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Elden Ring Player Proves Faith Builds Rule With One Shot Kills

Elden Ring Player Proves Faith Builds Rule With One Shot Kills

matthew "Your Average Gamer" Farnkopf is just standing around while Elden Ring's final boss, the Elden Beast, collapses behind their faith/lightning-based Tarnished.

Elden Ring‘s faith stat is pretty flexible to build around, particularly because developer FromSoftware baked so many incantations and spells into the game. Still, it tends to see very little use at high levels, as YouTuber Your Average Gamer put it in an email to Kotaku DotCom, folks claim it’s not as good as other in-game stats like the health-defining vigor. In an effort to prove the masses wrong, Your Average Gamer took their ardent belief in faith and put it to the test. Not only did they take on the hardest difficulty possible, they also absolutely demolished a variety of bosses, including ones like Radagon and the Elden Beast, in a single attack. It’s nuts!

Matthew “Your Average Gamer” Farnkopf is a YouTuber dedicated to putting together “crazy Elden Ring builds.” they’ve got a video on destroying Malenia in 90 seconds, another breaking down the effectiveness of Godrick the Grafted’s Great Axeand a different one on the ultimate status effect build. In short, Matt has spent a lot of time with Elden Ring since it dropped on February 25. And yet, it’s still remarkable they were able to find a one-shot build powerful enough to take out two of the game’s hardest bosses, Radagon of the Golden Order and the Elden Beastwith an assortment of equipment and incantations on New Game Plus Seven, the highest difficulty option Elden Ring currently has to offer. Every round of new game plus retains all your gear and stats while increasing the overall damage output and health pool of the enemies around you, meaning Your Average Gamer’s run is some seriously gnarly shit.

FromSoftware

It looks like Matt’s just throwing things to be throwing things during the fight, but there’s actually an order to the madness. as they explained in a short video detailing what they’ve dubbed the “ultimate PvE build,” Matt first casts the Howl of Shabriri and Golden Vow incantations for some initial status effects, like madness buildup for attack power and attack negation, respectively. They then poison themselves to increase their intelligence stat and temporarily boost lightning attack damage, the latter is especially important when paired with the sole attack spell Ancient Dragons’ Lightning Strikea late-game ability you find in the labyrinthine legacy dungeon Crumbling Farum Azula. After a quick buffing session, Matt turns to their gear for even more buffs—the Gravel Stone Seal to up the damage of Dragon Cult/lightning-related incantations, the Jellyfish Shield for 20% increased damage for 30 secondsand the Kindred of Rot’s Exultation Talisman to raise attack power by 20% for 20 seconds when there’s poisoning or rot nearbyamong others—before entering the battle arena to show the final bosses what’s up.

It was curtains once Matt stepped in front of Radagon. They cast the Ancient Dragons’ Lightning Strike, a multi-hitting attack that sends down several bolts of lightning to strike in a determined area, and watched as the hammer-wielding god’s health bar melted away in seconds. The same thing happened to the colossal Elden Beast, and y’all, I’m gagging RN.

ReadMore: Elden Ring Fans Rejoice As Dreaded Bloodhound Step Nerfed In Enormous Gameplay Update

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matt canopy Kotaku over email that they wanted to dispel the myth permeating the game’s community that “faith [builds aren’t] nearly as good as magic.” It took them “nearly 20 hours of trial and error” to find the right combination of gear and incantations to do the necessary damage to slay Radagon and the Elden Beast in one shot, and the results were stunning.

“I was primarily inspired to prove that something that many said couldn’t be done could actually be done…even on the hardest difficulty,” Matt said. “When I pulled this off on Journey Three, that gave me hope that it was technically possible. Once again to prove how powerful faith can be!”

Matt, to put it plainly, loves faith. It’s one of their favorite stats to construct characters around, and a central theme to the game overall. Still, getting things just right to accomplish this feat was quite the headache, something that forced them to “quit two separate times” because of how time-consuming it was becoming. Regardless of the frustrations, Matt said they were “glad [to have] stuck it out” in the end.

“So I’m physically disabled,” Matt said. “I have ongoing day-to-day stomach issues that can get/have gotten severe at times. I had just gotten over a flare-up of Colitis that I had to go to the ER for. After failing so many times throughout several hours, I found myself possibly going back into another flare-up. So I relaxed, calmed myself down, and spaced out my time. From then on I set hours I would do it and took the pressure entirely off myself. The moment I said ‘Okay, if someone else does it that’s fine,’ I was able to relax. Shortly after, I was able to achieve it anyway!”

FromSoftware

Doing a one-shot kill in Elden Ring is impressive but not entirely new. there was one Redditor back in April who killed the notorious Tree Sentinel in one hit and another speedrunner that created a glass-cannon build to bonk bosses with a single swing of their hammer in May. While it may not be that fresh, slaying FromSoftware’s infamously challenging enemies in one hit is still a cool sight to see. I wish I were patient enough to do this.

While Matt’s Beaten Elden Ring several times now, he’s not done with the game. They’re hoping FromSoftware adds new content in the form of “very challenging bosses, much like Dark Souls 3‘s DLC” or “another late game spike that would test us yet again.” Until then, Matt is trekking through the Lands Between once more looking for new builds to experiment with.

“I’ve retired the lightning build/character,” Matt said. “He’s kind of a legacy to me now. I’m starting a new build fresh, and I’m going to focus on exploring and the next cool build I can come up with. Elden Ring is a fantastic game, and the community is amazing! And remember ‘Seek Lightning!’”

It’s worth noting that while FromSoftware dropped patch 1.06 for the game, Matt said their ultimate PvE build is still effective against the game’s bosses. If you want to try out Matt’s full build for yourself, here you go:

  • Gravel Stone Seal or Golden Order Seal
  • Jellyfish Shield
  • Mushroom Crown
  • Fetid Pots
  • Neutralizing Boluses
  • Blood Sword for Health Damage
  • Godfrey Icon
  • Lightning Scorpion Charm
  • Kindred of Roy’s Exultation
  • Red-Feathered Branchsword
  • Ancient Prayer book (for the incantation)
  • Lightning-Shrouding Cracked Tear
  • Intelligence-knot Crystal Tear
  • Howl of Shabriri Incantation
  • Golden Vow Incantation

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Unity Signs New Deal To Help US Army, Government

Unity Signs New Deal To Help US Army, Government

A screenshot shows the Unity logo in white on a blue and black grid background.

picture: Kotaku / Unity

Popular video game engine Unity has had a lot of bad press over the last year, the result of things like large-scale layoffs and some really terrible comments from its CEO. Today the trend continues, as it was recently announced that the company has signed a new multi-million dollar, three-year deal with a technology company that will see it become the “preferred real-time 3D platform” provider for the US government and its various defense agencies and militaries.

Unity is a widely used video game engine that is often cited as being lightweight, easy to work with, and flexible, allowing indie devs and large studios to create games that can scale across multiple platforms, like Xbox, PC, and Switch. The engine powers numerous gameslike Among Us, V Rising, Call of Duty Mobile, and Cuphead. But this flexibility and power have also attracted the attention of folks outside of the game industry, including companies that help build simulations and other systems for the US government and military.

As announced earlier this weekUnity is parenting with CACI International on what the company calls an “exciting” three-year, multi-million dollar deal that will help it become the “preferred real-time 3D platform for future systems design and simulation programs across the US Government.”

If you, like most folks reading this, don’t know what CACI is, here’s how the company describes itself on its own website:

CACI is a $6 billion company whose mission and enterprise technology and expertise play a vital role in our national security, safeguarding our troops, and enabling our government to deliver cost-effective and high-quality support for all Americans.

This sounds a lot like Unity is once again cutting deals to help the US government and military in developing technology that could aid soldiers and the country’s ability to fight wars overseas. And while some might not mind working on such tech, as we saw last year, many staff members at Unity did indeed have an issue with how the company was handling these deals. There were reports that some employees were working on parts of the engine that would benefit Unity’s government and military contracts, yet the devs had no idea.

Kotaku has contacted Unity about this latest contract and how it plans to keep its game engine devs separate from or informed about its military and government contract work with CACI.

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Anti-Apex Legends #NoApexAugust Campaign Fails Spectacularly

Anti-Apex Legends #NoApexAugust Campaign Fails Spectacularly

A pirate shrugs in Apex Legends.

screenshot: EA

It’s not a universal maxim, but in many cases, there’s no surer sign a game is alive and well than when waves of players start calling it a “dead game.” The most recent example is apex legendswhich just set an all-time player count record amid a coordinated—I use that word generously—social media campaign urging players to fall off the game for a month.

apex legendsa free-to-play first-person shooter some people still call Why Aren’t You Titanfall 3?, launched three years ago amid the industry’s battle royale boom. Though it initially seemed experimental, a fun if ephemeral multiplayer pitstop between developer Respawn’s blockbusters (like titan fall and Jedi: Fallen Order), Apex quickly adopted a seasonal model. It’s been riding the live service train ever since and is now on its 14th season. This brings us to #NoApexAugust, a community effort to highlight various issues fans have with the game.

#NoApexAugust has mostly organized around a hashtag on Twitter, though the genesis can be traced back to to Reddit post from last month. Initially, one player suggested a single-day strike against apex legends. The post blew up. Complaints about apex legends poured in (the initial post has more than 1,000 responses), and it eventually morphed into the idea that the community would take a whole month off from the game.

The idea of ​​#NoApexAugust was to spur Respawn and publisher EA into action, addressing what players see as issues with the game: the high-ping servers…or the lack of cross-progression…or the overpriced cosmetics…or the lack or interesting cosmetics …or the slew of specific items some say are too powerful…or, look, players have a bunch of nonsense issues, many of which seem minor in isolation but coalesce into a larger “please fix game” rallying cry.

Right out of the gate, #NoApexAugust sputtered. Some people pointed out that the player base actually increased (if only marginally) over the first two days of the month, immediately after the campaign kicked off. And just yesterday—again, while #NoApexAugust was supposedly in full swing—apex legends set its all-time record number of players on Steam: 510,286 players, according to stat-tracking database steamcharts. (The previous record of 411,183 was set in May. These figures don’t account for players on consoles, however.)

Some dead game.

Clearly, #NoApexAugust has failed spectacularly at its intended goal of getting players to abstain from playing apex legends. Due to the obvious irony, you are allowed at least one (1) chuckle. Still, that a social campaign—messy execution aside—was merited here in the first place calls attention to very real issues players have with the game. Those shouldn’t be ignored, even if players are coming out in record numbers.

Representatives for EA, which publishes apex legendsdid not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

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Japanese Pixel Art Adventure Tokyo Stories Looks Very Cool

Japanese Pixel Art Adventure Tokyo Stories Looks Very Cool

BitSummit, Japan’s leading indie games event, was held over the weekend in Kyoto, and among the games showcased was one called Tokyo Stories that you have really got my attention.

Developed by Drecom, who are normally in the business of making phone games, it’s a moody adventure game set in Tokyo where, cryptically, “The city continues to tell her story, even after her disappearance.”

The game’s trailer looks fantasticwith an art style that builds its world in 3D, then gives everything a gritty pixel art effect, before smothering it all in some incredibly moody lighting:

Tokyo Stories [1st Promotion]

Looks amazing, right? By now though, you might also be wondering how the game actually plays, since that trailer was almost entirely made up of cinematic sequences. IGN Japan were at BitSummit, and after a hands-on demo with Tokyo Stories say that it’s built very much like a traditional PS1 game, with a fixed camera perspective that your 3D character walks around in, with most of your time spent simply wandering the city’s streets (you’re locked to a walking speed), exploring and learning about the world around you.

This might be a long shot for older heads here, but if anyone remembers the 2013 PS3 exclusive Rain, you might see some similarities here, and with good reason. Lead development on Tokyo Stories is Yuki Ikeda, who was also director on Rainand having been working on various projects at Drecom, this is his first all-new game in a decade.

Tokyo Stories is currently slated for PC and “consoles,” with a release date planned for sometime in 2023. If you want to see more on the game, its official Instagram account has some smaller clipsincluding one that shows how the game’s unique look is achieved:

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Fan Builds His Own Incredible Attack On Titan Video Game For PC

Fan Builds His Own Incredible Attack On Titan Video Game For PC

Yeah, there have been official Attack on Titan video games, but they’ve never really managed to fully capture the speed and scale of the show, so one indie developer figured he’d try and make his own and release it for free. Which he has done, and then some.

Swammy details the story of his little project in this videoexplaining that what started as a fun little experiment in early 2021 blew-up after his girlfriend convinced him to post a short gameplay video on TikTok. An overwhelmingly positive response inspired Swammy to continue development on the demo, building on a foundation of swinging through the city by adding first some Titans to go up against, and then—after one disastrous mix-up—a co-op multiplayer mode.

By January 2022, the game was looking pretty good!

FREE ATTACK ON TITAN FAN GAME – TRAILER (Swammys AOT Fan Game)

As you can see, the main appeal of this game vs the official releases is the swinging system, which in Swammy’s game is a lot faster and freer. If you’ve played the recent spider-man games, for example, you’ll be pretty much at home here, especially if you play this game in third-person (it’s playable from either first or third-person perspectives).

By the middle of 2022 Swammy’s project had racked up millions of views on social media and hundreds of thousands of downloads. And now it’s blowing up all over again because he’s announced that the whole thing is getting a revamp as he tries to port it over to Unreal Engine 5:

If you want to play the game as it exists today, you most definitely can, with download links available here. Note that while there are versions available for both PC and Android, the PC edition is the one getting all the work, with the Android one now at its “final build”, after “constant harassment and threats” gave Swammy “zero reason to continue working on it, for my own mental health”.

It’s super easy to download and start playing—though there’s a video here if you need some help—and having been messing around with it this morning, I can understand a lot of the hype from fans. Sure, it’s pretty rough around the edges, and stuff like the interface is as barebones as it gets, but allowing for the fact this is a one-man job, and how fun the basic act of swinging around and stabbing things is, I think it’s really cool.

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Rollback Netcode Coming To Dragon Ball Z and Samurai Showdown

Rollback Netcode Coming To Dragon Ball Z and Samurai Showdown

Dragon Ball Z

picture: bandai namco

EVO, the year’s biggest fighting games event, went down over the weekend, and in terms of news perhaps the biggest announcement was that not one but two games will be getting Rollback Netcode improvements over the next 12 months. Don’t know what that means, or why it’s important? I got you!

So in online multiplayer games, a large part of allowing everyone to play together is the way the game registers everyone’s actions at the same time. when a person in Canada is playing someone in Germany they’ll both be pressing buttons in their own homes, and the game needs to pick up those inputs, apply them to the game and have them play out in a way that makes the whole thing look as seamless as though they they were playing with (or against) each other in the same room.

Different games (and different genres) handle this differently, depending on how important speed and accuracy is to the player’s experience, but one type of input recognition that’s especially important to anyone playing a fighting game—where every frame and millisecond can mean the difference between victory and defeat—is called Rollback Netcode.

Rollback Netcode doesn’t rely on waiting for everyone’s input before registering actions; instead it lets both players press their buttons and see the action play out instantly without lag or delay, as though they were playing offline, and in the downtime between that and the opponent’s action arriving the game basically guesses what was going to happen next. If it guessed right the game continues with nobody noticing, and if it was wrong, it checks down to play out the action that the other player actually made, which sometimes involves a little “teleporting”.

The very helpful video below, by Coby Mystics, explains how Rollback Netcode works, and how in fighting games it’s speed and accuracy make it so superior to the more traditional Input Delay:

Code Mystics Explains Netcode: Input Delay vs. roll-back

OKAY! So now that we’re all up to speed on Rollback Netcode, you can understand why such a seemingly minor announcement is actually a huge deal for fighting game fans, and why these two announcements made at EVO went down so well with fans.

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First up, producer Tomoko Hiroki took to the stage to announce that the upcoming versions of dragon ball fighter z on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S will be getting Rollback Netcode, as will the PC version, though on the latter players will get the option whether to use Rollback Netcode (which will carry a slightly steeper system requirement) or stick with Input Delay.

It doesn’t look like the upgrade will be coming to the PS4, Xbox One or Switch versions of the game, though the last-gen PlayStation and Xbox versions will have upgrade paths made available for anyone who upgrades to newer systems.

As for when this is actually coming, it doesn’t sound like it will be soon, with the announcement saying “It will take some time until the system is implemented, but we sincerely hope you will enjoy it as soon as possible. More information will be released at a later date. Please wait for further details.”

The 2019 reboot of samurai showdown got the same announcement, with SNK teaming up with Code Mystics—creators of the vid above—to implement the upgrade. It’ll be coming to the PC, PS4, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S versions of the game (again leaving the Switch behind), and is “planned” for Spring 2023.

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Mario Kart 8 Leak Might Have Clues About Future DLC Courses

Mario Kart 8 Leak Might Have Clues About Future DLC Courses

Mario and friends race along the new MK8 stage Waluigi Pinball.

screenshot: Nintendo

Nintendo hasn’t revealed what the majority of mario kart 8‘s new courses will be, but players think they already know thanks to some clues reportedly left in the latest DLC files. Dataminers say the latest update contains a ton of leftover music references that hint at what 14 of the remaining 32 courses will be.

“Nintendo left then song prefetches to many future dlc courses in the BGM.bars of wave 2,” dataminer Fishguy6564 wrote on Twitter Thursday night. The discovery, apparently made by YouTube account recordreader, led to a list of music tracks pointing to various courses from past games in the Mario Kart series that would presumably appear in future DLC.

[SPOILERS] MK8D BOOSTER COURSE PASS MUSIC LEAK

The full list is:

  • Peach Gardens (DS)
  • Boo Lake of Broken Pier (GBA)
  • Alpine Pass (3DS)
  • Berlin Byways (Tour)
  • Waluigi Stadium (GCN)
  • Merry Mountain (Tour)
  • Rainbow Road (3DS)
  • Amsterdam Drift (Tour)
  • Singapore Speedway (Tour)
  • Los Angeles Laps (Tour)
  • Sunset Wilds (GBA)
  • Bangkok Rush (Tour)
  • Vancouver Velocity (Tour)
  • Maple Treeway (Wii)

Combining this apparent new info with Fishguy’s past datamining of the first DLC wave revealed a pretty thorough portrait of what types of courses could be coming in the future.

A lot of the courses are from toursthemobile Mario Kart spin-off. That’s not terrible news considering that the MK8 versions of many of those have been excellent so far. But players did quickly point out that if accurate, this means there are only two more Nintendo DS stages coming, and since one of them is Peach Gardens, not all of the fan-favorites like Airship Fortress, Luigi’s Mansion, and DK Summit will make the cut.

Fans will still have to wait a bit to see if these leaks get confirmed and how the rest of the question marks will be filled in. MK8‘s Booster Course Pass will add the remaining 32 new courses between now and the end of 2023.

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Activision Making More Off Phone Games Than Console And PC

Activision Making More Off Phone Games Than Console And PC

A solider with a rifle stands near a large, brown orc and both are in front of a screenshot of Candy Crush.

picture: Activision / Blizzard / King / Kotaku

Here’s a sign of the times: Activision has confirmed via newly released financial documents that it made more money on its phone games last quarter than it did on all of its console and PC games combined.

As spotted by tweaktown, Activision’s quarterly report was published last week and sheds some light on how its biggest games across PC, console, and mobile are doing financially. And because of games like Devil Immortal, Call of Duty Mobileand Candy Crush Sagathe beleaguered Call of Duty publisher’s making a lot of cash off phone games. In fact, more than half of its total earnings for the second quarter of 2022 came from mobile titles and not console or PC games.

According to the report, about 51 percent of Activision’s total earnings from the Q2 2022 period came from mobile games. That adds up to a total of $831 million in mobile game earnings. Meanwhile, its console games earned around $376 million and PC games brought in a bit less, $332 million. Finally, it made $105 million from events and esports.

What you might not expect, especially if you don’t realize how massive mobile gaming has become over the last decade, is that of the $831 million made off phone games, most of it came from King’s titles and not stuff like Call of Duty Mobile. In the report, Activision says that King titles like candy crush and FarmHeroes brought in over $680 million.

ReadMore: Lawyer To Pay Activision For Not Playing Call Of Duty

What these numbers reveal is that for big publishers like Activision, the future is likely one where it invests even more resources and money into mobile games and focuses less and less on console games. In an era where AAA games are more expensive to make than ever, take years to createand often flop, mobile games have become a lifeline for large game companies looking to keep their heads above water.

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For Activision it’s especially important as Call of Duty continues to lose millions of players and underperform. Seeing as the company has spent years focusing much of its energy on Call of Duty—at one point even having every studio it owned working on the franchise in some capacity—it’s likely it will seek to diversify into mobile more, not less, moving forward.

It should also be noted that Activision’s hugely successful mobile games are one of the main reasons Microsoft began the process of buying the company earlier this year following a huge, public fallout after the company was sued over years of sexual harassment and discrimination.

in some way, Call of Duty and warcraft are more like bonuses that Xbox gets top of King and his money-printing games.

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Lawyer To Pay Activision For Not Playing Call Of Duty

Lawyer To Pay Activision For Not Playing Call Of Duty

This marine is tting in a chair, staring off-screen at someone in the middle of a conversation.

Uh, say what now?
picture: Infinity Ward

A lawsuit against Activision Blizzard was dismissed last month because, according to a judge in the Southern California District Court where the complaint was brought, the plaintiffs didn’t play enough Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare to make an informed case against the maligned publisher. For eleven in Activision Blizzard’s many contentious legal battlesthings ended smoothly.

According to to report by a litigation associate at the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (who tipped Kotaku off), Activision Blizzard was sued in November 2021 by Brooks Entertainment, Inc., a California-based company specializing in film and TV production and other forms of entertainment. However, Kotaku couldn’t find an official website for the company. Brooks Entertainment and its CEO, Shon Brookswho describes himself as an inventor, claim they hold the trademarks for the financial mobile games Save One Bank and Stock Pickers. It should be noted that Kotaku couldn’t verify the existence of these games, either. Regardlessall three of these entities, alongside Activision Blizzard and 2016’s Infinite Warfarewere at the center of the lawsuit.

In October 2021, Brooks Entertainment alleged Activision ripped off intellectual property from both Save One Bank and stock pickeras well as the identity of its owner, in Infinite Warfare. To be more specific, the complaint asserted the “main character” for the 2016 first-person shooter, Sean Brooks, was based on the company’s CEO and that all three games had “scripted battle scenes that take place in a high fashion couture shopping center mall.” There were other similarities, too, but these claims were the crux of the complaint.

But if you’ve played just an hour or so of Infinite Warfare, you’d know this is all wrong. For one, the main character isn’t Corporal Sean Brooks at all but rather his squadmate CommanderNick Reyes, a space marine who becomes the captain of the game’s primary militia. Moreover, while there is a scripted battle scene in a shopping mall, it takes place in far future Geneva, one of many in-game locations, and Sean Brooks ain’t in it. You play as Reyes the entire time.

In January 2022, Activision’s counsel wrote to Brooks Entertainment’s counsel that the complaint “contain[ed] serious factual misrepresentations and errors, and that the claims set forth therein are both factually and legally frivolous.” If the company didn’t withdraw the lawsuit, Activision would file Rule 11 sanctions, penalties requiring the plaintiff to pay a fine for submitting dubious or improper arguments without substantial—or, for that matter, accurate—evidentiary support. And that’s exactly what happened in March 2022, when Activision filed its motions for sanctions against Brooks Entertainment, saying the plaintiffs failed to play Infinite Warfare and provided inaccurate filings.

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Logitech G502 Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Mouse

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Logitech G502 Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Mouse

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The Southern California District Court accepted Activision’s motions on July 12, dismissed Brook Entertainment’s lawsuit with prejudice (meaning the claim cannot be refiled in that court), and ordered the plaintiff’s counsel to compensate the troubled publisher for the money and time it wasted. In its conclusion, the court said the plaintiff failed to conduct a thorough and reasonable inquiry into the relevant facts about the game before filing the suit.

“Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is a first-person shooter game, not first- and third-person as alleged, and Sean Brooks does not conduct a scripted battle scene in a high fashion couture shopping mall,” the court said in its ruling in favor of Activision. “Plaintiff’s counsel could have easily verified these facts prior to filing the factually baseless Complaint, just as the Court easily verified them within the first hour and a half of playing the game.”

Kotaku reached out to Activision Blizzard for comment.

Richard Hoeg, a lawyer who specializes in digital and video game law, told Kotaku that unprotectable concepts like the names of people used in fictional entertainment are pretty difficult to copyright and claim infringement upon.

“It’s hard to say why the suit was brought up,” Hoeg said. “Certainly if a suit gets kicked out *with sanctions* it wasn’t a very good one in the first place. It might be simply hubris or it may have been counsel encouraging a suit against a well-resourced party. The suit itself says [Brooks Entertainment] pitched a game to Activision between 2010 [and] 2015. That all said, the infringement lawsuit is awful, alleging infringement on such unprotectable concepts as: ‘Shon Brooks navigates through both exotic and action-packed locations and Sean Brooks navigates through both exotic and action-packed locations.’”

Hoeg went on to say it’s hard getting “actual sanctions imposed on you” because that would be a level of bad lawsuit filing well above just a simple dismissal.

“The court basically finds the whole argument crazy,” Hoeg concluded. “Brooks Entertainment even included Rockstar Games for no reason (which didn’t help their cause with the judge). So, the sanctions here are Brooks Entertainment [has] to pay for Activision’s legal fees and costs.”

While things may have ended well for Activision this time, the disparaged publisher is still causing legal headaches. The company was just blasted by Devil devs for union-busting. Again. Ugh.

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Super Mario 64 Becomes First-Person Horror Game In Fan Project

Super Mario 64 Becomes First-Person Horror Game In Fan Project

A guy gets a mysterious letter from his girlfriend, arrives at a castle to find her missing, and loads of rooms full of monsters… It’s the setup to 1996’s classic Super Mario 64sure, but it’s also very much also a survival horror pitch, which is why this new fan-made project is such a perfect fit.

Via nintendo lifethis is Another Princess Is In Our Castle“a Super Mario 64 inspired Horror Experience,” where you “decide to come back to Peach’s castle a few years after the princess’ death, but something isn’t quite right…”

While this looks like a first-person mod, it’s actually an entirely fan-made project from the ground up, designed with the perspective in mind. While it’s currently just a short playable demo, its creator Claudio Mondin hopes to eventually flesh it out into something more substantial.

Here’s a trailer made by Mondin:

Another Princess is in our Castle – Super Mario 64 Horror Game Trailer

And here’s some gameplay footage, showing how the main point is to sneak around the castle collecting items, all the while trying to avoid a Princess who is definitely not peachy:

Like Mondin says, it’s pretty much just a demo, so don’t go expecting too much out of it, outside of some sneaking (and the very cool novelty of it). I’m going to play some more later today though, just to see what the promised mystery really is though (hopefully the ghost is just upset that her cake turned out dogshit).

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Logitech G502 Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Mouse

20% Off

Logitech G502 Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Mouse

Gaming!
Uses exclusive ultra-fast wireless tech to make sure your mouse is faster than you are, can be sued alongside special software for highly-customizable performance, and has 11 buttons to mess around with, a hyper-fast scroll wheel, and RGB lighting too .

You can download the demo and play it yourself here. I don’t wanna hear anything about lawyers in the commentseither, just go and enjoy something cool that a fan made.

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