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Persona 4 Revival will be "enjoyable in a new and different way", says series boss
Game Reviews

Persona 4 Revival will be “enjoyable in a new and different way”, says series boss

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The forthcoming remake of Persona 4 will be “enjoyable in a new and different way”, according to P Studio director Kazuhisa Wada.

Speaking to Japanese outlet 4Gamer at this year’s Tokyo Game Show (translated by Persona Central), Wada discussed the Switch 2 release of Persona 3 Reload alongside its director Shigeo Komori, but also touched on the highly-anticipated Persona 4 Revival.

“Persona 4 already packed a ton of content in Persona 4 Golden, so when it comes to creating the next ‘R’, it’s not just about adding more – we have to create an experience that’s enjoyable in a new and different way,” said Wada. “And this includes the sheer volume of content, so to be honest, it’s a tough challenge. But it’s shaping up nicely!”

Persona 4 Revival – Teaser Trailer | Xbox Games Showcase 2025Watch on YouTube

As with every mainline Persona game, Atlus released a revised Golden version of Persona 4 a couple of years after the original, which added new social links, new scenes, new difficulty levels, and other bonus content.

It’s unclear if this version will form the basis of the remake, or if Atlus has gone back to the original release. And just how different will it be?

Indeed, Atlus had a job on its hands with Persona 3 Reload. The original version of P3 was later revised as Persona 3 FES that added a new epilogue, while Persona 3 Portable added a female protagonist option.

When Persona 3 Reload was released last year, it took inspiration from the more modern Persona 5 Royal, but as it lacked all options from previous versions, for some fans it still didn’t offer the complete experience.

Still, in an interview with Denfaminicogamer (thanks Automaton), Wada stood by the decision not to add the female protagonist to Persona 3 Reload, stating the cost and time needed would’ve been several times the resources that went into the Episode Aigis DLC.

Persona 4 Golden is thoroughly beloved by series fans, so with the remake Atlus must be careful to offer something new while still appeasing its harshest critics.

Persona 4 Revival was finally officially revealed at this year’s Xbox Games Showcase in June, following multiple leaks and teases.

“We are currently working on this project with all our passion and love,” said Wada at the time. “We are confident that this will be a fresh and surprising product for both newcomers and long-time fans and we look forward to sharing it with you all.”



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Amazonfiretvsoundbar
Game Reviews

This Amazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus Has Never Been This Cheap Before, Almost Free for Prime Big Deal Days

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We’re closing in fast on Prime Big Deals Day. A couple times a year, Amazon likes to roll out the red carpet to have its own Black Friday-esque sales event during the big gaps between the usual holiday sales. This one next week falls between Labor Day and Black Friday. It’ll be live from October 7 to October 8, but some items have already dropped in price ahead of the official event. Right now, Amazon has the Fire TV Soundbar Plus going for a solid 40% off. You’d normally find it for $250 on the website, but for a limited time, it’s down to just $150 which happens to be its lowest price yet. That’s a whole $100 you’re saving.

This compact, plug-and-play 3.1-channel soundbar supports both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X sound to bring out the best from your audio whether it’s watching movies or streaming a song It’s Bluetooth compatible so you can connect your phone and use that to play music through just one sound system.

See at Amazon

Easy to Install

You don’t need to be super knowledgeable about tech to set up this soundbar. The Amazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus is designed to be up and running within minutes of taking it out of the box. All you need to do is plug it into your TV with the included cable over your TV’s HDMI eARC/ARC port. Plug the power into a wall outlet or power strip. Then turn it on. Easy peasy. The audio will instantly move over from the built-in speakers of your TV to your new soundbar. You can also connect over USB or optical.

If you are watching via a Fire TV, you can immediately start using the remote to control both the TV and the Amazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus. No need to code or pair anything.

The Amazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus is a compact audio solution for your living room, only measuring in at 37 inches across. It’s lightweight, weight just 8.8 lbs. The small form factor makes it a natural fit atop any entertainment center or mounted to the wall. It’s low profile enough that when placed on the stand, it won’t hinder your viewing of the lower part of the screen. It’s also easy enough to wall-mount by yourself being as light as it is.

Enjoy rich audio  the next time you watch a football game or stream the new Marvel. Get the Amazon Fire TV Plus on sale for 40% off for a limited time.

See at Amazon



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Call of Duty: Black Ops 7's beta is out, and is already plagued by cheaters
Game Reviews

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7’s beta is out, and is already plagued by cheaters

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Yesterday, the Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 beta began in earnest, welcoming in untold thousands of eager players to try the game out before its proper launch on the 14th November. However, a number of cheaters also seemed to let themselves in and get up to no good.

The Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 beta requires both TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot enabled on your PC to play, which Treyarch stated was needed to “create a more secure environment that catches more cheating.”

Within hours of the beta starting, however, clips started appearing on social media showing off wall hacks and aim bots working in the beta. Take the below video posted to X, which shows the same old cheats in action.

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Now, this account was later banned manually as confirmed by Treyarch on X, but why are old cheats working on a new game so soon after it was in the player’s hands? Well, while the Black Ops 7 Beta requires additional kernel-level access to your computer, the updated version of Activision’s proprietary Ricochet Anti-Cheat has not yet come to the game. Instead, players will have to wait until the full launch to get additional cheat protection.

This is but the latest blow in the ongoing fight between FPS game developers and cheat manufacturers. A continuous back-and-forth where cheats run amok until an updated anti-cheat solution bans a vast selection of these cheaters. Then, after a little while, the cheaters learn how the anti-cheat works and it circles round and round. This particular cycle has been a fixture of the Call of Duty series for years.

There are other options available to players who want to curb cheating. Activision announced earlier this year that it’ll allow console players to turn off crossplay to avoid cheating, admitting the majority of cheaters are playing on PC.

It’s worth noting that this year’s current Call of Duty competitor Battlefield 6 has also suffered at the hands of cheaters during its open beta, with EA’s anti-cheat shutting down over 300,000 cheaters during its run.



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06 Lego Game Boy (2)
Game Reviews

The Lego Game Boy Is A Masterpiece

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I’ve rather given it away with the headline there, but I couldn’t help myself. Lego’s recently launched Game Boy is the most extraordinarily satisfying build, with results that feel uncannily realistic. It looks and feels perfect, complete with a just-too-murky screen to thoroughly emulate the real thing.

Announced back in July and immediately up for pre-order (which I did as soon as I’d written the article), the Lego Game Boy was clearly a labor of love, and in some ways a compromise for Lego given the number of bespoke pieces made just for this set. From the curved and grilled panel to the fuchsia caps for the A and B buttons, a few plastic liberties have been taken to make this such a stunning replication of the 1989 handheld. And wow, it nails every element, from the bizarrely realistic-feeling d-pad (despite being so ostentatiously a Lego cross) to the spongy A and B buttons, all made complete with the epic and satisfying “CLICK!” of the on-off switch.

By my count, there are at least 12 pieces unique to this set, and wonderfully this includes a large number of pre-printed pieces with distinctive Game Boy designs and fonts. Where these would usually be stickers, Lego has saved people like me who live in fear of such operations, and I’m so very grateful. Placing stickers, especially long, thin ones, requires the steady hands of a surgeon, and not the shaky incompetent flippers on the end of my arms. Still, for those who enjoy the adrenaline rush of the completely irredeemable moments, both the game cartridges you build require a large sticker be placed.

© Kotaku

Another aspect that makes this build so special is that—and I realize how pretentious this sounds, but it’s definitely true—the instructions are put together with wit and timing. The first thing you’re asked to build is one of the two cartridges, along with a display stand for it that contains a slot for storing the spare lenticular cards. But rather than going straight onto the second, you instead are launched into the Game Boy itself, building it from the inside out. This means that you’re constructing its green network board first, then adding the base below, before putting in the mechanisms for the buttons and the buttons themselves, and only after that’s all in place putting together its complete shell. It’s so delightful that it’s constructed just as a Game Boy would have been, and those button mechanisms are just so smart. The d-pad uses a concealed rubber tire to provide the push-back when you press it in any of its four directions, while the A and B buttons get their exact sponginess from a cunningly placed rubber band pegged around three c-arm clips. The results feel so realistic, making these super-smart tricks feel all the more remarkable.

Further, it’s only after you’ve finished the main Game Boy that you realize you were unwittingly adding amazing details like a realistic-looking DC inlet at the bottom, a headphone jack on the left side, and the scrolling contrast and volume wheels. Oh, and the unexpectedly hefty click of the on-off button is still making me happy.

The smart nature of the instructions is completed by ending on the second cartridge, which you then slide into the back of the Game Boy, where even here it slots in with a satisfying clunk. It’s an incredibly rewarding way to finish, and you don’t have that moment of ending with the boring fiddly bits that so often marks the finish of a Lego build. There’s no putting the side-character together, or wedging flowers on all the plant stems here; that other cartridge and both display stands are already completed, and inserting that cartridge is your final moment.

© Kotaku

Now, the one criticism I have here is the last thing I thought I’d be saying, but there are a couple of flaky moments in the instructions. One piece type in particular is always shown such that you can’t see that it has an L-bend, and there are three or four odd moments where it obfuscates where a piece should be placed underneath what you’ve already built. Nothing disastrous, nothing I couldn’t quickly figure out, but unusual for Lego. But that’s it.

OK so, I swear this is true: As I was writing this review my ten-year-old son came into my study and saw the Lego Game Boy on its Lego stand next to me on my desk. “Oh, a new device!” he said. I handed it to him, and he muttered, “Game Boy.” He’s never held a real one. “Look more closely,” I told him, and he read bits of the writing, pressed some of the buttons, and said, “What?” So I took it from him, flipped it over, removed the back panel and took out the Zelda cartridge, revealing some of the Lego innards. “OH, IT’S LEGO!” he declared. I switched the lenticular out and put it back together, and he exclaimed, “This is SO COOL!” So there you go, a second opinion.

© Kotaku

It’s worth noting that the lenticulars are splendid. There’s the main loading screen one, which has the word “Nintendo” scroll up and down just like it should. Then there’s one for Zelda and one for Super Mario Land, to match the two carts. The Zelda one is perhaps the more disappointing, given the only movement is Zelda turning to look at Link while some V-like birds move about in the sky. Mario‘s is far better, showing Mario jump up to hit a ? block and reveal a star, with a couple of Goombas moving below. Both only have two images, but the Mario version feels a lot more dynamic. Meanwhile, the Nintendo logo screen has seven panels, such that you get a weirdly smooth scroll. And as I mentioned up top, once they’re in the Game Boy behind the plastic screen (it’s a Lego window frame with the plastic glass inserted, repurposed), it really gives that authentic dullness that’s dramatically improved by holding it in direct light.

I realize I’ve just totally nerded out here, and I’m good with that. I wasn’t even a proper Game Boy kid, my primary experience being a splendid summer vacation when a school friend lent me hers for a full six weeks and I just obsessed over it. But even that established a lifetime’s nostalgia for me, that’s duly met and respected by this perfect Lego recreation.

For the quality here, and the real pleasure gained from both the build and the finished result, $60 feels like a fantastic price. I usually find Lego’s prices egregious, often offensive, but the company could have been a lot more greedy here and wasn’t. Yes, you could also spend $60 on a handheld device that’ll emulate every Game Boy game and more beside, but honestly, this Lego brick (pun so very much intended) just feels very special.



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Consume Me review - difficult to finish, in a different kind of way
Game Reviews

Consume Me review – difficult to finish, in a different kind of way

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Jenny Jiao Hsia’s dazzling, semi-autobiographical tale of teenage life finds wit and warmth in its WarioWare weirdness, even as it deals with difficult themes.

“Just think of it like a video game!”, Consume Me’s increasingly put-upon protagonist Jenny tells herself early on as she prepares to take the dieting plunge. The final year of school is approaching, adult life is looming, and if that wasn’t enough, the words of her overbearing mother – how will she ever get a boyfriend if she doesn’t lose some weight? – are lodged in her brain. It’d be enough to overwhelm anyone, let alone a teenager still trying to find her place in the world.

Consume Me review

  • Developer: Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P, Ken “coda” Snyder
  • Publisher: Hexecutable
  • Platform: Played on PC
  • Availability: Out now on PC (Steam, itch.io)

Consume Me is a semi-autobiographical work from co-designer Jenny Jiao Hsia that deals openly and honestly with some pretty tough themes, including dieting, disordered eating, and fatphobia. That might sound like a difficult sell, but Jiao Hsia’s slice-of-life adventure adopts a format that’s immediately, winningly approachable. This is a cheery, pastel-hued phantasmagoria of hyper-kinetic split-screen cutscenes, slapstick WarioWare-style minigames, and time management challenges that (“Just think of it like a video game!”) cleverly uses the language of the medium – its penchant for repetition and routine, its love of ever-escalating pressures – to mimic Jenny’s daily struggles.

Here, the perils of a drifting mind while studying are abstracted to a minigame where you attempt to align your furiously spinning gaze with the pages of your book as thought-bubble distractions rush in; where laundry folding is a game of lightning-fast reactions, and the simple act of walking the dog becomes a comical dance of poop dodging and cash grabbing as you navigate New York City’s streets. And all this minigame silliness is pulled together by a compellingly presented story, told with boundless energy and genuine wit, charting Jenny’s increasingly fraught journey into young adulthood.

Consume Me launch trailer.Watch on YouTube

Each chapter of Consume Me focuses on the kind of familiar right-of-passage events (summer pool parties, fledging romances, high school rivalries, and college applications) that, from the other side of youth at least, feel comparatively trivial. But most of us probably have enough residual trauma from our teenage years – when everything seemed to be of absolute, apocalyptic importance – that it’s easy to empathise with Jenny’s spiralling circumstances and feel the pressure of expectation just as vividly as she does; even if you didn’t have the kind of complex relationship she has with food.

For all its easy breeziness, Consume Me is, at its heart, a game about the unhealthy, unsustainable patterns people can become trapped in when trying to live up to impossible standards, whether they be external or self-imposed. And for Jenny, that manifests most prominently as an obsessive focus on her weight and food. Her initial dieting successes – swimsuit-body confidence! An adorable boyfriend! – are quickly internalised as a causal link that must be maintained, and so no matter what other complications emerge in her life, fastidious food management remains an ever-present aspect of the game. As she puts it, “If I can’t control this one part of my behaviour, then everything falls apart.”

Image credit: Eurogamer/Jenny Jiao Hsia/AP Thomson

Each day, you’ll diligently prepare another meal, attempting to place tetronimo-shaped food items into your grid-like stomach, Tetris-style. Each item has a Bite value (Consume Me explicitly avoids the term ‘calories’), and your goal is to fill Jenny’s Guts while keeping within the week’s Bite limit. It’s a brilliantly effective, and impressively economical, way of putting players into Jenny’s mindset, where food is framed as an adversary to be overcome rather than enjoyed.

There’s a lot of this kind of design elegance throughout Consume Me, where experiences – and even emotions – are conveyed as much through gameplay as story. That’s most evident in its overarching framework of time management, where you’ll need to use Jenny’s limited free time as efficiently as possible in order to complete each chapter’s checklist of objectives. Early on, her responsibilities – studying, chores, and sticking to her diet – seem manageable enough, but with only a few hours of free time available each day, staying on top of things quickly become a tricky (and stressful) balancing act. One wrong move can have a dramatic knock-on effect; overeat, for instance, and suddenly you’ll need to spend a precious hour exercising to get back within your Bite limit. Then there’s the added complexity of your ever-dwindling mood, energy, and guts meters, all requiring diligent maintenance in order to avoid locking yourself out of critical activities each day. You can probably see where this is going.

Image credit: Eurogamer/Jenny Jiao Hsia/AP Thomson

Once Jenny’s holidays are over and the school year begins, things get increasingly chaotic as her checklist of responsibilities grows ever-more demanding – essay writing, college applications, long-distance romance-ing, even the destruction of high school enemies, all piled on top of everything that’s come before. Increasingly, you’ll find yourself falling into unhealthy (and detrimental) habits – knocking back energy drinks and staying up late – just to squeeze a few more hours out of the day, and the sheer mental effort required to keep Consume Me’s plates spinning can be exhausting. Which is obviously the point.

Consume Me accessibility options

Reduce shake effect toggle; reduce flashing colours toggle; separate music and SFX volume sliders; subtitles in English, French, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.

It’s hard to criticise something as intensely personal and mechanically deliberate as Consume Me, where Hsia and co-developer AP Thomson have made very specific design choices in order to tell a very specific story. But it’s clear from Consume Me’s surprisingly accommodating difficulty progression and its presentational breeziness, that – for all its intentionally wearying cycles of repetition – this is a game the team wants players to see through to the end. I’m not sure it finds quite the right balance though, and for me, even with its relatively scant eight hour runtime, it did begin to outstay its welcome, still marching slowly toward the next inevitable escalation long after it felt like its point had been made. And I can’t help wonder if it might have been a little more impactful if it’d wrapped up sooner.

But when I think back on my time with Consume Me, it’s not the stresses that stick with me; it’s the game’s effervescent wit and invention, its canny design and generous spirit (even the most adversarial characters are sympathetically written), and more than anything, the powerful authenticity of its voice. As daft as it often is, this is a game that captures Jenny’s struggles and triumphs so beautifully, and so convincingly, even a sequence introducing her relatively brief flirtations with religion manages to feel – and I say this as someone who’s long been iffy about the whole church thing – genuinely affecting. Consume Me’s pacing didn’t always work for me, but it remains a fascinating, thoughtful, and impressively assured creation all the same. And I can’t help admiring its method – and its message – immensely.

A copy of Consume Me was provided for this review by Hexecutable.



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Spacer's mascot says "this is how we play now."
Game Reviews

Welcome To The Enshittification Of Xbox Game Pass

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Some things happen slowly and then all at once. So it appears to be with Xbox Game Pass. Once hailed as the “best deal in gaming,” it’s now best known as the deal that just keeps getting worse. A 50-percent price hike this week feels like a death knell, if not for Microsoft’s $5 billion annual subscription business, then at least for the perception that the company is trying to meaningfully compete by rewarding its long-time fans with something they can’t get anywhere else.

It feels like the shift began way back in 2022. “We’ve held price on our console; we’ve held price on games and our subscription,” Xbox boss Phil Spencer said on stage at the Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference that year. “I don’t think we’ll be able to do that forever. I do think at some point we’ll have to raise some prices on certain things, but going into this holiday we thought it was really important that we maintain the prices we have.”

After years of Game Pass boosterism, he was also noticeably cool on the subscription service’s long-term growth prospects. “Game Pass as an overall part of our content and services revenue is probably 15 percent,” he announced at the time. “I don’t think it gets bigger than that. I think the overall revenue grows so 15 percent of a bigger number, but we don’t have this future where I think 50–70 percent of our revenue comes from subscriptions.”

He continued, “We’re seeing incredible growth on PC…on console, I’ve seen growth slow down, mainly because at some point you’ve reached everybody on console that wants to subscribe.”

Game Pass now costs more than Netflix

Three years later, with over $70 billion in acquisitions weighing on Microsoft’s gaming division, we’re seeing what that calculus means for the math on the ground. Microsoft has doubled the price of Game Pass in the last two years, in addition to tariff-fueled hikes on its consoles and briefly flirting with releasing its first $80 game this fall. Even as the company has touted Game Pass’ self-sustaining profitability, it’s also laid of hundreds of developers, closed studios, and canceled some of the biggest games it promised players at summer showcases past.

To me, the most shocking part of Game Pass Ultimate’s jump to $30 a month wasn’t the price tag, even if it is more than every other mainstream content subscription service out there (you can currently get Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN bundled together for the same amount). It was how little Microsoft offered in return: Hogwarts Legacy, old Assassin’s Creed games, and Fortnite skins. These are the types of fine-print perks Verizon gives you for adding a new phone line, not the basis for a premium flagship subscription service.

What the latest Game Pass overhaul is really about is extracting a premium from existing customers for day-one access to Call of Duty. Microsoft tested the waters last fall with a $3 a month price hike ahead of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and, just as importantly, the removal of day-one access from Game Pass’ middle tier. Microsoft is now promising that all of its first-party day-one Game Pass games will come to Standard, which remains $15 a month, within the first year—except Call of Duty.

That’s on console. The picture on PC is even more explicit. There, the service is going from $12 a month to $16.49 with no other changes. That’s almost a 40-percent increase in exchange for nothing except the ability to continue playing the new Call of Duty each year without paying for it. Microsoft apparently got tired of not being able to charge PC players for online multiplayer, which still costs $120 a year on Xbox.

Microsoft hasn’t announced new Game Pass subscriber numbers in over a year, which strongly suggests that it hasn’t grown much beyond the 34 million number shared in early 2024. Having now hit the ceiling Spencer alluded to back in 2022 on PC as well as console, the company seems content to soak its remaining users for as much as it can. Instead of growing Game Pass revenue by growing the program, it will make the number go up by getting its highest rollers to spend even more time at the tables.

Sony / Kotaku

In this regard it’s taking its cues from Sony. Part of what has made the PS5 generation the “most successful ever” is that the most dedicated PS5 players keep spending more and more. While PS5 sales are largely in line with the PS4 before it, fans are buying accessories and Fortnite skins, and staying subscribed to the most expensive version of PS Plus. With sky-high hardware prices and fewer exclusives than ever, Microsoft has clearly given up on growing its own share of the gamer pie. Instead it’s leveraging a massive publishing apparatus to try to squeeze its remaining users for even more cash.

This makes it sound like there is cold, hard financial logic governing Microsoft’s strategy here. But while I concede the new Game Pass might look good in a spreadsheet, I have no idea who it’s actually for anymore. At $360 a year you could buy Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Gears of War: E-Day, Fable, and Forza Horizon 6 and still have almost enough left over to pay the Xbox online multiplayer tax. If you’re only in it for the service’s impressive parade of neat indie games, well, you could buy A LOT of indie games for that much. And if you are a daily Fortnite player, I mean, are you even playing anything else?

The ‘Play Anywhere” platform is pricing fans out

Perhaps this is just Microsoft’s way of teeing up a cheap, ad-supported tier sometime in 2026. Call it Game Pass Lite. “The big question going forward is if Game Pass can be a sustainable product off console and how best they can reach this audience,” Niko Partners research director Daniel Ahmad wrote on X. “At the very least that’s going to require a lower entry cost (Essential) and experimentation with cloud only, ad supported, or mobile-first offerings.”

In the meantime, the company seems content to price out large parts of its audience that stuck with it for years waiting for Xbox to finally turn a corner. This reflects a larger reality in the current market. The top 10 percent of income earners now account for nearly 50 percent of consumer spending. “Everything is being priced for them while Xbox leaves everyone else behind,” wrote Giant Bomb‘s Jeff Grubb.

Been talking about this trend for years when it comes to games spending. Why are there premium gamepads, $149 collector’s editions, Pro consoles and general rising prices? Because the price-insensitive, affluent players are the ones doing more of the spending as everyone else shifts more to f2p.

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 2025-10-02T16:34:58.378Z

Motley Fool recently teased this out using Bureau of Labor statistics. “The top 20 percent of earners spent $1,722 on ‘other entertainment,’ including video games, in 2023, according to BLS,” it reported last month. “The next lowest income quintile spent $657 and the lowest income segment spent just $125 over the course of the entire year. The average spend on ‘other entertainment’ across all income levels was $653.” We don’t how those spending averages breakdown exclusively for games, but it suggests a similar picture: fewer people are accounting for a larger share of total spending on games, at least in the U.S.

Others are seemingly rushing to ditch their Game Pass subscriptions before they auto-renew at the higher price. Microsoft’s webpage for subscriptions was briefly overloaded after the announcement yesterday, and searches for how to cancel peaked. The whole episode might leave a less unpleasant taste in people’s mouths if it seemed like it was all in service of some larger ambition. Instead, it feels like Microsoft is setting a house it spent decades building ablaze and telling everyone inside to strip the copper wiring out of the walls before they leave.





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World of Warcraft is getting player housing in December, ahead of Midnight expansion launch
Game Reviews

World of Warcraft is getting player housing in December, ahead of Midnight expansion launch

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Blizzard has announced that player housing will be coming to World of Warcraft starting 2nd December, ahead of the Midnight expansion launch.

This initial rollout for housing will not be feature-complete, with the full suite of mechanics arriving when it enters the game proper at Midnight’s launch sometime in 2026. With the housing release in December, players will be able to buy a plot of land, establish a neighbourhood with other players, and begin designing your home with a selection of decor items.

Future updates to housing will include hundreds of decorations, including some furnishings that come from older achievements and content from prior expansions such as World of Warcraft: Legion Order Hall completion.

Here’s the full developer Q&A for World of Warcraft: Midnight, that came out alongside the alpha.Watch on YouTube

In addition, players will be able to level up their houses over time, which provides increased interior and exterior decor placement budget, fixture budget, and room placement budget. Neighbourhoods can be both private and public, allowing those from the same guild to build up an estate of sorts together within a variety of biomes.

Not only that, but neighbourhoods will be able to participate in endeavors. These are monthly neighbourhood events that provide exclusive decor to use on participants’ homes. As such, some level of community collaboration is intended for the housing system.

World of Warcraft: Midnight is the second part of a three-part trilogy, which started with The War Within last year. It’ll take players back to Silvermoon city, where the Blood Elves are having a rough time fending off void ne’er-do-wells. In addition players will be able to play as the Haranir as an allied race, a faction of note throughout The War Within’s narrative.

When Blizzard first announced housing it did so with a subtle jab at Final Fantasy 14, another popular MMO with its own housing system and housing-related problems. It’s worth noting that unlike Final Fantasy 14, housing isn’t limited in World of Warcraft, so players won’t be unable to get a house come December, which is good!



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Borderlands 4's Worst Character Sucks Less After Today's Update
Game Reviews

Borderlands 4’s Worst Character Sucks Less After Today’s Update

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A new update for Borderlands 4 is available now on all platforms, and after installing it you’ll discover that all of the game’s playable vault hunters are now stronger. But one in particular, Amon, is much, much more powerful after the patch, which is great because many (myself included) considered him to be the worst and weakest of the bunch.

Borderlands 4 launched last month to mostly positive reviews and big numbers on Steam. I really like the game and its chaotic mix of looting and shooting, even if performance issues have been a problem over the last few weeks. But performance has improved steadily with the last few patches, and now Gearbox is targeting balance tweaks. But don’t worry, the studio isn’t nerfing anything yet. Instead, the latest patch for the open-world FPS is all about buffing the vault hunters. And Amon, a large space warrior, got the most buffs following complaints that he wasn’t much fun to play and didn’t feel as exciting during firefights as other characters.

On October 2, Gearbox pushed out a new patch for Borderlands 4 that is focused entirely on improving each of the game’s four vault hunters. After the update, Harlowe does more stasis slam damage, Rafa’s APOPHIS Lance skill is deadlier, and the Siren Vex got some buffs to make some of her builds more viable. But it’s Amon who got the most tweaks by far, with the new patch notes listing 60+ buffs. Yowza! And some of these are huge, with one buff to “Massive Forgewave Damage” being listed as a 100-percent increase!

While it might seem drastic, Amon truly needed these buffs. I’ve now played as Rafa, Vex, and Amon in Borderlands 4, and by far the most boring and weakest was the big, tanky Amon. It often felt like I was tossing points into his skill tree without ever feeling the effects. Hopefully, these buffs help his kit feel more exciting and effective to use during combat encounters.

Anyway, here are the full Borderlands 4 patch notes as shared by Gearbox on Thursday:

Character Balance Adjustments:

Harlowe

Action Skills – Zero-Point

  • Stasis Slam Damage increased by 30%
  • Stasis Immune Damage increased by 14.7%

Rafa

Action Skills – APOPHIS Lance

Capstones – People Person

  • Project: Raiju Damage now scales by 12% per second, up from 10%
  • Project: Basilisk Damage increased by 15%
  • Project: Basilisk Hazard Damage increased by 25%
  • Project: Gorgon Damage increased by 17%

Passives – People Person

  • El Catrín
    • Critical Hit Damage increased to 8% from 7% per point
    • Bonus Shock Damage increased to 8% from 7% per point
  • Per My Last
    • Double Damage Chance increased to 6% from 5% per point

Action Skills – Arc-Knives

  • Melee Attack Damage increased by 12%
  • Dash Damage increased by 5%

Passives – This Year’s Gimmick

  • Handshake Deal
    • Melee Damage increased to 9% from 7% per point
  • To the Last
    • Skill Damage increased to 8% from 6% per point
  • El Paragus
    • Splash Damage increased to 9% from 7% per point
  • Liquidation
  • Collaborative Ignition
    • Bonus Damage increased to 8% from 6% per point
  • Sinergia
    • Duration increased to 14 seconds from 12 seconds
    • Melee Damage increased to 4% from 3% per point
  • Empuje
    • Action Skill Duration increased to 7% from 6% per point

Vex

Action Skills – Incarnate

  • Phase Explosion Damage increased by 16.6%
  • Eldritch Blast Damage increased by 9.5%

Augments – Vexcalation

  • Energy Vampire Damage increased by 25%

Capstones – Vexcalation

  • Heartpiercer Damage increased by 22%
  • Desecration Hazard Damage increased by 50%
  • Desecration Airborne Burst Damage increased by 48%
  • Geistwave Damage increased by 41%

Passives – Vexcalation

  • Radiant Attunement now deals 7% Splash Damage, up from 6% per point
  • Dreadlight Hazard Damage increased by 100%
  • Ars Arcana now increases Skill Damage by 9% from 8% per point

Action Skills – Phase Phamiliar

  • Trouble Health increased by 10%
  • Trouble Damage increased by 21.9%

Augments – Here Comes Trouble

  • Violent Outburst Damage increased by 12.5%
  • Vorpal Fang Damage increased by 34%

Capstones – Here Comes Trouble

  • Trouble Bubble Damage increased by 33%

Passives – Here Comes Trouble

  • Blood is Magic now increases Action Skill Damage by 8% from 7% per point
  • Claw and Bang now increases Melee Damage by 8% from 6% per point

Passives – The Fourth Seal

  • Fell Inscriptions Melee Damage increased to 7% from 6% per point
  • Recurrence now increases Melee Damage by 0.2% per stack from 0.16% per point
  • Haruspex Phase Dagger Damage increased by 11.7%

Amon

Action Skills – Scourge

  • Scourge has had its Maximum Vengeance increased by 50%, making it able to absorb more damage and deal more damage with Forgewhip when consumed.
  • Forgewhip Damage has increased by 27%

Augments – Vengeance

  • Blastchill Damage increased by 45%
  • Molten Rebuke Damage increased by 86%
  • Eternal Winter Massive Forgewave Damage increased by 100%
  • Stormlance Damage increased by 52%
  • Stormlance Detonation Damage increased by 10%

Capstones – Vengeance

  • Glacial Rapture Capstone now has a 60 second cooldown, down from 70 seconds
  • Glacial Rapture Forgewhip Damage increased by 16%
  • Glacial Rapture Fissure Damage increased by 41%
  • Wrathfall Damage increased by 46%

Passives – Vengeance

  • Scorched Kairos now increases Ordnance Damage by 6%, up from 5% per point
  • Battleborn now increases Gun Damage by 4%, up from 3% per point
  • Scar Tissue now increases Maximum Health and Rep Kit healing by 9%, up from 8% per point
  • Eternal now increases Action Skill Duration by 5%, up from 4% per point
  • Worldbreaker Damage increased by 50%
  • Winter’s Kiss now increases Damage Dealt by 10%, up from 8% per point
  • Strike The Anvil now deals 15% of the Damage Dealt, up from 12% per point

Action Skills – Crucible

  • Forgeaxe Damage increased by 12%
  • Double-Edge’s Twinned Forge Axe Damage increased by 10%

Augments – Cybernetics

  • Axe and Stones Action Skill Cooldown restoration increased to 40% from 33%
  • Axe and Stones Action Skill Ordnance restoration increased to 40% from 33%
  • Endless War Gun Damage Taken increased to 20% from 15% per Prime stack
  • Hour of the Hammer Forgehammer Damage increased by 14%
  • Blade Tempest Forgesword damage increased by 13%
  • Blade Tempest Forgesword Detonation damage increased by 4%

Capstones – Cybernetics

  • Snowmaul Damage increased by 38%
  • Storm Surge impact damage increased by 10%
  • Storm Surge Forgestorm damage increased by 60%
  • Conflangarang Capstone’s Fire Trail Damage increased by 100%

Passives – Cybernetics

  • Gathering Storm now increases Elemental Damage by 3% per stack, up from 2% per point
  • Executioner now increases Critical Hit Damage by 4%, up from 3% per point
  • Destruction Engine now increases Forge Skill Damage by 6%, up from 5% per point
  • Destruction Engine now increases Detonation Damage by 8%, up from 6% per point
  • Tempered Pyre Forge Axe Damage increased by 19%
  • Tempered Ice Forge Hammer Damage increased by 18%
  • Masterwork now increases Forgedrone’s Damage by 10%, from 7% per point
  • Masterwork now increases Forgedrone’s Duration by 8%, from 5% per point
  • Tempered Lightning Forge Sword Damage increased by 13%
  • Lightning Rod Elemental Bolt now deals 40% of the Damage Dealt, up from 30% per point
  • Escalation now increases Forgedrone’s Attack Speed and Movement Speed by 5%, up from 3%, per point
  • Honed Point now increases Forgedrone’s Critical Hit Chance by 5%, up from 4% per point
  • Heat Exchange now increases Cryo and Incendiary Damage by 8%, up from 7% per point

Action Skills – Onslaughter

  • Onslaughter Shield Regeneration increased to 15% per second, from 10%
  • Onslaughter Rocket Punch Damage increased by 78%
  • Molten Slam now has a 60 second cooldown, from 80 seconds
  • Molten Slam Damage increased by 50%

Augments – Calamity

  • Fellfrost Damage increased by 71%
  • Fulminating Fist damage increased by 69%

Capstones – Calamity

  • Hoarcleave now has a 55 second cooldown, from 65 seconds
  • Hoarcleave damage increased by 11%
  • Hoarcleave Detonation damage increased by 18%
  • Molten Roil now has a 70 second cooldown, from 80 seconds
  • Stormcutter now has a 65 second cooldown, from 75 seconds
  • Stormcutter Damage increased by 65%

Passives – Calamity

  • Heavy Plate now increases Maximum Shield Capacity by 7%, up from 6% per point
  • Wield The Storm now increases Status Effect Damage and Status Effect Duration by 7%, from 6% per point
  • Tritanium Knuckles now increases Melee Damage by 8%, up from 7% per point
  • Tritanium Knuckles now increased Skill Damage by 4%, up from 3% per point
  • Harbinger now increases Melee Damage by 2% per stack, up from 1% per point
  • Mortal Flare Damage increased by 22%
  • Judgment now increases Melee damage by 10%, up from 8% per point

Additional Change:

  • Added auto-clearing of Borderlands 4 stale shaders on version update, preventing performance degradation on some PCs.



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Rock Band 4 will be de-listed this week, now's your last chance to grab song packs
Game Reviews

Rock Band 4 will be de-listed this week, now’s your last chance to grab song packs

by admin


Rock Band 4 will be de-listed later this week, developer Harmonix has stated, meaning this is your last chance to grab any remaining song packs.

The game was original released a decade ago for PS4 and Xbox One, but now the licenses for the core soundtrack are expiring.

As such, the game will no longer be available to purchase and download from 5th October, while DLC song packs will gradually be removed once they hit the ten year mark themselves.

Rock Band 4 announced for PS4 and Xbox One (Dev Diary)Watch on YouTube

Of course, if you own the game already it will remain in your library, as will any purchased songs.

“We’re so grateful for the passion this community has shown,” said Harmonix. “From the team, it’s been a special experience to serve you with Rivals challenges, a super deep downloadable content library and a best in class band sim. If you’ve been meaning to grab a few last songs, now’s the time.”

The statement was shared on the game’s subreddit.

rock band 4 game and DLC de-listing Information from harmonix
byu/HMXKyleTheWynner inRockband

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Harmonix was acquired by Fortnite-maker Epic back in 2021 and has since created the Fortnite Festival music mode.

A year later, the studio’s last music game, the DJ mixing game Fuser, similarly went offline in December 2022.



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15 Best Abilities To Unlock
Game Reviews

15 Best Abilities To Unlock

by admin


Thanks to its excellent job system, there are hundreds of abilities your characters can learn in Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. Some of them are trash. Some of them are fun but mid. Here are the godlike ones.

Abilities in Final Fantasy Tactics come in four types: action, reaction, support, and movement. Below I’ve listed the best abilities to unlock in the latter three categories. These are useful no matter what Job or action abilities you’re rocking.

If you want my advice for action abilities, you should prioritize the Monk’s Chakra and Revive, White Mage’s Raise and Holy, Black Mage’s Flare, and the Summoner’s Cyclops and Lich. Also every Item, Geomancy, and Iaido action ability.

But when it comes to the movement, support, and reaction abilities, these are the best:

Teleport

Job: Time Mage

Cost: 3,000 JP

Why it’s great: You can move anywhere on the map, but with a decreasing chance of success the farther away from your current location the spot is. It breaks some maps entirely by letting you cross chasms or hop on the other side of barriers. It’s also perfect for Mages who want to cast a spell and then teleport out of range.

Ignore Elevation

Job: Dragoon

Cost: 700 JP

Why it’s great: You can move without being restricted by how high or low the square in front of you is. Need to jump up on top of a cathedral? You can do that! Plus you don’t have to worry about Teleportation failing.

Fly

Job: Bard

Cost: 900

Why it’s great: It looks goofy seeing your character flap around like a Chocobo but flight has some advantages that Ignore Elevation does not. Namely, you can escape if you get cornered by flying over enemies. The price to unlock is exorbitant but it’s never a bad option.

Movement +3

Job: Bard

Cost: 1,000 JP

Why it’s great: This one is also a Bard specialty, meaning female characters can’t learn it. But you can never go wrong with a good old solid plus-three to movement. Every time you go to move your character you’ll be like, whoa, WHOA! It doesn’t have the versatility of the other movement abilities but it’s great for heavy-hitters that need to get around the battlefield quickly.

Doublehand

Job: Samurai

Cost: 900 JP

Why it’s great: Doublehand lets you hold one weapon with two hands and doubles the attack power. It’s great for rare greatswords like Excalibur and polearms that require two hands already.

Dual Wield

Job: Ninja

Cost: 1,000 JP

Why it’s great: You can equip two weapons and attack with both. That splits the odds of missing both hits and lets you get bonus stats from the second equipped item. It’s almost always preferable to Dual Wield. Plus it works with the Monk’s Martial Arts, which Doublehand does not.

Equip Guns

Job: Orator

Cost: 800

Why it’s great: Guns have great range, basically never miss, and once you unlock the special magic versions, can be extremely powerful. The two jobs that can normally equip guns are pretty weak, so it’s great for pairing with other ones. Plus you can use it with the Knight’s Arts of War to break enemy gear from afar.

Swiftspell

Job: Time Mage

Cost: 700 JP

Why it’s great: The main drawback to the most powerful magic in the game is casting time. Spells that take forever give enemies too much time to move out of the way or to kill you before they go off. Swiftness makes Summons like Cyclops and Lich go off in record time and can make it easy to heal allies in a pinch before they are totally KO’d. On top of that, The Ivalice Chronicles remaster dialed down some of the casting times for the best spells, so Swiftness will make them land even more quickly.

Job: Chemist

Cost: 350

Why it’s great: Items is one of the most useful action abilities in the game. Adding range to them doubles that utility. There’s simply no substitute for a fully stocked inventory you can deploy across the battlefield without the need to wait for spells or getting into the perfect position.

Auto-Potion

Job: Chemist

Cost: 400

Why it’s great: You learn very early in Final Fantasy Tactics that Auto-Potion is one of the most annoying abilities to fight against. As the name implies, it has a high chance of using a potion after very hit, whether it’s physical damage or magic. It’s usefulness maxes out with X-Potions which restore 150 health, but even in the late game it’s rare that you’ll get hit for substantially more than that. One of the simplest, easiest-to-access abilities in the game will increase the survivability of everyone on your team exponentially, as long as you can afford to restock in-between battles.

First Strike

Job: Monk

Cost: 1,300 JP

Why it’s great: Tired: Counter Tackle. Wired: Counter. Inspired: First Strike. Not only do you get to attack the enemy first, but they don’t get to respond at all, so you’re essentially co-opting their entire turn. It only works for melee attacks, however, so its usefulness is limited to hand-to-hand brawls. Still, few things are more satisfying than sending a Ninja into battle and watching them double-strike every Knight in the vicinity before they even get their next turn.

Dragonheart

Job: Dragoon

Cost: 600 JP

Why it’s great: Dragonheart gives your character a chance to cast re-raise on themselves every time they take damage. It’s especially useful for characters you know will get wiped out because it guarantees them another turn when they revive, at which point hopefully the cavalry has arrived either to heal them or provide cover.

Shirahadori

Job: Samurai

Cost: 700 JP

Why it’s great: Once known as Blade Grasp, Shirahadori gives you somewhere between 60-80 percent evasion on every physical attack. It’s supposed to only apply to melee attacks but works for bows too, which is what ultimately makes it better than First Strike. When it comes to survivability, the only thing better than Auto-Potion is never getting hit at all.

Archer’s Bane

Job: Archer

Cost: 450 JP

Why it’s great: So this is basically Shirahadori but worse. It dramatically increases evasion but only for projectiles. Why include it on this list then? It’s cheap and easy to unlock very early on and Final Fantasy Tactics loves to throw enemy Archers at you up through almost the end of the game. Archer’s Bane can keep a Black Mage or Summoner from getting picked off. I prioritized it on my latest playthrough and was surprised how much work it put in.

Critical: Recover HP

Job: Monk

Cost: 500 JP

Why it’s great: Okay, one more for the road. Critical: Recover HP will fully restore your character’s health if the enemy’s attack takes them into near-death but doesn’t outright kill them. That might sound extremely limiting, but there are a surprising number of times when that is exactly what happens during a battle. It’s not as consistent as Auto-Potion and doesn’t provide as much overall value as a First Strike or Shirahadori but it’s a cheaper skill and has some very unique cases where it easily out-performs both thanks to the fact that it can automatically restore all of your character’s health. Pound-for-pound one of the best early-game reactive abilities.



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