Confirming previous rumors, Variety reports that Amazon will be moving ahead with producing a TV series based on the popular Mass Effect video game franchise. The writing and production staff involved might not inspire confidence from fans, though.
The series' writer and executive producer is slated to be Daniel Casey, who until now was best known as the primary screenwriter on F9: The Fast Saga, one of the late sequels in the Fast and the Furious franchise. He was also part of a team of writers behind the relatively little-known 2018 science fiction film Kin.
Karim Zreik will also produce, and his background is a little more encouraging; his main claim to fame is in the short-lived Marvel Television unit, which produced relatively well-received series like Daredevil and Jessica Jones for Netflix before Disney+ launched with its Marvel Cinematic Universe shows.
Sega has put dozens of its Master System, Genesis, Saturn, and other console titles onto modern game stores over the years. But, like that Dreamcast controller stashed in your childhood garage, they're about to disappear—and getting them back will cost you a nostalgia tax.
As PC Gamer has suggested, and which makes the most sense, this looks like Sega is getting ready to offer up new "classics" collections on these storefronts. Sega previously rearranged its store shelves to pull Sonic games from online stores and then offer up Sonic Origins. The title underwhelmed Ars at the time and managed to pack in some DLC pitches.
Throughout the years, several reports have accused Roblox, the popular gaming platform aimed at preteens, of lacking strict safety protocols for children, which exposes them to dangers such as grooming, explicit content, and violent or abusive material. In a significant update to its safety policy, Roblox plans to keep users under the age of 13 […]
In times like these it’s nice to be able to get away from it all, if only for a brief moment. If you have a VR headset you’re one of the lucky people who can enter other realities from the confines of your living room, so why not use it for your wellbeing? Here we’ve gathered Quest meditation games and experiences focused on VR relaxation. This list also covers apps on PC VR and PSVR 2, so there’s something for everyone.
Below you’ll find that we split up 20 VR meditation and relaxation experiences into several categories: Nature Relaxation, Musical Relaxation, Creation & Puzzling, Musical Creation, Meditation, Reflection, Mindfulness, and Exploration.
Ocean Rift is like an aquarium where you get to swim around with the fish. You’ll get to see lovingly animated sea creatures up close and you might even learn a thing or two with more than 40 narrated points of interest to find. And if you’re on Quest 3, Ocean Rift has a mixed reality mode that lets you turn your own room into an aquarium.
You can probably guess what this one is about… but you might not expect that the app has some rather beautiful environments. So yes, you’ll be fishing and you can take it as fast or as slow as you’d like. Consider putting on some music or even a podcast while you relax and wait for the big one. Real VR Fishing also supports multiplayer so you can fish with friends.
Google Earth VR is exactly what it sounds like… its Google Earth, but in VR. Beyond being able to explore essentially the entire globe as if you were a giant towering over it, the app can also be a wonderful way to relax. Find yourself a pretty place (there’s some great ones in the ‘Featured’ section inside the app), bring yourself down to ground level, and simply sit as a giant and take in the scene around you. You can even set the mood by adjusting the time of day. It can also be magical to just ‘wander’ starting from a familiar place and see where you wind up. Considering both the quality of the experience and the fact that its free, this one is an absolute must-try.
EarthQuest aims to not only bring the Google Earth VR experience to Quest, but modernize it too. EarthQuest adds multiplayer so you can explore the globe with friends as well as natural language input allowing you to ask ChatGPT to tell you more about the things you find.
Tetris Effect is classic Tetris gameplay wrapped in an audio-visual experience which uniquely accompanies each of the game’s levels. As you maneuver the blocks you’ll hear sounds that fit into the beat. Don’t lose yourself too much in the sights and sounds though as some of the levels will take skill and practice to complete, even on ‘Normal’ difficulty. A post-launch update to the game has brought cross-platform multiplayer to Tetris Effect so you can vibe with friends no matter if they’re playing in VR or on a flat screen.
Ever wish you could cruise down an endless highway, watching as the trees, buildings, and city streets pass you by while a synthwave soundtrack perfectly fits the vibe? Artist and musician Sheaf has created just that—a short VR experience which is hand-crafted to fit a three track synthwave album. For the great price of free, this one is a no-brainer.
Squingle is one of those games that you can look at and still not entirely understand what you’re actually seeing. But once you get your hands on the game all becomes clear: it’s a clever, trippy, and fun puzzle game that plays to VR’s spatial strengths. To put it simply, the goal of Squingle is to guide a pair of spinning balls through a pipe. Sounds easy enough, right? Well like any good puzzle game, Squingle starts simply enough but introduces more difficult concepts as you go—like a button that reverses the spin of the balls or one that changes the axis of the spin. And the pipe? It’s actually a bit more like a cosmic bowel that undulates with twists, turns, and parallel tunnels.
Puzzling Places is a series of 3D puzzles made out of 3D scans of real-life places. Going from flat jigsaw puzzles to 3D puzzles will stretch your brain in satisfying new ways as you use all your 2D jigsaw strategies (like sorting by color, edges, and the like) while leaning into your spatial reasoning sense to find the right connections between pieces. Even more satisfying—when you’re done you have a tiny 3D diorama to explore! Since launch, Puzzling Places has been updated with a multiplayer mode so you can relax and puzzle with friends, and mixed reality mode on Quest 3 so you can solve puzzles right in your room.
Vermillion is a free-form painting app designed to replicate the oil medium. You can do everything from basic paint-by-number to completely freestyle painting with color mixing and the use of various brushes to achieve different effects. With a multiplayer mode up to four players total can paint together. You can also paint in your own space thanks to mixed reality on Quest 3, or even do co-located painting with a friend so you’re both painting in the same physical room.
Have you ever wished you had a whole room and a box full of tracks, balls, and dominos to build the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine? You’re in luck. Gadgeteer will let you finally imagine your childhood dream of filling an entire room with a crazy chain-reaction-machine without the cat knocking everything over. Beyond being able to build whatever you want in ‘Sandbox Mode’, Gadgeteer is a full fledged puzzle game with 60 puzzles to complete and a pleasant soundtrack to boot.
Cubism is a casual VR puzzle that plays a bit like a 3D version of Tetris. Its sleek, casual design makes it great for relaxing seated play. But fear not, while the puzzle concept is simple, Cubism will have you scratching your head in short order as difficulty increases across 60 stages. The bright, void-like environment makes it easy to forget about the woes of the real world as you focus on finding the right fit for the pieces before you to the backdrop of a beautiful piano soundtrack. Thanks to hand-tracking support, you can even play without needing to pick up your controllers. A post-launch update has added a mixed reality mode on Quest 3 so you can solve puzzles from the comfort of your own room.
Vrkshop describes itself as a “VR woodworking game” and aims to recreate a hands-on woodshop where you can measure, mark, cut, nail, and much more. With a realistic wood-cutting system, the app challenges you to use the tools at your disposal to create furniture and other objects with no explicit instructions.
Color Space is a virtual reality coloring book where you get to bring life to a full 3D scene rather than just a flat page. Step into one of 26 environments and start adding color as you see fit. As you color the scene, it will start to come alive with animated elements and ambient sounds.
Electronauts is like a VR DJ station with training wheels. Though you can take the training wheels off if you’re especially talented, the training wheels are actually part of the appeal; Electronauts does an incredible job of letting you express your inner musical creativity even if you don’t have instrumental talent. The game serves up some 80 tracks, each which function as a custom sound-kit with unique instruments, backing tracks, and more. And as a huge bonus, PC VR version of the game are multiplayer, meaning you can jam out with a friend. The track list is heavy on the EDM side (though there are some chill songs to be found) so if that’s not your cup of tea you might want to look elsewhere.
Drops is a musically focused experience where shapes that you place make different sounds when struck with falling balls. With an endless flow of balls, you can construct a cacophony of sounds on the fly, adding new shapes and creating new paths as you go. Think of it like a Rube Goldberg machine, but for making minimal, meditative music.
De Harry Potter-game Hogwarts Legacy was één van de grootste games van 2023 en sindsdien wordt er met smart op een vervolg gewacht. Warner Bros. Games deelt daar goed nieuws over in gesprek met Variety. Er wordt gewerkt aan een vervolg, zo is bevestigd.
David Haddad, de president van Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, stelt zelfs dat het nieuwe spel “een erg grote prioriteit” is voor het bedrijf. Ook vertelt hij dat het team een aantal van de grote verhaalelementen van de game heeft gecoördineerd met de verhaallijnen die zich zullen afspelen in de HBO-serie “Harry Potter” van Warner Bros. Television. Veel meer is helaas nog niet bekend over de nieuwe game.
De eerste game is overigens ook nog steeds relevant. Volgens Insider Gaming komt er namelijk DLC aan voor Hogwarts Legacy, met daarin tien tot vijftien uur aan nieuwe content. Het gaat om nieuwe quests, activiteiten en outfits. De DLC zou volgens bronnen van de website in 2025 verschijnen en tussen de 20 en 30 dollar kosten.
Veel te danken aan Hogwarts Legacy
Dat er een tweede game komt, is geen verrassing. Hogwarts Legacy is inmiddels 30 miljoen keer verkocht. Volgens Haddad maakte dat succes ook dat Warner Bros. dit als een goed moment zag om flink in te zetten op Harry Potter. Zo komt er een nieuw pretpark in Orlando, wordt er gewerkt aan een nieuwe serie in de franchise en zijn er al meer games verschenen. In augustus verscheen bijvoorbeeld Harry Potter; Quidditch Champions en een nieuwe versie van de LEGO Harry Potter-spellen.
As US states were busy counting votes to confirm who would be the next president Tuesday night, Nintendo's Japanese Twitter account was busy confirming a key backward-compatibility feature for the upcoming "Nintendo Switch successor," which is still only pre-announced, officially.
"At today's Corporate Management Policy Briefing, we announced that Nintendo Switch software will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch," Nintendo posted in a social media update attributed to company President Shintaro Furukawa. "Nintendo Switch Online will be available on the successor to Nintendo Switch as well."
This is Furukawa. At today's Corporate Management Policy Briefing, we announced that Nintendo Switch software will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch. Nintendo Switch Online will be available on the successor to Nintendo Switch as well. Further information about…
In the full policy briefing referenced in that post, Nintendo adds that it "believe[s] that it is important for Nintendo’s future to make use of Nintendo Account and carry over the good relationship that we have built with the over 100 million annual playing users on Nintendo Switch to its successor." The company also makes the (perhaps obvious) clarification that "in addition to being able to play Nintendo Switch software they currently own, consumers will be able to choose their next purchase from a broad selection of titles released for Nintendo Switch [on its successor]."
Metal Slug Tactics pushes hard on the boundaries of the vaunted run-and-gun arcade series. You can run when it's your character's turn, but it's a certain number of tiles. You can gun, but not rapidly, and only after considering the most optimal target and tools.
Is this just Into the Breach with classic-era SNK artwork and aesthetics? Kind of, and you're welcome.
As a true fan once wrote, Metal Slug games are about "crazy vehicles, amusing enemies and levels, and some of the best sprite art you'll ever see in gaming." To my eyes, you're getting a whole bunch of that in Tactics. Turn-based, grid-mapped tactics have a natural tendency to feel slow and to strip characters down to chess pieces that can do two or three things. Here, the characters and villains cannot stop rocking their bodies, the guns and explosions and scimitars go off big, and the exaggerated-just-enough artwork keeps everything locked into an action-movie mood.
Last night, Nintendo pulled off a surprise launch of a new Nintendo Music smartphone app, offering many of the company's staple soundtrack songs as a perk to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. But the new subscription freebie could give Nintendo additional motivation to once again crack down on Internet users who have been collecting and posting Nintendo music online for years now.
The Nintendo Music app includes hundreds of songs from titles to download or stream, ranging from 1985's Super Mario Bros. to last year's Pikmin 4. The current music selection is far from comprehensive, but it at least touches on many of Nintendo's most popular series, including Zelda, Pokemon, Kirby, Fire Emblem, Metroid, and Animal Crossing (plus some popular background music from various Wii Channels). Nintendo promises that more tracks will be "added over time," mirroring the process Nintendo has used to add to its Nintendo Switch Online classic game downloads.
A new trailer introduces some of the features of the Nintendo Music app.
Nintendo Music users can build their own playlists, of course, or choose from a number of pre-arranged playlists to suit different moods or character themes. The app also syncs with your Nintendo account to highlight music from games you play and offers options to avoid "spoilers" from certain game music or extend songs in lengthy loops.
Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most graphically demanding and visually impressive games in recent years, will soon get a Mac release, according to developer and publisher CD Projekt Red.
The announcement was published on CD Projekt Red's blog and also appeared briefly during Apple's pre-recorded MacBook Pro announcement video. The game will be sold on the Mac App Store, Steam, GOG, and the Epic Game Store when it launches, and it will be labeled the Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, which simply means it also includes Phantom Liberty, the expansion that was released a couple of years after the original game.
Cyberpunk 2027 launched in a rough state in 2020, especially on low-end hardware. Subsequent patches and a significant overhaul with Phantom Liberty largely redeemed it in critics' eyes—the result of all that post-launch work is the version Mac users will get.
The film is in early development, having just been pitched to Apple and approved. Will Speck and Josh Gordon (Blades of Glory, Office Christmas Party) will direct and produce. Given that pedigree (zany comedies), it's clear this film won't be a serious historical drama about the struggles of those who traveled the American West.
In fact, the report not only notes that it will be a comedy—it says it will be a musical, too. "The movie will feature a couple of original musical numbers in the vein of Barbie," according to THR's sources. EGOT winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul will be responsible for the original music in the film.
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