Forget about playing together this Valentine's Day. Instead, go solo with Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, an auto-shooter spin-off that takes inspiration from Vampire Survivors. The roguelike title is now available in Steam Early Access.

Along with not offering co-op, another main difference with Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is the three-quarters viewpoint. However, there are similarities between the original game and this new spin-off. For example, Survivor offers the same four classes for players to choose at the start of each run--with three subclasses.

"The idea to make a bullet hell spin-off of Deep Rock Galactic was born over a beer we had with the Funday team during Gamescom, and it's amazing to see what it has become," said Søren Lundgaard, CEO of the original game's developer Ghost Ship Games.

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RPG fans have another game to look forward to, as the latest sequel of a long-running franchise has been confirmed for release worldwide. After launching the game in Japan this past September, Falcom and NIS have confirmed that Ys X: Nordics--the latest entry in the RPG franchise--is coming to Western shores this fall.

Ys X is set one month after the events of Ys II--which originally launched in 1988--and it serves as the third game in the franchise's timeline. The game will follow the returning hero from every Ys game, Adol, as he teams with a new female protagonist, Karja, and meets a nomadic tribe of sailors called the Normans.

NIS has unveiled a brief announcement trailer for Ys X's Western version, which confirmed the Fall 2024 release window. The video highlights the game's traversal, naval combat, and shows off a a few of Adol and Karja's moves in combat.

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Sons of the Forest will leave early access on Steam and launch on February 22, and developer Endnight Games released a new trailer showing off what to expect in the game's 1.0 version.

The trailer shows footage of players being able to rescue others by calling an SOS, paraglide, and fight off infected monsters. In Sons of the Forest, you're sent off to a remote island with the task to find a missing billionaire. However, upon arriving, you find that it's filled with cannibals. As with many survival games, you must craft and build in order to come out alive.

Sons of the Forest was released into early access on February 23, 2023 on PC and is a sequel to 2014's The Forest. So far, the game hasn't been announced for other platforms. However, its predecessor eventually came to PS4 in 2018, which opens up the possibility Sons of the Forest might be released outside of PC.

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Sony has confirmed that Koei Tecmo's upcoming PS5 exclusive, Rise of Ronin, is not releasing in South Korea. This comes after reports that the Korean PlayStation Store pulled the game from its listing. A brief search of "Rise of Ronin" confirms that the game is not listed on South Korea's storefront. Sony, the game's publisher, said the game was never officially coming to the country, making the reports of it being pulled unfounded.

In a statement to IGN Japan, Sony Interactive Entertainment said, "Rise of the Ronin for PlayStation 5 was never officially announced for release in Korea. We can confirm that the title is not going to be sold/published in South Korea in any form (physical/digital)."

First reported by the Ruliweb (and explained by Eurogamer), the reason for the game's removal wasn't stated, but it could be because of its premise. Game director Fumuhiko Yasuda spoke about the game's inspirations, which includes the scholar Shoin Yoshida and his influence on the Meiji Restoration.

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Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has just received its first big post-launch patch, plugging several exploitable holes in the game with a variety of fixes. The most prominent of these was a bug found when dealing Burning damage, as players discovered that they could exponentially stack this elemental effect to be far more lethal than what was intended.

As it explained on the Suicide Squad Discord group, Rocksteady originally planned for Burn to scale more modestly as players took on tougher Mastery levels in the game's Elseworld missions. Instead, a "major unintended" bug saw those damage numbers soar and it "basically meant that if you used a Burn build, every Mastery Level had the same difficulty," the developer said.

This update will see Burning damage scale correctly, and Rocksteady plans to introduce a new leaderboard as well. All unlocked Mastery Levels, Finite Crisis rank, and gear earned in Elseworlds missions using the Burn exploit won't be removed, and Rocksteady expects players to discover other game-breaking builds in the future.

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We've already seen Princess Peach as a ninja, musketeer, cowboy, chef, and more in the leadup to Princess Peach: Showtime's March 22 launch. It seems she has a few more tricks up her sleeve, as Nintendo has revealed four more transformations that she'll be using in her upcoming adventure.

The four new forms are Mermaid Peach, Dashing Thief Peach, Figure Skater Peach, and Mighty Peach, and a new gameplay trailer has shown off a little bit of each form's action. This brings the number of transformations Peach will use in the new game to 10.

She skates, infiltrates, sings, and saves the day! Introducing four new transformations to #PrincessPeachShowtime premiering March 22! pic.twitter.com/2QKOTovoXx

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) February 14, 2024

Specifics on each new transformation are below:

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Are you ready for the greatest Bigfoot story ever told?

Bleecker Street has released the trailer for the upcoming comedy Sasquatch Sunset starring Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough as sasquatches making their way through the world.

Eisenberg announced his involvement in the film back in 2022 and explained that there is no dialog and he's in full makeup and hair the whole time. "In full body hair. No lines, I grunt, but no lines," he said. "I'm so looking forward to this."

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You wish you played ball like this girl. MLB The Show 24 will highlight the Negro Leagues story of Toni Stone, meaning she will be the first female player featured in the long-running baseball series.

The official MLB The Show account on X (formerly known as Twitter) noted that Stone will show up in Storylines: Negro Leagues Season 2 alongside the likes of Hank Aaron--who broke Babe Ruth's all-time home run record--and Josh Gibson, who may have hit more home runs than both of them. Stone became the first woman to play in the Negro American League for the Indianapolis Clowns in 1953.

Every hero has a story. Unlock legends like Hank Aaron and Toni Stone in Storylines: Negro Leagues Season 2.@NLBMuseumKC @nlbmprez
Pre-order MLB The Show 24 Now: https://t.co/NSSSERTAUi#MLBTheShow pic.twitter.com/rHdjG2d7h1

— MLB The Show (@MLBTheShow) February 13, 2024

According to MLB, Stone actually replaced Aaron at second base for the Clowns. She played for Indianapolis for one season before joining the Kansas City Monarchs in 1954. She hit .243 over those two seasons before retiring from professional baseball.

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We're now several years into the current generation of consoles, and according to Sony, the PS5 has now entered the "the latter stage" of its life cycle. Sony senior vice president Naomi Matsuoka has predicted sales of the console to start slowing down in the next fiscal year, which runs from April 24 and concludes in March 2025, which will result in Sony adopting a more flexible strategy.

"Looking ahead, PS5 will enter the latter stage of its life cycle," Matsuoka said (via Bloomberg). "As such, we will put more emphasis on the balance between profitability and sales. For this reason, we expect the annual sales pace of PS5 hardware will start falling from the next fiscal year."

According to Sony, 8.2 million PS5s were sold during the third quarter of its current financial year ending on December 31, 2024, but these numbers were lower than expected. The company has revised its sales forecast from its ambitious goal to sell 25 million PS5s during the current financial year ending March 31, 2025, and it now expects to reach 21 million sales.

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Yoshitaka Murayama, the creator of Konami's fan-favorite RPG series Suikoden and the head of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes studio Rabbit & Bear Studios, has passed away on Feburary 6 at the age of 54.

His passing was announced via a statement on the official Rabbit & Bear website, which confirmed that his death was caused by "an ongoing illness." He served as the scenario writer for Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, a game his studio funded via a successful Kickstarter in 2020.

It’s with a heavy heart & deep sadness we must inform you that Yoshitaka Murayama, the scenario writer for Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes and head of Rabbit & Bear Studios, passed away on February 6th.

Read the statement from Rabbit & Bear Studios: https://t.co/RZcglRrPC5 pic.twitter.com/6gFeHJv5hQ

— 【公式】Eiyuden Chronicle (百英雄伝） (@eiyuden) February 14, 2024

"His hard work on Eiyuden Chronicle as scenario writer was finished," the statement reads, "but as his co-workers and friends, it saddens us to know that he won’t get to see the reactions from his fans." The statement also says the team "want[s] to maintain his legacy and vision with this game and know that he would have wanted the rich world he has created with Eiyuden Chronicle to live on."

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It looks like the next year will be a relatively quiet one on the first-party front for Sony, as the company has said that it will not be releasing any major PlayStation franchise games before April 2025 at the earliest. Speaking in a financial call, Sony Interactive Entertainment boss Hiroki Totoki explained that while "major" projects are currently in development, it'll be focusing more on its live-service games throughout its next financial year, which ends on March 31, 2025.

"Regarding first-party software, we aim to continue to focus on producing high-quality works and developing live-service games," Totoki said. "But while major projects are currently under development, we do not plan to release any new major existing franchise titles next fiscal year like God of War Ragnarok and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Although the burden of acquisition-related costs will ease next fiscal year, we expect profit from first-party software to decrease slightly from this fiscal year due to the impact of the decrease in sales."

While it's too early to expect new Spider-Man or God of War games, this does rule out new entries from some of Sony's other big franchises, like Ghost of Tsushima or The Last of Us, in 2025 At the same time, new video game franchises like FairGame$, Marathon, and Concord are in varying stages of development, while the year ahead will see the release of several PlayStation timed exclusives like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Rise of the Ronin, and Stellar Blade.

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The original Mario Vs. Donkey Kong on Game Boy Advance was a victim of its own success. A successor to the stellar and underrated Game Boy version of Donkey Kong, it brought back many of the same puzzle-platforming mechanics with adorable mini-Mario toys serving as stage collectibles and story MacGuffins. But the minis ultimately became the stars of the sub-series and took over its identity. We've received a steady stream of Lemmings-like spin-offs since then, centered mostly around guiding minis through trap-filled stages. While those games were charming enough, they never quite recaptured the magic of Donkey Kong on Game Boy or Mario Vs. Donkey Kong on GBA. Thanks to a combination of quality-of-life improvements and visual flair that showcase what made those older games special, this Switch remake gives that original design ethos a new lease on life.

The minis are the impetus for the story, though, which begins when Donkey Kong spots the little clockwork toys and gets an insatiable appetite for them. He invades the Mario toy factory and steals all he can get his mitts on, and Mario--apparently concerned about his licensed merch--chases after the ape to recover them. Donkey Kong isn't the villain, per se, but more like a childlike, not-too-bright antagonist in an old cereal commercial.

The puzzle-platforming stages have Mario traversing through a series of traps and enemies to reach a mini-Mario in a vending capsule. You can collect a series of colored packages, carefully tucked away in hard-to-reach places, as a bonus in each stage. Once you've completed a series of six themed stages recovering the minis, there's a follow-the-leader stage where you guide them to the exit, attempting not to lose any along the way, and having them collect alphabet blocks (spelling "TOY," naturally). Then there's a boss stage against Donkey Kong, and the more minis you successfully guided in the previous stage, the more pips of health you have for the battle. Rinse, repeat. It's a nice little loop that allows each stage's goals to feed into the others.

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Preorder Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Limited Edition

$63 (was $70)

Preorder at Amazon Preorder at Crunchyroll

Preorder Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War

$35 (was $45)

Preorder at Amazon Preorder at Crunchyroll

After years of waiting, the final major arc in the Bleach manga series received an anime adaptation. While it's still far from complete, the first two seasons of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War have been a blast. If you're looking to relive some of the big battles, Blu-ray collections are available to preorder now at Amazon and Crunchyroll.

Preorder Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Limited Edition $63 (was $70)

First up, there's the fancy limited-edition release of Season 1, which features 13 action-packed episodes setting up the devastating war between Soul Society and the Wandenreich forces led by Ywach. This limited-edition release arrives on March 26, and comes with a 72-page book full of concept art and promotional images. On the two discs, there are clean openings and endings, promotional videos, Ichigo Explains shorts, and a recording of the 2023 Anime Expo Panel featuring Masakazu Morita, the voice of protagonist Ichigo Kurosaki.

Normally $70, Amazon and Crunchyroll are selling preorders for this box set for $63.

Preorder at Amazon Preorder at Crunchyroll Preorder Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War $35 (was $45)

If you're not too concerned about flipping through an art book, a standard edition is also available at $35 at Amazon (or $40.48 at Crunchyroll). All the digital extras are included in this version, and like the limited-edition release, you can watch the saga unfold in crisp 1080p. If you preorder either edition from Amazon, you'll get the retailer's preorder price guarantee. You won't pay for your copy until it ships, and you'll be charged the lowest price offered between the time you order and release. Prime members can get free release-date delivery.

Preorder at Amazon Preorder at Crunchyroll

In case you missed it when it came out, Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War has proven to be a well-received comeback for the iconic manga/anime. It's Bleach without any of the annoying filler or padding that plagued the original series, allowing the story to unfold with better pacing. It's also the best-looking Bleach series to date, as mangaka Tito Kube's distinctive style has been beautifully replicated and expanded on with well-animated fight scenes.

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Play the Original Three Tomb Raider Adventures: For the first time ever, play the complete experience with all expansions and secret levels on modern platforms in this definitive collection. Uncover treasures of the ancient world by solving puzzles and unraveling mysteries lost to the ravages of time. Follow Lara Croft around the world and face off against deadly foes and dangerous myths. Experience the classics boasting upgraded graphics, with the option to switch to the original polygon look at any time.