Stephen Totilo

10 Minutes Of The Legend Of Zelda: Link’s Awakening On Switch

The Switch remake of 1993’s The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is here at E3, and we’ve capped as much footage of it as we can to show you. It’s beautiful, largely faithful to the source material and just a bit stumbly on the framerate, which they can hopefully smooth out by the game’s September…

Xbox Boss Phil Spencer Says Banjo In Smash Was An Easy Deal To Make

Nintendo’s penultimate E3 announcement today involved the addition of a Microsoft-owned character to Smash Bros. This kind of company crossover between two platform holders might seem extraordinary, but Xbox boss Phil Spencer said that it was actually a pretty easy deal. “The ‘how’ is not actually that interesting,” Spencer told me when I asked him…

Hands-On With The Secret-Filled Luigi’s Mansion 3

I played Luigi’s Mansion 3 at an embargoed Nintendo event on Sunday, where I also spoke to some of the game’s developers. It’s already feeling just as good as the great 2013 Nintendo 3DS game Luigi’s Mansion Dark Moon As with Dark Moon, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is being developed by Vancouver-based Next Level Games with…

We Put Microsoft’s Project xCloud To An Unexpected Test

It’s unclear how accurately one can judge a new game-streaming service at a show like E3 here in Los Angeles, when the value of the service is going to be whether it works in normal situations. E3 ain’t a normal situation. But after Xbox chief Phil Spencer asked me yesterday if I wanted to try,…

Hands-On With Watch Dogs Legion, A Radical Rework With ‘Something To Say’

There is no main character in the new Watch Dogs, no “guy on the box” in this adventure set in post-Brexit London, the game’s creative director, Clint Hocking, said during a behind-closed-doors demonstration of the bold game this past Sunday. Instead of featuring a main character, Watch Dogs Legion enables players to recruit and control…

Gods & Monsters Is A New Ubisoft Game That’s Like Zelda With Greek Mythology

Somehow, the makers of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey are deep in development on a game that looks like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild crossed with Greek myth. It’s a big surprise, especially because the makers of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey just shipped a 100+ hour game last October and now they’ve got a gorgeous…

Whoever owns this truck is really into Xbox! As spotted in a parking lot near Microsoft’s big E3 showcase last night. It could be a promotional truck or one owned by a dedicated fan. We’re not sure.

It Sure Looks Like E3 Around Here

It’s E3 time in Los Angeles, which means that the LA Convention Center and nearby building are covered in giant video game ads—though less-covered than in years past thanks to Sony not being around and some signs not up yet because they are for secret games (!).

Kingdom Hearts III: ReMind DLC Gets A Trailer And A Winter Release Date

E3 news clearly can’t be contained to E3 week or E3 press conferences anymore, as Square Enix just debuted a trailer for a Kingdom Hearts III downloadable add-on during a concert for the franchise’s music in Los Angeles. After some initial panic from fans who couldn’t see the trailer, it popped up on the company’s…

Splatoon 2‘s Final Splatfest Will Be Held In July As The Game’s Post-Release Development Winds Down

When Nintendo released Splatoon 2 for the Nintendo Switch in 2017, the company announced that it would provide Splatfest events for two years. That commitment is nearing its end, with Splatoon’s chief creator Hisashi Nogami announcing in Los Angeles today that the game’s final Splatfest will be held from July 18 through July 21 Splatfests…

The Forgotten Video Game Memories Hiding In Our Brains

The mind is a mysterious vessel full of things we know and, weirdly, things we’ve forgotten. My brain was cruising along as usual on Wednesday until a minute before noon when, suddenly, a Nintendo Switch press release reminded me of a passenger I had long forgotten about. There in my email inbox was a subject…

Sony Is Testing 16-Person Parties For PS4

Party chat on PS4 may be doubling, if an upcoming test by Sony is a success. The platform-holder announced today that users can sign up to beta test 16-person parties, up from the current limit of eight. Over on Xbox One, players can have 12-person parties, a quantity Microsoft bumped up from eight in 2015.…

Ubisoft just revealed the first new endgame specialization class for The Division 2 since launch, adding the mini-gun-toting “gunner” to the three other endgame roles—complete with special skill tree and sticky foam grenade. Players will have to complete in-game tasks to unlock it, unless they have the game’s season pass, in which case those tasks unlock…

The Cool Moments In PlayStation VR’s Blood & Truth Are Far Too Rare

For a few seconds, Blood & Truth, the most-hyped game to hit the PlayStation 4’s virtual reality headset since its October 2016 launch, is as thrilling a VR experience as one could hope for. You’re in the headset holding PlayStation Move controllers as the game’s graphics wrap around you. You’re a soldier back in his…

The Division 2 Replaced A Mystery With An Anticlimax

I don’t play games for rewards. I never minded much that collecting the flags in the first Assassin’s Creed gets you nothing, didn’t mind that grabbing all the stars in Mario 64 lets you talk to Yoshi but not ride him. The journey’s the fun and whatnot. There was, however, this one mission in The…

Overwatch League Commissioner Leaves Blizzard For Epic

The Overwatch League’s founding commissioner, Nate Nanzer, announced on Friday night that he is leaving one of the most-hyped pro esports leagues in the world. The news was first broken by ESPN, which reported that Nanzer is leaving the league for the team-based shooter to join Epic Games to work on competitive Fortnite “This has…

The next episodic expansion for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, The Fate Of Atlantis – Torment Of Hades, will be out June 4, publisher Ubisoft announced today. That’s the fifth of sixth promised paid multi-hour add-ons spanning two three-chapter arcs.

You Can Now Read The Proposed Senate Bill That Would Ban Loot Boxes In Games Kids Like [UPDATE]

As expected, Republican Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri has introduced a bill that would ban the inclusion of “pay-to-win microtransactions and sales of loot boxes in minor-oriented games” as well as to games that publishers believe kids play. It would not affect cosmetic items and also has a long way to go before it could…

There are “currently no plans” to change the difficulty for The Division 2‘s notoriously tough raid, community developer Chris Gansler said in an official developer stream today. “We know the raid is… harder on consoles, but we are happy with where we are at. We’ve seen multiple people clear it.” Currently, 36 teams have beaten…

Question for readers: What do people think of Death’s Gambit? I tinkered with it briefly on my PS4 and wasn’t sure whether to make more time for it. How is it? Have its many patches changed it much?