ZombiePie

1. Botany Manor

2. Peppa Pig

So... that final episode sure did piss a lot of people off.

@allthedinos: soooo... this Helldivers 2 account linking stuff and the Stellar Drive "censorship" nonsense claims from internet chuds might warrant nominations.

@bigsocrates: I genuinely think this topic warrants its own thread.

So... good news, I guess? After being a bit of a punchline in that everyone in the press and hobby thought it was dead, Ubisoft announced that XDefiant not only IS NOT DEAD, but it will be releasing on the 21st of this month. After the game went radio silent for years, it's finally coming out in about two weeks. After the game was excoriated for its ridiculous title and multiple delays, it's finally happening.

But hold your horses because this is a Ubisoft online multiplayer shooter. As is usually the case with one of these, the game will launch with only a portion of its promised features and content. As reported by Eurogamer, XDefiant will start with a "preseason" that is planned to last about six weeks or about a month and a half. This preseason will have five factions, fourteen maps, and only five multiplayer modes to choose from when you enter its main campaign. The game will also have a traditional "ranked mode" with your standard array of 4v4 competitive match types. It is also critically important to remind everyone that XDefiant is a free-to-play multiplayer shooter and is most definitely going to have every single F2P trapping seen in Ubisoft's prior F2P multiplayer games.

As much as I want to discount this game, Ubisoft always seems to be the developer to find a way to make these "work." After Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege and Tom Clancy's The Division 2 had less than smooth launches, both secured stable, though toxic, online communities that have kept those games running and active years after their launches. Is this the time when that winning formula breaks? Maybe, but nonetheless, good on them for finally releasing a game.

At a time when most are scaling back their ambitions in the video game industry, Hasbro has decided to do the opposite. While most major studios are either cancelling projects or laying off staff, Hasbro's head of digital product development, Dan Ayoub, has announced the company plans to spend $1 billion to re-eneter the games market. In an interview to gamesindustry.biz, Ayoub stated:

"The biggest thing to takeaway, which is honestly a little surprise to a lot of people, is that Hasbro is in fact making video games," Ayoub says. "And we have a considerable investment in our studio structure; we've got over $1 billion in games right now being developed."

"Video games is an integral part of Hasbro's strategy going into the next 100 years and we have to make sure that everything that comes out is top quality, is authentic, and is something we can build upon, because we're talking about a couple studios and a couple games right now, but we have much larger ambitions for that."

As part of these ambitious plans, Hasbro has secured four studios: Invoke Studios, Atomic Arcade, Skeleton Key, and Archetype. Hasbro has tasked each of these to work on games with AAA aspirations with some working on original ideas and other using Hasbro's extensive list of IPs. For example, Ayoub revealed that Atomic Arcade is working on a mature GI Joe title, Invoke on a a Dungeons & Dragons game, Skeleton Key on an original horror-themed title, and Archetype on a new AAA franchise led by former BioWare alum, James Ohlen.

All of these gaming ambitions will be operating under Hasbro's Wizards of the Coast digital brand which not only was buoyed by Baldur's Gate 3 being a massive success but also Monopoly Go, which generated $2 billion for Hasbro is about 10 months. Nonetheless, Wizards of the Coast also spent $500 million to market the game, which exceeds the marketing budget of even the likes of The Last of Us Part II.

Now, for those of you that have been around the block for a while, you may recall a time when Hasbro was a major player in the video game arena. Hasbro Interactive, Inc. was at one point the third largest video game publisher in the world. Unfortunately, Hasbro Interactive's aggressive growth only happened due to Hasbro spending money like crazy and when the Do-Com Bubble Burst, the gaming division bled money. It also did not help that Hasbro's hardware division, Tiger Electronics, Ltd, struggled to make handheld devices, though it had the saving grace of making the Furby. Nonetheless, at one point Hasbro Interactive lost $74 million on revenues of $237 million and when Hasbro decided to exit the video game market, that is what led to Atari SA/Infogrames.

Nonetheless, Hasbro does have the advantage of having a plethora of IPs that are bound to sell. Wizards of the Coast has been itching to make a sequel to BG3, even if Larian has signaled they have no plans to continue working with Wizards to even make DLC for BG3.

These Stellar Blade weirdos/chuds realize that South Korea as a country has some of the strongest anti-porn laws in the world, right? They know it's not coming from a place of absolute freedom, riiiiiiiight?

For those of you that may have missed it earlier, ghosthunter on itch.io is hosting a MASSIVE bundle on the site with the help of 358 creators to try and raise money for the charity, Palestine Children's Relief Fund. Currently, the bundle has 373 games, reference books, pen and paper tabletop manuals, tutorials, game dev assets drops, and more all for the asking price of $8. Furthermore, the bundle has raised $394,823.77 towards its charity goal of $500,000.00! Simply amazing stuff!

Nonetheless, with this being a a mostly gaming oriented bundle, what are your recommendations? With hundreds of options to pick from, it's obviously overwhelming to look at the bundle once you purchase it. It also does not help that itch.io's filtering tools aren't the best and sorting things still remains a pain in the ass.

If you ask me, Anodyne, ZeroRanger, A Short Hike, Coffee Talk, Wandersong, A Monster's Expedition, They Bleed Pixels are worth the $8 asking price alone, but do any of you know about the more homebrew-titled titles in the package? Have you played any of the lesser known things in the Palestinian Relief Bundle? Has anyone read the tabletop books? What do you recommend?

@bigsocrates: At the end of the day, Songbird isn't going bankrupt because of this. They understand the retro demo scene and usually only manufacture repro carts for things after they get enough guaranteed pre-orders. Also, with Tempest 3000, there is an almost cult-like mystique to the game as it is considered the best game of the Nuon platform.

So, there's an odd precedent to this. Songbird's niche is re-releasing video games on repro carts for consoles associated with the demo scene as well as consoles that have open source OSs. They primarily were known for releasing games for the Jaguar on repro carts. In that case, long story short, Atari made almost every single one of its console and PC OSs open-source. This started in 1999 when Habro released the patents for the Jaguar into the public domain and Atari even officially endorses the BigPEmu Jaguar emulator which was painstaking made by Rich Whitehouse to coincide with the release of Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. Between this and the fact the OS is entirely open-source, the demo scene for the Jaguar is shockingly in-depth.

Jaguar emulation isn't just "solved" playing games via emulators is the best way to experience the games and Atari encourages you to do it. Towers II: Plight of the Stargazer, one of the few RPGs on the Jaguar recently was released on repro carts last year.