21: Anthem is dead, but Outriders is born!
What a week of news! In this week’s episode we will take a look at Sony State of Play 2021 along with all the other game announcements and updates. We will also go over all the latest on Intel’s 11th gen CPUs coming later this month.
Of course it cannot all be good news. We also have the cancellation of Anthem Next. Even if understandable, it still hurts to see a studio give up on a game. Especially since Anthem has so much potential. Oh well, Outriders it is!
Looking to Outriders to bring us mountains of loot!
Gaming News
The biggest event we had in the past week turned out to be rather boring. I had no real expectations of Sony State of Play 2021 but what we got was somehow still disappointing. We finally got a release date for Kena: Bridge of Spirits though, August 24th. That’ll be a nice early birthday present for me. Final Fantasy VII Remake is going to have a PS5 version and PS5 exclusive Yuffie DLC coming on June 10th. The PS5 update is free and the DLC price is not released yet. For those buying it all from the start, the new version with the DLC will be 70$.
In other minor announcements we had Crash Bandicoot 4 and Oddworld Soulstorm releasing PS5 versions in March and April respectively. Good to see some PS5 versions of things coming soon.
State of Play recap: Playstation Blog
Kena Bridge of Spirits: IGN
Crash Bandicoot 4: Crash Bandicoot
Oddworld Soulstorm: IGN
FFVII Remake DLC: Polygon
In other gaming news, it’s the age or remasters and remakes! Which is fine with me. I happen to really enjoy remasters. I love old games and want to play them again. Or if there is a game that I missed when it came out, going back can be challenging to get old games running. So I say bring on the remasters!
Legend of Mana: Square Enix
Star Wars Republic Commando: Star Wars
System Shock: Polygon
We also had Starfield pop it’s head up again. There is a rumor now that Bethesda would like to release Starfield in 2021. That seems to be an executive’s wishful thinking though. PC Gamer also had a Starfield recap posting also this week. Could be coincidence or could be something. I will wait for something more concrete before jumping on any release hype train. And to wrap up release news, Hot Wheels Unleashed is coming to all platforms on September 30th.
Starfield rumor: Inverse
Starfield everything we know: PC Gamer
Hot Wheels Unleashed: Nintendo Life
In console news this week we had Nintendo showing up with some hardware updates. It’s the 10 year anniversary of the 3DS launch! Nintendo celebrated by stopping production and closing the eshop. Um, ok I guess.
Playstation news is lite right now. Other than it is still near impossible to buy the consoles that is. A minor headline is that the PS5 will be getting it’s own VR headset. Do not expect any further updates as it is still very early. Check back next year.
Nintendo 3DS ten years: The Gamer
Nintendo drops 3DS support: Tech Times
PS5 VR: Washington Post
In hardware news we have updates on quite a few fronts. AMD has the 6700 and 6700XT coming soon, maybe end of March. Nvidia launched the 3060 and it is of course sold out. In better Nvidia news, they are rolling out Resizable BAR. This is their answer to AMD’s Smart Access Memory (SAM). I expect that, like SAM, it will be underwhelming but any FPS gain is worth it. Will probably require some chipset and driver updates though.
Intel is also ramping up the media for the 11th gen release. We have benchmarks and claims of the single thread lead coming back over to the blue team. Also, with AMD struggling to meet demand, Intel 11th gen may start pre-orders in a couple weeks. This is ahead of the March 30th launch date. Interesting to is the early reports that the 11th gen chipset is showing improved PCIe gen 4 performance. Largely irrelevant to gamers, but potentially 11% ahead of AMD in early tests on the Samsung 980 pros.
11th gen benchmarks: Wccftech
Pre-orders soon?: Tech Radar
PCIe gen 4 performance: Toms Hardware
Wrapping up this episode with some game updates. This is all related to updates of current games and demos of upcoming games.
Godfall released the Primal Update. This is a much needed and seems to be a decent update. We have post level cap Ascension Levels that provide skill points to allocate. Primal tier of stats on gear is a nice add even if it feels like any other games stat increases. I will not complain though, more stats is more stats and that is good. It also updates Dreamstones and Tower of Trials to be a little more fun and rewarding.
Godfall Primal Update: Push Square
Diablo III actually surprised us all with a pretty impactful update that is currently in PTR testing. This is the follower system revamp that should make followers more useful. Actually if I am being honest, it feels like the revamp shoots followers way past useful and into build altering.
Diablo III Follower Revamp: Diablo 3
Cyberpunk 2077 cannot catch a break it seems. The latest cyber attack on CDPR has delayed patch 1.2 till the second half of March. No worries, will drop back into Night City when it gets here.
Cyberpunk 2077 patch 1.2 delay: Twitter
In what should not be a surprise, but still sad, Bioware is cancelling Anthem Next. No more rework for Anthem. Of course it is sad but it makes sense. I get the feeling that it would be easier to start over with Anthem 2 instead of polishing the turd that is Anthem. Don’t get me wrong, there is fun in Anthem, but there are too many annoying things in the way of fun.
Anthem Next cancelled: Bioware Blog
However sad the Anthem news is, we have Outriders. With the demo available and release one month away, it is the perfect replacement to Anthem. Both of the games are new IPs and both arrived with high hopes. Anthem was way more hyped of course, but Outriders has a lot riding on it. Thankfully it is fun to play. We will see how the full game is though.
Outriders: Square Enix
That’s it for this week. Thanks for watching and reading! See you next week!