Laughing Hyena
  • Home
  • Hyena Games
  • Esports
  • NFT Gaming
  • Crypto Trends
  • Game Reviews
  • Game Updates
  • GameFi Guides
  • Shop
Tag:

theft

Fill a bit of year-long wait for Grand Theft Auto 6 with this chaotic new game
Gaming Gear

Fill a bit of year-long wait for Grand Theft Auto 6 with this chaotic new game

by admin May 20, 2025



Look, it’s time to face reality: it’ll be another year until you can play Grand Theft Auto 6. I know, I know — you were probably hoping that you’d wake up this week and discover that its delay to May 26, 2026 was just a dream. Sadly, them’s the breaks, kid. You’re going to need to play some other things to fill that gap, whether its something like Mafia: The Old Country or other vehicular crime games like Mario Kart World (at least the way I plan to play it).

But don’t worry, I’m not just here to bum you out. I am nothing if not constructive, so I come bearing a recommendation to help ease your sorrow, if only for a few weeks. Deliver at All Costs is a delightfully chaotic new game that takes inspiration from the original Grand Theft Auto games, back when the series had a top-down perspective. It’s a compact slice of open-world mayhem that GTA fans are sure to get a kick out of.

Published by Konami, Deliver at All Costs follows a delivery driver named Winston who gets a new gig in the quiet town of St. Monique circa 1959. His job is simple: deliver packages around town in his crappy pick up truck. How hard can that be?

To answer that question, Deliver at All Costs begins with one heck of a joke. At the very start of the game, I exit my apartment and get into my car. I instinctively press down my right trigger to accelerate. Instead of moving forward, my car blasts backwards and crashes through a storefront that crumbles into a million pieces. It’s a perfect introduction. It not only tells me that every piece of the city is destructible, but also that I’m in for a full slapstick comedy of errors.

That’s what the full game delivers over the course of its varied jobs, each of which plays with physics in creative ways. In one mission, I need to haul a living Marlin across town. It thrashes in the backseat of my truck, throwing off my steering. Another mission has me delivering a balloon inflating machine, one that keeps lifting my truck into the air anytime my wheels even slightly come off the ground. All of that happens from a top down perspective that pulls inspiration from Grand Theft Auto 2.

Konami

A game like this lives and dies by how many ways it can twist a simple idea around. While its frontloaded with its best jokes, there are a lot of comedic gags throughout that keep missions diverse. One highlight tasks me with racing toy cars to kids around a neighborhood, piloting them almost like unwieldy slot cars. The cops take notice and deploy a squad of tiny police cars after me, which try to ram into my vehicles and blow them up. I didn’t know what to expect next from each mission, which kept me playing even when its dull story and traditional open-world collect-a-thon hooks didn’t hold my interest.

The real appeal, though, is more primal. The fully destructible maps are just a delight to crash into. For the most part, I tried to do my job like a good upstanding citizen, obeying traffic laws as best as possible. Naturally, that’s not always possible. I’d often find myself barreling through a building and watching bits and pieces fly out of it as I accelerated through the other side. The citizens of its explorable spaces don’t take kindly to being plowed over either, as they’ll attack my truck and force me to get out and repair it. Fortunately, I can craft upgrades to help me deal with that, like hydraulic doors that I can use to knock away pesky pedestrians. It all makes for some satisfying emergent comedy as I turn quiet 1950s towns into my own personal demotion derby.

While it feels a little long in the tooth for what it is and uses its best ideas too fast, Deliver at All Costs is a fun little gem in the vein of something like Maneater. That is to say that it delivers a light, fun, and funny premise and executes it well enough to make it all worth the curiosity. And hey, what else are you going to do for the next year while you wait for Grand Theft Auto 6? Get behind the wheel and deliver some chaos.

Deliver at All Costs launches on May 22 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.






Source link

May 20, 2025 0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Marathon art
Gaming Gear

Haunted looking art director livestreams apology for Marathon theft scandal, but chat is merciless: ‘Would write an original comment, but I don’t see any good ones to plagarize’

by admin May 19, 2025



Last week Bungie was accused of using the designs of an independent artist, Antireal, without her knowledge or permission. It’s a pretty cut-and-dry case: elements of Marathon’s environment art unquestionably copy iconography from posters designed by Antireal in 2017. It didn’t help that several of the game’s art team also follow her accounts on social media.

Bungie issued a statement acknowledging the “unauthorised use” and blamed the situation on a former employee:

“We immediately investigated a concern regarding unauthorized use of artist decals in Marathon and confirmed that a former Bungie artist included these in a texture sheet that was ultimately used in-game.


You may like

“This issue was unknown by our existing art team, and we are still reviewing how this oversight occurred. We take matters like this very seriously. We have reached out to [Antireal] to discuss this issue and are committed to do right by the artist.”

That mea culpa was followed last Friday by a livestream in which game director Joe Ziegler and art director Joseph Cross directly addressed the controversy, beginning with another prepared apology from Cross before the pair fielded questions. I will say upfront that this is in places uncomfortable viewing: Cross is clearly exhausted and looks miserable throughout. Regardless of how this plagiarism accusation plays out, and how Antireal is compensated, it is obvious these events have taken a considerable personal toll on Bungie’s staff.

The chat is largely oblivious to this and some viewers go straight for the jugular. Marathon’s tagline is “ESCAPE WILL MAKE ME GOD” which was co-opted during the stream and turned into the meme “PLAGIARISM WILL MAKE ME GOD”, which was spammed on repeat throughout, with minor variants.

Cross somehow manages to get through an hour of this, and gamely answers some of the most prominent audience questions. One of these is about how exactly Bungie will compensate Antireal and why it was scrubbing all the assets in question rather than employing the artist who made them.

Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.

“For what it’s worth we’re confident the majority of the assets in that capacity are original, created internally by our internal artists,” says Cross. “We would love to work with Antireal if that’s an opportunity that presents itself: that’s part of what we sort of reached out to communicate.”

This is one of the elements of the plagiarism scandal that has gotten out of hand. Bungie has definitely incorporated some of Antireal’s iconography, and its feet should be held to the fire for that. But this has now ballooned into a baseless accusation from some that Marathon’s entire art style is plagiarised from this artist.

“At this point it’s a very small set of assets,” says Cross. “The decals themselves are the kind of details that are placed on the sides of buildings or crates or something like that so we absolutely do need to replace them and we would rule in any sort of way of doing that including contracting, collaborating or working with the artist for sure.”

“Something slipped through our net,” adds Ziegler. “So we have to go back and look at everything just to make sure that nothing else slipped through our net if that makes sense. Because it caught us by surprise and we want to make sure that we’re doing the right diligence to ensure it doesn’t happen again: so either way we’re going to scrub all the assets just because we want to make sure that we didn’t miss something else.”

Whatever else can be said about Bungie, and how these assets found their way into Marathon, it is at the very least holding up its hands. But there’s not much sympathy out there for the studio: probably because this is the fourth time this has happened in four years: last year fan art was used while designing a Destiny 2 Nerf gun; in 2023, an in-game Destiny 2 cutscene featured artwork copied from another artist; in 2021, Bungie admitted that fanart of Xivu Arath was “accidentally used” in a trailer for the Witch Queen.

(Image credit: Bungie)

The YouTube comments under the livestream are unforgiving. “You know, it’s telling that you used Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias in your cinematic, a poem that spoke of the fall of once great empires, lost to the sands of time,” says SunCityRebel. Other examples include: “I would write an original comment, but I don’t see any good ones to plagarize” and “art extraction shooter genre.”

Inevitably, there’s plenty more of that on the game’s subreddit, but also a little more empathy for the situation:

“I think it’s a good apology,” says Marikal. “You guys make it seem like this guy is an evil mastermind stealing stuff on purpose. What happened was some contractor working under him stole stuff back in 2020 and it slipped past him. Yes it is his responsibility, and so he is trying to make it right and fix it, but it’s not like he wanted this.”

This incident has taken place at a time where it feels like, for whatever reason, community sentiment has soured badly around Marathon. Despite a fantastic launch trailer and broadly positive responses from those who’ve played it, you don’t have to go far to find folk talking about how “cooked” the game / studio is, confidently predicting it’s going to fail, and making comparison to another Sony-published live service shooter: the catastrophe that was Concord.

Bungie was up against it with Marathon anyway: a plagiarism scandal in the runup to release was the last thing it needed. A new report claims morale at the studio is in “free fall.” Senior individuals like Cross have to carry the can, and that’s their job. But for the studio and the game’s sake, this situation needs an amicable resolution and a line drawn under it yesterday.



Source link

May 19, 2025 0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail

Categories

  • Crypto Trends (99)
  • Esports (77)
  • Game Reviews (83)
  • Game Updates (89)
  • GameFi Guides (96)
  • Gaming Gear (97)
  • NFT Gaming (91)
  • Product Reviews (98)
  • Uncategorized (1)

Recent Posts

  • Some Nintendo Switch 2 Games Will Support A USB Mouse
  • Bitcoin’s Current Trend Echoing Past Cycle Moves After Making History – Here’s How
  • BTC Market Cap Tops $2.2T as Derivatives, Sentiment Signal Pricing Upside
  • Pocket alternatives for bookmarking your content
  • Slumping Athletics shake up roster, call up five players

Recent Posts

  • Some Nintendo Switch 2 Games Will Support A USB Mouse

    May 24, 2025
  • Bitcoin’s Current Trend Echoing Past Cycle Moves After Making History – Here’s How

    May 24, 2025
  • BTC Market Cap Tops $2.2T as Derivatives, Sentiment Signal Pricing Upside

    May 24, 2025
  • Pocket alternatives for bookmarking your content

    May 24, 2025
  • Slumping Athletics shake up roster, call up five players

    May 24, 2025

Newsletter

Subscribe my Newsletter for new blog posts, tips & new photos. Let's stay updated!

About me

Welcome to Laughinghyena.io, your ultimate destination for the latest in blockchain gaming and gaming products. We’re passionate about the future of gaming, where decentralized technology empowers players to own, trade, and thrive in virtual worlds.

Recent Posts

  • Some Nintendo Switch 2 Games Will Support A USB Mouse

    May 24, 2025
  • Bitcoin’s Current Trend Echoing Past Cycle Moves After Making History – Here’s How

    May 24, 2025

Newsletter

Subscribe my Newsletter for new blog posts, tips & new photos. Let's stay updated!

@2025 laughinghyena- All Right Reserved. Designed and Developed by Pro


Back To Top
Laughing Hyena
  • Home
  • Hyena Games
  • Esports
  • NFT Gaming
  • Crypto Trends
  • Game Reviews
  • Game Updates
  • GameFi Guides
  • Shop

Shopping Cart

Close

No products in the cart.

Close