support, please join our community on the Xbox Insider subreddit. Official Xbox staff, moderators, and fellow Xbox Insiders are there to help. We always recommend adding to threads with the same issue before posting a brand new one. This helps us support you the best we can! Don’t forget to use “Report a problem” before posting—the information shared in both places helps us understand your issue better.
Thank you to every Xbox Insider in the subreddit today. We love that it has become such a friendly and community-driven hub of conversation and support.
For more information on the Xbox Insider Program follow us on Twitter at @XboxInsider and this blog for release notes, announcements, and more. Keep an eye on future Xbox Insider Release Notes for more information regarding the PC Gaming preview.
The post Game hubs are available now for Xbox Insiders on PC appeared first on Xbox Wire.
