No hero should have to work alone. Batman trained Robin, Bill and Ted changed history, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, well, let’s just say they went on their own terms. In video games, the most iconic duo is easily Mario and Luigi. Since 2003, Nintendo’s flagship brothers have headlined Mario & Luigi, a spin-off of the iconic Super Mario franchise that places equal emphasis on Mario and Luigi as a team; the cornerstone of this philosophy is how all critical button inputs boil down to the A and B buttons which correspond to Mario and Luigi respectively. The siblings have been enjoying a well-earned vacation for the last decade (since Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam on 3DS), but we caught up with the pair to go hands-on with their latest, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, on the increasingly aging Nintendo Switch. After an hour in their company, it’s clear that there’s little in the way of mechanical innovation in this successor. Yet, the little things, the dressings and accoutrements to this mushroom dish, have left me thinking about it for days. They’re enough to justify this brotherly reunion entirely.Setting sail Mario & Luigi find themselves on Concordia, a col…

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How to unlock Tonic recipes

Tonic brewing explained

How to use Tonics

Brewing Destiny 2 Tonics recipes and swigging them during activities buffs you with extra combat abilities and bonus chances to get Revenant loot. These Volatile and Enriching Tonics are also a vital part of getting Revenant loot in Destiny 2, so it’s important to understand the ins and outs of brewing. However, it’s a slightly confusing system at first as it’s not obvious how you get ingredients for each Tonic or how you go about unlocking better recipes. To help you become a master apothecary, here’s everything you need to know about Destiny 2 Tonics, from how you unlock all the recipes to how you use them.How to unlock Destiny 2 Tonic recipes To discover Tonic recipes in Destiny 2, you’ve just got to brew other Tonics and hope that you randomly unlock a new recipe during the process. Essentially, whenever you hand over some reagents at the Table to brew, there’s a small chance that you’ll discover a new and similar recipe too.With 45 Tonic recipes to discover in Destiny 2 and only seven to start with, that’s a lot of brewing to do. So…

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Metaphor: ReFantazio has only been out for a few hours, but it’s already smashed through Persona 5 Royal’s concurrent player record on Steam, and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down any time soon, either. The enormous new fantasy JRPG from Studio Zero was met with critical acclaim when its reviews went live earlier this week – including from my own Metaphor: ReFantazio review for GamesRadar+, in which I gave the game four and a half stars out of five. It appears that its player count is set to reflect that, because it’s taken no time at all to soar to 38,713 concurrent players on Steam – on a weekday, hours after launch – and surpassing Persona 5 Royal’s all-time peak of 35,474, which it set two days after its release in 2022.Despite coming from the creators of Persona 3, 4, and 5, Metaphor: ReFantazio isn’t a Persona game, although in some ways, it certainly feels like one. Even so, Persona 5 Royal – the definitive edition of Atlus’ 2016 JRPG – has felt like the one to follow. It’s held onto its fanbase tightly for years, and there’s a reason why it’s widely considered to be one of the best JRPGs of all time. Clearly though, Metaphor: ReFantaz…

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The sophomore slump, or second album syndrome, is a well-documented phenomenon in music where breakout artists sometimes struggle to replicate the heights of their debut in their second album, but does that ever happen to game studios? The developers behind Dead Cells certainly felt that pressure while making their next roguelike launching this month.In an interview with GamesRadar+, Thomas Vasseur and Yannick Berthier of Dead Cells creator Motion Twin talked through the sometimes overwhelming pressure of following up one of the best and most successful roguelikes in history with their next game, Windblown, another similarly gorgeous action game.”It’s awful and very, very cool at the same time,” Vasseur says. “Because when you want to do better, it’s like you’re running after another thing. So I think we needed this pressure to be effective in the development, but when it is too hard for us to think about that, we just remember what we are doing. We just wanted to make a game to play together.” Vasseur even likens that rush to the feeling of storming through a World of Warcraft dungeon as a seasoned veteran. “We really want to have this kind of feeling to rush. It’s hard to be in t…

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Lead Skyrim designer and former senior Starfield systems designer Bruce Nesmith reckons Bethesda Game Studios won’t move to a new game engine – and explained why it doesn’t need to.Speaking in a recent interview with VideoGamer, Nesmith outlines why Bethesda’s in-house engine still works for the studio despite its age. “We’re arguing about the game engine, let’s argue about the game,” he says. “The game engine is not the point, the game engine is in service to the game itself. You and I could both identify a hundred lousy games that used Unreal. Is it Unreal’s fault? No, it’s not Unreal’s fault.”While Bethesda’s engine has been used to create what are arguably many of the best RPGs of all time, it’s also ever-evolving – what started as the company’s version of Gamebryo, a now long-defunct engine, gradually blossomed into the Creation Engine. “Gamebryo is no longer a business, it hasn’t been for a while. But that engine has been constantly tweaked, updated, and refined,” continues Nesmith.According to the ex-developer, the Creation Engine has evolved “to do exactly the kinds of games that Bethesda makes: The Elder Scrolls, the Fallouts, Starfield.” At this point, “it’s perfectly tun…

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We’re ready to explore South of Midnight in all its spooky folklore-infused glory. Officially announced during the Xbox Games Showcase 2023, we’re still thinking about it one year later as we look ahead to all the new games for 2024 and beyond that lie ahead. The announcement trailer for Compulsion Games’ upcoming adventure gave us our first little snippets of the world setting and story, but a substantial gameplay trailer revealed at Xbox Games Showcase 2024 has us more excited than ever to explore all the magic of the Deep South when the game launches in 2025.Said to take place in a magic realist version of the American South, the trailers do well to establish the tone, with some fantastical elements thrown in for good measure. Follow that up with punchy third-person combat and exploration, and it’s certainly shaping up to be among the most intriguing upcoming Xbox Series games to keep on your radar. For now, read on below as we take you through everything we know so far about South of Midnight.Recent updatesThis South of Midnight hub was updated on June 10, adding the new gameplay trailer following its reveal at the Xbox Games Showcase 2024.South of Midnight release date   …

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The Silent Hill 2 Remake bug room code is something you’re likely trying to work out in a panic as insects besiege you from every angle. The keypad combination is actually random across each playthrough of the Silent Hill 2 Remake – there’s no specific answer across the board, but you can narrow it down to a specific set of numbers and then run through all the various possible combinations until you find out the code for the bug room. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!How to solve the Bug Room code in the Silent Hill 2 Remake More Silent Hill 2 Remake guidesSilent Hill 2 Remake Nurses’ Office
Silent Hill 2 Remake Director’s Office hand
Silent Hill 2 Remake Director’s Office SafeThe code to the bug room in Silent Hill 2 is (at least on normal puzzle difficulty), some random combination of the numbers 2,3 and 9. You can work this out because when you examine the keypad, those numbers are clean – implying that previous use has worn the blood off them. In that sense, this puzzle makes a little more sense than the Silent Hill 2 Remake rings puzzle back in the hospital before this, though there’s a catch.Namely, there really doesn’t seem to be any way to narrow down the answer beyond that,…

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The Silent Hill 2 Remake surgical chair and dummy puzzle, is a fetch quest that gives you the Lapis Eye Key for the Hospital chained box with three locks. There’s nothing to work out here beyond following the chain, using the Instrument of Force and Key of Bliss (hammer and lobotomy spike), to get what you need, and then backtracking to where you started. Even with the chain to follow, it can be easy to get lost, as sometimes you have to take a different path to stay with it, and the corridors of otherworld Brookhaven Hospital are treacherously convoluted – so even without the monsters to fight it can be easy to get turned around. Silent Hill 2 Remake surgical chair and dummy walkthough You’ll reach the surgical chair and hospital dummy in Silent Hill 2 by following the middle chain of the Silent Hill 2 Remake Chained box to the exam room you can see on the map above. Here you’ll find a dummy in the chair shielding its face. Using the Instrument of Force (hammer) you can break away the first arm, and then twist the second away to reveal the eye.  At this point in Silent Hill 2 Remake, you’ll have to follow the chain again through a breakable wall where you’ll find …

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It’s been – deep breath, please – 14 years since StarCraft 2 launched. Ouch. Though my brain has finally stopped thinking that 2010 was just a few years ago, this one stings. I was never particularly good at StarCraft – truth be told, online RTS matches stress me out like nothing else – but Wings of Liberty’s campaign hooked me from the first mission. It was my stepping stone from playing the likes of Halo Wars and Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2 alone, to trying out multiplayer and learning phrases like Zerg rush and APM against my will. I have fond (if painful memories) of trying to master all three of StarCraft 2’s factions at once, throwing myself into the zerg’s trial-by-fire horde playstyle and, once that felt too hard, dropping it to learn Protos’ quality over quantity tactics. I never quite clicked with either – it was the safe, reliable Terrans I did best with – but it was the first and only time I’ve been so driven to compete in a strategy game. Even 14 years later, I’m yet to find another RTS that has grabbed me in the same ways StarCraft did. So when it was recently reported that a StarCraft shooter was in the w…

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How long is Silent Hill 2 Remake? Well, that largely depends on how you approach it. Bloober’s recreation is longer than the original, but there’s variation depending on how you tackle the challenge ahead – how much you explore or fight can have an impact. And if you’re intent on pursuing multiple playthroughs of the game to get different endings then that can all change things. Overall Silent Hill 2 Remake is about 20 hours long on average, but that’s a rough estimate so let me explain the possible variations below. How long to beat the Silent Hill 2 Remake? More Silent Hill 2 guidesSilent Hill 2 Remake tips
Silent Hill 2 Remake Director’s Office Safe
Silent Hill 2 Remake Nurses’ OfficeThe Silent Hill 2 Remake will take roughly 17-22 hours for most players to beat, though that will vary depending on how skilled you are as a player and how much you tread off the beaten path for collectibles and new challenges. Silent Hill 2 Remake is hardly an open world game, but sections of it are non-linear, where you’re free to explore a few streets before moving onto the next location. This is how completely options puzzles like the Silent Hill 2 Remake Garage Jack lever come into …

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