Insert Coin Kicks Off Its Shenmue Collection With Ryo Hazuki's Tiger Jacket

It’s springtime, and everyone (and every title) is gearing up to celebrate the season. And that includes tactical RPG Blue Archive as well. The game has launched Main Story Vol.5 Hyakkaryouran Episode Chapter 1, ‘Like the Flower That Wishes to Bloom.’ Technically, it’s Blue Archive’s own Cherry Blossom Festival.

We're getting closer and closer to gaming's annual announcement season. Every summer sees the industry turn out for a few weeks of pre-recorded presentations and live broadcasts, all showcasing what's coming up in the near future. With E3 now sadly a thing of the past, the biggest of these events is now Summer Game Fest, created and hosted by Geoff Keighley. Whatever games you enjoy, it sounds like this will be worth watching — a lot of game developers and publishers are taking part.

EA Sports’ long-awaited return to the college football scene will finally be fulfilled on 19th July, when the imaginatively named EA Sports College Football 25 launches on PS5. There’ll be two versions available: the bog-standard edition for $69.99, or the Deluxe Edition for $99.99. The latter comes with all kinds of bells-and-whistles, including three days of early access from 15th July, the Heisman Hopeful Ultimate Team Pack, and 4,200 College Football Points.

NieR director Yoko Taro, NieR series producer Yosuke Saito, and NieR composer Keiichi Okabe are all working on a new game together, it's been confirmed, but nobody's willing to say whether the project is actually a NieR title yet. Speaking to Famitsu, Saito teased: «I'll have something a bit more put-together to say in the not-too-distant future, so please stay tuned. It might be NieR, it might not be NieR. (Laughs.)»

Sugarfun Games is launching the closed beta test of their upcoming adventurous RPG Draconia Saga. The game is now open for pre-registration on the Play Store. The Draconia Saga CBT is slated to kick off on May 16th (tomorrow) across the Southeast Asian region.

The Sims 4 is nothing if not a teetering jenga tower of updates and add-ons and DLC packs, and the latter half of 2024 will be no exception for EA's life sim king. Yesterday saw the release of an update to the base game's swimwear, kicking off the updates teased in the recently-revealed new roadmap, Season Of Love. The roadmap video's vibe is that it and its partner saw you from across the bar and wondered if you'd be interested in joining them, and it kind of weirds me out.

Diablo IV just received its biggest update to date in the form of Diablo 4 Season 4 Loot Reborn, and we already know how long this season will run.

A while back Ubisoft revealed about a billion Assassin's Creed projects. The first of these to leap into the carefully placed haystack of release was Mirage, which I liked. Up next, it seems, is the artist formally known as Assassin's Creed: Codename Red. All we knew about red was that it would be set in feudal Japan, something fans have been clamouring for for literal years. Now we know that it's an AC game set in feudal Japan called Assassin's Creed Shadows, and it's getting an "official cinematic world premiere trailer" debut on YouTube tomorrow, at 5pm BST.

Not all gaming laptop deals are worthwhile purchases, as some devices will have trouble meeting the needs of gamers. If you need a recommendation to avoid any disappointments, we suggest going for the Dell G16 gaming laptop, which is on sale from Dell at $600 off. Instead of $1,900, you’ll have to pay just $1,300 for this dependable machine, but you’ll have to be quick with your purchase because the gaming laptop may be back to its regular price as soon as tomorrow.

Monks appear to have a new glyph option coming in The War Within, the Glyph of Jab causing Tiger Palm to attack with their equipped weapon instead of an unarmed strike! When Monks were originally introduced in Mists of Pandaria, Jab was their basic chi generator, while Tiger Palm instead consumed it. Standing out as the only ability to actually use a non-fist weapon, the Fighting Style passive ability caused Jab to be replaced with a functionally identical yet visually distinct version based on their equipped weapon — Club (mace), Slice (sword), Sever (axe), Pike (polearm), and Clobber (staff) — unsheathing for a quick strike before returning to the Monk's unique unarmed combat stance. This video from 2012 showcases a few of the differing animations, which was quite novel at the time. When the Legion expansion update removed Jab in favor of Tiger Palm, Monks lost this flavor, with only the unarmed strike animation available to it, though various other weapon animation abilities have appeared throughout the years since. In The War Within, Glyph of Jab restores those long lost visuals in an even better way; allowing Monks the option of deciding whether to use unarmed strikes or swing their weapon.

2024 is looking like a packed year for Microsoft, and though the majority of the company’s first-party releases are likely planned for the back half of the year, one of the more prominent ones is not that far away. Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is set to launch in under three weeks’ time, and ahead of its release, starting next week, Microsoft will be kicking its marketing campaign into gear.

I don't tend to do a lot of videogame discount posts because I have a mortal fear of enriching my backlog, but when I see the entire Mass Effect trilogy and all of its expansions for around the price of a slightly more aristocratic sandwich, I am compelled to share. The Legendary Edition of BioWare's ravishing sci-fi RPG series is 90% off on Steam until 13th May. That translates to 6€, $6 or £5 for all three main games and 40 DLC packs, plus bells and whistles such as 4K Ultra HD and beefed-up character models. If you haven't played a Mass Effect game before, this is a pretty good place to start.