Today’s Wordle hint and answer #706: Friday, May 26

Improve your daily Wordle game with our general tips and tricks, sneak a peek at today’s answer if you need to (we won’t tell anyone), or find a little guidance with our clue for the May 26 (706) puzzle. However you want to play Wordle today, we’ve got it covered.

I had a great start to the Friday puzzle, the first line giving up some great letters and the second ruling out what could have been a game’s worth of bad guesses. I was just one green away from another win by the third go, and then four sealed the deal and gave me today’s Wordle answer with plenty of breathing room.

Today’s Wordle hint

(Image credit: Josh Wardle)

A Wordle hint for Friday, May 26

The answer to today’s Wordle is an old-fashioned term for a pig, as well as a general impolite term for anyone you don’t really like. You may have encountered this word in the phrase “Like casting pearls before _____”. There are two vowels in this one. 

Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

There are no repeat letters in today’s Wordle. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

A good starting word can be the difference between victory and defeat with the daily puzzle, but once you’ve got the basics, it’s much easier to nail down those Wordle wins. And as there’s nothing quite like a small victory to set you up for the rest of the day, here are a few tips to help set you on the right path: 

  • A good opening guess should contain a mix of unique consonants and vowels. 
  • Narrow down the pool of letters quickly with a tactical second guess.
  • Watch out for letters appearing more than once in the answer.

There’s no racing against the clock with Wordle so you don’t need to rush for the answer. Treating the game like a casual newspaper crossword can be a good tactic; that way, you can come back to it later if you’re coming up blank. Stepping away for a while might mean the difference between a win and a line of grey squares. 

Today’s Wordle answer

(Image credit: Future)

What is the #706 Wordle answer?

You’re one sentence away from an end of the week win. The answer to the May 26 (706) Wordle is SWINE. 

Previous Wordle answers

The last 10 Wordle answers 

Past Wordle answers can give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle-solving fresh. They are also a good way to eliminate guesses for today’s Wordle, as the answer is unlikely to be repeated. 

Here are some recent Wordle answers:

  • May 25: BAGEL
  • May 24: UTTER
  • May 23: CLERK
  • May 22: IGLOO
  • May 21: BRASH
  • May 20: FLASK
  • May 19: GRIEF
  • May 18: SHORN
  • May 17: PLANK
  • May 16: LATTE

Learn more about Wordle

(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)

Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and you’ll need to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them to keep up your winning streak.

You should start with a strong word like ARISE, or any other word that contains a good mix of common consonants and multiple vowels. You’ll also want to avoid starting words with repeating letters, as you’re wasting the chance to potentially eliminate or confirm an extra letter. Once you hit Enter, you’ll see which ones you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.

Your second guess should compliment the starting word, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. With a bit of luck, you should have some coloured squares to work with and set you on the right path.

After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there’s an E). Don’t forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).

If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used you can scroll to the relevant section above. 

Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. 


Source link

Will Smith finally picked a game to star in, and… it’s a free-to-play survival shooter?

Lightspeed Studios, best known for co-developing PUBG Mobile, and Will Smith, best known for slapping comedian Chris Rock on live television, have teamed up for a free-to-play open world survival shooter called Undawn.

Jokes aside, Will Smith is one of the biggest movie stars in the world, an Academy Award winner (and 4-time nominee) whose films have earned nearly $9 billion worldwide. Except for a Fortnite skin, this appears to be Smith’s first real videogame role, and if I were to picture him as the face of a game I guess it would be something a little more grand—like Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077, or Liam Neeson in Fallout 3, or one of the many Hollywood actors who have performed in the Call of Duty series.

Instead, Will Smith is now the face of a free-to-play mobile shooter that’s also coming to Steam. So, yeah, I’m as confused as you are. Go ahead and watch the star of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air wordlessly deliver a smackdown on some monsters making trouble in his neighborhood in the trailer above.

We first heard about Undawn in 2019 (it was originally called Dawn Awakening) but it’s finally on the brink of release: the free-to-play multiplayer survival game launches on June 15 for mobile devices and on PC. If you need a refresher on what it is, exactly, read on:

“In the post-apocalyptic world of Undawn, survivors have split into different factions each with their own rules of survival,” reads a press release sent to PC Gamer (which, no joke, contained the words “Get Jiggy” in the subject line). “During their daring adventure, players will encounter legendary survivor Trey Jones played by global movie star Will Smith. Trey will act as a guide to help other survivors navigate the world four years after a global disaster.” 

It’s a little hard to say what’s in the actual game—the official site immediately gets busy tantalizing you with a list of rewards you get for pre-registering, like consumables and several different types of in-game currency. The Steam page is a little more to the point, showing off shooting, monsters, resource gathering, base building, and vehicles. It also shows a very cluttered mobile game HUD, so I’m not super optimistic it’ll be enjoyable on PC.

As for Will Smith, he does fit into the world of Undawn pretty well, though mostly because he looks quite a lot like his character Robert Neville from 2007 zombie apocalypse film I Am Legend. I’m a little suspicious that Smith’s character doesn’t talk in the trailer, or even make noises like “ugh” or “uff” while running, sliding, and bashing monsters. Did he just lend his looks, and not his voice, to the game? I guess we’ll find out on June 15.


Source link

Metal Gear Solid 3’s remake announcement can’t hold a candle to one of the best game trailers of all time

I’m psyched for the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake for two reasons: this entry in the series has never been playable on PC, and it’s the pinnacle of what Metal Gear Solid was up until MGS5. That open world, less-narrative-focused capstone to the Metal Gear saga is a peerless stealth game, but MGS3 is really the pinnacle of the form Kojima was working in from 1998 to 2008, with the first four games. Today’s CG reveal trailer, though, didn’t really feel much like Metal Gear—at least not in the style of Hideo Kojima.

This short trailer reminded me just how much control Kojima exerted over the Metal Gear series, down to how they were presented at big industry events like E3. In the early 2000s, E3 press conferences were still stuffy affairs with businessmen in big suits talking about sales figures and audience demographics between game trailers. Konami certainly wasn’t exempt, but the trailers Kojima brought with him were clearly designed to be events in a way other game trailers at the time just weren’t.

The original MGS 3 trailer was not just a two minute hype reel. It was a gameplay showcase, a comedy, and a graphics engine flex all in one. Kojima was seemingly less interested in revealing the game’s existence than he was making a mini movie that conveyed its tone. Over time his obsession with Hollywood has worn thin for me—I really do not care that he’s gotten Elle Fanning and his other favorite Hollywood celebs to star in Death Stranding 2—but in 2003, nobody else was showing games this way.

I feel confident saying Metal Gear Solid 3 wasn’t just the pinnacle of Metal Gear: it was also the pinnacle of E3 game reveals. It just keeps going, abruptly shifting tones from suspense to action to farce and back again, including meta jokes about Grand Theft Auto and more fake-out endings than that year’s Return of the King.

As a piece of short-form storytelling it holds up really well 20 years later. It reveals little about the game as a whole, not giving up story details or even showing an actual stretch of the game in the way that a traditional “vertical slice” demo would. Instead the MGS3 trailer is more like an official work of machinima, crafting its own out of context battles to show off a bunch of Snake’s new moves… including snake eating.

Konami says the remake will be “a faithful recreation of the original story and game design,” so I’m hopeful that everything that made Metal Gear Solid 3 great will still be there. The jungle stealth and environmental systems hinted at the depth MGS5 would later blow wide open. A couple of boss fights are genuine all-timers, including the open-ended sniper battle against The End. What I love most about Metal Gear Solid 3, though, is how well the Cold War and nuclear arms race fit Kojima’s style of political commentary. The setting allows for a certain degree of old spy movie camp while pulling back from the convoluted digital age politics of Metal Gear Solid 2. The 2003 MGS3 trailer—and its also superb 2004 follow-up, which shows off far more of the story—both reveled in that tone.

Is this kind of game reveal outright extinct in 2023? If not, it’s certainly endangered. We’re lucky if a reveal includes gameplay rather than an overly polished CG particle fest set to a pop song. Even in the best cases, today’s manicured gameplay trailers aren’t distinct creative works worth watching in a decade or two.

Today’s Metal Gear Solid 3 remake reveal certainly won’t be worth watching years from now, either. Perhaps there was no need for it to be—after all, it was going to be tough to outdo the original. But going full CG here has real “didn’t even try” energy, especially as it’s the first Metal Gear anything Konami has released since the 2018 disaster Metal Gear Survive. I don’t think it’s hero worship to say that Kojima never would’ve released a trailer this pedestrian. It at least would’ve undercut the tension with some silly text popping up on screen. 


Source link

Fallout was nearly called ‘Warriors of the Apocalypse’, ‘Radstorm’, ‘Moribund World’ and so many other terrible names

Perhaps my favourite thing in the more recent Fallout games is just wandering the wasteland listening to the outstanding selection of old music. The first time “Crawl out through the Fallout” came on, I couldn’t believe how funny and perfect it was for the game, encapsulating exactly that kind of nuclear gallows humour that the entire series plays off. In fact it’s hard to imagine Fallout being called anything else: But boy, did it dodge several bullets.

Fallout co-creator Tim Cain has in recent times been reminiscing about his earlier days in the industry, and was obviously at developer Interplay when the first title in the series was being developed. Initially the game’s builds were labelled ‘GURPS’ (an in-joke about the tabletop system that inspired many mechanics) and had the codename ‘Vault 13’ based on the bunker the player starts the game from, but the developers knew this wouldn’t do for the final product. After all, if it was a success, were they going to make Vault 13 part 2?

“It’s very very hard to come up with a name for a game, especially a new game with new mechanics, a new setting, and new characters,” said Cain. “By the late ‘90s, there was already this vibe that a lot of words were being overused in game names, words like ‘dark’ or ‘shadow’ or ‘blood.’ These were starting to show up so much that we would almost kind of make fun and be like ‘let’s call ours Dark World or Dim Place, or Souls of Blood’. They’re over-used and we were kind of over it”.

One thing was clear: Vault 13 wasn’t going to do the job. “It was a bad name,” said Cain. “I said we really need to come up with something better.” Then Cain produces a relic: A word document containing a memo from June 19, 1996, focused on potential names for the game.

“‘This has been an exceptionally difficult time,'” reads the note. “‘To find a name for this game that is both catchy and tells somewhat about the premise of the game is not easy. The cool words describing a nuclear war such as ‘apocalypse,’ ‘holocaust,’ ‘armageddon,’ ‘wasteland,’ have either already been taken or have religious connotations that we don’t like.'”

There was an Interplay meeting where everyone was invited to suggest names for the new game. “No idea will be critiqued,” said Cain at the time, smirking about critiquing them now. Among the candidates were:

  • The Vault
  • Survivors
  • Warriors of the Apocalypse
  • Radstorm
  • Nuclear Winter
  • Doomsday Warrior
  • After the Bomb
  • Hiroshima Revisited
  • Vault 13
  • Remains of the Day
  • Devastated Earth
  • Fallout
  • Nuclear Summer
  • Dying Earth
  • The Rust Age
  • Future Past
  • Dead Glow
  • After Effects
  • After FX
  • Devolution
  • The Surface
  • The Surfacing
  • Out of the Vault
  • Ground Zero
  • Earth AD
  • Moribund World
  • Vault 666
  • World Gone Mad
  • Static Age
  • The Chosen Ones
  • The New World
  • The World Outside
  • Outside the Vault
  • After the Collapse
  • Return to the World
  • Outside

Cain also recalls going to the marketing team, who had their own terrible ideas. Firestorm. Ravaged! Eradicated. Annihilation. At this point Cain is barely able to hold back the laughter. Desiccated. Consumed. Biohazard (!). Mutilation. Scarred Earth. Further into the Wasteland.

Among the candidates was the jewel: Fallout. This was suggested by co-creator Brian Fargo and “I kinda didn’t like it” but “sure enough, the next morning I woke up and went ‘Fallout’s actually a really good name,’” remembers Cain. “I suggested it to the team, boom. Everybody loved it. It was the number-one choice, it really worked well for sequels. I specifically did not want to call the first one Fallout 1, I know people call it that these days to distinguish it but to me it’s just Fallout”.

Cain says that in hindsight this was probably “the easiest naming process ever” because every IP he subsequently worked on that had a similar process ended up in “the most drawn-out meeting after meetings, copyright searches, people pointing out it was too close to something else or had bad connotations or that there was a book or old movie that was already named that.”

Now that the dust has settled, Cain thinks they got it bang-on, and is at pains to credit Brian Fargo for not only advocating the name but explaining why it would work, at a time where Cain was too focused on things like there not being any actual radioactive fallout (because in Fallout the nukes landed a long time before everything starts).

“What I really like is, and I’ll give it to Fargo for basically pointing this out, that Fallout is a nice, short name that capture the essence of the game: You say Fallout and you immediately think well this is probably a post apocalyptic game, and it’s probably not a happy post-apocalyptic game,” said Cain. “So Fallout fits perfectly. And that’s where the whole series got its name.”


Source link

Today’s Wordle hint and answer #704: Wednesday, May 24

Keep your Wordle win streak going in the right direction, however your daily game is currently going. If you’re a little stumped, today’s clue will help you out, and if you’re a single guess away from disaster, the May 24 (704) Wordle answer is only a quick click away. 

I was sure this was going to be easy. Nothing builds my confidence up like seeing three yellows on the first row, but I was soon proved wrong. The second go revealed the same three yellows in different spots, and the third finally turned them into greens. That was great, but I still had no real idea what to do with them. Luckily, I got today’s Wordle answer on the last go—but only just.

Today’s Wordle hint

(Image credit: Josh Wardle)

A Wordle hint for Wednesday, May 24

There are a few different meanings for today’s word. The first is an alternative way of saying “total”, “complete”, or “absolute”. The other, written and pronounced in the exact same way,  means to speak or make some sort of sound. 

Is there a double letter in today’s Wordle? 

Yes, a letter is repeated in today’s puzzle. 

Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day 

Playing Wordle well is like achieving a small victory every day—who doesn’t like a well-earned winning streak in a game you enjoy? If you’re new to the daily word game, or just want a refresher, I’m going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success: 

  • You want a balanced mix of unique consonants and vowels in your opening word. 
  • A solid second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
  • The answer could contain letters more than once.

There’s no time pressure beyond making sure it’s done by the end of the day. If you’re struggling to find the answer or a tactical word for your next guess, there’s no harm in coming back to it later on. 

Today’s Wordle answer

(Image credit: Future)

What is the #704 Wordle answer?

Here’s your Wednesday win. The answer to the May 24 (704) Wordle is UTTER.

Previous Wordle answers

The last 10 Wordle answers 

Knowing previous Wordle solutions can be helpful in eliminating current possibilities. It’s unlikely a word will be repeated and you can find inspiration for guesses or starting words that may be eluding you. 

Here are some recent Wordle answers:

  • May 23: CLERK
  • May 22: IGLOO
  • May 21: BRASH
  • May 20: FLASK
  • May 19: GRIEF
  • May 18: SHORN
  • May 17: PLANK
  • May 16: LATTE
  • May 15: CANOE
  • May 14: SCARF

Learn more about Wordle

(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)

Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and it’s your job to work out which five-letter word is hiding by eliminating or confirming the letters it contains.

Starting with a strong word like LEASH—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters—is a good place to start. Once you hit Enter, the boxes will show you which letters you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.

Your second go should compliment the starting word, using another “good” guess to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer.  After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there’s an E). Don’t forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS). 

If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used, you can scroll to the relevant section above.

Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. 


Source link

Exoprimal is a throwback to weird, experimental early 2000s Capcom

We all have weaknesses videogames exploit to make us love them in spite of any obvious faults. It turns out that one of mine is watching 100 raptors fall out of a portal in the sky, then shooting them with a machine gun. I guess that makes Exoprimal an educational videogame?

Exoprimal is a deeply strange game, and somehow the dinosaurs falling from the sky are the most normal thing about it. The story seems like it’s headed for a Jurassic Park setup, with your team of special forces operatives heading to an island where some sort of disaster’s taken place. But instead of landing, finding a bunch of dinosaurs, and then killing them, you first go through an interdimensional time portal controlled by a rogue AI, and then you compete in a Hunger Games-style contest against alternate universe versions of yourself for the AI’s amusement. That’s where the dinosaur killing comes in.

It’s such an unnecessary twist on what would’ve been a perfectly fine premise—go to island, shoot lots of dinosaurs—that I respect the swerve. The exosuits are Capcom’s take on a Japanese tokusatsu series like Power Rangers, simultaneously cheesy, ostentatious and badass. There’s a wider variety of them than I expected, broken out into assault, support, and tank classes.

Exoprimal is mostly geared towards co-op, so you’ll experience the story in cutscenes slightly awkwardly stuffed between multiplayer matches. Those matches are, again, strange: for the first ⅔ of each you’re exclusively in co-op blasting dinosaurs, and then in the last third of the match you go head-to-head with a competing team in some kind of Overwatch-style objective like pushing the payload. As in Overwatch you can swap suits at any time, which became an important part of my team’s strategy. We’d start out all-in on assault to chew through dinos as fast as possible, then make sure to throw in a tank and healer for PvP.

Exoprimal doesn’t quite fit any of the usual buckets we put multiplayer games in, but I think that’s a clever move on Capcom’s part. It gives you the chill co-op solidarity of playing with your friends, with a bit of adrenaline at the end when you go up against another team.

(Image credit: Exoprimal)

The race to complete co-op objectives for the majority of the match feels strangely isolated, though—every time you kill a wave of attacking dinos, the AI will inform you whether you’re going faster or slower than the other human team. I feel like I have no way to react to this information other than feeling a bit smug or panicked that the other team will have a time advantage when we reach the finale. Perhaps Exoprimal was saving surprises for later, but it needs some way to affect the other team in the first part of a match—give me a portal gun that lets me send a T-Rex across dimensions to grief the other team, or something.

As unconventional as these parts of Exoprimal are, its meta progression is the exact opposite. It’s lifted straight from the generic F2P game handbook, including loot boxes with cosmetic drops and a battle pass. It’s not the best fit for a $60 game, and feels out of step with how people spend money on games right now, and how odd (I say that endearingly) Exoprimal otherwise is.Exoprimal

(Image credit: Exoprimal)

I also wonder whether Capcom’s recent announcement that players can choose to queue up for only PvP or only PvE matches will dull the impact of its unorthodox structure. I think it’s for the best, though—expectations for a co-op romp where you shoot 73 dinosaurs per minute are very different than they are for balanced, competitive shooters. Exoprimal is probably better poised to deliver on the former.

If you took out the cookie cutter monetization, Exoprimal would look like a game spawned from Capcom’s prime experimental period in the early 2000s. I don’t know if this odd mix of PvE and PvP is going to hook most players, but tossing a grenade into a pile of dinosaurs is, at least for a few hours, a real good time.

Exoprimal’s out on Steam and Game Pass on July 14.


Source link

Activision Blizzard says it’s ‘committed to the Chinese market’ following China’s approval of Microsoft acquisition

Following the EU’s approval last week, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation has given its blessing to the proposed union between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. The decision was reported by Seeking Alpha late last week, and confirmed by Activision Blizzard today in a statement sent to PC Gamer.

“We’re glad to see China join dozens of other major countries in welcoming more competition in the gaming industry,” wrote an Activision Blizzard spokesperson. “SAMR has unconditionally approved our merger with Microsoft, using facts and data to reach the correct conclusion. We are committed to the Chinese market, with many of our amazing players and employees based there, and we look forward to bringing them new choices and benefits as part of this deal.”

Last month, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority opted to block the acquisition over concern that aquiring Activision Blizzard would give Microsoft too much power in the emerging cloud gaming market. The surprise decision is being appealed, but Microsoft may have a hard time overturning it while keeping its current deal intact. Approval from the EU and China doesn’t hurt, but along with the UK roadblock, it’s still got the US Federal Trade Commission to deal with.

In December last year, the FTC announced that it would seek to block the acquisition. If the UK had approved the deal, the FTC was expected to drop its complaint, but that didn’t happen and a hearing is scheduled for August 2, during which the FTC and Microsoft will present evidence for their cases.

Activision Blizzard hasn’t had a great year when it comes to business in China: It broke up with its Chinese publishing partner, NetEase, and so World of Warcraft and its other games have been offline in the country since January. According to one report, the whole thing might have come down to a misunderstanding related to this very regulatory decision. (The gist is that Activision Blizzard reportedly interpreted a comment from NetEase as a threat to influence Chinese regulators if it didn’t get the deal it wanted, and NetEase says that’s not what it meant.)

At last check, Blizzard was looking for a new publishing partner to work with in China, but now that Chinese regulatory approval for the Microsoft acquisition is a done deal, maybe it’d be easier to just give NetEase an apology ring? (Although, considering that NetEase smashed up its World of Warcraft statue after the breakup, maybe that’s a firmly shut door.)

I’ve asked Activision Blizzard if there’s any update on its efforts to get its games back online in China.


Source link

Turns out Cliffy B might not be done with making games after all, and still thinks there’s a future for Lawbreakers

Clifford Bleszinski occupies an odd space in the games industry at the moment. The artist formerly known as Cliffy B is a big-budget director of substantial talent who’s worked on some best-in-class titles and is still relatively young, but breaking off from Epic Games and setting up on his own didn’t go quite as planned: LawBreakers was great, but didn’t sell, while Radical Heights was a hail Mary that didn’t quite come off either. Since those two misfires Bleszinski has become something of a social media soapboxer and, judging by how he’s been angling for a consultancy role on the next Gears, is looking for his way back into games.

One possible route, which Bleszinski has been touting for a while now, is a revival of LawBreakers. He’s also sending rather mixed messages about it,  saying only last month that Korean giant Nexon owns the rights and he’s “kinda over the whole making games thing” anyway. But wait!

See more

The “friend” being referred to here may well be Justin Roiland, co-creator of Rick & Morty and founder of Squanch Games (based in California), who also apparently acquired the rights to Radical Heights when Bleszinski’s Boss Key Productions closed its doors. Roiland had a voice role in LawBreakers and is apparently a good pal of Bleszinski, though a Radical Heights revival is probably the only thing more unlikely than a LawBreakers comeback.

As well as LawBreakers, after a few vodka sodas Bleszinski lamented the fate of one of Boss Key Productions’ unmade games. A recent rumour suggests that Microsoft is looking to somehow bring back Scalebound, the Hideki Kamiya directed action game from Platinum that was cancelled in January 2017. As unlikely as that may seem, the idea had Bleszinski reminiscing about a game called Dragonflies and Microsoft’s refusal to back it.

“STFU Microsoft might be reviving Scalebound after they turned down DragonFlies?!” wrote Bleszinksi. “Man. People wonder why I have zero desire to make another game any time soon. And yes, I’ve had a two vodka sodas, but I’m in zero fucks mode these days.”

Bleszinki has previously described Dragonflies as a game where you played “ninja/samurai in airships riding dragons fighting zombies with friends in a PVE ‘feudalpunk’ setting on floating islands”. You were supposed to hatch your dragons and raise them, which all sounds pretty amazing, but bear in mind that almost every single game idea sounds amazing until people hunker down to actually make the thing. Still, if Microsoft does revive Scalebound, I’m looking forward to Bleszinski having a few more vodka sodas and telling us what he really thinks of Phil Spencer.

Outside of games, Bleszinski’s keeping busy with a comic about dogs fighting for justice in a dystopian future, as well as penning a memoir about his time in the industry. He’s also an investor and producer in theatre productions.



Source link

Indie studio warns other developers after being unable to claim its own name on Discord

Indie studio Rusty Lake is responsible for puzzle adventures like Rusty Lake Hotel, The White Door, and the Cube Escape series. Like everyone else on Discord, the studio needs to choose a new username as part of the shift Discord is currently rolling out, eliminating the old system where everyone had a four-digit number called a discriminator attached to the end of their name. Rusty Lake was lucky enough to be offered the chance to reserve a username relatively early in the process, but, wouldn’t you know it, somebody else got there first. 

In a warning to other indie developers posted to Twitter, Rusty Lake wrote, “We just received an email that we, as Verified Owners, could finally submit a new username and wow… ‘rustylake’ is already taken! If we as a server owner with 240K+ members can’t even claim it…”

As Rusty Lake went on to explain, this is an issue because “Now we have a risk of impersonation + extra legal costs to file a possible trademark infringement.” The studio reached out to Discord support to ask for help dealing with the situation, and received “an automatic response email to this issue and the follow up is directing us to another helpdesk.”

Back when Discord announced that everyone would need to choose a new username, it explained the reason behind the change: nearly half of all friend requests on the platform fail to connect with the proper user. That’s a serious problem, and yet it hasn’t stopped Discord from building a userbase of almost 200 million. No, I don’t understand why it’s so popular either.

This isn’t the first time someone has squatted on a Discord username. The names of several popular streamers like “pewdiepie” and “ksi” were taken earlier in the process, though Discord has since reverted them and reserved the usernames for their rightful owners. Meanwhile, a change.org petition started by Discord users who want the platform to keep the numerical discriminators has over 15,000 signatures.



Source link

Great moments in PC gaming: Reaching Warrior rank in Tekken 7

Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.

Tekken 7

(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

Developer: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Year: 2015

Recently, I decided to move beyond my button-mashing ways and actually try to get good at Tekken 7. It’s a tough transition to make—why would I waste time in the lab figuring out frame data and combos when I can frantically run my thumb over all the face buttons and still do sorta good? Especially in a game like Tekken 7, which feels pretty easy to mash out, but is one of the toughest fighting games to pick up as a newbie. I’ve been on a quest to get good enough to play in tournaments though, and to do that I actually had to try and learn the goddamn game. 

I’ve long been attached to Lucky Chloe—hated by many, loved by weebs like myself. She’s not very good, mind you. She regularly places low on tier lists with a huge chunk of her movelist being launch-punishable and easily sidestepped. But she’s kinda goofy and a mega-goblin, so I was determined to stick with her.

The problem is, part of getting good is playing against other real people. Fighting ghost battles is all well and good, but nothing can replicate going toe-to-toe with another human. I do not enjoy fighting other humans. Nevertheless, I threw myself into ranked mode determined to come out on the other side a better player.

Online Tekken ranks work in colors, with each color having different stages. These days, you start off in teal rank, before moving onto green rank, then yellow, orange, red, ruler (light purple), and blue. Then you’ve got the peak: Purple rank and gold rank, which tops off at Tekken God Omega. Really good players can usually get to Tekken God Prime, one rank below the top, with Omega held almost exclusively by professional players.

I had one goal: reach Warrior, the first yellow rank and a milestone for new players. It doesn’t sound too difficult, but ranked is pretty damn hellish this late in Tekken 7’s lifespan. Frustratingly gimmicky players, smurfs, cheaters, and pluggers—players who disconnect right before they lose, often stopping the win from counting with no repercussions to the plugge—are rife in lower ranks. That’s not to say those things don’t happen further up the ladder too, but online Tekken can be a truly hair-pulling experience for those just starting out.A fighter delivers a powerful kick in Tekken 7

(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

Did it suck? Kinda. Frequently eating shit and not quite having enough experience to figure out why was rough. Thankfully, I’m surrounded by wonderful friends who also happen to be ridiculously good at Tekken. Being able to stream my games and receive instant feedback about what I was doing wrong, which moves I should be using, and ways to out-gimmick the gimmicks gave me a leg-up not every low-level player is afforded. 

Before I knew it, I was actually… getting better? I clawed my way out of the teal ranks with surprising ease, leaving the seemingly arduous task of battling my way through green rank to Warrior. Learning to play with patience, watching out for punishable moves, and learning a couple of combos saw me fly through matches. Turns out having some semblance of an idea what you’re doing actually feels pretty good! Managing to pull off an entire combo without dropping was a victory in itself, but managing to do it while also clinching the win over my opponent was even cooler.Lucky Chloe

(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

After claiming 59 victories, my promotion match to Warrior was finally upon me. A silly online rank is trivial when you boil it down, but I was nervous to tackle it at last. I was playing well though, and only needed to take three more rounds to finally parade my yellow rank in front of my pals (who are all placed far higher than me, mind you). I played as well as I could, waiting for my moment and trying my best to remember all my inputs. 

The match ended, and Lucky Chloe’s victory screen appeared. I did it. I bloody did it! I won and was rewarded with the “Promoted to Warrior” graphic emblazoned across my screen. Accompanied by my endlessly supportive friends in Discord to celebrate my achievement, I felt damn good about how far I’d come in mere weeks. Getting good in any game is usually an enjoyable journey, but I’ve never felt more satisfied than doing it in a fighting game. I’ve still got a lot to learn, but being able to display my yellow rank felt like the first step to being a better player. 

Maybe one day I can join my friends in the orange ranks and beyond, but for now I’m feeling pretty good with where I’m at.


Source link