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Icy North Games is trying to avoid the hand of Fate once again, as the indie video game studio recently announced the second Kickstarter campaign for their open-world MMORPG Past Fate. Their goal for this run is set at $25,000 and ends on August 22nd of this year. Icy North Games is based in (fittingly) Helsinki, Finland, and was established in the summer of 2018. Later that year they released their first game, Dread of Laughter, a first-person survival horror game where you play as Catheryn Barnett as she is being hunted by a serial killer....

Several legislators from the State of Pennsylvania are reintroducing a bill that would levy a 10 percent sales tax to all video games that falls under a mature rating. The original proposal to tax mature games was put to the table several months ago by Rep. Christopher B. Quinn but it eventually died in committee. The politician cited that the apparent link between video games and violence, and recent tragedies such as the Parkland Florida school shooting, are the primary drivers to the bill....

Capcom’s long-running Monster Hunter franchise is about to have a pretty big year in terms of new releases. Monster Hunter Rise is set to launch in a few weeks for the Switch and Monster Hunter Stories 2 is coming a few months after. In order to reveal more information about both titles, Capcom presented a Monster Hunter Digital Event today and there were some significant updates. There was a demo released for Monster Hunter Rise several weeks ago that allowed players to explore one of the game’s five locales, with two quests available to complete....

Monster Hunter Rise is just a month away, and Hori is releasing a special Nintendo Switch controller to celebrate. Many fans are extremely excited about this Nintendo Switch console exclusive, as trailers for Monster Hunter Rise have been building up enthusiasm leading up to the game’s launch. The new Hori controller also adds to that excitement. Hori sells a Split Pad Pro controller for the Nintendo Switch. The design works very much like the Joy-Cons, in that they slide onto each side of the standard Switch console for portable play....

The Juicy Well-done Hammer is a late game weapon in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne that is quite unlike any other weapon. The Monster Hunter series has often had a reputation for some pretty outlandish and unique weapons, but for the most part the weapons in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne were fairly seriously designed. A few of the more silly designs were added into the game post launch and the Well-done Hammer and its Juicy upgrade fit that bill....

There’s a new update for Monster Hunter: World available now that addresses a few of the game’s current issues. Primarily, the patch smooshes a pesky bug that’s causing problems for players attempting to initiate the recently added Siege quest. A new monster, Kulve Taroth, was added to Monster Hunter: World last week, and the requirements to begin the quest are pretty simple. As usual, the quest line first tasks hunters with searching for traces of the monster....

As art forms mature, they journey into deeper and darker places. Just as popular literature grew to include indulgent penny dreadfuls and exploratory works on the human condition, many video games are taking the plunge into the often murky world of morality. Gamers no longer always play the lawful hero—series like BioShock and Mass Effect star flawed, complex characters who are constantly making difficult or damning choices that affect the outcome of the story....

Hope you’re not sick of seeing re-releases of older Star Wars games, because today GOG brings another handful of those games for its customers to enjoy. Earlier this week, the digital games distributor introduced several Star Wars games including, for the first time digitally: Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Star Wars X-Wing Alliance, and Star Wars Galactic Battleground Saga. The slew of Star Wars titles came about as a part of GOG’s new partnership with Disney Interactive (which is proving to be of benefit to everyone), and while the release of the aforementioned games made many happy, the multiplayer components were pretty underwhelming....

What do the Mortal Shell Tarnished Seals actually do? Read on to find out. Mortal Shell throws a lot at you early on. You not only have to come to grips with the combat mechanics, weapons, shells, and more in a relatively short amount of time. The Tarnished Seal abilities are perhaps the easiest to overlook when trying to just focus on surviving, but can be a major advantage if given some attention....

Naraka: Bladepoint was originally sold as a more traditional MMO when it was revealed at 2019’s The Game Awards, but since then developer 24 Entertainment has switched gears, pivoting Naraka: Bladepoint towards the ever-popular battle royale genre. Now, a single map will feature 60 players all battling it out to see who’s best. The rest of the game seems to have been retained, from its extreme parkour to a grappling hook that can get you anywhere in the blink of an eye....

The NBA 2K series is routinely high on the charts for video game sales each year. The massively successful basketball sim is loved by millions, as it allows players the chance to live out their dreams of playing on an NBA team. NBA 2K21 is on the way for next-gen consoles, and it will likely come with new content and utilize the horsepower of the new machines for impressive gameplay. But the series would also be wise to peak into its previous iterations and borrow from some of the fan-favorite features and successful game modes of old....

More details have leaked regarding Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit’s remaster ahead of its official unveiling by EA later today. Any time screenshots, release dates, or even the existence of a previously unrevealed game are leaked, developers must tear their hair out. So begins the search for where exactly the leak from. Who released key details to the outside world, whether that reveal happened by accident or on purpose. EA devs have been left to ponder that about the Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit remaster all summer....

A few years ago, plastic instrument-based games were nearly as popular with casual gamers as their motion-based counterparts available on the Nintendo Wii. Despite some early criticisms that the genre was nothing more than a gimmick, derived from the first few to become popular, a few very successful franchises were born out of the craze It may have seemed like the Rock Band era was over when DLC packs stopped being released two years ago, but apparently developer Harmonix isn’t quite done with the party game yet…...

Practically every year, the next Assassin’s Creed game is host to a plethora of leaks leading up to a big reveal. This year seems to be no different, even with the typical reveal venue E3 being canceled, and the latest Assassin’s Creed Ragnarok leak has some strong things to say about past leaks. First, it’s worth mentioning that this leak comes from French YouTuber and gaming streamer xJ0nathan. This means there’s a little more credibility here than a run-of-the-mill 4chan or Reddit Assassin’s Creed rumor or leak, but still, fans should take it with a grain of salt....

Sony has been taking a lot of flack recently for its unrelenting stance on cross-play, but the company has shown no signs of backing down so far. Nintendo and Microsoft have added to the pressure - whether intentional or not - with a Minecraft cross-play trailer aimed at highlighting the joys of inter-console gaming that Sony continues to deny its fans. Criticisms of Sony’s refusal to allow cross-play have been mounting for some time, but the situation has reached boiling point recently when Sony not only blocked the feature on the immensely-popular Fortnite, but also prevented anyone who had played the game on PS4 from using that account on a different console....

It’s been a busy couple of months on the Pokémon auction scene, as not one but two individual card selling records have been beat! And let’s not forget about the rare collection of 1st Edition cards worth $45,000 in the UK. Well, buyers have gone and done it again with another astronomical price paid for a rare unopened box of Cards. The Pokémon Trading Card Game is still going strong after its initial release almost nearly 24 years ago in Japan....

It’s been a rollercoaster of a few weeks for CD Projekt RED as the studio gets closer to the global launch of its highly anticipated action-rpg, Cyberpunk 2077. In addition to the highs of announcing that the game has finally gone gold, the studio has received plenty of criticism for its decision to institute a mandatory six day work week for its staff in order to reach the finish line in time....

Now that the dust has settled on The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars is looking ahead at the second half of the year with its most ambitious Disney+ series yet. The upcoming spy thriller Andor is a 24-episode prequel series meant to set up the events of Rogue One while also showing us who Diego Luna’s Cassian was before the events of the fan-favorite film. It’s not an easy task, especially considering how Star Wars‘ penchant for over-explaining its lore has been received by the fans over the years....

Titanfall developer Respawn Entertainment is teaming up with Korean mobile publishing giant Nexon to release games based on the mech shooter for the mobile market. When Call of Duty developers Jason West and Vince Zampella jumped ship to create their own game studio (dubbed Respawn Entertainment) and announced that they would be working on a mech-centric game, gamers sat up and took notice. The idea of having two of the brightest minds in the FPS genre helming a futuristic mech game sounded appealing, and the ensuing title, Titanfall, became hotly anticipated....

Host of The Game Awards, Geoff Keighley, has announced that a new map for Among Us will be revealed at the 2020 awards show. The map, which was teased on Twitter by developer InnerSloth earlier this year, is centered around a completely new location for the game and will feature some unique areas and tasks. While not much is known about the map aside from a screenshot showing the deck of a spaceship, InnerSloth has revealed the new map will be influenced by the developer’s previous game The Henry Stickmin Collection....