Gaming in city Taipei. Reviews, Walkthroughs, News

ASUS is expected to be the next major player to enter the AI PC laptop segment utilizing Qualcomm's Snapdragon X CPUs.

As the only British baseball fan on Planet Earth, I had one simple mission when I first arrived in Taipei: to choose a local team to support. Taiwan is infatuated with America’s former favourite pastime, and it’s even dedicated a spot on its $1,000 note to a celebrating squad. After much deliberation, I settled on the Rakuten Monkeys for one rather simple, primitive reason: they’d just signed Korean cheerleader Lee Dahye.

Hardware manufacturer ASUS has announced a new piece of gaming-focused gear called the ROG Mjolnir. Slated to join the ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) line, the Mjolnir appears targeted towards players on the go.

Nine Sols, the highly anticipated new title from Detention dev Red Candle, will launch on 29th May – but only on PC for now. The side-scrolling action game, which is heavily inspired by Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, has been in development for quite some time, and blew past its crowdfunding targets a few years ago.

Rise of the Ronin, the latest tentpole PS5 console exclusive from legendary Japanese developer Team Ninja, has been subject to a colossal marketing push in Asia, where posters and billboards have been spotted around cities such as Taipei for several weeks now. That’s all culminated in an Edo period art exhibition in Huashan 1914 Creative Park – coincidentally, the former home of a Japanese sake manufacturer– where Sony has installed several 19th-century props inspired by the game.

For an event still in its infancy, Taipei-based indie expo G-EIGHT immediately appears accomplished far beyond its years. Its sophomore effort – conducted on the Taipei Expo Park on a sunny weekend in early December – was bustling with enthusiastic attendees, all eager to test drive the latest efforts from local Taiwanese developers, spanning established names like Red Candle through to up-and-coming student projects from freshly minted graduates.

As gacha game developer HoYoverse continues its pursuit of world domination, the developer has effectively rebooted its first gacha giga hit, Honkai Impact 3rd. Already over six years old, this wasn’t the first entry in the Honkai franchise, but it was the one that blew up and catapulted the Chinese company into the mainstream. It’s obviously since gone on to build even bigger titles like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail.

Taipei’s blue-hued Bannan Line is always packed to bursting, as it’s the approximately 26-kilometre MRT line which ferries passengers to key city destinations like Ximen and Taipei Main Station, but it was abuzz with added enthusiasm late last month, as enthused gamers rode the train all the way through to its destination station for the Taipei Game Show.

Fighting and fantasy fans are desperate to see Final Fantasy 7's Tifa in Tekken 8, so much so Tekken boss Katsuhiro Harada acknowledged it.

Roguelike action game Ancient Weapon Holly will launch for PlayStation 5, Switch, and PC via Steam on March 8, followed by PlayStation 4 at a later date, publisher and developer ACQUIRE, and publisher Aniplex announced. It will cost 1,980 yen in Japan. It will support English, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Polish language options. A demo is currently available for PC.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth players will get to experience an all-new storyline when they reach the Costa del Sol segment of the game. With the game releasing in about a month, Square Enix has been revealing new information about Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth to keep fans excited.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was designed for multiple playthroughs, according to the game's co-director.

Clouded Leopard Entertainment will release Ys: Memories of Celceta Kai for PC via Steam with Japanese audio and Traditional Chinese and Korean text this spring, the publisher announced.

Clouded Leopard Entertainment will release The Legend of Heroes: Kai no Kiseki – Farewell O Zemuria in Asia with Japanese audio and Traditional Chinese and Korean text in 2024, the publisher announced.

Clouded Leopard Entertainment will release Ys X: Nordics for PC via Steam with Japanese audio and Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and Korean text on March 14, the publisher announced.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is fast approaching with everything that made the original game a cult classic, including swanky fantasy abilities, janky ragdoll physics, and small-person-climbs-big-monster combat. But to fit all those towering foes into one game, the sequel also introduces a hugely expanded map.

A demo for dungeon exploration and bakery management RPG Aeruta is now available for PC via Steam, publisher Gravity Game Arise and developer FromDawn announced.

Earth Defense Force 6 will launch for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 on March 14 in Asia with English, Korean, and Chinese audio, and English, Korean, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese text support, publisher Clouded Leopard Entertainment announced.

Shueisha Games will publish adventure game OPUS: Prism Peak, the latest entry in the OPUS series by Taiwanese studio SIGONO, the companies announced.

Scaring players has helped put the small team at Red Candle Games on the map. Its first two titles, Detention and Devotion, impressed and terrified fans with frighteningly strong horror chops, but the team is leaving that behind to tackle something completely different in Nine Sols. This side-scrolling action platformer blends sci-fi with Chinese mythology and is Red Candle’s most ambitious project yet. This significant step forward affords an opportunity to look back on the studio’s young history, so we spoke with co-founder Vincent Yang to learn about how a small band of gamers in Taiwan formed one of the industry’s most promising – and, at one time, controversial – indie studios.

Of all the predictions I could have made for 2024, a feature-length movie follow-up to 2020’s chaotic, vivid anime series Great Pretender certainly wasn’t one of them. The 23-episode heist comedy series, directed by Hiro Kaburagi (91 Days, Speed Grapher) and written by screenwriter Ryōta Kosawa, made a splash when it premiered on Netflix, earning its way onto best-of-the-year lists with its colorful characters and striking art direction. After nearly three years of silence, the series is returning with an all-new adventure playing in select American theaters only on Jan. 9 and 10, ahead of the Feb. 23 Japanese premiere.

I don’t want to leap to hyperbole in the first week of the year, but I am quite confident in saying that The Brothers Sun has the best fight scene with men in inflatable dinosaur costumes that I’ve seen in 2024. Sure, it’s the only one I’ve seen in this or any year, and I doubt there will be another anytime soon. But that doesn’t diminish how much it kicks ass. It’s simply great to start the year with a show that capably gives me something I’ve been lacking in television for some time: a series that is just as interested in good goofs as it is killer brawls.

Atelier is one of those niche PlayStation franchises that seems to get new entries annually but rarely makes a splash outside of its core community. That appears to be changing in Asia, however, where Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator – yes, that’s really its name – appears to be blowing up big time.

Brand-new year, brand-new TV! We’re not totally done with last year’s television, though: This Sunday will be the Golden Globe Awards, honoring a lot of the best films and TV shows of 2023 (along with some duds — award shows, what’re you gonna do?). That will be airing at 8 p.m. EST/5 p.m. PST, and will be streaming at the same time it’s on CBS.

This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.

The words affordable and board game table are likely things you never expected to be in the same sentence. Even if you wanted one of the impressive Game Toppers for your standard table, you were still going to spend over 1000 dollars for a 3×5 table. Most tables today are in the range of 2000-3000 dollars, and that’s before you pay to ship a product weighing hundreds of pounds.

Taking inspiration from games like Slay the Spire, Alina of the Arena unleashed its gladiatorial combat on PC in 2022. Now it’s set to launch on consoles later this month.

Old World Lab's Abyss Online celebrated their popularity at Gamescom Singapore with a series of content teasers showing off several choice clips of combat and gathering. The developers were excited to announce the popularity of their game during the convention, captivating attendees with their immersive world rendered in Unreal Engine 5. The team stated in a recent Steam post that they are eager to replicate their success, and plan to conduct live demos and AMAs with gamers around the world, with Taipei being the next stop.

Old World Lab's Abyss Online celebrated their popularity at Gamescom Singapore with a series of content teasers showing off several choice clips of combat and gathering. The developers were excited to announce the popularity of their game during the convention, captivating attendees with their immersive world rendered in Unreal Engine 5. The team stated in a recent Steam post that they are eager to replicate their success, and plan to conduct live demos and AMAs with gamers around the world, with Taipei being the next stop.

Google Maps is one of the most used apps for finding new places and navigating through different locations globally. Now, Google has introduced significant updates and features to the Google Maps app, which may enable users to have an improved user experience and enjoy new features that will simplify navigating routes. These new updates will allow users to experience AI features, explore their surroundings, and navigate the routes easily. Want to know what these features and updates are? Check what these Google Maps updates are all about.

Google Maps is about to get a lot more immersive with the rollout of an AI-enhanced feature that gives you bird's-eye view of your route complete with 3D imagery along the way.

Regular readers will know, perhaps rather unusually, I love trains. I’ve been covering Train Sim World in intimate detail for years now, much to developer Dovetail’s pleasure. (I will get around to reviewing Train Sim World 4 by the way, it’s just the schedule’s been brutal for me this past month. Also, maybe the studio would like to slow down just a touch with the sequels and expansions so I can catch up?)

In the opening hall of the Makuhari Messe this Tokyo Game Show was an enormous, monolithic tribute to HoYoverse, a company fast becoming one of PlayStation’s most important developers. While the juggernaut Chinese studio may not get the same recognition as the likes of Naughty Dog or FromSoftware, its games are absolutely colossal in scale – and to underline our point, the company is registering greater profit margins than the entirety of Sony’s gaming division right now.

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Minisforum has teased its upcoming Mini-ITX PC which supports 55W AMD Dragon Range & Intel Raptor Lake HX CPUs.