It's another Friday in October, which means there are probably one hundred new games to play released this week. Maybe my memory is betraying me but this feels like the wildest October in video game history, certainly this current generation at least. But you won't hear me complaining (much) about that because the wide variety of releases means there's almost certainly something for everyone.
Willits said he bumped into comedian Jimmy Carr at the airport and they got to talking about games, apparently. "He honestly gave me an idea for a video game. I'm not joking. Such a nice and brilliant guy," Willits said. That's all Willits had to say on the matter, and Carr hasn't apparently discussed his game idea publicly online. Carr, who is known for his crowdwork, said in a popular video that he hasn't played video games since childhood.
This month, I picked up a concerned parent from the waiting room. I walked her to my office and asked how I could help. "My 10-year-old son can't focus on anything. I think it's because of the video games. He won't read because he says it's boring, he won't even play a board game with me. He keeps getting in trouble at school for playing games on his Chromebook in class. The only time he sits still is when he's playing video games."
The Nintendo Entertainment System was released in the United States on 18 October 1985: about a year after I was born, and 40 years ago today. It's as if the company sensed that a sucker who'd spend thousands of dollars on plastic toys and electronic games had just entered the world. Actually, it's as if the company had sensed that an entire generation of fools like me was about to enter the world. Which is true. That was the time to strike.
Obsidian Entertainment returns to the world of its comedy sci-fi RPG, The Outer Worlds, for the second time. Like the first game, The Outer Worlds 2 is set in a world where powerful corporations fight for control of entire planets, and you're just a tiny but important cog in the machine. The sequel tells an entirely new story with its own cast of characters, meaning even players who skipped the first game should get along just fine.
"I am desperate for there to be a third-person action-adventure, Uncharted, Assassin's Creed, that kind of open-world thing," Trachtenberg told IGN. "Concrete Jungle was something that I missed unfortunately. And that was a long time ago. And there's just so much fun to be had game wise, I think, with Predator. I hope it could happen."
"I tell everyone there is no 'correct' ending, there is no 'canon' ending, there is no 'official Sandfall' ending," Svedberg-Yen said. "Both endings are there for a reason; we put them both there for a reason; they were designed in a very particular way. Neither is perfect. Both are heartbreaking in their own ways. Both of them have parts that make you glad, parts that you feel like, 'okay, I want a happy ending for these characters,'
In the music, TV and film industries, streaming has completely upended the business model. Instead of buying albums and films, most of us pay for a few subscriptions depending on what we want to watch, and maybe supplement that with the odd vinyl or special-edition Blu-ray. This has been pretty terrible for musicians, who earn approximately $0.004 per play on Spotify, while Spotify itself made $1bn in profit last year (admittedly after many years of operating losses).
Science-fiction games encompass one of the premier genres in the video game market, and there are dozens of top-notch sci-fi games available to sink your teeth into. The entire sci-fi genre across media is made up of dozens of distinct franchises, and there is certainly some blending between television, movies, and video games. While some of these franchises make for fantastic games, there are also unique sci-fi titles that solely lie in the gaming industry.
As character creators get better, people are making nearly 1:1 recreations of celebrities , characters from other games, and digital versions of themselves . That is normally all well and good, but now players have started recreating Charlie Kirk, the right-wing commentator who was assassinated at Utah Valley University earlier this month, and they're using the basketball game's tattoo options to add, well, another detail to the recreation.
Electronic Arts, maker of video games like "Madden NFL," "Battlefield," and "The Sims," is being acquired for $52.5 billion in what could become the largest-ever buyout funded by private-equity firms. The private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund PIF, and Affinity Partners will pay EA's stockholders $210 per share. The companies value the deal at about $55 billion, including debt. Affinity Partners is run by President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Every day, tens of thousands of people roam through the dystopian universe of DayZ, a popular online game in which players strive to survive a zombie outbreak. Immersing themselves as participants and observers, film-makers Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse and Quentin L'Helgouac'h find strange beauty in this post-apocalyptic world filled with brutality and bloodshed. Their documentary is built entirely around in-game footage, interactions and POV shots, capturing a seemingly endless realm with infinite possibilities.
The heart of Disco Elysium is a murder mystery. You start as a disheveled detective with a savage hangover. Your clothes and memory are missing. Not far beyond your destroyed hotel room, someone is dead. Your investigation will slowly piece things together. But in the real world, a battle over the game's legacy has led fans on an even more mysterious quest.
The iconic skateboarder broke out as a teenage prodigy on the pro circuit with the Bones Brigade, the legendary Powell Peralta team in the early 1980s. By 1999, Hawk etched his name into the history books when he landed his first 900 - two and a half midair spins - at the X Games, a feat that had never been done before, let alone live on television. The moment vaulted the sport firmly into the mainstream, changing it forever.
To play is human. It's how toddlers experience and learn about the world they just entered. It's also how we as adults rewire our brains and learn new things most effectively. In a world in which consumers are flooded with choices, companies are fighting ferociously to capture and maintain the consumers' attention. The business leaders who are successfully steering their organizations in this digital-first world are using a secret weapon that taps into our most human desire to play: video games.
From new places to dine al fresco to amazing animation and and classic film comedies, there is a lot of fun stuff to do and see this weekend, so let's get to it, shall we? (As always, be sure to double check event and venue websites for any last-minute changes in health guidelines or other details.) Meanwhile, if you'd like to have this Weekender lineup delivered to your inbox every Thursday morning for free, just sign up at www.mercurynews.com/newsletters or www.eastbaytimes.com/newsletters.
So what could be the next activity on the cards once you're done building your Batman-themed LEGO sets? A Batman movie, perhaps, or a game themed on the action-packed and secretive life of the Caped Crusader. That wish seems to have materialized with the official LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight game set to be released on major gaming console platforms, including PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
