Nintendo releases big 'Animal Crossing: New Horizons' update earlier than expected

 

Nintendo

Nintendo has released its last free major content update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons over a day earlier than planned. During its Direct presentation in October, the gaming giant announced that it's rolling out New Horizons version 2.0 on November 5th. As TechCrunch and IGN have confirmed, though, the update is now live and can be downloaded to your Switch. Version 2.0 adds quite a number of new features to the game, including characters from old Animal Crossing titles. 

One of those characters is Brewster, the quiet pigeon proprietor who'll open up the Roost café at the museum after you do a certain favor for museum director Blathers. Kapp'n, the singing sailor kappa, is also back and will take you to remote islands on his boat. You can only purchase boat rides once a day with Nook Miles, though, so you can't endlessly sail around all day. If you want to shop from new stores owned by familiar characters, you can head over to Harv's Island, which now has an open market. Reese & Cyrus' shop, for instance, will offer new types of furniture customization, while Katrina will read your fortune.

The update adds gyroid hunting and cooking activities, as well. For the latter, which will be part of DIY recipes, you can combine anything you harvest and other ingredients to create new dishes. Finally, New Horizons 2.0 introduces several quality-of-life improvements, including the ability to establish ordinances. You can make the residents get up at the time of the day you're active in the game, for example, or reduce weeds' growing rate. The update also allows you to keep more items by giving you a bigger home storage and storage sheds you can place around your island. 

In addition to the free update, Nintendo announced last month that it's releasing a Happy Home Paradise paid DLC that'll let you design vacation homes for characters on November 5th. That one isn't available yet, but it'll set you back $25 when it comes out tomorrow. 

'Metroid Dread' reminded me why Metroid is an essential series

 

Nintendo

Nintendo occasionally milks some of its big franchises, but Metroid is generally not one of them. In fact, Metroid Dread is the first all-new game in the series since the divisive Metroid: Other M arrived in 2010. As the fifth mainline, side-scrolling game in the series, Dread has a lot to live up to. And while it’s not a total reinvention of the franchise, like Metroid Prime was 19 years ago, it also does a great job of avoiding the pitfall of feeling like a retread, an issue that occasionally plagues Nintendo’s other flagship franchises.

If you’ve played any of the previous side-scrolling Metroid games, Dread will be familiar. As usual, Samus Aran loses all her powers and needs to escape an underworld maze, fighting baddies and retrieving power-ups that let you explore new sections (or old parts of the map you couldn’t get through before).

That’s a well-trodden path, but Nintendo flipped things this time with the E.M.M.I. encounters, terrifying robotic enemies that stalk you through specific parts of the map. They can’t be killed until you explore their area to find a weapon power-up that puts you on equal footing. At first, I was worried that these encounters would be too frequent, or too hard to escape, but developer MercurySteam did an excellent job balancing out the E.M.M.I. areas. Escaping from the dreaded robots by leaving the zones they patrol isn’t too tough, and you don’t have to spend so long in their areas that the whole game devolves into stealth tension.

On the other hand, if you get caught by an E.M.M.I., that’s pretty much it. You have one chance to block their lethal attack, and I’ve only done it right once. I’ve probably gotten caught several dozen times and have never made it out alive. Fortunately, the game just resets you to the door entering the E.M.M.I. zone if you fail, so you won’t lose much progress.

Nintendo

Meanwhile, I’ve had a blast exploring the dank tunnels and caverns that make up the world of Dread. As with most Nintendo games, the atmosphere and art style are top-notch, even if Dread doesn’t hold a candle to the more technologically advanced titles on the Xbox Series X or PS5. When I play a game that is this well-designed and thoughtful about what it does with the technology available to it, I don’t worry about counting pixels. That said, it also looks extremely impressive docked to my 4K TV.

Most of the gameplay hallmarks of Metroid titles are here, including power-ups like charged shots, the morph ball, the missile cannon and plenty of other returning favorites. But there’s enough new here, like the grapple beam and screw attack, to keep the game feeling fresh.

Maybe for people who have obsessively played the Metroid series before, Dread will feel like more of a retread. But while I’m familiar with the core components of these games, the first-person Metroid Prime is the game I know the best — I never beat the original game, or the highly-regarded Super Metroid on the Super NES. If you’re like me, don’t let that stop you from trying Metroid Dread. There’s a reason so-called Metroidvania games are still popular. 

And if you haven’t tried one before, getting the newest installment in the series that helped define the genre is a great way to get your feet wet. Most importantly, it doesn’t feel like MercurySteam and Nintendo just checked the boxes for this game. Indeed, the skill that MercurySteam brought to Samus Returns (a remake of 1991’s Metroid II: Return of Samus for the Game Boy) is on display here; Nintendo definitely picked the right developer to make the first mainline Metroid game since 2002. It’s an inspired addition to a series that already has an impressive legacy. Just don’t get cocky — run like hell if an E.M.M.I. tracks you down.

'Sociable Soccer' comes to PC and consoles in spring 2022

 

Tower Studios/Kiss Publishing Limited

It took several years, but the Sensible Soccer sequel is finally close to launching on PCs and consoles. Tower Studios and KPL have revealed that Sociable Soccer will reach PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox Series X/S and Steam in the second quarter (aka spring) of 2022. The developer isn't yet ready to show the game in action, but it's promising improved gameplay, sharper graphics and better matchmaking than the Apple Arcade version you see here.

If you bought the Early Access release on Steam in 2017, you won't have to pay again. Tower is promising a new code when Sociable Soccer is available through Valve's store.

As you'd expect, Sociable Soccer is practically the antithesis of 'realistic' soccer games like FIFA 22. It's meant to be fast, easy to grasp and whimsical. You can send emojis to your rival, for starters. It won't appeal to diehards who demand real teams and players, but it might fit the bill if you're looking for a quick footie fix.

'League of Legends' champion Jinx arrives in 'Fortnite'

 

'League of Legends' champion Jinx in 'Fortnite' Epic Games

Game marketing is creating more strange bedfellows. Epic Games is adding League of Legends champion Jinx to Fortnite today (November 4th) at 8PM Eastern, just ahead of her debut in the Netflix series Arcane on November 6th. She'll be available in the battle royale shooter's Item Shop alongside themed gear like a pickaxe, spray, Back Bling, a lobby soundtrack and loading screens.

It's not a one-way partnership, either. Riot Games is bringing League of Legends, Runeterra, Teamfight Tactics and Valorant to the Epic Games Store. This won't matter much if you're a fan (you probably downloaded those games a long time ago), but it might expose some Fortnite players to Riot's titles.

Epic has been rapidly expanding its gaming-themed expansions in recent months. It just added two Resident Evil heroes in late October, and previous updates have added characters from the likes of God of War, Halo and Street Fighter. However, the League of Legends update is unique as a tie-in for a streaming TV series — it's about as convenient a promotional tool as you can get.