UK Nintendo eShop releases for 14th January 2016

The new Super Mario battle-royale game is out now for Nintendo Switch Online members.

The Super Mario Bros. 35th anniversary celebrations continue apace with the release today of Super Mario Bros. 35 on Nintendo Switch. The game is based on the 1985 NES classic but adds a battle-royale gameplay twist similar in format to Tetris 99.

The game sees 35 players compete online across classic Mario courses, beginning with the iconic World 1-1. The platforming gameplay comes as naturally as breathing, but this time, defeated Koopa Troopers and Goombas are sent over to other players’ courses to disrupt their progress. You’re also up against the clock which counts down from 35 seconds and has to be topped up by stomping on enemies. The fun continues until there’s one Mario left standing.

It’s a simple concept, and in our brief time with the game, a well-executed one. Matches are chaotic and pleasingly clumsy with familiar levels made significantly more challenging. The game is also exquisitely produced with a user interface that echoes Super Mario Maker.

Here’s the launch trailer.

Super Mario Bros 35 is free to download and play for Nintendo Switch Online members at no additional cost. Weirdly – and just like the recently released Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection – the game is only available until March 31, 2021. To get it, navigate to the Nintendo Switch Online section of the Switch eShop.

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Sony has confirmed the two PlayStation 4 games coming to PlayStation Plus in October 2020.

First on the starting grid is EA’s Need for Speed Payback. Which Need for Speed is that you ask? It’s the 2017 effort from Ghost Games. The racing isn’t actually that bad, but the game is dragged down by creaky storytelling and aggressive microtransactions. It’s worth a quick spin.

Next up is Vampyr, Dontnod’s 2018 tale of bloodlust and revenge set in Edwardian London. It’s a distinctly AA game but not without merit for fans of gothic fiction and Hippocratic hokum. In our review, we said that a “vivid sense of time and place, and a fantastic central idea, soon turn pale with repetitive combat and a forest of conversation trees.” It certainly doesn’t suck.

Both of next month’s free PlayStation Plus games are available to download from October 6, 2020.

PlayStation Plus free games – October 2020

• Need for Speed Payback
• Vampyr

September’s PlayStation Plus games – PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Street Fighter V – are available to download until next week. And if you’re playing on Xbox One, Microsoft has also confirmed the four titles coming to Games with Gold in October.

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Developers will have to crunch, and crunch hard, until Cyberpunk 2077 releases in November.

In 2019, before Cyberpunk 2077’s big E3 showing, CD Projekt Red requested an interview with Jason Schreier, then of Kotaku. Schreier, now with Bloomberg, is one of the industry’s foremost voices on video game labour and conditions, with a level of access many of us dream of.

In that conversation, which was published on Kotaku, CD Projekt Red co-founder Marcus Iwiński spoke of a “non-obligatory crunch policy” for developers working on Cyberpunk 2077, and promised that the developer, famed for its intense crunch on games like The Witcher 3, wanted “to be more humane and treat people with respect”.

Now, weeks out from the release of Cyberpunk 2077, Schreier reports that mandatory crunch is now in effect at CD Projekt Red, following an email from studio head Adam Badowski.

Per the Bloomberg article, quoted verbatim as Thumbsticks has not seen the email directly:

“Starting today, the entire (development) studio is in overdrive,” Badowski wrote, elaborating that this meant “your typical amount of work and one day of the weekend.” The extra work would be paid, as required by Polish labor laws. Many other video game studios don’t pay for overtime.

“I take it upon myself to receive the full backlash for the decision,” he wrote. “I know this is in direct opposition to what we’ve said about crunch. It’s also in direct opposition to what I personally grew to believe a while back — that crunch should never be the answer. But we’ve extended all other possible means of navigating the situation.”

It’s important to stress at this point that crunch is not simply “a bit of overtime”, as many armchair commentators on social media are quick to suggest. Crunch, in video game development terms, is the systematic failure of project management that leads to extended periods – weeks, months, or sometimes years – of development staff working horrific hours with no respite. That will often involve six- or seven-day weeks, evenings and weekends, totalling 60-, 70-, or 80-hour weeks. Week in, week out. For months. Delays to release dates, which you might think offer a reprieve, often simply extend and elongate the crunch.

CD Projekt Red is always keen to point out that – as per Polish labour law – crunch is paid overtime for its employees, reportedly time-and-a-half for evenings and double-time for weekends. This sounds brilliant to our American friends and colleagues, who – far removed from the sorts of working time protections we enjoy in the EU – might have to perform similar crunch with no additional remuneration, only holding onto the vague promise of bonuses should the game perform well upon release.

And for an odd evening here or there, or the weekend before release, that would be fine. That would just be regular overtime.

But when crunch is a culture and lasts for months – or years – it’s no wonder that burnout is endemic in this industry and attrition rates are so high. It’s also often referred to as “optional” but there is a tacit expectation that everyone must crunch; just look at Rockstar, where the Housers reportedly expected everyone to be working if they were, and they were always working. Nobody wants to be seen as letting their teammates down when everyone else is suffering together, missing their families, struggling with their mental health and exhaustion.

Crunch is far from the only issue with Cyberpunk 2077, with questions around the game’s use of racial stereotypes, cultural appropriation, and attitudes towards transgender people circling since that E3 demo. And no doubt people will still buy it in droves. A large portion of the gaming public simply won’t care about the cultural harm or the conditions its developers face. Or, at least, will care less about that than their desire to play the hot new video game. Some will see working on a game like Cyberpunk 2077 as such a “dream job” that people should suffer any poor conditions with a smile.

But we once thought that the food industry wouldn’t change, as was the case with battery-farmed eggs. Then, when the public stopped buying them in favour of higher-welfare options, the industry changed its ways. The same is true of the cosmetics industry and the growth of cruelty-free products with the “Leaping Bunny” accreditation, or the market for ethically-sourced produce with certifications like “Fairtrade” or “Rainforest Alliance”.

These campaigns prove that when the public votes with its feet – or more to the point, with its wallet – then the industry of production can change.

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You might have noticed something a little… different about Peter Parker in the PS5 remaster of Marvel’s Spider-Man.

The narrative around the remaster of Marvel’s Spider-Man for the PlayStation 5 has been confusing, to say the least. Now, it’s gotten weird.

If you own the base game on PS4, for instance, you don’t get a free upgrade on PS5. Nor will you get to carry over your saves between generations. But if you buy Spider-Man: Miles Morales for PlayStation 4, then you will get a free upgrade to PS5 for that. But you can’t buy the ultimate edition of Marvel’s Spider-Man – that includes both the remaster of the original game and the Miles Morales expandalone – for PS4, so yeah, you’ll basically have to buy it again in some form to get the remaster.

Got that? Good. Except it just got weirder.

Remember Peter Parker, AKA title character Spider-Man, in the PS4 game? Well, he’s looking a little… different in the PS5 remaster.

Old Pete vs new Pete pic.twitter.com/9yicgqZU0S

— Nibel (@Nibellion) September 30, 2020

What appears to have happened, here, is that Insomniac has recast Peter Parker, like Aunt Viv’s sudden change after the third season of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. But that happened because (reportedly) Will Smith fell out with original Aunt Viv actor Janet Hubert. That can’t have happened with an already-modelled digital character, right?

Here’s the explanation, from Insomniac community director James Stevenson, on the official PlayStation Blog:

“In order to bring the best performances to players with our next-generation Marvel’s Spider-Man games, we have recast the face of Peter Parker. We loved working with John Bubniak on the original game; however, to get a better match to Peter Parker/Spider-Man actor Yuri Lowenthal’s facial capture, we have cast Ben Jordan to be the face model for Peter Parker on the PS5 console. He looks incredible in-game, and Yuri’s moving performances take on a new life.”

Which… is technically an “explanation” but it’s still weird, right?

Fans of the game are making fun of the changes on Twitter, with many speculating that it’s to make the video game character resemble his big-screen counterpart, Tom Holland.

Tom Holland Hom Tolland pic.twitter.com/AVNuyoojSe

— Smart Alec (@_TheSmartAlec) September 30, 2020

You can see why people are thinking that. What’s also weird is that, for an “older” portrayal of Spider-Man – 23, according to the game’s marketing – he now looks significantly younger; far closer to the high school-aged Parker of the current Marvel movies.

And it’s still weird.

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The 2015 Horizons expansion is being added to Elite Dangerous in anticipation of its major Odyssey expansion in 2021.

Frontier Developments has announced that Elite Dangerous, its space (trucker) simulator and competitor to Star Citizen, will have its only paid expansion, the 2015-released Horizons, folded into the main game on October 27 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

The expansion added planetary landing, weapon crafting, ship-launched fighters, multi-crew co-op, and exploration with the SRV Scarab ground vehicle, among other things.

For those who invested early – perhaps five years early – they will be granted an exclusive “Azure ship paint job” compatible with all ships. Get in there quick, then, and it could still be yours.

It all comes in anticipation of the game’s major add-on coming in 2021, Odyssey. The major expansion will add on-foot exploration of planets, first-person combat, refreshed visuals, social hubs, NPC missions, thousands of new settlements, and more. There will be no VR on launch, but perhaps you can forgive them that?

The game is already a bottomless pit of sheer space given that less than 1% of its galaxy has even been explored according to Frontier. These expansions should do a lot to add colour to the void.

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