Something for the Weekend – 21/10/23

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is headed to Netflix just in time for the holiday season.

Every so often in the course of our irregular series of Gamers Hate Thing posts, I like to chuck in a Gamers Love Thing post just to shake things up - though in this case, Gamers Love the Thing in question partly for not being another Thing they Hate, and the Thing they Love is something they Hated back in 2016. Erm.

Starfield's protagonist is silent, but that wasn't always the case. Sam Coe's voice actor Elias Toufexis has revealed he recorded lines as the voice of the male lead, while Cissy Jones did so as the game's female protagonist.

For the King II takes us on an exciting and deadly journey through Fahrul, about 20 years after the events of the first game. This time, we are contending with the dictator Queen Rosomon and her loyal queensguard as we hop from tile to tile, hoping to stoke the fires of the resistance and take all the loot for ourselves.

Embracer Group’s chief operating officer has confirmed his departure from the company.

The weather in the UK might not have a name this weekend, but it’s still pretty wet and rather blowy out there a moment. So… I’m not going to go out unless I absolutely have to. And I certainly won’t be braving any fireworks displays tomorrow. It’ll be a nice and cosy weekend of gaming for me. How about you?

Black Friday is still a few weeks away, but several retailers have already begun rolling out some excellent deals worth checking out this weekend. For example, our top deal this weekend is the inaugural discount on the Asus ROG Ally, knocking $80 off the speedy handheld PC at Best Buy. Some other noteworthy deals include a pair of Humble bundles, a sizeable discount on the Xbox Elite Series 2 controller, and some personal favorites from my board game library.

Update:  Pulse Explore wireless earbuds, Pulse Elite wireless headset, and additional PlayStation Link USB adapters will be available to pre-order starting Friday, November 24th. Preorders will be available through PlayStation Authorized Dealers and Sony Centres in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam. 

Boxed Super Mario Bros Wonder sales beat those of Spider-Man 2 in the UK last week, thereby overtaking the first spot on the sales chart.

It’s been another miserable week weather-wise, and things haven’t been very cheery in the gaming industry either. This week saw a number of upcoming games being delayed, and the big release of Cities Skylines 2 was marred by performance issues.

The Exynos 2400 is expected to be found in several Galaxy S24 variants sold in several regions, and while Samsung did not divulge the details of its flagship SoC, a recent claim made by the Korean giant’s executives placed the silicon’s GPU ahead of its competitors. However, earlier benchmarks revealed that it still has some catching up to do, and we will discuss those details shortly.

Generative artificial intelligence has become a major discussion point in 2023, but we generally hear about its consumer-focused or business-focused applications. However, generative AI is not just limited to this space as it has made a strong impact in academics and research fields as well. A new report has highlighted that a group of researchers have developed an AI tool that can potentially predict deadly viruses before they can appear. This model can be crucial in predicting COVID-19-like pandemic situations ahead of time, and enable governments and the healthcare industry to be better prepared.