Fallout 76

While Fallout had already switched gears from being a top down RPG to a full blown first person adventure with the third entry, the franchise’s biggest risk to date has undoubtedly been Fallout 76. Released in 2018, Fallout 76 sought to take what was a predominantly single player franchise and morph it into a live service game. But that process was far from smooth, and the launch version of Fallout 76 was criticized by fans on account of its empty world and technical inefficiencies galore. But thankfully, Bethesda didn’t give up on the game and Fallout 76 has become much better with each new content update. As it stands now, Fallout 76 is easily one of the best ways to experience the franchise – which ultimately makes this risky venture a smash success.

As per a report by GamesIndustry, several of last year’s games such as Far Cry 6, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and Ratchet and Clank: A Rift Apart, which were some of the best-sellers of the year, performed very well, selling more physically than digitally. The only exception to this is Resident Evil Village, which was marginally a little bit more popular on the digital front.

Nintendo games continue to perform well physically, unsurprisingly. Of all the physical copies sold, Switch had a share of 47%. Apart from that, FIFA 22‘s digital sales share was 61%, making it the fastest-growing digital product in the country, whereas the Call of Duty franchise saw the digital share drop year on year, with Call of Duty: Vanguard’s share being 58%.

EA’s F1 2021 in the end takes the bag for the biggest digital sales share for a new release, enjoying a 64% digital sales split.

Below, you can have a look at the 2021 UK sales chart with digital sales split to get an overview of the current market situation.

The outage might was caused due to the expiration of a domain name that’s used by the Denuvo DRM for game activations. Server issues have been now fixed though, and it seems that the games are now accessible. Denuvo confirmed the same in a statement provided to PC Gamer, saying:

“A Denuvo domain was unreachable yesterday afternoon CET. The problem was fixed after we got notified from our automatic system control. After the fix, there was no whatsoever restriction or limitation for the gamer. Denuvo is working to implement further improvements to avoid such downtime in the future.”

DRM has long been a necessary evil in the PC gaming scene, and criticisms have often been hurled at Denuvo particularly for its high CPU usage, affecting performance in games. Recently, Resident Evil Village on PC did have a lot of issues when playing at high-framerates due to some DRM conflicts, which was resolved via a post-launch patch by Capcom months after release.

Of course, there’s Marvel’s Spider-man and its standalone expansion Miles Morales from Insomniac, which has fans excited for the future of that franchise – but the general consensus towards Marvel games seem to be skeptical at best. This is evident by the conversation surrounding the recently announced Marvel’s Midnight Suns – which has fans equal parts skeptical as well as hyped for the game – even through details remain scant on the gameplay front.

This paints a very dull picture for the upcoming Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, even more so considering that Marvel’s Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy are both being published by Square Enix. However, this picture doesn’t do Guardians of the Galaxy justice since its shaping up to be its own different entity. There’s a very decent chance that the game could turn out to be great fun and by extension, one of biggest the year has to offer.

As fans and critics have pointed out countless times since the release of Marvel’s Avengers, the biggest problem with it is the disconnect between what Marvel’s Avengers wanted to be and what the developers made of it. Its tacked-on loot and RPG mechanics originating from its live-service format does it more harm than good. After a handful of expansions that can roughly be termed more of the same, it seems that the game will remain that way and the day doesn’t seem far away when support for it drops out eventually.

However, Guardians of the Galaxy is a different beast in this respect. Developer Eidos Montreal has confirmed on several occasions that the game is a single-player experience, and places a lot of its focus on delivering a great narrative. Of course, it remains to be seen how the story pans out – but it seems that the game seems to have a firm understanding of what makes MCU narratives so endearing.

Even in times of extreme peril, MCU superheroes always have their wits about them which makes sympathizing with them pretty easy while providing some much needed levity to the situation. Eidos Montreal seems to carry this influence on its sleeve, which is most evident from the gameplay trailer which shows leader of the band Star-Lord playing some classic 80’s tunes for his ultimate move that gives damage buffs to all party members. At the same time, Guradians of the Galaxy isn’t a retelling of the narratives found in the movies and comics – but is Eidos Montreal’s own version of this universe. Of course, it remains to be seen how positive of an impact this has over the proceedings of the narrative and characters – but is an interesting point to get hyped for and speculate on nevertheless.

There’s also role playing game styled dialogues within Guardians of the Galaxy, which is also touted to be an integral part of the experience. The gameplay reveal trailer showcases that feature a handful of times, and there’s also a Fallout-esque indicator which informs you of your relationship status with a companion. Choice and consequence has been hurled around a lot in interviews and press releases, which if true – could definitely make Guardians of the Galaxy worthy of replaying several times over.

Of course, narrative is only half the picture – and the gameplay for Guardians of the Galaxy is also looking to be shaping quite well at the same time. It’s markedly different from Marvel’s Avengers – which features flashy combat with a ton of different moves, but ultimately falls flat with spam attacks being the best strategy in most situations due to damage sponge enemies.

Guardians of the Galaxy on the other hand, is a strictly single-player game where Star-Lord is the only playable character in the game. As seen in the gameplay reveal, as Star-Lord – players will be controlling their party of characters by issuing number of commands and moves for each Guardians. Star-Lord’s move set doesn’t seem extremely interesting from the trailer with most of his time being spent shooting down enemies from a distance while the party members do most of the heavy lifting for him.

It’s a radical change from what fans expect out of a Marvel action-focused game, but this shift seems to be a part in the larger push towards what the developers call it “solo team-play.” As players will progress through the game, the enemies and the party will start to unlock new move sets. There’s also commands that players can issue to motivate party members to fight harder, which is also looking to be an interesting addition to the mix. All in all, Guardians of the Galaxy seems to be distancing itself from purely action territory towards a hybrid of both action and tactics. If the developer remains committed to its vision for Guardians of the Galaxy, it could definitely help the game stand out amongst a horde of different experiences releasing later this year.

Of course, delivering on the promises ultimately falls on Eidos Montreal’s shoulders, which is a promising studio behind the highly acclaimed title Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which strangely enough shares some similarity with the studio’s current project. There’s a similar focus of choice and consequence, plus there’s also an enormous toolkit of move sets and commands to issue much like the numerous possibilities found with Adam Jensen’s kit. Considering the studio’s previous work, it shouldn’t be uncharted territory to bring those mechanics and learnings into a new realm for Guardians of the Galaxy.

2021 is looking to be an interesting time for Marvel, with its cinematic universe kickstarting its Phase 4 with mostly great releases. WandaVision and Marvel’s What If…? have been received with great critical and commercial acclaim, and Guardians of the Galaxy has the potential to carry on this trend with its release in October. Furthermore, it could also serve as a tale of redemption for publisher Square Enix which has garnered a lot of negative press following the release of Marvel’s Avengers. There’s a lot riding on Guardians of the Galaxy, and Eidos Montreal certainly has the potential to make it stand out with its unique ideas – and hopefully, it manages to do that and then some more.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Telltale has confirmed that its ongoing take on Marvels zaniest property will continue this upcoming Tuesday. The fourth installment of Telltale’s Guardians of the Galaxy will be launching on October 10. It will be called Who Needs You- and you can check out a trailer for it for yourself below.

The episode will continue right from where the third one left off- and as is always the case, it will be dealing with resolving the conflicts that the previous installment left wide open. The game will cost $5 if you purchase it standalone, and free if you got the Season Pass, which was $30.

Telltale’s Guardians of the Galaxy will be launching on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. A Nintendo Switch version of the game has also been announced- but as of right now, no release date has been confirmed, and we don’t even know if the release will still be episodic, or if it will be released in one consolidated package.

Update: Nintendo has gone ahead and confirmed that Telltale’s Batman and Guardians of the Galaxy will be coming to the Switch. This was confirmed through a tweet which you can check below this article. The headline has been changed to reflect the update.

Original Story:

While big western AAA support is still up in the air, the Switch is starting to do very well for itself in terms of garnering third party support from just about all other quarters- Japanese, indie, and now, western mid tier developers and publishers, too.

Take Telltale- they have stated that in addition to Minecraft: Story Mode, Nintendo Switch owners can expect more of their games on the platform, including Telltale’s take on Batman and Guardians of the Galaxy.

“I think you know as a studio that prides itself in having our games, the same games, that you play on a big PlayStation console, is the same thing you will play on a telephone,” Telltale’s Head of Creative Communications Job Stauffer said in a recent interview with Eurogamer. “The Switch is that happy medium of the two. It’s part console and it’s part mobile. So it just feels natural on the Switch and we love it.

“Minecraft, the first game, came out today. I think you can expect to see other titles like Batman, Guardians of the Galaxy, maybe Minecraft Season 2 in the future.

“We don’t have dates yet but we’re big fans of the platform. More Telltale titles are coming to the Switch, stay tuned.” Eventually, Nintendo themselves confirmed that both games are hitting the Switch via a tweet, which confirms it with finality.

So, yes- it looks like Switch owners can soon look forward to playing Telltale’s take on just about every pop culture property and franchise that there is on Nintendo’s newest machine. Things are slowly starting to pick up on the third party support front for Nintendo- now if only those pesky AAA western developers would come around…

Get ready to defend the galaxy or become the Dark Knight when more @telltalegames adventures arrive on #NintendoSwitch! pic.twitter.com/4TncanjMgf

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) August 24, 2017

Remember the multi game partnership that Square Enix and Marvel announced last week? The first game in that partnership is meant to be some sort of Avengers game- but the second one might be taking what is arguably Marvel’s most popular property within the so called ‘nerd culture’ and making a game out of it.

According to a report on Eurogamer, Eidos Montreal is currently in the early stages of producing a Guardians of the Galaxy game- this is in addition to Eidos Montreal also assisting Crystal Dynamics with the previously mentioned Avengers game. Not much else was said about the Guardians game, presumably since it is in very early stages of development, but just the fact that it is being made should make fans happy.

Of course, Guardians of the Galaxy fans will also get the chance to play a game starring their favorite band of galactic misfits when Telltale Games releases its own take on Guardians of the Galaxy this Summer.