While a big deal has been made about someone former PlayStation exclusives coming to the PC—like Horizon and God of War—no deal was made last week whatsoever about a game with a much lower profile, but which I love regardless.
That game is Hohokumwhich was first released on the PlayStation 4 (and PS3, and Vita) in 2014, and which remains one of the most chill video game experiences available. A collaborative work between artist Richard Hogg, developers Honeyslug and the record label Ghostly, Hohokum is to beautiful 2D adventure where you play as a worm…kite…thing that just floats around its various levels, poking around a colorful landscape just to see what happens.
HOHOKUM | Now Available On Steam
It’s magic. I love this game so much that amidst all the hardware drama and blockbuster releases making up our roundup of the last console generation I wrote a whole thing just about this little game, which I described as being—in terms of meeting its ambitions—perfect.
You move a big snake thing around a floating landscape, and sometimes you run into things, and sometimes you fly through things. You’re never fighting, talking, not really doing much of anything.
Yet for Hohokum these aren’t limitations. They’re a canvas.
It’s a game that understands the links between interaction, visuals and soundtrack to a terrifyingly perfect degree. Each is inspired by and reliant on the other two, to the point where once it gets going Hohokum is almost synaesthesic.
one thing Hohokum is now providing to also be is timeless. Eight years on from its original release its art style hasn’t aged a day, and technically looks as though it could have been released yesterday. The heavyweight soundtrack accompanying it also sounds as good in 2022 as it did in 2014, no doubt helped by the fact that many of the artists involved—like Tycho—are still killing it today.
So if you haven’t owned a PlayStation in a while and never got to check this out, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Annapurna has published this PC version (which, admittedly, is probably why less of a fuss was made than if Sony had released it), and it’s out on Steam now.
Today vampire survivorsthe popular top-down, reverse bullet hell roguelike currently in Early Access on Steam, received a patch that not only tweaked some of the game’s mechanics, but added a handy cheat menu as well.
Blink and you might miss it but buried within the teaser trailer for patch 0.10.0, as a voice that sounds like it’s on the brink of madness rants about “things not of this world,” is a brief glimpse of a menu screen of sorts spinning wildly about. That menu isn’t a figment of the narrator’s addled imagination; it’s the game’s new cheat menu. If you want to kick your powers up a notch while serpentining around amidst the game’s flurries of bullets, you can type in some cheats to unlock secret characters, ghosts, and relics to give you some respite from the vampiric hordes. If you want to unlock that spinning menu for whatever reason, you can type “spinnn” into the game’s search bar. You’re welcome.
Vampire Survivors – Patch 0.10.0
ReadMore:One Of The Year’s Best Games Finally Gets A Final Boss
Alongside the new cheat menu, the 0.10.0 patch (also known as the “The Not One” patch) also brings two new achievements, a new arcana, two new characters, and a new weapon to the game. Whether either of the new characters can top the tree remains to be seen:
Kotaku
At the end of “The Not One” patch notes is a hidden “work in progress” tab teasing new spells coming to the game alongside an on-screen keyboard for touch-screen and gamepad players.
Originally released on itch.io, vampire survivors is a time survival roguelite shoot em’ up in which you mow down monsters and undead by the thousands Since coming to Early Access in December, vampire survivors has received overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam for its level-up system, weapon combinations, and absorbing gameplay loop.
You can download vampire survivors on Steam, GamePass and Itch.io.
While it’s not the most powerful console out there, the smaller and more affordable Xbox Series S has been a big hit for Xbox. But reportedly, some devs have felt the strain of getting bigger, more advanced games to work on the console and in response, Microsoft is freeing up some memory to help improve the tiny console’s performance.
As spotted by TheVergeMicrosoft is hoping to make the Xbox Series S a bit more powerful by freeing up some memory and letting developers access that extra memory if needed. In a video explaining this new developer-focused update, Microsoft says that it is unlocking “hundreds of additional megabytes of memory” and that this will, in theory, give studies more control over how to use the console’s limited memory. Microsoft says this “can improve graphics performance in memory-constrained conditions.”
The June Game Development Kit (GDK) is Available Now
To be clear, this isn’t like Microsoft quadrupling the power of the Series S. Nor is this Microsoft flipping some secret switch to let the console start running games at 8K and 240hz or anything wild like that. Instead, the amount of memory dedicated to non-gaming functions in the $300 Series S is being tweaked.
While the more powerful xbox series x console has 16GB of RAM the cheaper Xbox Series S has only 10GB. But before this update, devs only had access to 8GB of that memory as Microsoft reserved around 2GB for the console’s OS. Now devs will have a few hundred extra megabytes of memory, which could help some games run a bit better moving forward.
The Xbox Series S has always been positioned by Microsoft as a cheaper, less-powerful, but still capable next-gen console option. and it’s proven to be a very popular piece of hardware since releasing alongside the beefier Xbox Series X in 2020. Hell, I already had an xbox series x and I ended up buying one. It’s become the main way we play games in our living room, perfect for Fall Guys and Fortnite. But for more intense games it can struggle, requiring cutting down on framerate or resolution. This has reportedly led to some issues and frustration from devs trying to get certain games running on the lesser machine.
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A recent example of a game performing differently on Series S is the Evil Dead game, which launched without a 60fps performance mode on the cheaper machine. Resident Evil Village also limits the game to only 45fps at 1440p and 30fps if you turn ray tracing on.
Hopefully, a few extra bits and bobs of memory can help devs working on Xbox ports not feel as hamstrung by the weaker Xbox Series S.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla dataminers recently discovered files of an Iron Man skin that shoots a Unibeam from the chest. The skin is currently not available in Ubisoft’s digital store, but fans are hoping that it gets released sometime in the future.
The armor was found by an Assassin’s Creed dataminer named Pedder, who previously mined DLC information from the game files that later proved to be accurate. the Youtube videos show a red-and-yellow armor set that shoots a laser beam from the chest and a similar looking white variant. The Unibeam can be activated with the “Battlecry” ability in Valhalla. The pack also includes a mechanical raven, a mount, and two swords.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Update – NEW ‘Star Wars’ Advanced Mechanical Armor Set Found!
This isn’t the first time that Marvel-related Assassin’s Creed cosmetics have surfaced. Previously, Andy showed off a video of a Thanos skin called “Master of Elements.” This unreleased skin includes colorful gem-studded gloves that activate a different ability every few seconds. Some fans are a little disappointed Ubisoft hasn’t actually released any of these skins—or even confirmed their existence. Kotaku reached out to Ubisoft about whether or not these skins will be released, but was not able to obtain a comment at the time of publication.
A Marvel collab wouldn’t even be the most unusual crossover to appear in the Assassin’s Creed series. back when Origins was still getting updates, players could stumble upon a final-fantasy Easter egg in ancient Egypt. Iron Man’s robot mount may be a little out there for medieval England, but I’d say that the Chocobo mount was far more jarring to ride into the desert sands. Assassin’s Creed‘s Fortnite-ification continues.
Despite Ubisoft’s troubles with delays and cancellations, Valhalla has enjoyed a relatively robust release schedule. This spring, the publisher launched the major dawn of ragnarok expansion, which added a ton of Norse mythology quests to the already-massive open world RPG. Ubisoft has released a Valhalla expansion every year since the game’s initial release, and it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. So I’m not too bothered if the developers spend a little more time tweaking the skins that absolutely no one was even expecting from a viking game.
They said it was impossible and, for nearly two decades, that seemed to be the case. But last night, a streamer named Jervalin beat Halo 2‘s “LASO deathless” challenge, earning a cool $20,000 in the process. Talk about finishing the fight.
Let’s rewind. Earlier this summer, the YouTuber Charles “Cr1tikal” White Jr.. posted a $5,000 bounty to beat Halo 2 on the highest difficulty setting, with every bonus challenge modifier turned on, without dying. In the 18 years since Halo 2‘s 2004 release on Xbox, no one had ever published evidence of completing the challenge. White’s challenge stipulates that the whole run is streamed, either on YouTube or Twitch. By July, no one had successfully stepped up to the plate, so last month, White tacked an extra $15,000 onto the bounty.
Most observers keeping tabs on the challenge had their money on Jervalin—a relatively private streamer who’s picked up a modest following for setting world records on a variety of Halo challenges—being the first person to complete it. Sure enough, late last night, I’ve crossed the finish line. (Here’s the archived stream.)
Bungie/Jervalin
Neither White nor Jervalin could be reached for comment in time for publication.
Jervalin was remarkably chill for finishing what some people, including White Jr., have called the “hardest challenge in all of gaming,” addressing viewers in the even-handed tone you’d use while moving on to the next addendum in a mostly empty community board meeting.
“All right, chat,” he said. “I think we did it. I think we fucking did it. Imagine that. Two years ago, I said, ‘I think this is impossible.’ Imagine fucking that.”
Whether or not Halo 2‘s “LASO deathless” challenge really is the “hardest… in gaming” is, of course, a subjective measure. But it’s definitely up there. You have to activate all of the game’s skulls, or gameplay modifiers that typically ramp up the difficulty. The Catch skull, for instance, makes enemies toss grenades more frequently. Famine, meanwhile, means enemies drop half the ammo they usually would. Mythic doubles the health of all enemies, while Angry increases the enemy’s fire rate. Blind removes your HUD. Assassins turns enemies invisible. (It’s not technically there skulls, however. For the challenge, Envy is left off, because that one grants you invisibility too, which does not make Halo 2 more difficult, for obvious reasons.) All together, when you turn every skull on and play on Legendary, the game’s highest difficulty setting, you more or less create a set of conditions that ensures you die instantly if you take any damage.
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Jervalin had to rely on a few exploits to finish the challenge. To wit: He brought a banshee, a violet-colored aerial vehicle with a powerful cannon, into the final boss fight against Tartarus on the “Great Journey” level. That final fight takes place on a series of circumferential platforms hovering over an abyss. With pinpoint precision, he used the banshee’s cannon to send waves of foes careening off the edge as they spawn—before they get a chance to really even fight.
I’ve been covering the Halo community for a while now, and can’t recall a time where I’ve seen players pretty unanimous in an opinion, let alone a positive one. Sure, halo-infinitethe latest game in the series, has its issues, which players are not shy about criticizing. But there remains a reverence among even the biggest names for Bungie’s original games since the mid-2000s, and the mind-bogglingly impressive feats players are able to pull off.
The run garneredpraising desde Halo streamers like Remy “Mint Blitz” and Luc “HiddenXperia.” Emanuel Lovejoy, the coach for Cloud 9, arguably the best professional Halo team on the planet right now, called Jervalin to “legend.” so did Spacestation Gaming’s UberNick. the Halo pro Kyle Elam noted how yesterday’s scrims—basically, matches between pro players that don’t count toward the official seasonal record—were put on pause so players could collectively watch Jervalin get it done. “Gonna need Jervalin to make a Twitter so we can actually @ this legend [clapping hands emoji],” Halo esports analyst and caster Alexander “Shyway” Hope said. It has been a genuine delight to witness such universal acclaim from all corners of the community.
But the most heartwarming moment—the sort of moment that proves Este, not the toxicity that inhales so much oxygen out of the room, is what video games are all about—happened in the final seconds of the stream: Jervalin’s family runs into the stream, embracing him in an almost suffocatingly tight bear hug. $20,000 is nice. That’s nicer.
Competitive Pokemon trainers are both excited and terrified at the recent rule changes in the video game championships (VGC), where players compete against one another via pokemon sword and Shield in an array of leagues. Mythical Pokémon are now allowed for official tournament play for the first time. This means that nobody is safe from heavy-hitters like Megearna or Victini, and the community is scrambling to find counters. Some of the most truly diabolic players have already started to add broken Pokémon to their own teams.
The rules for the latest Series 13 ranked matches, starting September 1, were posted yesterday for pokemon sword and Shield, this series focused on the Galar region, The rules mainly remained the same from the last series, except for an extended eligible Pokémon list. The information was originally spotted by the Pokemon fansite Serebiiand Kotaku was able to confirm the full list of eligible Pokémon in the Pokémon Homemobile app.
Mythical Pokémon are better known as event legendaries, and are normally close to impossible to obtain through normal gameplay. This group includes Mew, Celebi, Jirachi, Arceus, and so on. Previously, you had to participate in special in-person events in order to obtain these rare Pokémon. Now, the only mythical Pokémon that are excluded from the eligibility list are the ones that can’t be obtained in Sword and Shield.
These days, mythical Pokémon are much easier to obtain than in the past. The dreaded Megearna can be obtained by completing the Alola Pokédex in pokemon sun and moonand Mew can be captured and transferred over from the Pokémon GO app. Victini can be captured in the Pokémon Sword and Shield DLC. So not being able to access limited time events is less of a competitive disadvantage now than it has been in the past.
The new series rules complicates the meta further: There are no restrictions on the number of legendary and mythical Pokémon that players can bring to a ranked match. Previously, up to two legendaries had been allowed in tournaments under the “GS rules” introduced in PokemonHeartGold and SoulSilver.
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Vertagear Summer Sales 2022
Ergonomic premium quality Vertagear has a number of gaming chairs on sale right now. One in particular that caught our eye is the PL4500 which is embroidered with Swarovski crystals down to $500. You can also get one of their RGB kits to add a set of lights to either the top cutout sections around the headrest or a bottom LED kit for $200 to light up underneath like your chair is in Need for Speed: Underground 2.
Series 13 kicks off September 1, and runs until October 31. After that, things will shift over to the freshly released violet and Scarlet, with their mid-November release. For now there’s absolutely nothing stopping competitors from being curb stomped by a full squad of broken legendaries and mythicals. And VGC Pokemon players have absolutely no mercy.
There’s been a raft of intriguing strategy RPGs this yearbut one of my favorites so far is Symphony of War. It’s been climbing the charts on Steam in recent months, and for good reason. From a distance it looks like another Fire Emblem knockoff. Up close it’s doing enough interesting things to stand on its own, and I really recommend you give it a shot.
Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga quietly came out on Steam in June and has been rack uppositive reviewsever since. Developed by an indie team called Dancing Dragon Games with a history of RPG Maker projects, it’s a trope-filled military drama about civil war and demonic threats. But you can pretty much ignore all that. Beneath the predictable plot and airbrushed character portraits is a deep strategy game that’s hard to put down. Personally, I think it’s even better in the strategy department than Triangle Strategy.
Make no mistake: Symphony of War is old-school. While newer entries in the Fire Emblem series have delved deeper into visual novel elements and relationship mechanics, it’s focused almost exclusively on renewing the nuts and bolts of classic grid-based battles. What works so well is that Symphony of War nails the basics and also adds plenty of new wrinkles for fans to dig into (especially those who also dug last year’s Dark Deity).
gif: Dancing Dragon Games / Kotaku
The biggest one is that each individual unit represents an entire squad made up multiple types of fighters. Maybe there are some knights in front flanked by pikemen while wizards and archers rain down death from the back. When two units move next to each other and throw down, a mini-turn-based skirmish ensues. Mages in the back cast fireballs and healing spells while knights in the front dish out melee damage. Combat unfolds across two rounds, with attackers getting the first turn and the defending side going second. Some fighters can only attack on the first or second turn, while others will occasionally luck into a bonus turn. The action is easy to follow and yet also opens up plenty of room for customization.
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Vertagear Summer Sales 2022
Ergonomic premium quality Vertagear has a number of gaming chairs on sale right now. One in particular that caught our eye is the PL4500 which is embroidered with Swarovski crystals down to $500. You can also get one of their RGB kits to add a set of lights to either the top cutout sections around the headrest or a bottom LED kit for $200 to light up underneath like your chair is in Need for Speed: Underground 2.
Adding more subtle layers of complexity are unique fighter bonuses and an extensive research tree. Horseback fighters get to attack first without retribution. Infantry provide defensive bonuses to nearby units. And archers can naturally attack from a distance without facing counter-attacks. These and other stats can then be augmented and magnified by researching new tech. Rather than leveling up specific units, you’re growing the overall capabilities of your army.
screenshot: Dancing Dragon Games
in this way Symphony of War forces you to sometimes think like a 4X strategist while playing like a traditional JRPG enthusiast. Instead of customizing one single party and fighting through a dungeon, you’re building up a small army of them and taking on a whole battlefield. Completing missions faster and capturing enemy units and buildings along the way nets you extra money and points that can then be poured back into outfitting your various crews. Just a few novel tweaks and the decades-old tactical JRPG formula feels fresh and modern again in 2022.
A few other games have also taken hybrid approaches to tactical RPGs recently. The Iron Oath and Songs of Conquest both come to mind. The former is a roguelike with battles that take place on a hexagonal grid. The latter also sports a hexagonal battlefield in service of map exploration and city-building closer to a 4X game. They’re really promising games in their own right (and still in Early Access), yet neither is as focused on plumbing the depths of leveraging small advantages so one group of animated sprites can wipe the floor with another.
Symphony of War is far from a perfect package, but it offers one of the more meaty and innovative takes on the tactics RPG formula I’ve come across in years.
A YouTuber built a PC out of a working toilet, creating what might be the first toilet capable of both handling your waste and playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. What a world we live in!
As spotted by Eurogamer, YouTuber Basically Homeless cut a deal with the electronics store Microcenter to create a gaming PC inside of an actual toilet, complete with all the plumbing and water that entails. It’s a wild thing, but not surprising. You see, for as long as we have had toilets and video games, many have tried to combine them. Even I have heard that siren’s call and attempted to poop and game at the same time. Countless others do so while playing games on their phones.
But Basically Homeless didn’t want to simply bring a Switch or phone or even a Steam Deck into the bathroom. Instead, he wanted to create a setup that would let him play 120hz FPS shooters with a mouse and keyboard while sitting on a toilet. And in his video documenting the entire processI was shocked both by the end results and the lack of planning.
Basically Homeless
The way this thing works is one half of the tank contains all the toilet bits and bobs along with the water. Then he built a “Water Wall” out of plexiglass and glue. On the other side of the wall are all the computer parts. The idea was to keep them separate, letting you flush the working toilet while playing games. Also, built into the lid is a fan to help keep the PC cool.
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that the first time he connected the toilet to the water supply his hacked-together “Water Wall” failed and he ended up having to use a whole can of Flexseal inside the tank to protect the valuable PC electronics. However, now that he’s gotten everything working (including the RGB lighting), the finished PC/toilet hybrid is oddly impressive. Thanks to a large cutout in the front, you can see both the functioning toilet and the running PC.
According to Basically Homeless, he had to learn basic plumbing and how to cut porcelain to create this bizarre PC. The end result is both a conversation starter and a man who can now fix his own toilet. Truly a win, win situation.
Devil Immortal‘spay to win mechanics have been controversial since the game launched back in June. Now they’ve also apparently broken the game for at least one YouTuber who reportedly spent over $100,000 on beefing up his Barbarian character. The player’s win rate is seemingly so good the game won’t even match him against other players, torpedoing his prospects of competing in the latest Rite of Exile end game event.
over the weekend, Devil Immortal YouTuber jtisallbusiness asked viewers if he should try to refund his $100,000 account as a result of the issue. He claimed that he spent so much money immediately following the game’s release that he was able to easily overpower almost every opponent in the game’s PVP Battlegrounds mode. As a result, he had hundreds of wins and only a few losses, pumping up his MMR (match-making rank) so high it became impossible to queue with anyone else.
“I would say it’s probably around, somewhere around 48 to 72 hours somewhere in between that of only trying to queue for a Battleground and never being able to get one,” he said.
Jtisallbusiness contacted Blizzard about the issue almost a month ago, and said he was eventually told the problem would be addressed in a couple weeks. Now, however, his clan of him OneTimes is competing in the Rite of Exile to defend its Immortals title against other players as part of Devil Immortals elaborate end game. The only problem is Jtisallbusiness can’t join them. Part of the questline requires participating in a standard Battlegrounds PVP match, but because of his matchmaking limbo he was unable to qualify.
“So basically I’m stuck as the clan leader in the Immortals clan not being able to queue us up for Rite of Exile at all,” he said. “I can’t do anything about it.” Adding to his frustration from him is the fact that he’s trying to make money off Devil Immortal as a streamer and content maker, an effort now seemingly stymied by his early spending spree (other videos are devoted to showing off his collection).
For many other players in the community, however, it’s a chef’s kiss moment for everything they hate about the game’s monetization. “Congratulations, you just ‘won’ in a p2w game,” reads one of the top comments on his YouTube video discussing the issue. “Can’t complain about that, you got what you paid for.” Others shared similar sentiments, and the video itself was downvoted thousands of times.
Players on Reddit, where links to it were being passed around, were equally unmoved. “I know it’s his money from him and people can do whatever they want with theirs but come the fuck on man. 100k?! On Devil Immortal?!” wrote one person. “When someone’s Devil character is worth close to my entire mortgage,” wrote another.
Blizzard and jtisallbusiness didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. It’s also not yet clear how the situation will affect the rest of his clan, which includes players he said have each poured thousands of dollars of their own into the game. Once the Rite of Exile is completed, the top 30 challengers are pitted against a single Immortal who is transformed into a raid boss. One thing seems certain: It will not be Jtisallbusiness.
