Metaphor: ReFantazio, the newest game out of Japanese video game company Atlus’ Studio Zero, owes a lot to the Persona games that came before it. From the mind of longtime Persona designer Katsura Hashino, it’s a sprawling role-playing game that combines dungeon crawling with social sim elements, using a daily …
Read More »‘The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’ Trades Tropes for New Tricks
Nintendo, after nearly four decades, is taking The Legend of Zelda somewhere new. With Echoes of Wisdom, the video game company not only builds on the experimentation of its last Switch release, Tears of the Kingdom—it also does something no other Zelda title has done before: Give the princess power …
Read More »Nintendo Is Suing ‘Palworld’ Creator Pocketpair
Palworld, colloquially known to fans as “Pokémon with guns,” is in hot water. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company announced Thursday that they’ve filed a patent infringement lawsuit in Tokyo against Pocketpair, the company behind the game, claiming Palworld “infringes multiple patent rights.” The lawsuit isn’t completely unexpected. In Palworld, players …
Read More »Sony’s $700 PlayStation 5 Pro Is Finally Coming in November
Sony’s PlayStation 5 mid-cycle upgrade, the PS5 Pro, is coming November 7. Lead PlayStation architect Mark Cerny revealed the console today during a brief video presentation. “Simply put, it’s the most powerful console we’ve ever built,” Cerny said of the $700 device. It’s been four years since the PlayStation 5’s …
Read More »The Death of ‘Concord’ Offers a Bleak Look at Gaming’s Future
Earlier this week, after warping across the galaxy for 90 hours in a sentient spacecraft, Twitch streamer John Wissmiller realized that Concord was the best first-person shooter he’d played in a decade. “The gunplay was crunchy, the movement was smooth, and the progression felt rewarding,” he says. “I was even …
Read More »New AI Model Can Simulate ‘Super Mario Bros.’ After Watching Gameplay Footage
Last month, Google's GameNGen AI model showed that generalized image diffusion techniques can be used to generate a passable, playable version of Doom. Now, researchers are using some similar techniques with a model called MarioVGG to see whether AI can generate plausible video of Super Mario Bros. in response to …
Read More »‘The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’ Gives the Princess Powers That Link Never Got
Princess Zelda has to escape from jail. She was tossed into prison over her alleged involvement in the appearance of mysterious “rifts” all over the land of Hyrule. Under normal circumstances, she’d be stuck down there until longtime hero Link could come rescue her. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of …
Read More »‘Black Myth: Wukong’ Devs Told Streamers to Avoid Politics in Their Playthroughs. It Backfired
Amid a long list of Twitch streams for Black Myth: Wukong, a new action role-playing game released this week, one stood out: “Covid-19 Isolation Taiwan (Is a Real Country) Feminism Propaganda.” The stream, run by a creator called Moonmoon, did not include anything out of the ordinary for a video …
Read More »At Nintendo’s New Museum, Classic Games Get Reinvented for Today
This story originally appeared on WIRED Japan and has been translated from Japanese. Built in 1969 in Uji City, Kyoto, the Uji Kokura factory was originally responsible for the production of toys. Now, more than half a century later, the factory has been reborn as the Nintendo Museum. It will …
Read More »'Assassin’s Creed Shadows' and How ‘DEI’ Became Gamergate 2.0’s Rallying Cry
On May 16, the gaming and entertainment news site Dexerto tweeted an image from the forthcoming game Assassin’s Creed Shadows featuring one of its protagonists, the Black samurai Yasuke, in a fighting pose. Across scores of replies, some voiced optimism, others fatigue with Assassin’s Creed’s now 14-game-long run, and a …
Read More »