Games

Games

Just beyond the boundary's edge, a cockatoo flew into the hole in a eucalyptus tree where it is nesting. Beyond that, the Swan River flowed. Galahs, chests as pink as those any number of Englishmen will be sporting in a couple of weeks' time, snuffled on the grass. Other birds flitted around the park, even those with less eye-catching plumage sporting eye-catching names: black-faced cuckooshrikes; willie-wagtails. Um, ducks.

You won't need to extract to complete Power Out, but you may potentially be making quite a trek to reach the quest location. It's not a bad idea to toss on a combat-focused augment with a good gun and shield, as well as plenty of ammo and healing items to ensure you're prepared to take on anyone standing in your way.

She's just 12 years old, but in between thinking about school and Taylor Swift, Tanvee "Lilac Tiger" Vallem is training to be a professional pool player. The Bethesda middle-schooler entered her first billiards tournament only five weeks after she began playing pool in 2022. This past June, she won first place in the 14-and-under division at the Connecticut State Junior Pool Championships. And later this month, she'll compete with girls 19 and under at the Predator WPA Junior World Championships in Gandia, Spain.

With hundreds of games to choose from, just choosing a game to play on PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium can be a challenge. The solution is to find one game you can devote dozens of hours to, lock yourself in a dark room, and devote hours to that one title while pretending the rest don't exist. Open-world games are a great option for this approach, and there are a whole bunch to pick from in the PS Plus library.

One is a shared "PS5/PC" icon and the other reads "Cross-Buy." They add that the new symbols use official Sony fonts and aren't found on PS4. While these new icons aren't yet proof of anything, they suggest Sony is exploring new features that would expand the PlayStation ecosystem beyond a single console, much like Microsoft has been doing with its "Play Anywhere" initiative and recent movement into PC gaming handhelds with the full-screen Windows gaming experience for the ROG Xbox Ally X.

The hack-and-slash Warriors spin-offs on Nintendo Switch have been easy to skip. The arcade action can be fun and the character interactions rewarding for fans of the given franchise, but for the most part they've done little to break out of the fan service bubble. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment might be different. Early reviews suggest the Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom spin-off isn't just a must-play for hardcore fans but a decent action game that new Switch 2 owners should be paying attention to.

The first season for Pokémon Legends: Z-A featured Greninjite as the reward for reaching rank K (the game starts at rank Z and tops at A). But with the second season starting on Wednesday, November 5, at 10 PM PT/1 AM ET, those who missed getting Greninja's Mega Stone can win it by only leveling up once to rank Y, and Delphoxite will be rewarded at the lower rank of S. That's eight ranks lower than the prior season's requirement.

We were there when you first found Thorpe in the forsaken grove after dragging yourself across a foreign beach. We were there when you found your first settlement and explored its charm and denizens. We were there when you fought pirates, tigers, corrupted, ghosts, and all manner of hazards across the land. We were there when you set foot on forsaken sands filled with lost secrets and hidden dangers. We were there when you discovered the untamed wilds filled with beasts and verdant jungles.

Stanford is in the bottom 10 in the country in scoring offense, though it does much better at home (80 points in three wins) than on the road (60 points in five losses). Some of that has to do with the strength of its opponents - the Cardinal has faced three losing teams at home and three AP Top 15 teams on the road.

When we were designing Bayonetta, our clients requested us to take off her glasses, and it's true that I kept rejecting their proposals,

Pat Cummins has lost the race to be fit for the first Ashes Test as he continues his recovery from a stress injury in his back, with Steve Smith to reassume the captaincy of Australia in the series opener against England next month. Cummins has not bowled since Australia's 3-0 series defeat of West Indies in July and was in serious doubt for the match in Perth on 21 November.

We are saturated with superhero media to the point where even self-criticism has been done to death with franchises like Watchmen and The Boys. But with its debut choice-driven narrative adventure, AdHoc Studio has managed to find a unique angle for the superhero genre. In Dispatch, the story focuses on an office-based lackey and corporate manager of said superheroes, rather than the heroes themselves.

Tubedoku is a 3x3 grid that you have to fill with six different tube stations that satisfy the descriptions both the row and column. Similar to the New York Times' Wordle, a new puzzle is released every day. Unlike regular sudoko, there are normally multiple possible answers for each square. For example, a station that's on the Central line and has no repeating letters could be Bank or Fairlop, and a station ending in Green and in Zone 2 could be Bethnal Green, Parsons Green or Kensal Green.

"In recent times, public debate within the chess world has too often moved beyond the boundaries of acceptable, harming not only people's reputation but their very well-being," FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich said in a statement on the organization's website. "When this happens, discussions can turn into harassment, bullying, and personal attacks a particularly serious concern in today's environment," Dvorkovich added.

Sony is preparing to trim its PS Plus Extra catalog once again, with seven titles making their exit. While no specific departure date has been confirmed, removals typically line up with the next service refresh. The outgoing games include Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus The Awakening of Golden Jazz, Battlefield 5, Digimon Survive, Football Manager 2024 Console, Like a Dragon: Ishin, Synapse, and Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon is technically the seventh entry in the longrunning crime series, but for all intents it was a fresh start - and the best place to jump in outside of the very first Yakuza. Admittedly, the Yakuza series is a bit hard to explain or define in a succinct way - if you've ever talked to someone who loves these games you've likely heard about its bizarre mix of crime melodrama and utterly off-the-wall weirdness and humor.

This time, sporting a bit of a new look in a recent interview, Kojima has said he sees AI as a boon that can help cut out what he describes as "tedious" tasks, helping developers to lower costs and produce games faster. In an interview with Wired Japan ( h/t Dexerto), Kojima described "a future where [he stays] one step ahead; creating together with AI,"

The leaks have begun circulating through leak accounts, and include details and concepts for five upcoming games, and a loose timeline for the next five to six years of development. But keep in mind that even if these projects are at some stage of development at Game Freak, pipelines shift, ideas can be scaled back from their initial concepts, and some of these games could be internally canceled and never formally announced.

Team Cherry has rolled out a small new patch for Hollow Knight: Silksong. The update is focused on bug fixes and controller-support improvements (especially on PC and Mac), while larger adjustments will likely come in the future. For instance, the patch notes do state that more controller fixes are on the way. Please do be aware that some of the adjustments could be considered spoilers.

Coco Gauff had more struggles with her serve but overcame seven double faults to beat Jasmine Paolini 6-4, 6-3 on Saturday and reach the Wuhan Open final. Gauff will face Jessica Pegula in Sunday's title match after her fellow American came from behind to oust top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 2-6, 6-4, 7-6 (2). The third-ranked Gauff edged Paolini by winning the battle of converted breaks 7-5 as both top-10 players struggled with their service games.

Nintendo just released an odd little game onto the SNES Virtual Console that was previously exclusive to Japan. The simply-titled Mario & Wario is a point-and-click puzzle game that finds the plumber on the search for his brother after his money-obsessed doppelganger drops a bucket on his head. That's the actual plot. Players lead the bucket-headed Mario through 100 levels, each of which are filled with point-and-click puzzles set in a sidescrolling world.

Marathon, Bungie's upcoming hero extraction shooter, is getting another invite-only test soon. The test will run from October 22 to 27, and folks can sign up right here. Things haven't gone great for Marathon thus far, but following the disappointing reception of the first alpha test, and the embarrassing accusations of plagiarism, it'll be interesting to see what tweaks Bungie has made and just what the game is shaping up to be.

There's no denying the glaring flaws of Sonic the Hedgehog 4--the wonky physics, the blatant remixing (or one might even say "rehashing") of classic levels and bosses from the first two Sonic games, and the soundtrack's questionable and often derided soundfont being chief among them. But despite its problems, even 15 years later, I still find myself occasionally coming back to replay both episodes.

If you choose to get an extra controller for your Nintendo Switch 2, you can spend a lot - and get a lot in return. Buying Nintendo's own $89.99 Switch 2 Pro Controller, for instance, will net you the console's only wireless controller with a 3.5mm headphone jack, not to mention great rumble and a slick design. It's not perfect, but it's the total package.