Gaming in New Zealand. Reviews, Walkthroughs, News

Rare has marked Earth Day by showing off its latest building, a sustainable workplace called Barn X.

UPDATE: It has now been revealed the new Lord of the Rings movie has a working title of Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, and will be directed by Andy Serkis

Despite being hugely allergic to horses - my eyes once swelled up so severely at a local fair my wife had to guide me home - I continue to be absolutely spellbound by the animals. I’ve been rewatching The Lord of the Rings this week and I’ve been genuinely gripped by watching professionally trained horses galloping across the vistas of New Zealand, rearing up against tennis balls representing CGI orcs and charging down the incredibly steep slope next to Helm’s Deep. Not to mention my love of just riding endlessly in a direction on horseback in Red Dead Redemption 2 and Assassin's Creed Odyssey (helped by Kassandra's wonderful command of "Phobos!" to summon her mount).

Pokemon is a multimedia juggernaut and its the various forms it comes in that have made it so massively popular for more than two and a half decades. However, you would think, considering how important an arm of the Pokemon machine it is, that the anime would be easier to watch from start to finish. With its 25 seasons shared between multiple streaming platforms, watching 'em all not only requires thorough research, but it can get pretty expensive too. Hoopla has entered the anime fray to help Pokemon fans on both those counts as the free service is now carrying eight seasons of the show.

The long-delayed Star Wars: Hunters finally has a new release date. Back in 2021, Lucasfilm Games and developer Zynga announced Star Wars: Hunters, a squad-based arena shooter set after the fall of the Galactic Empire at the end of the original Star Wars movie trilogy. Players can choose from characters like Rieve, a dark-side-empowered warrior, a lightsaber-wielding droid called J-3DI, and even Utooni, a pair of junk-scavenging Jawas stacked together. Each of these characters has their own unique abilities, which will come in handy during frantic battles across several classic Star Wars locations.

Helldivers 2 players are celebrating a dramatic 11th-hour victory that saw hundreds of thousands of the digital soldiers unite to defend 10 worlds from the undemocratic grip of advancing bug-like Terminids, and soulless Automatons. However, some members of the community have found themselves wondering whether Arrowhead’s game master Joel may have stacked the odds in their favor to stave off defeat.

It's been a busy week in WoW and here's Blizzard's recap of the awesome events that happened this last week.

As we step up to recognise Earth Day 2024 – the 50-year-old global event that seeks to highlight issues affecting our climate, oceans, and planetary peace – not-for-profit organisation PlanetPlay wants to help game studios and players make meaningful change.

New details about Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game have been revealed.

Catch up on all the latest World of Warcraft news from the last week—take a tour through The War Within in the WoWCast developer chat, pre-purchase the World of Warcraft®: The War Within™ 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition, get a closer look at the new Warbands System, and more! 

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is set to introduce a bunch of new characters to the long-running franchise, from Owen Teague's primate protagonist Noa to Freya Allan's human Mae. It'll also welcome a new villain, too: Kevin Durand's Proximus Caesar. 

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Cosmic horror fishing game Dredge is getting a live-action film adaptation.

Dredge, the 2023 indie Lovecraftian fishing title from Black Salt Games that took the gaming world by storm, is set to become the next live-action Hollywood adaptation. The New Zealand-based game company is teaming up with production company Story Kitchen to bring the creepy game to life.

At GDC 2024, New Zealand-based developer A44 (known for 2018's Ashen) provided an updated look at Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, its upcoming action RPG that sits between God of War and a lite, more accessible version of the Soulslike genre.

Hey, do you like going shoulder-to-shoulder with a pal to battle in same-screen local multiplayer games? Follow-up question: do you enjoy deceiving your pal while trying to uncover their own deceit? Last question: do you want to throw knives at your pal's face? If so, check out Neon Knives, a fun free same-screen game for two players where you must both try to blend into a crowd of NPCs while identifying and assassinating your mate.

Flintlock: Siege of Dawn is an upcoming PS5 action RPG from New Zealand developer A44 Games, best known for its 2018 Souls-Like, Ashen. Today, we were treated to an extended gameplay overview of the studio's next game, giving us our best look yet, with commentary from creative director Simon Dasan.

Dredge, the sinister fishing game from Black Salt Games and publisher Team 17, has donated $100,000 New Zealand dollars to the New Zealand Whale and Dolphin Trust as it celebrates its first anniversary and teases that there's more to come for the wonderful indie horror game.

Love crossword puzzles but don’t have all day to sit and solve a full-sized puzzle in your daily newspaper? That’s what The Mini is for!

Bunny Haven – Cute Café is surely the cutest game dropping on Android this month! Just as you’re starting to munch on those Easter chocolates, Runaway dropped this cosy garden fun simulation to make the holiday even better.

If you follow video games, you probably know what a “Soulslike” is at this point. The term, used to describe action RPGs that draw heavy inspiration from punishing titles like Dark Souls, has spawned a popular subgenre whose influence can be seen in games big and small. Now, we may be getting a new mutation of that genre thanks toFlintlock: The Siege of Dawn.

During a lengthy developer update livestream, Grinding Gear Games announced some Path of Exile 2 news. To start with, the studio based in New Zealand announced a delay in the beta test that was previously slated for June. While the content is in place, the team disclosed the need for more time to properly polish Path of Exile 2. As such, the beta test will now take place at some point in late 2024. However, it's not just bad news, as an Alpha test will still be conducted in June.

2024’s cadence of major new releases is showing no signs of slowing down, and there’s another flurry of those on the horizon. In that group, however, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is probably the game that most seem to have their eye on, and as excitement surrounding its imminent launch continues to build, Capcom has shared details on the game’s exact global launch timings across all platforms.

Gamers worldwide have been awaiting titles like , for nearly a decade. Capcom's new action-adventure RPG, has received rave reviews, bolstering the already impressive hype surrounding the game. But the success of the title arrives with a huge cost — literally.

Fortnite is packed with cosmetics which can be acquired through the in-game store or by progressing through the battle pass. However, it’s not often that Epic Games give away a harvesting tool as stylish as the Midnight Scythe Pickaxe as a bonus for buying V-Bucks.

Mojang has announced a monthly subscription for Minecraft called Marketplace Pass, which gives payers access to «150+ different content packs» from the in-game Marketplace.

The so-called Expansion Pass for Persona 3 Reload is now available to pre-order in regions where it's the 12th March — which means that we now know how much it's going to cost. In New Zealand, for example, it's priced at $56.95, which roughly equates to £30 in the UK and $35 in the US.

Amazon's upcoming TV take on Fallout continues to look incredible, and we appear to be on the precipice of a bold new world in which video game adaptations, like HBOs The Last of Us, don't have to be terrible. Over three minutes, the insanity and «vibe» of the bizarre post-apocalyptic setting are damn-near perfectly captured, and we can't help but get our hopes up for this one.

The Fantastic Four fan art asks what if Marvel's First Family got their own cartoon in the delightfully chaotic style of The Powerpuff Girls.

Microsoft held its second Xbox Partner Preview event on Wednesday.

During the Xbox Partner Showcase, New Zealand-based developer RiffRaff Games (led by Joshua Boggs, known for the puzzle game FRAME) announced Sleight of Hand, a neo-noir stealth sim game.

Playstack says its roguelike card game Balatro has run into a ratings problem resulting in it being "temporarily removed from sale on a number of digital stores in some countries on console platforms."

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is almost here, and players are too excited to wait any longer. Thankfully, if you have an extra email you won’t need to wait as long as everyone else. We’re going to Journey through Midgar and figure out how to play Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth early.

If you thought the days of porting Doom onto every possible device known to humanity were over, think again. Now, get ready to slay demons while also maintaining a neat yard. You may be a lover of violent FPS games, but you’re also a responsible adult now.

It would be difficult to pinpoint the moment the smartphone took control of my life. Like Japanese knotweed, it grew surreptitiously in my mental garden, gradually throttling other forms of attention until it had insinuated itself into almost every activity. I check my screen time rarely, but I remember a sense of vague discomfort a few years ago on seeing that it had passed a daily average of six hours. Recently, it stood at more than 11.

 Tinder is expanding its identity verification program at a time when artificial intelligence (AI) can make it hard to tell who's real and crime is rising on dating apps. Tinder, the world's most popular dating platform, is rolling out the system in the US, the UK, Brazil and Mexico over the coming weeks and months. It's already been testing the feature in Australia and New Zealand, where people who had been verified saw a 67% increase in matches compared to those who didn't, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. 

Google's AI chatbot Bard has now been renamed Gemini, which matches the name of its new multimodal model. In the process Gemini itself has now received new capabilities for users to find all the required AI features in one place. With Google Gemini, users can now generate images with text prompts. Gemini, which is powered by Imagen 2 model, enables the tool to generate high-quality images that match the user's prompt. Just like any other AI image generation tool, Gemini also requires detailed prompts to generate AI images. Know how to use Google Gemini for AI image generation.

It’s a long, cold wait between seasons of Taskmaster, especially after an entry as stellar as series 16. Luckily, the hilarious British panel show has kept its growing international audience entertained between seasons by uploading episodes of one of its many licensed spinoff series to its YouTube channel. Taskmaster New Zealand’s first two seasons are now onthe official Taskmaster YouTube account, including the incredible season 2, which originally aired in 2021 and is one of the best seasons of any version of Taskmaster. If you consider yourself a Taskmaster fan, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Twitch streamer Jinnytty, widely recognized for her engaging content, experienced a moment of surprise when one of her viewers donated a significant sum of $10,000. However, the surprise didn't end there; the Twitch donation came with a unique condition: the funds were to be exclusively allocated for a live-streamed cruise experience.

Things aren’t looking good for Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. With the shadow of failed live-service superhero games looming over it, Suicide Squad needed an early victory to prove itself to fans and demonstrate that it’s not like the games that came before it.

Developer Rocksteady Studios has taken its new live-service multiplayer shooter set in the Batman: Arkham universe, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice Leauge, offline after Early Access players hit a «story completion» bug. While the standard edition of the game doesn't hit PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC until this Friday, February 2, players who purchase the more expensive Deluxe Edition, which costs $99.99 compared to the Standard Edition's $69.99 price tag, can jump in three days early. 

Like many modern releases, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League put its short early access period behind a paywall. While the game fully launches on February 2, anyone who paid for the Deluxe Edition is meant to be able to play 72 hours early. However, that is not working in practice.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is out now - as long as you opted into its early access release and you live in New Zealand where it's now January 30 - but it's already been pulled offline due to a huge bug with story progression.

Rocksteady Studios has been forced to pull Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League offline just one hour into its Deluxe Edition's early access launch due to a bug that automatically completed players' games.

Consulting firm Nordicity is well-versed on the subject of tax credits for the games industry.

Minecraft's long-in-the-works movie adaptation continues to pick up steam, with the news White Lotus star Jennifer Coolidge has now joined its cast.

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The director of Warner Bros' upcoming Minecraft film adaptation wants to avoid any kind of fan reaction akin to that 'Ugly Sonic' reveal.

Upcoming action RPG Granblue Fantasy: Relink will get a demo for both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. According to Gematsu, publisher Cygames and developer Cygames Osaka announced that a demo will be coming to both platforms tomorrow, January 12. In areas where it is already January 12, like New Zealand, the demo is available now.

A demo for action RPG Granblue Fantasy: Relink will launch for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 on January 12, publisher Cygames and developer Cygames Osaka announced. It is available now in regions where it is already January 12, such as New Zealand (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4).

Microsoft Corp. executive Dee Templeton has joined OpenAI's board as a nonvoting observer, according to a person familiar with the matter, as part of a broader boardroom overhaul following the brief ouster of the startup's chief executive officer (CEO) Sam Altman. Templeton has worked at Microsoft for more than 25 years and is the company's vice president for technology and research partnerships and operations, according to her LinkedIn profile. She has already begun attending board meetings, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private matters. OpenAI and Microsoft declined to comment. 

Looks like Jack Black just can't keep away from those videogame movie adaptations, because he's the latest star to be cast in the live action Minecraft movie.

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Actor Jack Black has joined the cast of Warner Bros and Legendary's "Minecraft", a live-action movie based on the popular video game from the studio. Black joins "Aquaman" star Jason Momoa as well as actors Emma Myers and Danielle Brooks in the project, which will be directed by Jared Hess of ”Napoleon Dynamite” fame, reported entertainment news outlet Variety.

Jack Black has joined the cast of the in-development live-action Minecraft movie. Rumors about this casting popped up yesterday, January 2, with Deadline reporting that Black would play Steve (the Minecraft guy with the teal shirt and blue pants). Notably, Black starred as the villainous Bowser in The Super Mario Bros. Movie last year, giving us the instant-classic «Peaches,» too. 

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 “I mean, sometimes you get these like, late civilization vibes,” said Elon Musk, Tesla's chief executive officer, at a recent event for the Cybertruck, his piece of absurdist automotive art. “The apocalypse could come along at any moment. And here at Tesla, we have the finest in apocalypse technology.” There's a lot of this end-of-days talk around right now. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, there were stories about Silicon Valley billionaires prepping for Armageddon by purchasing bunkers in New Zealand. But this year I've been hearing and reading more and more of it, especially linked to artificial intelligence.

Path of Exile 2's game director Jonathan Rogers is closing out 2023 with a livestreamed interview with one of Path of Exile's major content creators, Kripparrian, later today. 

Nothing seems to foreshadow the end of civilization in the popular imagination more completely than a toilet roll shortage. 

In Flesh and Blood’s latest expansion, Heavy Hitters, the trading card game introduces a brand-new hero named Betsy. Set against the backdrop of a fight club known as Rathe’s Death Match Arena, few competitors elicit the kind of fear and respect that she does. While other fighters have come and gone over the years, Betsy was born to this life — raised in the arena’s shadows. She embodies the determination, hedonism, and excitement that make its gladiatorial spectacle the only place where combatants can be guaranteed to win big or lose it all. Those odds are an excellent match for her signature mechanic, called wager, which invites players to bet against their opponents for increasingly complex and rewarding combat encounters.

PlayStation 5 has surpassed 50 million units sold through to consumers, manufacturer Sony Interactive Entertainment announced.

The New Zealand games industry generated NZD $434.4 million ($270.9 million) in the financial year ended March 2023, according to a survey by the New Zealand Game Developers Association.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has been crowned IGN's Best Game of 2023, narrowly beating the much-celebrated role-playing game Baldur's Gate 3. Despite missing out on the main honor, Larian's RPG still walked away with three awards, namely Best PC Game, Beyond's Best PlayStation Game and, unsurprisingly, Best RPG. It equalled the number of awards picked up by Tears of the Kingdom, which was crowned Best Open-World Game and NVC's Best Nintendo Game in addition to Best Game of the year.

Last month Path of Exile 2 was selected as the #9 Most Wanted game in PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted. The sequel to the long-running ARPG Path of Exile is coming soon, and with work on Path of Exile 2 now well underway, we flew to New Zealand to talk to developers at Grinding Gear Games about how they're approaching a game that needs to be firmly rooted in the original while offering both new players and veterans something fresh and different.

Free-to-play 3D action game One Punch Man: World will launch for PC, iOS via App Store, and Android via Google Play on January 31, 2024 in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, and on February 1, 2024 in Europe, Middle East, and North Africa, publishers Crunchyroll Games and A Plus Japan announced with developer T3 Studio.

By Ash Parrish, a reporter who has covered the business, culture, and communities of video games for seven years. Previously, she worked at Kotaku.

Starting from tomorrow through January 5, 2024, we’re celebrating the holiday season with a month full of activities for our PlayStation community. As part of the PlayStation Plus Season of Play, PlayStation Plus members can redeem free avatars for PS5 and PS4 consoles, join eSports tournaments, earn points on PlayStation Stars and enter a competition for your chance to win amazing prizes. Activities for those who are not PlayStation Plus members are available as well.

Sony has announced that, starting on the 5th December, select Crunchyroll shows will be added to Sony Pictures Core — the movie-based service that PS Plus Premium subscribers have access to. For those who might now know, signing up to the most expensive PS Plus tier gets you access to a fairly sizeable catalog of films at no extra cost — and now some Crunchyroll anime is being thrown into the deal.

Starting from tomorrow through January 5, 2024, we’re celebrating the holiday season with a month full of activities for our PlayStation community. As part of the PlayStation Plus Season of Play, PlayStation Plus members can redeem free avatars for PS5 and PS4 consoles, join eSports tournaments, earn points on PlayStation Stars, save on PlayStation Gear merchandise, and enter a competition for your chance to win amazing prizes. Activities for those who are not PlayStation Plus members are available as well.

The Minecraft movie is adding more stars to its lineup. Peacemaker star Danielle Brooks, according to Deadline, has been cast in the live-action adaptation in an unknown role, as well as Sebastian Eugene Hansen.

Soulslike action RPG Flintlock: The Siege Dawn officially announced a new release window at yesterday's PC Gaming Show event. The game, originally scheduled to launch in 2022, was then moved to 2023 and then 2024. It'll now be released next Summer on PC (on Steam and Epic Games Store), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S|X.

Apple released a new short film yesterday, November 30, which narrates a heartwarming tale of a little girl and a mythical creature going on an adventurous journey through a forest and other landscapes to find her lost voice. It is directed by Taika Waititi of the Jojo Rabbit and Thor: Love and Thunder fame. The story works as an allegory to highlight the struggles of people with speech disability, and the climax brings it all together in a typical Waititi fashion. The ad highlights how the new iOS 17 feature Personal Voice on iPhones can help people through this disability.

As part of today's livestream, Grinding Gear Games revealed one of the new classes coming to Path of Exile 2 next year, the Mercenary. The class uses a crossbow and incorporates lessons learned from shooters, including adding WASD movement to the ARPG.

One of the appeals of Stardew Valley is its chill soundtrack. Accompanying players while they farm crops, talk to neighbors, and go exploring, the musical score is such an integral part of the game that a Festival of Seasons tour was announced last month. However, demand has been so high that the developer has added in more dates.

Stardew Valley fans were excited when creator Concerned Ape announced Festival of Seasons, the first-ever live concert tour featuring music from the game. The Festival of Seasons tour will bring live orchestra performances from Stardew Valley’s soundtrack to several cities around the world, offering fans another exciting way to engage with the cozy gaming sensation.

Fans of the UK-based comedy panel show Taskmaster will have just finished up watching series 16. The program itself just seems to go from strength to strength, so it’s not surprising that it’s being turned into an official video game. Specifically, a VR game.

Unity are chopping 265 jobs - around 3.8% of their global workforce - and ending an agreement with digital effects company Wētā FX as part of a company "reset", following an awful year for the game engine provider. Unity also plan to close offices in 14 locations, including Singapore and Berlin, and cut costs at offices in San Francisco and Bellevue, Washington.

Valve boss Gabe Newell is headed to court. A court order filed on November 16 (via Gamesindustry.biz) says Newell is required to testify in person in the ongoing antitrust lawsuit between Wolfire Games and Valve so the plaintiffs in the case can «adequately assess» his credibility.

Yesterday, a massive sunspot spanning 200,000 kilometers containing as many as 12 dark cores was reported on the Sun. As per information from the NASA Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO), there was a high chance that it could explode at any moment, and that is exactly what happened just an hour ago. An M-class solar flare was seen erupting on the sunspot, whose extreme ultraviolet radiation sparked a short-wave radio blackout on the Earth. While NASA has not been able to confirm the presence of any Earth-bound coronal mass ejection (CME), this information should be revealed in a few hours' time.

Apple's suite of products has several health and fitness features that can save your life. There have been numerous instances of the Apple Watch saving the life of its wearer by alerting them of health abnormalities. But it isn't just the Apple Watch that can become a rescuer in dire circumstances. Perhaps the most crucial of all the features on the iPhone is the Emergency SOS via satellite. Introduced with the iPhone 14 last year, the latest iPhone 15 also comes equipped with this life-saving feature. Know all about the Emergency SOS via satellite feature on the iPhone 15, and how it works.