‘Vale: Shadow of the Crown’ is an action-adventure set in a dark fantasy world, developed by Falling Squirrel and Creative Bytes Studios. It’s simultaneously neither first, second or third-person in perspective, yet also arguably any of the three. I say this because Vale runs on the greatest graphical processor known to humanity: The mind… 🎵Dun dun duuuuuh🎵.

How Does it Work? Vale is a sort of mashup between radio drama and video game, not even having any kind of visuals besides optional subtitles on an ambient night-time background with occasionally colour-changing dust specks. You can go on quests, explore dungeons, fight off enemies in Daredevilish fashion, all that good stuff.

Vale aims for appeal to blind and visually-impaired gamers, which is a good step in the right direction regarding accessibility in video games, which I go more in-depth on here. I also recommend the video by Game Maker’s Toolkit ranking the accessibility of this year’s games if you want a better grasp of it’s presence in the industry.

On accessibility in Vale and other games: Vale earned a nomination at The Game Awards for its accessibility, though Vale creator and Falling Studio director Dave Evans admitted the game’s creation wasn’t entirely ‘altruistic’ in its initial reasons for production. Leveraging his past writing experience for film and TV, part of his reason for presenting Vale in the way he did was to “specifically play with narrative and character development on a scale I could afford”. But hey, can’t fault him too much for that, the profit motive is less a ‘Dave’ thing and more a ‘Yayyy Capitalism’ thing.

Vale had gone through play testing from SightlessKombat, a sightless gamer who’s acted as an accessibility consultant for many other games. He discusses in an interview with DigitalTrends how most blind characters in media are either villains or one-dimensional characters, so Alex as a confident protagonist is a great change of pace. SightlessKombat is also a twitch streamer, so hell yeah, Comrade Accessibility Gaming Representation!

Lukáš Hosnedl, another sightless Vale consultant, made note of how despite adding accessibility options for most big-budget mainstream games will take time, there are some simple changes that aren’t too hard to implement, such as optional magnification of text and colorblind modes. There’s also discussion of how many sightless players are missing out on more mainstream gaming experiences like Apex Legends, Phasmophobia, Among Us and Fortnite. Lukáš and SightlessKombat urge for greater inclusion of sightless gaming testers in the industry for important feedback and improving gameplay experiences from people’s multiple perspectives.

Speaking of accessible games, despite my little dig about how The Last of Us Part 2 won Game of the Year in a product poem about how everyone fancies Lottie, I’ll admit that The Last of Us Part 2’s accessibility options for blind and deaf players are pretty good. Have a butcher’s round our store if you want in on the action. Far Cry 6 also starts off players in the accessibility menu once first installed, so I’m told.

How’s the story stack up? Vale follows one princess Alex and her companion, Sheppherd, on a quest to save the land from death, destruction and dick-munching merchants haggling a 20-copper price out of a 100-copper cloak! From what I can tell from the Vale trailer, the performances are quite well done. There’s some theatrical exaggeration from a few characters, but it feels believable as far as fitting the in-game world goes. Very intriguing and immersive, especially with headphones at the ready!

Product Poems:

Very very Vale… Oh, the T is silent? Django called!

It takes two to tango, three it is not and four is what it has caused. What am I?

Dank Souls. Dank memes. Freddy? Liz? Dank Queens. Smash both. LEGO Ninja team.

There was once an AMIIBO called Belmont. Who loved to yeet axes in Vermont. With a whip and a thong, Chrom soon came along, and said “Lottie promised me a bouffant”!

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The post The Brilliant Accessibility of Vale: Shadow of the Crown first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Gather ’round ladies, gents and esteemed Paidia pilgrims! Cuphead dropped a trailer at The Game Awards, this time with brand new gameplay and a release date to boot! Gosh-golly, Christmas sure is coming early folks, and so am I!

The DLC in question has actually been in the works for a long time, so needless to say, this was a good time for the folks at Studio MDHR to make a comeback with something suitably spectacular. Cuphead The Delicious Last Course is set to release on June 30th 2022. We’ve also covered news of Netflix producing a Cuphead TV show and you can view the teaser trailer for it right here.

Save your appetite…for adventure! The Delicious Last Course launches on June 30, 2022 on Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PS4, Steam & GOG.

Watch the brand new trailer, and see what awaits Cuphead, Mugman, and all-new playable character Ms. Chalice next year.https://t.co/Xlco6y8Hsm

— Studio MDHR (@StudioMDHR) December 10, 2021

What To Expect from The Cuphead DLC: Based on the trailer, it seems the new and creatively-named ‘Diel-sea Island’ will have four different themed world sections:

Jee whizz, it’s gonna be a doosey folks! We’ve got the mountainous mountains guarded by The Suspiciously Hairy Yeti in desperate need of a Manscape sponsorship! We got the snowy tundras just in time for the Christmas season, that features a cheeky Hollow Knight easter egg for any eagle-eyed viewers! Take to The H’Wild H’west and shoot into that cow girl as if it were Alexis Texas in a Django parody!

We also have footage of a knight (in both senses of the Chess way of looking at things), though sources remain divided on whether horses exist, according to my own rigorously researched… Reddit posts.

Cuphead The Delicious Last Meal will be playable on Mac, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One.

‘Everyone really honed their craft during the course of development, we’re so proud of our talented team, and the meticulous care they put into every element of this expansion. […] (There will be boss fights in the Cuphead DLC that) contain more frames of animation than entirebosses in the original Cuphead’. – Maja Moldenhauer, Chief Operating Officer of Studio MDHR.

Product Poems:

Special offers, could I interest you, special offers, Sonic or Hitman 2? Special offers, maybe a Stream Pack, though our special offers no discount on that.

Dual charging dock. The lover’s rock. For you see… Shared gaming hobby.

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The post Cuphead DLC, Release Date And More! first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Who’s ready for this one then? We certainly are. It has just been confirmed that The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience is going to be released on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Announced in a recent teaser, the original movie team will be taking the helm alongside one of our favourite game developers at the moment. You guessed it, Epic Games will be joining the team to offer a ‘wild ride into the reality-bending universe of The Matrix’.

Furthermore, the game will include performances by The Matrix cast, including Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss. If that isn’t enough reason to get you aboard the hype train, well God help you. There really isn’t much more we could say to convince you after that. Except maybe it’s just that you don’t believe us? Well check out the teaser below to see Keanu announce it himself:

You see, that was him right? Well believe it or not, that was actually a CGI version of the Hollywood Star. It looked strangely real right? That’s what technology has come to nowadays. Very impressive, we must admit.

Nevertheless, that’s most definitely his voice there so don’t you worry about that! With The Matrix Resurrections hitting cinemas soon, this couldn’t have been better timed when it comes to the films promotion. The iconic music is enough to make any fan of the franchise giddy with excitement, which is exactly what its done to us!

Although, we do admit that Keanu does look a lot more like John Wick than Neo here. Clearly the directors of the film couldn’t convince him to give that long hair of his a quick trim. Can’t blame him for that I suppose.

The Matrix Awakens Set To Use Unreal Engine 5 Technology

Just like previous Epic Games titles such as Redfall, the game will be released in Unreal Engine 5. With the latest Fortnite chapter release, that too is now being played in the latest system. It looks like there could also be a possible Matrix crossover with Fortnite after recent leaks. This shows that The Matrix franchise is really trying to get back in the mainstream once more, after a a decade and a half since the last film.

There’s not much more else we have to say about this release, as we’re yet to receive any more details. However, it should be said that more news will be announced at the upcoming Game Awards, so make sure to tune into that!

In the meantime, be sure to head over to our store for all the latest gaming deals. There’s plenty of options here for your Christmas gaming sessions!

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The post The Matrix Awakens Set For PS5 And Xbox Release first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Do you want the good news first or the bad news?

In a recent tweet by Geoff Keighley (executive producer and host of The Game Awards), he claimed that ‘beyond it’s nominations, I can confirm Activision Blizzard will not be part of this year’s The Game Awards’. This is largely due to rampant allegations of harassment and a toxic work culture at Activision Blizzard.

The brave souls coming out against Activision Blizzard has resulted in employee walkouts, a California lawsuit for worker’s rights violations, protests, public condemnations from the big 3 game companies and the loss of talented workers set for development on Activision Blizzard projects. And not to inhale my own phallus, but of all my thumbnails, my ‘BlizzCon Blizzcancelled‘ one isn’t half bad if I do say so myself.

The Washington Post interviewed Geoff Keighley, wherein he claimed that he wanted to address potentially removing Activision Blizzard from The Game Awards ‘without hurting the developers or employees’, which is fair enough. Many of the greatest films and novels were made by people of unsavory moral character, and even then, the work of Activision’s downtrodden employees shouldn’t suffer because of the actions of the company’s abusers.

Unfortunately, Activision Blizzard may have some limited influence at The Game Awards. Rob Kostich, (new president of Activision Blizzard) serves on The Game Awards’ board of advisors. The board doesn’t decide which games get nominations and awards, but keeping one of Activision’s head staff is a slightly sus gamer move, to use parliamentary language.

I mean, I don’t know the guy, but let’s not mince words, it’s a little darkly funny that the top leaders of Activision Blizzard have hilariously similar names! At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a real life ‘Bobbert Kotique‘ who I’d have to settle out of a lawsuit for unintentional slander!

‘There is no place for abuse, harassment or predatory practices in any company or any community, we all need to work together to build a better and a more inclusive environment so everyone feels safe to build the world’s best games’ – Geoff Keighley.

Do we have any specifics on how Geoff Keighley wants to support the game devs and employees of Activision without condoning the company’s practices? Kinda… And by kinda, I mean not really (as far as I’m aware). But, I am nothing if not a man open of mind and occasionally dumb of ass, so in the spirit of good faith: Geoff Keighley, if you’re reading this, here is my suggestion for how to include effected contributors to Activision games without praising the company or it’s abusers as a whole.

Name names: At the end of the day, it takes a village to raise a child. When discussing games from Activision (if they make it into the awards lineup), research the key named developers, see who contributed to what, give a little spotlight to those who contributed to the game rather than “by Activision” (which is admittedly a pitfall I’ve fallen into on occasion). I understand The Game Awards will be dropping in a few days, so I may be asking a little much, but hopefully this is food for thought for next year… Or maybe there won’t even be an Activision Blizzard next year, in which case, no trouble at’all a’tall.

If you’re looking to cop some swagalicious dragon merch, then get discounts with our newsletter. We’ve got a neat Spyro coin purse, Spyro loot crate AND last but not least, PS4 and Xbox flavors of Yakuza LAD (Like a Dragon)!

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The post Activision At The Game Awards: Absent or “Absent”? first appeared on Get2Gaming.

The game awards is back. It will occur on December 9th at the Microsoft theater in los Angeles, and, unlike last year, will be an in person event. This will be the Eighth annual Game awards, and will feature an on-stage orchestra, Celebrity Guests, New game reveals and, of course, the awards themselves.

Talking to the epic Games Website, Game awards founder and Host Geoff Keighley said “You know, it’s great to have celebrities, it’s great to have music, but I think focusing really on games is important, Especially this year, there’ll be a lot of content for 2022 and 2023 that will be showing us our kind of biggest lineup yet of world premieres and announcements.”

“What we really learned last year was at the end of the day, it really is the games and the trailers that drive the show.”

Keighley said that they Are expecting around 40-50 games to display at the Game awards to some extent, and for the number of new titles being announced there to be in the double digits.

“I still feel like we’ve only kind of sort of touched the surface of what’s possible on the PS5 and Xbox Series X, so I think you’ll see some stuff in the show that is truly pretty stunning,” he said. “We’ll see footage of games that will remind people that the best of this industry is still to come.”

Last years show was the first time the game awards had expanded out from beyond Los angeles, with the show being streamed from studios in california, London and tokyo, and featuring celebrity guests like Chrisopher Nolan, Gal Gadot, Nolan North and Keanu Reeves.

Last years big Winner at the game awards was last of us 2, which you can get from go2games.com

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The post Game Awards Tease “biggest line up yet” first appeared on Get2Gaming.