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Based on the amazing-yet-dark comic run, The Last Ronin isn’t the usual quirky cartoon universe. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, if you didn’t know, started as a much darker, gruesome comic series back in the 1980s. When it became a cartoon, they made it more kid-friendly and made it fuel a massive toy line. Sure, the TMNT have been known for their laid back attitudes, surfer vernacular, and lots of pizza over the years. But, they didn’t start out that way. As mentioned, the original comics were grim, violent, and serious. Cut to nearly 40 years later, the multiverse is full of a wide-assortment of iterations. Back in 2020, The Last Ronin told the story of one of the turtles dealing with loss and vengeance. In the story, only one of the TMNT remains, as nearly everyone else he knew is long gone. He uses all four weapons of the turtles during the story and it’s just a fantastic tale. We won’t spoil the story. Go read it. We’ll wait. It’s worth it. We’ll be here when you get back. In any case, The Last Ronin is getting a video game adaptation. It’s due out for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox One S and X. THQ Nordic dropped a teaser trailer for the project, alongside some details in the description for the game, which lines up with its comic book origin. “Who is the Last Ronin?” The YouTube video’s description asks, “In a future, battle-ravaged New York City, a lone surviving Turtle embarks on a seemingly hopeless mission seeking justice for the family he lost.” The description on the video continues by solidifying exactly what the teaser is for. “From the minds of the creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and based on the best-selling comic book event by Eastman, Waltz, Bishop, Delgado, and the Escorza Brothers: the official video game adaptation of TMNT: The Last Ronin.” The video is in grayscale and shows four candles. Across the 45 second teaser, three of them burn out with various backgrounds as they do. The mystery, for those that didn’t read the comic, is that no one knows who the Last Ronin actually is. The hardcore TMNT fandom already knows and has known for years. But, the mystery is part of the story, so they keep it intact for those that are learning of this for the first time. Black Forest Games is developing the game, who is best known for the remakes for Destroy All Humans and its sequel.

Starfield is one of the most highly anticipated games in years and you can pre-load it right now. 2023 is shaping up to be one of the best years ever in the gaming industry. The next big game, Starfield, arrives on September 6, however, you can pre-load it beginning today, August 17th. We will show you how to go through the process and discuss the different versions and what they will include. When you pre-load a game, you are downloading it before it is available to play. When a highly anticipated game is released, the servers can run slow due to millions of people trying to download the game simultaneously. If you pre-load the game though, it is available to play on the release date with no additional wait. How to pre-load Starfield on PC and Xbox Series X|S Starfield is a free download on Xbox and PC with your Game Pass membership. Remember that if you are playing on PC, you must download the Game Pass version from the Microsoft Store, not Steam. To pre-load Starfield on PC, do the following: Open up the Microsoft Store App (or click here) Search for "Starfield" Click on Starfield Standard Edition Click the button that says "Pre-install Included with Game Pass" Once you do that, you are good to go. Sit back and let it download. If you are on Xbox, boot up your console and do the following: From the home menu, hit the "Y" button Search for "Starfield" Go to Starfield Standard Edition Click the button that says "Pre-Install All Coming Sep. 5" You should now be all set up, and Starfield should download for you automatically once it becomes available. This pre-load feature is especially useful if you live in an area with limited internet where downloading a game that is 125GB might take a while. What are the different versions and how can I play Starfield early? The standard version of Starfield will arrive on September 6th. However, you can play almost a week early. If you want to pay to upgrade to the Starfield Premium Edition, you can play the game as early as August 31, 2023. In addition to the base game, you would also receive the following: Shattered Space Story Expansion (when it is released) Early Access Constellation Skin Pack: Equinox Laser Rifle, Spacesuit, Helmet and Boost Pack Access to the Starfield Digital Artbook & Original Soundtrack You can upgrade to this version for $31.49 if you are a Game Pass member. If you are not a Game Pass member and want to buy the package outright, it will cost $99.99. The price disparity is because Game Pass members don't have to pay for the base game, which is why that option is almost $70 cheaper. If you want to just purchase the base game for now, you can also do that for $69.99. Then, later on, if the expansion pack looks interesting, you can purchase the premium edition upgrade for $34.99. Suppose you are someone who likes to collect physical items. In that case, you can purchase the Starfield Premium Edition Upgrade for Xbox Series X at stores like Best Buy and Amazon. If you choose this route, you will get everything that you do with the digital version with the additional bonus of receiving a nice-looking Starfield Steelbook. There is also a bigger Starfield: Constellation Edition that includes everything in the Premium Edition Upgrade, plus a nice Chronomark watch, alongside a case for the watch. But, good luck getting your hands on it, as it's sold out pretty much across the board. What is Starfield? Starfield is the first new universe from Bethesda in over 25 years. It is set in 2330 when humanity explores beyond our solar system. Bethesda’s new adventure is all about you as you create your character, decide your backstory and skills, and build your own spaceship. No one's playthrough will be precisely the same as you have the opportunity to visit more than 1,000 planets in the game. Starfield will allow you to fly and command the ship of your dreams. One minute you could be exploring a fascinating new world. Next, you can take off and fly off into space, getting caught up in a dogfight and even potentially boarding and taking over control from enemy vessels. Who will you choose to be as you explore the universe of Starfield?

Honestly, I’m impressed at just just how accurate it is to the Pokémon games Listen, I can’t hope to ever fully understand modern sports. The last time I followed anything about basketball was when I played NBA Street for the PlayStation 2 (which is still, hands-down, an incredibly fun series to play). But, what I do know is video games and especially Pokémon. Most times when a non-video game company uses a popular game in homage, they “half-ass” it. It’s usually barely a reference, if not entirely infuriatingly inaccurate. The Chicago Bulls, however, clearly have some pro-Pokémon trainers on their marketing staff. Instead of just making a quick infographic or a blog article, they took it one step further with a video. But, that video positions Benny the Bull, their mascot, as the protagonist of a classic Game Boy-era Pokémon game. We’re not talking about some small homage either. This video is full pixel art, designed to resemble the original Pokémon Red and Blue games. The music is just right and just off enough that it feels familiar, but is copyright free. In the video, Benny is roaming around the city, making his way to the United Center, the Bulls’ infamous stadium. Once inside, he walks around the court, going into battle with rival teams’ coaches. For instance, the first battle is against the San Antonio Spurs’ “Coach Pop” (also known as Gregg Popovich). He sends out “Wemby”, or Victor Wembanyama, who is too tall for the screen and is just a pair of legs due to being 7’5 in real life. Each time Benny wins, he’s told when the Bulls will be playing against that particular team. In the middle, he pickles up a Popcorn Bag, parodying and directly quoting when you find Leftovers in Celadon City, originally seen in the Pokémon Gold and Silver games. The best part, a joke that even I understood, is when Schedule Master (The NBA Commissioner Adam Silver), the final boss, sends out “Bron”, a parody of LeBron James, complete with a crown on his head during the battle. There are a few great details to this one. Bron has the audio of the meme where the little kid says “Lebron James” a bunch of times. His level is at 20, to show how many years he’s been playing, which is exactly 20 during this upcoming season. His crown falls off after he’s defeated (spoiler alert, I guess). His sprite and pose are both a direct homage to Giovanni, the final gym leader and head of Team Rocket in Pokémon Red and Blue. After the battle, Benny earns the whole schedule, which flashes quickly on the screen. Then, the game zooms out to see a real-life version of Benny playing a Game Boy Color with Pokémon Red in the back of it, laying atop the United Center. The drone camera zooms out to show how small he is by comparison. It ends with a “To Be Continued”. Prior to the much larger 4-minute video, they dropped a title and New Game (or “New Season”) video with the NBA commissioner Adam Silver taking the place of Professor Oak. The fact that you end the game by facing him feels like a direct reference itself to the fact that there is evidence that players may have been able to face off against Professor Oak at the end of the original games in some cut content. Additionally, all of the Bulls that were shown in the video, including Benny, got their own custom stats screen based on the screens from the original Pokémon games. I’m honestly just super impressed at the detail and research that went into this little video. You can watch the video over on X / Twitter on the Chicago Bulls official account. The official schedule, as expected, did also get an easier-to-read version posted, still in the font and cues from Pokémon.

Remnant II was definitely one of my most anticipated game titles of the year. I put dozens of hours into Remnant: From the Ashes and its DLCs. That game wasn’t without its faults, but it was a lot of fun to play both solo and with friends. Remnant II fixes a lot of the complaints I had with the first game. However, there are weird design choices, minor frustrations, and a few bugs that hold it back from reaching greatness. The narrative behind Remnant II is a simple post-apocalypse survival story. You and a fellow survivor are taken to Ward 13 after a run-in with The Root, a fierce enemy that has taken over Earth. You're introduced to a few people in the camp (including some familiar faces from the first game and DLC), and the World Crystal, which has the power to stop The Root and teleport Ward 13 prisoners to salvation. Your character is equipped with a primary weapon, a sidearm, and a melee weapon. The primary and sidearm can modified to do a multitude of things like healing teammates, unleashing concussive blasts, or even blasting out a tentacle. Your character is also bolstered by an archetype classification that comes with more abilities and perks. I chose the Medic for my primary and then later upgraded as a Handler as my secondary when I was able. The latter gave me have a dog that I could sic on enemies (and who was just an all around good boy). And yes, you can pet the dog. I found the archetypes really easy to use enjoyed the freedom to change them at any time. What I don’t really care for is how the items for a lot of the archetypes are hidden away behind mountains of dialogue or within parts of a world that can kill you if you stay too long. These seemed like unnecessary hoops to jump through. I could also collect trait points, which are upgrades that can increase health, the size of an area of effect attack or healing aura, damage resistance, and other upgrades. Whereas in Remnant: From the Ashes, the trait points were capped at 300, here you can gain only 60. This limits the players abilities, which I don't understand why developers would do. It's great that weapons can be upgraded, but for some reason, armor cannot. My guess for the reason for this is so that players can focus on using a combination of trait points, rings, a necklace, and the relic mods. I liked this choice, as it saved resources for other things like weapon upgrades, consumables, and new archetypes. The developers did a really neat thing this time around with the world building in that it is quite unique for each player. For instance, my friend got to go to a lush jungle world called Yaesha as his first world; I on the other hand went into a cold, poisonous hell-world called N’Erud. When I arrived at Yaesha later in the game, I had different boss encounters, traversed different dungeons, and just experienced different layouts of the world in general. While I adore this aspect of the game, I also kind of hate that someone who might have never played the first game might get thrown into N’Erud and get the same RNG that I did, with tons of pesky bug enemies that seemed like they would never stop spawning, and bosses that were just frustrating to fight mainly because of their arenas. I could see a lot of people quitting at that point if they thought the entire game was like this particular planet. Players can choose to reroll their world progress and keep their current character progression, so if their first world is one they don’t want to do at that time, they can just reroll until they get one they might like without losing any of their gear, items, traits, or archetype levels. One world I had a lot of fun with was Losomn, or as my friends and I called it, “the Bloodborne world." It was filled with yelling villagers trying to stab, burn, slice, or shoot us amid the werewolves, executioners, and ceiling-clinging slimes challenging our progress. The combat in the game felt much smoother than in the first game, and movement felt really responsive and enjoyable overall. During combat the player has to manage a stamina gauge that drains during activities like running or rolling. Thankfully, in Remnant II they went the Elden Ring route and made it to where stamina doesn’t drain when you aren’t in combat. Wonderful. The map system reminded me a bit of Metroid Prime, where you could turn it up and down and see different levels of each area. It also tells if you have already been through a door before and labels all of the undiscovered portions in either red or purple. This really helped with being able to quickly find on the map where I should try and explore next. One drawback was that the performance on PC was pretty lackluster. I have over the recommended specs needed to run the game, but I still had to run it on Low settings with an upscaler enabled just to get a decently steady 60 frames per second. I still ran into frame dips, and I have never had these kinds of issues with any new title that I’ve played coming out recently. It just feels really unoptimized. I hope this gets patched very soon. Another issue I had was weird bugs like enemies spawning inside of a wall or in the ground and still being able to hit my character with projectiles or even melee attacks, but I had no way of getting rid of them. My friend also got stuck when trying to use a checkpoint where it told him that he couldn’t use the crystal because “enemies were nearby”, but we had cleared out every single enemy. He just had to jump off a cliff and let me resurrect him at the crystal to fix the bug. Some of the boss features seemed like they were created to frustrate the player more so than reward their skill. For instance, there is a boss fight involving a set of giant cubes that can instantly kill you if they don’t watch for the cubes’ patterns. I liked the concept, but the cubes were so overpowered that the player had nowhere to go many times. It’s just little things like this that feel a bit unfair. So while I really enjoyed my time with Remnant II (and I can’t wait to get all of the archetypes and have them all maxed out), I can say that it does have some rough edges that should be ironed out a bit. Some of them (like optimization) will probably be improved, but others (like the boss fights having some frustrating aspects) might not get addressed because some of those were issues in the first game too. I think that anyone who enjoyed Remnant: From the Ashes should really enjoy this and a lot of newcomers should too. However, if you hated the first game or found it too frustrating, Remnant II probably won’t win you over. Pros: ● Combat and world design feels much better than the first game ● Archetypes are much more fleshed out and add a lot more depth to the gameplay ● Dungeons and worlds being generated differently each time adds replay value ● Lots of fun with friends Cons: ● Some bosses can feel unfair by design ● Archetypes being hidden away feels unnecessary ● Players who found the first game frustrating might not enjoy this one either Score: 7/10 Reviewer played on PC. Remnant II is now available on PC, Playstation 5, and Xbox Series X|S

A love letter to the fans and industry of pro wrestling, WrestleQuest mixes crazy action and insane stories with RPG gameplay. This game is aimed at long-time wrestling fans with nostalgic deep cuts that they will appreciate. It’s an interesting enough idea, but one that produces mixed results. If you enjoy the feel of a classic RPG, you’ll feel right at home with WrestleQuest. The game is built around turned-based combat and players have an opportunity to inflict additional damage with timed button pressing. Sometimes you’re fighting by yourself, sometimes alongside a partner or two. Your job is to get the crowd pumped up and involved with the show, and taunting your opponent riles up the audience. Along the way, you find and store items to recover your health points (HP). Your ability power (AP) is the currency for the “gimmicks” menu—your special moves. With enough AP, you can perform a "South of the Border" Stunner or a "Flying Elbow Drop" with Muchacho Man. In tag-team mode you’ll find inventive maneuvers like "Brooterly Love" and "Toybox Blockbuster." To win, you play a mini game for the pin. It has a meter, and you need to be able to hit the button when the needle is in the green three times. The coolest part of any wresting game are the special moves, and I didn't particularly care for the timed button pressing in turned-based sequences to make those happen. The timing was too fast for me; I think most players will have a hard time pulling off special moves with the ring closing so quickly. The story mode in WrestleQuest is its differentiating feature, and is something wrestling fans will appreciate. It follows two different guys climbing the ranks: Brink Logan comes from a wrestling family and is one half of the "Honest Bucks" tag-team combo with his partner Stag. The other main character is the Muchacho Man, which as you can guess, is modeled after Randy Savage. There is an eclectic cast of characters that you will meet as you ascend the ranks of the wrestling world. Progressing through the game is sort of a mixed bag of pleasure and pain. The mini map needs a lot of work; accuracy is an issue and you can get lost as a result, which is frustrating. Early in the game, I encountered one of the worst mini-games I have played in a long time. Nothing is more frustrating than a platform jumper with poor mechanics—and that’s exactly what this was. If you hold the button down for too long or not long enough, your character doesn't jump correctly, and you risk losing. The whole thing is an exercise in frustration. Also, a word to the wise—save often and have a backup save point. Toward the end of the game, when I lost a match, the game reloaded my last save point. The problem is that it put my character in an arena where I could not leave. It was a game-breaking bug. What I had to do was quit the game and then manually load one of my save files. Fortunately, I only lost about 20 minutes of progress instead of 20+ hours of gameplay. Overall, WrestleQuest is something wrestling fans will truly enjoy from a sentimental perspective. The story overstays its welcome a bit, but I loved the nostalgia in the storyline. You can clearly see the love of wrestling the development team had and their care with the different legends like Macho Man Randy Savage, Ric Flair, Sgt. Slaughter, and more. I love the wrestling nostalgia, but due to playability issues I can’t give it my full recommendation. I hope that a patch or two might resolve these shortcomings down the road. Pros: ● Wrestling fueled nostalgia ● Creative combat system ● Great use of some of the biggest legends in the industry Cons: ● The story could have been told in a more concise manner. ● The timing sections will be too quick for some people. ● Some of the mini-games are an exercise in frustration. ● The mini-map doesn’t work properly at times. Score: 6/10 WrestleQuest is available on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC. The Xbox Series X version was played for this review.

Finding Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3 is relatively easy. She can be found in Act 1 after you have completed the prologue quest “A Nautiloid in Hell”. Once you have made your way to the Emerald Grove, slightly northwest of where you crash land on the beach, you’ll have easy access to her location. Once you rescue the grove from the goblin incursion, you’ll notice Wyll, The Blade of Frontiers, joins the fight. He will end up at the Emerald Grove training young Tieflings for the possible fight ahead. When you chat with Wyll, make sure to ask him to join your group and the conversation will automatically lead to Karlach. The devil he mentions is there to hunt. You will then have the general location of Karlach. The easiest way to find her and recruit her for your party is to leave Wyll at camp. That way there will be no bad blood when you first meet. To be safe, avoid the first objective “The Blade of Frontiers” and continue east down the trail, past the dying Hyenas. They can be avoided by sneaking by and not interacting with any of the downed animals. Otherwise, a long and possibly difficult fight will ensue. Karlach is just across the river. Chat with her and respond positively and offer to help her fight the Paladins of Tyr. There are no negative consequences for dealing with them, as they are pretending to be Paladins and are enemies in disguise. Once you help Karlach with the Paladins, she will happily join your party. She will either stay with your group, or you can send her back to camp. The story between her and Wyll will continue at a later point in the game.

Open Beta for Palia went live last week and Patch 0.166 keeps the ball rolling. This past week, Singularity Six dropped the Open Beta for their upcoming game, Palia. Palia is a delightful MMO cozy game that lets players build their home and farm on a plot of land and then go out and adventure. Anyone familiar with games such as Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, or the like definitely should give this free game a try. But, as it is, it’s still a little rough around the edges due to it being an Open Beta. The good news, however, is that they’re actively patching the game. Less than a week after launch, we’re seeing “Patch 0.166”, which brings some great new additions to the game. The list is pretty long and can be found on their official blog. But, a quick list includes new quests and found items to discover, adjustments to EXP rates, additions to Zeki’s Wondrous Machine and the Premium Store, and (finally) pets. The important thing is that the game is going to constantly get quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes. One qualm that they’re working on is the user interface for housing, for instance, which is getting some new functions like rotating the camera. Sometimes, it’s the small things that matter. Additionally, they’re adding more story quests with this update, with the “The Acceptance Ceremony” quest. Plus, they added “Found Item” quests to the list. As this is a freemium game, they’re offering pets for players that will follow you around as you traverse and farm. Of course, they started with a feline, the Palcat. Palcats come in four colors to start off, which are Sandy (tan/orange), Nocturnal (black/gray), Island (teal/gray), and Snowy (gray/light gray). You can get them by visiting the shop. The Sandy Palcat is available as a stand-alone purchase. But, the other three come with purchasing 3000 Palia Coins, the game’s premium currency. You get all three automatically once you buy the prerequisite amount. For those that already grabbed some Palia Coins, the purchases are retroactively giving you your Palcats. We will be paying close attention to the growth of Palia as it eventually heads towards a full launch. We don’t have an exact date as of yet, but it’s coming to the Nintendo Switch this Holiday 2023 and will likely be a more full launch then. Join their open beta for free right now on PC on Palia’s website.

Larian Studios drops hotfixes, promises over 1000 fixes and tweaks in the first patch. It’s no surprise that Baldur’s Gate 3 is getting a ton of attention lately. The game is fantastic. It even got the honor of one of our sacred 10s here at GameCrate. But, Larian Studios isn’t happy with just success, fame, and glory. They want to make the game even better, somehow. They have already dropped three hotfixes to squash bugs, crashes, and blockers. This has amounted to hundreds of fixes as it is. Swen Vincke, CEO and founder of Larian Studios, took to Twitter/X to talk about the upcoming first official patch. Even though they dropped a ton of hotfixes, the first patch for a game is generally something special to a development studio. For Baldur’s Gate 3, the first patch is all about fixes and tweaks to make an already nearly perfect game even perfect-er. Vincke casually brought up a loose roadmap for Baldur’s Gate 3. Right this moment, they have a hotfix coming (likely for immediate problems to be solved). Then, they have patch 1, then patch 2. He notes that Patch 1 will have over “1000 fixes and tweaks”. Patch 2 is looking to incorporate some requests, likely some quality-of-life enhancements. It was recently mentioned in a recent Post/Tweet from Larian Studios Director of Publishing Michael Douse that they’re working on a way for players to change their look mid-game. Or, as he put it, “Things are being cooked”. It’s also a great time to mention that the PlayStation 5 version of the game isn’t even out yet. On September 6th, when the game hits PS5, players will also benefit from all of the hotfixes, patches, and upgrades that Larian has included by then.

The Grand Theft Auto 6 devs could be looking at a really cool future feature During the pandemic, people watched a lot of streams, played games, and were generally just stuck at home. We all found ways to keep ourselves preoccupied and kill time. But, some Grand Theft Auto 5 fans took it to the next level. Rockstar Games hasn’t always played nice with the modding community. But, the rise of roleplaying in GTA5 may have changed their minds a bit. “Over the past few years,” the official Rockstar Games Newswire post states, “we've watched with excitement as Rockstar’s creative community have found new ways to expand the possibilities of Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2, particularly through the creation of dedicated roleplay servers. As a way to further support those efforts, we recently expanded our policy on mods to officially include those made by the roleplay creative community.” Cfx.re is a modding community that has built a special tool that mods the game to allow multiplayer on private servers. It seems like a small detail, but it had huge implications for those looking to tell stories or play with only their friends and no one else. You see, GTA Online is often chaotic. If a Twitch streamer wants to tell a story, roleplay their character, or just keep things between their pals, there wasn’t really an official solution. You could be in the middle of a story and BAM, you got gunned down by a rando on the server. FiveM (for Grand Theft Auto 5) and RedM (for Red Dead Redemption 2), both made by Cfx.re, have been solid mainstays with fans of the games for years and now they’re both owned by Rockstar Games. “By partnering with the Cfx.re team,” Rockstar’s post continued, “we will help them find new ways to support this incredible community and improve the services they provide to their developers and players.” They promise to share more in the “weeks and months ahead” and left it at that. While the implications are that they could have the technology built directly into future game releases, they’ve left the door open for any possibilities. In the meantime, you can still download FiveM and RedM for your games right now on PC.

A week after PlayStation entered its beta test, Netflix is looking to let gamers play games directly from their TV. Hot off the heels of Sony doing the same thing, Netflix dropped their cloud gaming beta for a “small number” of those in the UK and Canada. It appears that they’ll be adding PC and Mac support within weeks as well. Last week, TechCrunch identified that Netflix quietly dropped a new app for mobile devices that would turn your phone into a controller, aptly called “Netflix Game Controller”. The app store description straight up says “Connect to your TV to play”. It was assumed they were imminently planning to launch their cloud gaming service. Cut to nearly a week later, and the assumptions were correct. This initial test includes two games. Oxenfree is an excellent Netflix Game Studio game from Night School Studios. The other game is a gem-mining arcade-style game called Molehew’s Mining Adventure. They were both likely included to test the capabilities of the service in speed and latency, as well as the power needed to play more advanced games. Players, as suspected last week, use the mobile phone controller app to play these games. Currently, the beta only works on TVs. But, within a few weeks or so, they’re opening up testing on PC and Mac as well, through supported browsers. When that happens, those players will be able to use the keyboard and mouse support. No word if Netflix is going to offer physical keyboard and mouse support on the TV version as well. As mentioned, this is just a small beta test for a limited amount of users within a small part of the global space that uses a small selection of TVs and devices. So, give it time if you weren’t invited yet. The “select devices” that the beta will be compatible with are: Amazon Fire TV Streaming Media Players, Chromecast with Google TV, LG TVs, Nvidia Shield TV, Roku devices and TVs, Samsung Smart TVs, and Walmart ONN. But, more will be added over time. With Xbox already offering cloud gaming, Sony and Netflix are now in a battle to get their platforms available as well. One does wonder if the entire endeavor could turn out to be as fruitless as Google learned with the Stadia. I guess time will tell.

Microsoft is done playing around with trolls and toxicity. Lately, Microsoft has been putting a lot of attention on making its flagship platform a safer place for everyone. They’ve tried various systems in the past. But, they have now officially introduced a new one: The Enforcement Strike System. In their post on the official Xbox blog, they explain that the older system was a little more convoluted and vague. They want people to know exactly what is going on at all times. Depending on your strike total determines how much time you’re suspended from using social features. Users will have the ability to get up to eight strikes, which brings your total suspension to a maximum of 365 days. The good news is that users can appeal the strikes and moderation is apparently done by real people. So, if you get a strike, you can appeal it and get a real response. With the recent addition of voice reporting, it’s easier to prove when something is or isn’t legitimately a strike. Additionally, strikes are on your account for six months before they fall off. It’s interesting to see their breakdown of how many points go into each strike, as well. According to the “Enforcement Stacking: User Journey” chart, it breaks down how it all works. For instance, profanity and cheating both only merit 1 strike point each. Being sexually inappropriate, bullying, and harassment are all 2 strikes each, while full-on hate speech draws on the big boy 3 points of a strike. The crackdown is nice to see. But, only a 3-day suspension for hardcore hate speech feels more like a slap on the wrist. All other instances only merit a single day of suspension. Stacking them is the only way to start amping the consequences up. This may have been done to keep toxic people from abusing the system, just to bully or lock out people from being able to play games. But, the punishments are super light unless you’re a multiple-time offender. I feel like there needs to be more of a balance struck. It’s better than nothing, though.

Sony is coming in strong with cloud streaming and unrivaled resolution. We reported on some future plans that Sony has up their sleeve recently. During their recent PlayStation presentation, they showed off tidbits of software and hardware, such as their mysterious Project Q. But, it was Microsoft’s recent court case against the FTC that displayed Sony’s 2023 holiday lineup. Sony is adding to that list with cloud streaming. PlayStation is slowly rolling out the beta randomly to PSN users. There doesn’t seem to be a specific methodology to who is getting it and when, but people are already talking. The news about Sony’s cloud streaming isn’t surprising. What is surprising, however, is that they’re offering 4K resolution for games. For comparison, not even Xbox Cloud Streaming offers that. The closest approximation is the now-defunct Stadia service, which offered 4K and HDR upscaling from 1080p during its short lifespan. It, however, didn’t actually “run” in 4K. Seriously, there was an entire class-action lawsuit about this exact detail. It was messy. According to users that have already been invited, the beta allows some games to be played in 720p, 1080, 1440p, all the way up to 2160p (AKA 4K). After trying 2160p on God of War: Ragnarok, one user mentioned that they were having “no issues so far”. The picture shown in the post on Resetera by user ArashiGames allows you to choose the max resolution. If your network connection or TV can’t handle the stress, it’ll automatically dumb it down. The good news is that, seemingly, all PlayStation Plus Premium subscribers will get the cloud streaming functionality for free when it is officially out. While not directly mentioned anywhere in people’s discussions about it, there is a possibility that this could have a future tie-in with Project Q, Sony’s upcoming portable system that ties to your PS5.