"The Overwatch Community Won't Be the Same Without Him"

figured it's a good time to re-float this video of Jeff Kaplan giving me tips on playing Reinhardt.

the ow community won't be the same without him pic.twitter.com/HE9H5wDhFk — mellon collie and the infinite dadness (@_mandotorres) April 20, 2021

Oculus Gaming Showcase April 2021 Date and Start Time

How to Watch the Oculus Gaming Showcase April 2021

• IGN.com (homepage)
• IGN's Facebook Channel
• IGN’s Twitter
• IGN's Twitch Channel
• IGN’s Youtube Channel
• IGN's iOS App
• IGN's Android App
• IGN's PlayStation 4 App
• IGN's Xbox One App
• Roku
• IGN App for Android TV
• IGN for Amazon Fire TV
• Apple TV
• IGN 1 on Samsung TV Plus
• Pluto TV
• Plex Live TV

What Games to Expect at Oculus Gaming Showcase April 2021

Apex Legends’ latest Stories From The Outlands lore video confirmed that the next Legend heading into the arena is Kairi Imahara, also known by her callsign as Valkyrie. Fans of the Titanfall series are excited by this reveal, but for those unfamiliar with Valkyrie, here’s a full breakdown on what her past means, how it connects to the Titanfall universe, and what she might bring to Season 9 of Apex Legends.

In the cinematic "Northstar," Valkyrie visits a deserted planet where she finds a mysterious Pilot’s helmet. Shortly afterward, it’s revealed that Valkyrie is the daughter of the infamous Pilot Viper from Titanfall 2. Not only was he a difficult boss fight, but he was also one of the few elite Pilots who managed to join Kuben Blisk’s mercenary faction, the Apex Predators. He also used a modified Northstar-class Titan, hence the name of the video. As ruthless as he was, however, this lore video actually offers the first look at Viper’s appearance as well as some information about his private life. We briefly see he and his family lived on a seemingly peaceful planet filled with lush green grass and beautiful skies.

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So that’s what we know. Now, let’s get into some of the theories we have about the latest trailer, beginning with the location heavily featured throughout. Judging by the bright blue sky, saturated green grass, and overhead skirmish it’s very possible that Valkyrie and her family lived on the planet Typhon during the last major battle of the Frontier Wars. These wars were largely between the IMC and a civilian-led militia made up of those living on the outer planets. It also bears a striking resemblance to the landscape featured in Titanfall 2’s fight against Viper.

Not only was the setting for much of Titanfall 2’s campaign set on Typhon, the planet was also the location of the IMC’s Fold Weapon which ultimately imploded at the end of the story, destroying the planet in the process. We did catch a glimpse of Valkyrie and her mother leaving their home, so it’s possible they escaped before the planetary disaster. The IMC also tested the Fold Weapon on Typhon’s moon Orthros, which could be the shattered planet behind Valkyrie as she picks up her father’s helmet in the recent trailer.

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Near the end of the cinematic, we see Valkyrie working with Rampart to restore her father’s Northstar-class Titan. At the end of the video, Viper’s Titan has been salvaged and is presumably what Valkyrie will use when she enters the Apex Games next season. Interestingly enough, Respawn previously published art for Rampart depicting Viper’s Titan chassis in the corner. This could imply that Rampart and Valkyrie may have known each other for a while and they have been working on this restoration project for some time.

As for her potential abilities, Valkyrie seems to be bringing her father’s legacy into the Apex Games. Her key art on the official Apex Legends website reveals her modified suit, complete with missile launchers like the Northstar-class Titans. With this new teaser, Valkyrie’s previously leaked abilities seem to be more accurate. As datamined by That1MiningGuy (in a since-removed Reddit post), it’s rumored that her passive ability will allow her to hover in the air (a skill you could equip on your loadout in Titanfall 2’s multiplayer), her tactical ability would allow her to deploy cluster missiles, and her ultimate ability would allow her to launch into the air with her teammates to redeploy — something we may have seen teased in a recent Twitter video released by Respawn celebrating their 100 million player achievement.

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Despite featuring several visual upgrades, Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturn HD Remaster will reportedly run at a locked 30 frames per second on PC.

In a video posted by RPG Site staff writer Josh Torres, Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturn HD Remaster can be seen running at 30 FPS.

I've touched a bit of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne's upcoming PC port on Steam. Sad to report that it is indeed capped at 30fps. I've taken a small slice of gameplay footage at the very beginning of the game with a Steam FPS counter at the top left (sorry that it's super small). pic.twitter.com/FRGrMJoF89

— HDKirin (@HD_Kirin) April 20, 2021

Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturn HD Remaster is due out on PS4, Switch, PC, and PC via Steam on May 25, 2021. Fans who order the Digital Deluxe Edition will receive the game on May 21, four days earlier than the standard edition.

The HD Remaster includes remastered 3D models and backgrounds, new difficulty settings, the ability to save wherever you want, voiceovers for Japanese and English, an alternate branch with Radio Kuzunoha, and other changes.

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The nominees for the 2021 Annual Game Developers Choice Awards have been announced today. They include huge hitters like The Last of Us Part II, Ghost of Tsushima, Hades, and more.

Nominated for Game of the Year is The Last of Us Part II, Ghost of Tsushima, Hades, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Half-Life: Alyx.

TLoU II, Hades, Ghost of Tsushima, and are all tied for the most nominations this year, with six each.

The GDCAs will be available to stream on July 21 at 4:30 PM PST for any Game Developers Conference 2021 pass-holders. GDC, now in its 35th year, is all-digital for a second year in a row from July 19 - 23. The 2020 Game Developers Conference was one of last year’s first games industry events to be canceled due to concerns regarding COVID-19, with most companies pulling their participation.

Any game released in 2020, regardless of platform or medium, was eligible for nomination this year, which is why you'll see Kentucky Route Zero (which started in early 2013) nominated for 2020's best narrative. Nominees and winners are chosen by the International Choice Awards Network, a group of game developers from various parts of the industry.

Read on for nominees for other categories.

BEST AUDIO

Hades (Supergiant Games)

The Last of Us Part II (Naughty Dog / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Doom Eternal (id Software / Bethesda Softworks)

Final Fantasy VII: Remake (Square Enix)

Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

BEST DEBUT

Phasmophobia (Kinetic Games)

Umurangi Generation (Origame Digital / Playism, Origame Digital)

Carrion (Phobia Game Studio / Devolver Digital)

Mortal Shell (Cold Symmetry / Playstack)

Raji: An Ancient Epic (Nodding Heads Games / Super!Com)

BEST DESIGN

Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

The Last of Us Part II (Naughty Dog / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Hades (Supergiant Games)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo EPD/ Nintendo)

Half-Life: Alyx (Valve)

INNOVATION AWARD

Microsoft Flight Simulator (Asobo Studio / Xbox Game Studios)

Dreams (Media Molecule / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Half-Life: Alyx (Valve)

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout (Mediatonic / Devolver Digital)

Hades (Supergiant Games)

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BEST MOBILE GAME

The Pathless (Giant Squid / Annapurna Interactive)

Genshin Impact (miHoYo)

Legends of Runeterra (Riot Games)

Alba: A Wildlife Adventure (ustwo / PID Publishing)

If Found… (Dreamfeel / Annapurna Interactive)

BEST NARRATIVE

Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition (Cardboard Computer / Annapurna Interactive)

Final Fantasy VII: Remake (Square Enix)

Hades (Supergiant Games)

The Last of Us Part II (Naughty Dog / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

BEST TECHNOLOGY

The Last of Us Part II (Naughty Dog / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Half-Life: Alyx (Valve)

Dreams (Media Molecule / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Microsoft Flight Simulator (Asobo Studio / Xbox Game Studios)

BEST VISUAL ART

Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Hades (Supergiant Games)

The Last of Us Part II (Naughty Dog / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Moon Studios / Xbox Game Studios / iam8bit)

Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt RED / CD Projekt)

BEST VR/AR GAME

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners (Skydance Interactive)

Paper Beast (Pixel Reef)

Dreams (Media Molecule / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Half-Life: Alyx (Valve)

Star Wars: Squadrons (Motive Studios / Electronic Arts)

GAME OF THE YEAR

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo EPD/ Nintendo)

The Last of Us Part II (Naughty Dog / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Half-Life: Alyx (Valve)

Hades (Supergiant Games)

Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Greetings, Overwatch Community, I am leaving Blizzard Entertainment after 19 amazing years. It was truly the honor of a lifetime to have the opportunity to create worlds and heroes for such a passionate audience. I want to express my deep appreciation to everyone at Blizzard who supported our games, our game teams and our players. But I want to say a special thanks to the wonderful game developers that shared in the journey of creation with me. Never accept the world as it appears to be. Always dare to see it for what it could be. I hope you do the same. GG, Jeffrey Kaplan

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Greetings, Overwatch Community, Jeff’s been a great leader, mentor, and friend, and he knows how much we’re going to miss him. I’ve been lucky to work alongside him and the rest of the Overwatch team for many years in building something that continues to inspire people all around the world, and I’m honored to carry the torch forward. I love Overwatch. From our first pieces of concept art, to the first maps we built, to the first time I was able to run around as Tracer (who at that early point shot laser beams out of her eyes), this game has just clicked with me. I love its inspiring, hopeful, beautiful world worth fighting for. I love its characters—larger than life, colorful, powerful, and global. And most of all, I love the fast, fluid gameplay requiring teamwork, situational awareness, and quick decision making. I also recognize that making games at Blizzard has always been a group effort and never about just one point of view. Together with the rest of the team I feel fortunate that we have a deep bench of development and creative leaders, numerous veteran Blizzard artists and designers, and some extremely talented new blood as well—along with tons of support throughout the company for the live game and for Overwatch 2. Speaking of Overwatch 2, development is continuing at a good pace. We have an exceptional vision we’re executing on, the reaction from many of you to the updates we shared at BlizzConline thrilled us, and we have exciting reveals planned for this year and beyond as we ramp to launch. We’ll be sharing more frequent updates about Overwatch 2 progress and new features in the live game with you all very soon. While I have no pretenses about filling Jeff’s shoes, I’m excited to step into the game director role and continue to be part of a team that’s putting all of its heart, talent, and focus into the next iteration of Overwatch, and I’m honored to continue serving this incredible community. -Aaron

For over 20 years, Japanese studio Clap Hanz has been known for exactly one thing: making really good PlayStation golf games.

It started in 1998 with Everybody's Golf 2, having taken over the series from Camelot (which would then go on to make all of Nintendo's Mario Golf games). The series would go on to span four generations of PlayStation consoles, as well as the PSP, Vita, and PSVR. In all that time, Clap Hanz has not released a single game that wasn't part of that series, wasn't golf, and wasn't exclusive to Sony.

That is, until now. Earlier this month, Clap Hanz announced and simultaneously released its very first game to break most of those molds: Clap Hanz Golf. Though still a golf game, Clap Hanz Golf is not a part of the Everybody's Golf series, and instead of being a PlayStation console game, it's currently exclusive to Apple Arcade. It's a massive step for the studio after all these years, and it's a move that CEO Masashi Muramori says he hopes will better identify the studio as its own entity to a global audience.

"We wanted the global audience to know who Clap Hanz is, and what we've done in the past," Muramori says in an interview with IGN. "By putting our name in the title, we thought it would be the best way for gamers to recognize Clap Hanz.”

Muramori reassures me that the studio does still have a good relationship with Sony, but that the studio does want to explore other options in the future beyond its current and former partnerships.

"The last Everybody's Golf title was released in 2019 for PlayStation VR, and there haven't been any new announcements up to this point," he says. "But that doesn't mean the relationship is over. We still have a very good relationship with Sony. [...] We don't want to limit ourselves to Apple and Sony. Just for your reference, there is nothing set in stone as far as other partners for the time being. But we would like to pursue any other opportunities that would arise in the future."

[poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=There%20are%20actually%20a%20lot%20of%20games%20that%20are%20in%20the%20planning%20%5Bstage%5D%2C%20and%20they%20are%20not%20limited%20to%20golf%20games."]

Clap Hanz Golf isn't just looking for new partners and opportunities. Muramori says the studio is also looking to expand its horizons beyond golf games in the future. He hopes in another 20 years that golf games are still a pillar for the studio, but that the studio is also able to establish other pillar titles "that showcase our abilities as a game developer."

"There are actually a lot of games that are in the planning [stage], and they are not limited to golf games -- all sorts of different genres," Muramori says. "But realistically, we need to prioritize the ones that are most likely to succeed, so for that reason most of our games have continued to be golf games. But we always have the urge to develop other games as well."

No matter its ideas for future projects, it’s clear that the team at Clap Hanz still loves making golf games. Muramori has been working on Everybody's Golf since the very beginning, including being credited as a programmer on the original game as a part of Camelot. Now, at the head of the company, Muramori says he believes that it was thanks to Everybody's Golf -- and Sony specifically -- that golf games became popular at all. And he's glad to continue that tradition.

"We do have to acknowledge that before Everybody's Golf and Hot Shots Golf, golf games weren't really that popular," he says. "It seemed really dull, like a chess game or Reversi game. But thanks to Sony and their promotion team, Everybody's Golf and Hot Shotz Golf did receive lots of support from the gamers, and I think that was one of the reasons golf games started to become popular.

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"I think the appeal is that depending on what kind of natural environment you're put in, whether it be how strong the wind is or whether you're stuck in a bunker or things like this, the gamers simulate how to shoot the ball with what club, how strong, things like that. When they're actually able to reproduce their simulation in the game, it feels good. So for Clap Hanz, that is the core appeal, and what makes golf games so much fun."

For Clap Hanz, making a game for Apple Arcade was about more than just breaking away from some of the publishing and naming conventions they'd been attached to for two decades. Muramori tells me that the team was specifically interested in the possibilities of bringing a golf game to mobile, where a controller was not the default method of input and touch controls would have to be used instead.

"If you're familiar with [Everybody's Golf], you will know that the controls are basically pushing the button three times," Muramori says. "It's essentially getting the hang of when to push the buttons. Once you get the hang of the timing, it really isn't that big of a challenge. So in order to transcend that, Clap Hanz has taken advantage of new technology and new hardware, and the result of that is Clap Hanz Golf.

"...In order for an intuitive control mechanism, we needed to step back and do something analogue rather than digital. From that standpoint, the fact that the slightest difference in where you touch or how you touch and how you flick on the touchscreen was something that was very interesting for Clap Hanz. So that was one of the reasons that we focused on iOS."

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User interface lead Shunsuke Takashima notes that while the team doesn't have time to play a lot of other games, for Clap Hanz Golf, they did look closely at PGA 2K21 for inspiration. "We found that PGA 2K21 was something that relied less on timing, so that was something we really went deep into," he says.

And lead programmer Toshiyuki Kuwabara adds that developing for iOS with this goal in mind presented a particular challenge in that there were so many models of iPhones that the game needed to support, as well as Mac and Apple TV.

"Across all these devices, players get to choose to either use the touchscreen or use gamepads or use a track controller, so lots of different control mechanisms actually," Kuwabara says. "In doing that, we needed to make sure that all the devices had the same difficulty, so that using a certain device wouldn't give certain players advantages over other devices. That was something we were really careful to make sure everybody had a fair chance."

Aside from the controls, Muramori tells me that there were two reasons for bringing a game to Apple Arcade specifically. One was that Apple Arcade's subscription model meant they wouldn't have to implement loot box-style monetization, and could design a game similarly to how they had in the past. Another reason was that Apple reached out to Clap Hanz at an opportune time -- with its ambitions to make something new already in place, the studio was in the process of looking for outside partners to work with at the time.

The Clap Hanz team is eager for players to share in their new adventures. Lead artist Keisuke Futami says that he hopes players will enjoy the cast of characters and challenging courses. The other three emphasize their excitement about the controls again: Takashima says he believes what they have done with Clap Hanz Golf is "just as good, if not better" than the traditional Everybody's Golf controls. Kuwabara mentions the same, adding that he hopes players will persist even if the difference from the team's former games seems challenging at first.

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Muramori concludes that he feels because of the control changes, Clap Hanz Golf is closer to playing real golf than the team has ever gotten before.

"Hopefully Clap Hanz Golf on Apple Arcade will be a new start," he says. "Not in the sense that we are cutting ties with Sony, but as a new game franchise we hope to be able to build on, so that Clap Hanz Golf becomes something that gamers love to play."

After 20 years of making one kind of game, Clap Hanz Golf doesn’t just feel like a next step; it feels simultaneously like a first step towards something entirely new.

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Alpha and Alpha Skip Ahead Insiders: in case you were wondering why I shared that tip on reordering groups!

See what's stored in Quick Resume from your groups list (Guide, Home and My games & apps) and see if your running game supports Quick Resume in the Guide: pic.twitter.com/AnPEP4JSae — Eden Marie (@neonepiphany) April 19, 2021

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Which Mortal Kombat Kharacters have you included?