Author: Zach Barbieri

After some speculation this year, Square Enix has announced Dragon Quest VII Reimagined during the Nintendo Direct Today. The title is a remake of the 2000 title Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of a Forgotten Past, the first title in the series to be released for PlayStation. The game had previously been remade in 2013 for the DS, a version of the game that this remake seems set to draw from, with enemies wandering the map and 3D animation, both absent from the original game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c8xcYHboPs In the classic title, players set off on an adventure with their friends when their…

Aspyr Media, the Embracer Group-owned studio, has been accused of using AI to replicate the voice of French actor Françoise Cadol without her permission, for use in their most recent titles, the Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered collection. Aspyr Media is perhaps best known for their remaster work, in particular on games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Cadol has voiced the character of Lara Croft, the main protagonist of the Tomb Raider series, in France for several decades. In addition to the games, she was also brought in to voice the character in the French dub of the…

One of the more loved, but bizarre features from The Sims 3 is set to make an appearance in The Sims 4, through the upcoming Adventure Awaits Expansion Pack, which should make a fitting edition to the game, given that the expansion is set to release on October 2. This feature, which is one of many new additions to the current Sims title, is that of imaginary friends that allow the younger Sims to turn things like dolls into bizarre abominations of the mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGUB3nrq4ec This feature, along with others, is juxtaposed to the three new Getaway Lots: Camp Gibbi…

Following the gaming rumor mill doing its thing, Nintendo has confirmed that a Nintendo Direct will be held on Friday, September 12. The broadcast is set to begin at 6am PST/9am EST/ 2pm BST, and will run for around a full hour. It should be noted that the Direct will be held on the day before the 40th anniversary of the Super Mario Bros. series, suggesting we should be getting some news on that from them. The team behind Super Mario Odyssey just recently saw an equal level of success with their Nintendo Switch 2 title, Donkey Kong Bananaza, which…

To celebrate the 14th anniversary of Dead Island, originally released in 2011 by developer Techland, a tease was posted confirming that Dead Island 3 was in development. Current developer Dambuster Studios, which saw the troubled development of Dead Island 2 to completion after several other development studios left the project over the years, posted a picture (see below) and a caption to the game’s Steam page that stated: “and the next outbreak is already brewing.” The message along with this picture read: It’s been 14 years since Dead Island first splattered onto the scene, stranding players in the blood-soaked paradise…

The year was probably 2000 when I played my first Harvest Moon game, which was Back To Nature on the original PlayStation. It is hard to look back and remember a time when you honestly had one franchise in the farming sim, now cozy game genre, apart from a few spin-off franchises that had that game’s name in its title. With Stardew Valley achieving an audience that most couldn’t even begin to believe would flock to a type of game that existed relatively niche up, that Story of Seasons, formerly Harvest Moon, has gotten heavily lost in the shuffle of…

Hollow Knight: Silksong, the long-awaited follow-up to Hollow Knight from Team Cherry, has finally been released after 6 long years of waiting and is selling as well as you would expect for a hugely anticipated title. In fact, it is performing so well that several storefronts have been crashing under the weight of fan desire to finally start playing the game. Steam, the PC storefront, for instance, has struggled to support the influx of customers arriving at it. Sinksong’s store page had been returning an error page across the initial hours after the game’s official launch, which isn’t common among…

Earlier this year, developer The Initiative was closed during the massive lay-offs at Microsoft, which resulted in a reduction of 9,000 positions from the company at large. As part of this, the game The Initiative was structurally set up to develop a reboot of Rare’s Perfect Dark franchise, was canceled. The game had been stated to have had a troubled development since it was announced in 2020, with it largely going dark after that point until it finally reemerged with a trailer at the Xbox Showcase in 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofUi9DR9sc4 In a recent report from Bloomberg, however, it was stated that…

IO Interactive showcased the first look at gameplay for their upcoming 007: First Light, their take on the classic James Bond character created by Ian Fleming, during a Sony State of Play. The primary gameplay showcased is set across the opening mission of the game, which features the character serving as tactical support, posing as a Chauffeur, while two more experienced spies infiltrate a chateau during some kind of event in hopes of capturing 009, an ex-agent who has fled and gone into hiding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwRpK8eoLLE This segment of the deep dive showcases three segments of glamplay that start with a…

Sony has announced an upcoming State of Play broadcast set to feature a deep dive into the upcoming James Bond game, 007: First Light, from Hitman developer IO Interactive. The broadcast is set for Wednesday, September 3, at 11 pm Pacific and 2 pm Eastern time. It will be available to watch via PlayStation’s YouTube and Twitch pages. Senior Global Communication Manager of IO Interactive, Yann Roskell, stated via a PlayStation Blog post: In this upcoming State of Play, tune in for over 30 minutes of gameplay featuring a playthrough of Bond’s first mission as an MI6 recruit,” Sony wrote…