Emulation is a huge draw for Valve's handheld console, it's just been an open secret until now
NEWS THIS WEEK
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SIFTER is produced by Nicholas Kennedy, Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Daniel Ang & Adam Christou. Mitch Loh is Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer. Thanks to Omny Studio for their support of SIFTER.
FIONA: Hi I’m Fiona Bartholomaeus
MITCH: and I'm Mitch Loh,
FIONA: Welcome to Walkthrough, SIFTER’s weekly recap on the biggest news in video games.
MITCH: This week a final fantasy seven spin off is shutting down, Valve “accidentally” in quotation marks shows off emulators on the steam deck and a Silent Hill 2 remake is confirmed.
FIONA: Here is the news for Sunday 16th of October. Let’s go
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FIONA: Valve said the quiet bit out loud by showing off a Nintendo Switch Emulator in their latest Steam Deck promo video.
Eagle-eyed viewers spotted an icon for Yuzu, an open-source emulator for Switch titles, in a recent trailer.
An updated version of the video was uploaded shortly after, but some saw it as acknowledgement of the fact that emulating games is extremely popular on the handheld.
As part of this announcement Valve ditched the pre-order system for purchases, with anyone able to buy one straight away…that is if you’re in the US…there is still no way to buy a steam deck in Australia yet.
Come on Valve seriously.
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MITCH: A long rumoured horror game remake has seemingly been confirmed this week.
Christophe Gans who directed the Silent Hill film said in an interview that developers Bloober Team were working with Konami specifically on Silent Hill 2 .
It’s not the only upcoming Silent Hill game, according to Gans the “Silent Team” have a number of projects in the works.
FIONA: It’s pretty unlikely Hideo Kojima will come back to the franchise after P.T., but hey we can hope.
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FIONA: Activision Blizzard have confirmed that players will need to register their mobile phone numbers in order to play the upcoming Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2.
Last week Overwatch 2 launched with the same requirement, and was met with a lot of push back from players. But Activision Blizzard are doubling down and sticking to the new model which is likely a company-wide initiative.
We’ll see how this lasts.
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MITCH: Sticking with Activision-Blizzard, the rocky launch for Overwatch 2 continues, with a range of bugs and questionable design decisions
Console players have found themselves in a lose-lose situation when in crossplay queues with PC players, with their controller aim-assist disabled.
Not only that, but the characters Bastion and Torbjorn have had to be temporarily disabled from play - due to fundamental bugs that made their characters broken in competitive matches.
While disabling these characters, Blizzard accidentally unleashed a new bug onto many players who suddenly found a large portion of their hero roster disabled and unable to be selected for a couple of days.
And a terrible bug has sorted highly ranked competitive players into some of the lowest tiers and they were stuck there - unable to progress. A new patch has fixed the issue and now players should once again be able to rank up.
FIONA: to smooth things over with players - Overwatch 2 will be giving away a free reaper skin, some extra collectibles and activating double battle pass EXP weekends over the next fortnight.
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FIONA: Square Enix has announced that the final circle is closing in on Final Fantasy 7 The First Soldier with servers set to return to the Lifestream in January 2023.
Launched in November ‘21, this battle royale is Square Enix’s latest in an ever growing list of titles exclusive to mobile devices which have been met with “mixed” reception and success.
The publisher has made it very clear that mobile games will remain a core part of their strategy with several titles on the way, including an “episodic” version of Final Fantasy 7… with loot boxes…. and something called Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link, a name which is almost too normal to belong to a Kingdom Hearts game in the 2020’s.
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MITCH: And some fantastic news for Indonesian studios Mojiken and Toge Productions, their upcoming game “A Space for the Unbound” will be released now after all.
The slice of life point and click game was stuck in limbo when Toge and Mojiken had a dispute with their former publisher PQube, which meant the game went into hiatus.
Chorus Worldwide will now publish the game globally on consoles, with details on the release promised soon.
FIONA: As a big fan of Coffee Talk, I’m incredibly happy they’re able to go ahead with the launch of a game they’ve worked hard on and I can’t wait to play.
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FIONA: That’s it for news, here are the games arriving this week.
MITCH: Out on Tuesday is A Plague Tale Requiem, the follow up to 2019’s Plague Tale: Innocence. If you loved the gross, rat–filled world of the original, you’re bound to be into this sequel set six months later. Grab it on PC, Switch, Playstation 5 and Xbox Series S and X on the 18th.
FIONA: Also out on the 18th is Ghostbusters Spirits Unleashed. It’s a multiplayer shooter hunter game where you play as either ghostbusters in first person shooter action, or as ghosts in third person haunting mode. It’s out on PC, Playstation Xbox this Tuesday.
MITCH: The Mario plus Rabbids sequel is here, titled sparks of hope. The first entry was a surprise hit for turn-based strategy fans, and this new entry looks to be delivering more of that quality action. Grab it on Nintendo Switch on the 20th.
FIONA: After seven long years of waiting between batman games, Gotham Knights will hit the shelves this Friday. Players will be able to take control of four of batman's most competent sidekicks to uncover the mystery behind the Court of Owls. It’s out on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S and X on the 21st.
MITCH: And lastly we have New Tales From the Borderlands, a telltale style choice based narrative adventure set in the world of Borderlands. That's out on all platforms this Friday.
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FIONA: This has been Walkthrough by Sifter, my name is Fiona Bartholomaeus,
MITCH: And my name is Mitch Loh, Thank you so much for listening.
FIONA: We know you love listening to SIFTER so if you’d like to support our work, we’ve got a Ko-Fi where you can contribute whatever our work is worth to you. Even a small amount makes a big difference to us. Head to sifter.com.au/support where even a couple of dollars makes a big difference and helps us keep making the shows you love.
MITCH: SIFTER is produced by Nicholas Kennedy, Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus (Bar-tholo-may-US), Daniel Ang, Daniel Hyndes & Adam Christou (CHRIS-TOO). My name is Mitch Loh, I’m the Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer.
FIONA: Thanks to Brian Fairbanks from Salty Dog Sounds for composing the Walkthrough theme tune.
MITCH: Thanks to both Audio Technica Australia and Omny Studio for their support of SIFTER’s three podcasts. Thanks again for listening, we’ll be back with more news next Sunday.
