Number 1 For Gaming

Today is Star Wars Day, which returns every year on May 4. It is also the day that people say a certain phrase I refuse to utter let alone type out. I would rather take a brutal whacking from a plastic lightsaber – you know, like the one I had as a kid with a lightbulb in the handle – than say the dreaded thing people say on this day. It’s right up there with Live Long and Prosper, and I love Star Trek as much as the first three Star Wars movies – but it still bugs me when people say it.

It is also KY Derby Day if you are into that sort of thing like most Kentuckians (Phantom Track was robbed. Why wasn’t an inquiry called on the jockey riding the winner Mystik Dan?). There’s a saying around these parts that goes something like: “It doesn’t matter which horses you pick or which bourbon you drink… said no Kentuckian ever,” and that’s pretty much the truth. Folks here love horses as much as they love bourbon, especially Woodford Reserve, and if you prefer a different bourbon, we can’t be friends anymore. Okay, Blanton’s and Knob Creek are excellent as well, and so is Wild Turkey Rare Breed – and I can smell the Wild Turkey distillery on a good day when the wind blows just right – but Woodford Reserve is so damn smooth it’s sinful.

Presently, those living in the UK are enjoying a long weekend thanks to the Early May bank holiday on Monday. US folks will have to wait for the end of the month when Memorial Day rolls around. Come on end of May! We US folks need a three-day weekend too, ya know.

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Star Wars Day is here, and May 4th brings plenty of fun things going on in games, discounts to be had, shows to stream, and plenty more.

There are likely local festivities to get involved with so you should check the website of your local Chamber of Commerce or Tourism Board. Facebook will be your best bet, though.

This weekend is packed with exciting events and sales. From today until next week, the gaming world has something for everyone. Let’s dive into a few highlights.

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Today is Star Wars day. International celebrations on lightsabers, Jedi, the force, and little green guys. One of the more established nerd holidays, it’s a time for peace and jubilance. However, I’m not here to mess around. As a fan of Star Wars – and more recently the Star Wars Jedi series – my mind is on one special guy. Star Wars Jedi 3, whenever it comes out, will be the climactic conclusion to a brilliant modern Star Wars trilogy. But it won’t be the same without Oggdo.

Anyone who has played any of the games will have strong opinions about the king of all space frogs. A running joke to some, a series highlight for others.This is absolutely not and joke and is very serious. Star Wars Jedi 3 may end up brilliant either way, but without Oggdo I dare say a sizable portion of the fanbase will be left bereft of hope. As such, I’ve written out a list of suggestions on how I’d like to see everyone’s favourite frog return. Again, all entirely serious.

One of the best running gags of the Star Wars Jedi series stems from a certain frog called Oggdo. This lad proved a challenging optional boss fight in the first game, with his no-BS attitude and unique charm popping back through the Spawn on Oggdo in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. I don’t care if canonically they have to make a new Oggdo in a lab, or revive him through force shenanigans. Oggdo must return. The frog is as much a core part of the Star Wars Jedi series as Merrin is.

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As we head into another corporate made-up holiday for May 4th, know that there is at least one significant, non-annual, and lesser-discussed Star Wars thing to celebrate in 2024 – 25 years of Lego Star Wars.

The success of Lego Star Wars can’t really be understated. In video gaming, we know it as the brand combination that led to oodles of video games – but it charted a new course for Lego at large, too. It’s the single most successful piece of Lego franchise licensing, but is also undoubtedly the brand that cracked the door open for other brands. With Lego’s interest piqued, the toy behemoth has recreated everything from Batman to Horizon Zero Dawn in its iconic bricks – but it all began with Star Wars.

Part of the triumph of Lego Star Wars is really the breadth of its appeal. This is shared with regular Lego – there’s city sets of police stations and hospitals for kids, but also supremely detailed fully-featured buildings for the bigger kids. Lego Star Wars has long followed this template, serving up cutesy play sets ranging from a tenner or so up to larger ‘Christmas present’ tier toys – and then more expensive sets for adults who really should know better.

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One year since its release, Arkand has yet to release the extra content included with the Bite Back Edition of its vampire killing game, Redfall.

As noticed by Kotaku, the promised content included with the game’s special edition is MIA with nary a word on when it might be released.

The Bite Back Edition, which costs $100 without Microsoft’s Game Pass and $80 with, includes the base game, the Redfall Hero Pass with two future heroes, the Laser Beam Multi-Weapon Skin, the Tactical Knife Stake weapon attachment, Northern Expedition Devinder Outfit, Eyes in the Dark Jacob outfit, War Clothes Layla outfit, and the Engineer Volunteer Remi outfit.

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Ninja Theory has shared the minimum and recommended PC specs for Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 ahead of the game’s May 21 release.

The game is available for pre-order on Steam and Xbox, and pre-ordering it on the latter will allow you to pre-install Hellblade 2 which helps you jump into the game quicker. It will also release day one on Game Pass for cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X/S.

Below are the minimum and recommended PC specs with additional information for medium and very high settings.

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Helldivers 2 is now racking up a barrage of negative Steam reviews following an announcement from Sony that linking your Steam account to a PSN one is set to become a mandatory requirement to play the game soon. Obviously, this is something a whole load of PC players – those being the ones affected by this – aren’t fans of, hence the aggressive thumbs downing.

If you’re out of the loop, Sony said in the announcement that it’s set to end a “grace period” during which not linking the two accounts was optional due to some technical issues around the game’s launch. The new state of play is this: “as of May 6, all new Helldivers 2 players on Steam will be required to connect their Steam account to a PlayStation Network account. Current players on Steam will start to see the mandatory login from May 30 and will be required to have linked a Steam and PlayStation Network account by June 4.”

Since that bombshell dropped this morning, the game has been hit by a slew of negative reviews from folks frustrated with the fact that the linking is becoming mandatory – even if it has been listed as requirement on the Helldivers 2’s Steam page since launch.

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Nintendo has managed to take down 8,535 GitHub repositories containing code from Switch emulator Yuzu with a single DMCA notice. Yup, after reaching a settlement with Tropic Haze, the company behind the emulator, the process of totally scrubbing any clones or copies of it from the net is in full swing.

If you’re out of the loop the company behind that plumber and the little pink blob’s decision to sue Yuzu’s creators in court earlier this year quickly resulted in a decision in Nintendo’s favour that meant Tropic Haze had to pay the publisher $2.4 million of “monetary relief”. It was also barred from offering or promoting Yuzu or its source code going forwards – leading to the emulator being “discontinued, effectively immediately”.

Now, as reported by TorrentFreak, Nintendo lodged a DMCA notice with GitHub – a platform that allows lots of developers to store and share code – eariler this week, and it’s resulted in a lot of Yuzu respositories being taken down.

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Riot Games has finally rolled out its Vanguard anti-cheat to League of Legends. In the wake of this update, various users have expressed concerns and shared negative technical experiences, with some claiming the update has bricked their PCs. In response, Riot has come out publically and stood by the implementation, pointing to a relatively miniscule number of these reports against the total player base, and identifying key causes and fixes.

Vanguard – a kernel level anti-cheat – has proven controversial since its implimentation into Riot Games’ FPS Valorant back in 2020. These concerns range from privacy isses, as it not only has access to the most authoratitive layer of your operating system, but also takes screenshots of your game to ensure you’re not using any pesky cheats. As a kernel level bit of software that’s always running, it’s also put a toll on players’ older machines with its high CPU usage.

With that context, we can look back to this week’s eruption from parts of the League of Legends community. As soon as the Vanguard patch went live, reports on social media popped up pointing to bricked PCs, and noting that those playing on Virtual Machines (including Nvidia Now) or those without UEFI or TPM2.0 enabled on their PCs weren’t having it function properly.

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Sony itself has just made a big announcement about Helldivers 2, and it’s not going down too well. Basically, the “grace period” for PC players not having to link their Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network one in order to play is coming to an end soon – with security being cited as the reason why this is set to become mandatory.

This news came via an update on the game’s Steam page, attributed to Sony Interactive Entertainment itself, rather than Helldivers developer Arrowhead. “Due to technical issues at the launch of Helldivers 2, we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional,” it reads, “That grace period will now expire.”

“Account linking plays a critical role in protecting our players and upholding the values of safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games,” Sony continues, “This is our main way to protect players from griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behaviour. It also allows those players that have been banned the right to appeal.”

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