News Picks/Weekly Round-up from Auryn Cox @Ciaran’s Customs

Nintendo Direct February 2021

The long-awaited Nintendo Direct dropped some big announcements earlier this week.

Zelda fans may have been disappointed not to have gotten any new info on the Breath of the Wild sequel, they’ll have to wait until later this year for more details on that, but the confirmation of a HD release for Zelda: Skyward sword for the Switch might keep them happy until then.

Its launching on the 16th of July and will feature the same motion controls which were present on the Wii version, although this time they will be optional.

Nintendo usually keeps the best announcement until last and this year they closed the show by dropping a teaser trailer for Splatoon 3. It’s not coming until 2022 though.

Mario Golf: Super Rush was announced for the Switch and will be releasing on the 25th of June. It will also feature motion controls as well a story mode where you can play as your Mii. The game also features a game mode called Speed Golf, where players all tee off at the same time and race to be the first one to put their ball in the hole. It looks like a lot of fun.

The Smash Bros. Ultimate roster is set to get even bigger with both Pyra and Mythra from the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 being added to the game as DLC. The duo will be arriving in March.

It was also announced that the hugely popular Fall Guys will be arriving on the Switch this summer.

Project Triangle Strategy, a strategy RPG successor to the highly acclaimed JRPG Octopath Traveller will be a Nintendo Switch exclusive. The game seems to take inspiration from classic titles such as Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics. Although the game won’t be releasing until 2022 you can try out the demo which is available now on the Switch e-shop.

Miitopia the Mii powered RPG which was originally on the 3Ds will be arriving on Switch on the 21st of May.

Fans of Animal Crossing: New Horizons got a look at the upcoming Mario items one of which is a warp pipe that players can use to travel across their island.

Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville launches in March and the Outer Wilds is coming to the Nintendo Switch at some point later in 2021.

Star Wars: Hunters is a new free-to-play online squad-based arena multiplayer game set between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. It’ll be arriving on the Switch later this year.

We also got a look at the team-based multiplayer dodgeball game Knockout City which is coming out on the 21st of May.

A Legend of Mana remake is coming to the Switch on the 24th of June. Visually the game looks pretty good and features an interesting new game mechanic which sees players going through the world gradually build the map up by placing things on it.

Telltale’s Tales from the Borderlands launches for Switch on the 23rd of March.

Apex Legends will also be arriving on the Switch in March, its set to release on the 9th. Footage from the trailer suggests that there may be a few technical issues but only time will tell.

Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse launches 16th March and DC Super Heroes Girls: Teen Power launches on the 4th of June.

The full 50-minute Nintendo Direct broadcast can be watched on Nintendo’s YouTube channel.

Halo 3 is Getting a new map

After over a decade after its release Halo 3 is getting a new multiplayer map.

343 Industries announced the news on their latest Halo Waypoint blog post.

The last time Halo got a new map was all the way back in 2009, as part of the Mythic II map pack release.

Details about the new map are scarce, but it was originally apart of Halo Online, an online only version of Halo developed by Saber Interactive and built with a modified version of the Halo 3 engine.

The game was released back in 2015 but was only available in Russia via a closed beta, it was cancelled shortly after.

The map will be playable on the Master Chief collection and will be arriving sometime next week.

Star Wars: Republic Commando might be coming to the Switch

The popular Star Wars Republic Commando game looks set to launch on the Switch.

That’s because Switch eShop dataminer NWPlayer123 noticed the game had been added to Nintendo store servers ready for release.

Star Wars Republic Commando was a tactical first-person shooter set during the clone wars. It first released back in 2005 for the PC and Xbox and was widely praised by fans and critics.

The original was developed by LucasArts, but it looks like the Switch Port is being handled by Aspyr. Aspyr has previously ported a number of classic Star Wars games to newer hardware, examples being the Star Wars Jedi knight games and Star Wars Episode 1: Racer.

No Man’s Sky Companion Update

The latest update for No Man’s Sky will allow players to tame, train and breed the procedurally generated alien wildlife and keep them as pets.

The Companions update was announced earlier this week by developers Hello Games on the No Man’s Sky website.

“Explorers of No Man’s Sky have always been drawn to the strange, vibrant and often bizarre creatures inhabiting its infinite worlds. However, until now, face-to-face interactions with those creatures have been relatively limited, with friendships only lasting as long as a stack of Creature Pellets,” the developers said via the latest blog post on their website.

“We wanted to create an opportunity for players to form deeper, long-lasting bonds with the fauna they encounter along their journey.”

Once a player tames a creature it will accompany them on their adventures, travelling by their side. These companions can be petted, fed, and played with, and they each have their own unique personalities which are defined by their species and ecosystem.

The companions can even communicate with the player by having their thoughts transmitted, translated and sent directly to their internal communication channels via a "neural harness".

The companions can be trained to carry out useful tasks to aid the player, such as scanning for resources, identifying hazards, searching for treasure, providing light, hunting other animals and mining for resources.

Companions can even lay eggs which can be genetically modified and traded with other players.

“We have another packed year planned for No Man’s Sky, and it’s exciting for us to think ahead to everything we have in store,” concluded the Hello Games blog post.

Valheim takes Steam by Storm

Valheilm, the procedurally generated Viking survival game has sold over 3 million copies in just 17 days.

Valheilms developer Iron gate revealed the news on the games Steam page. The game has already received 60,000 ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ reviews on Steam making it the 78th best reviewed game on Steam of writing this article.

Henrik Törnqvist the co-founder of Iron Gate Studios spoke with PC gamer about the game’s sudden success.

“We had a feeling that it would sell pretty well, at least to sustain us, you know. But it being a million seller, and now two million seller, is something we could never have guessed," he said.

“It's quite incredible, and very humbling also, I might add."

While the game is only in early-access players seem to be pretty satisfied with the games current build and its sure to get a series of updates from the developers which will only improve the game over time.

Adata has allegedly altered its XPG SX8200 Pro again

Adata has allegedly altered its XPG SX8200 Pro SSD for the fourth time.

Tom’s Hardware reported that Reddit user svartchimpans recently purchased an SX8200 Pro that doesn't match the specs of any previous revisions that they tested.

Adata did reach out to Tom’s Hardware to clarify that the Redditor measured performance with the new SSD configuration connected to the PCH and compared performance to the originally-shipping SSD connected to the CPU.

While this can affect performance Adata does not dispute that there is now another configuration shipping to customers.

Retailers have increased GeForce RTX 3060 graphics cards prices before release

European retailers have increased the price of their GeForce RTX 30 graphics cards which are set to release on February 25th.

The cards are now being listed at €490. While the NVIDIA internal embargo guidelines should allow for the first batch of cards to sell for the MSRP as they have almost all been pre ordered.

However, online hardware publication Videocardz believes that retailers might cancel preorders, only to force customers to reorder the same card at a significantly higher price.

About the Author

Auryn is a student journalist and an avid gamer. He enjoys strategy games as well as all the new releases from 10 years ago. He also has a few hours on Overwatch.

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