There’s a new reason to revisit Battlefield 2042, Euro Truck Simulator 2 gets ported after 13 years, and I don’t need another Balatro-like in my life, but I might make an exception for fellow dopamine drip machine Raccoin. Welcome to another edition of Morning Checkpoint, Kotaku‘s round-up of gaming news and cultural discourse. Also, ongoing updates on the fate of D.C.’s most infamous sandwich slinger. A 20-person goon squad was sent to his home last Friday to re-arrest the guy, but murals memorializing the moment will be harder to detain.
Raccoin is a coin pusher for roguelike deckbuilder freaks
Playstack’s next game is about watching coins fall off a ramp as you use special items and tricks to generate giant, super-satisfying combos. It’s certainly being presented as Balatro for coin-pushers, complete with a nice, quirky arcade cabinet art style. You select different characters with unique advantages and unlock special coins you can deploy to rack up bonuses. There’s a physics simulation element and lots of jingling.
The developer is Doraccoon, and this appears to be their first game. If you’ve ever wandered by someone hunched over a coin pusher in the wild with a zombie look in their eyes and shook your head in dismay, well, hey, that could be you when Raccoin launches. There’s no release date yet, but a free playtest on Steam is live starting August 18.
Keeping Anthem online forever might have made it a worse game
Ex-BioWare producer Mark Darrah recently mused about Anthem‘s servers shutting down next year in light of the Stop Killing Games movement. “It would have been an uglier game, probably would have had more latency issues,” he recently told YouTuber MrMattyPlays. “It would have been a worse experience second-to-second in order to get something that basically wouldn’t need to ever be sunset.”
But he also added that those tradeoffs might be worth it in the long run. “I think maybe it is that we want to be in a world where we’re willing to sacrifice some fidelity, sacrifice some things in order to get it so that games don’t just vanish one day.”
Battlefield 2042 gets a big surprise update called “Road to Battlefield 6“
EA’s last beleaguered multiplayer shooter is being repurposed into a bridge to the future. A new update that goes live today adds a new free pass full of unlockable nods to the franchise’s past as well as new rewards for Battlefield 6. A version of the Iwo Jima map is also returning, alongside other new content. Fans are grudgingly on board. “Okay 2042, ill bite one last time,” wrote one YouTube commenter.
Euro Truck Simulator 2 is coming to console
A PlayStation store listing for the hit highway and chill series leaked over the weekend. The PS5 version is arriving over a decade after the game came out, though regular updates have continued adding new vehicles and fleshing out the sprawling continental road map.
There’s an enhanced version of Shenmue III on the way
Shenmue III Enhanced will have more NPCs in the streets, better graphics, menu and gameplay fixes, and a new camera mode inspired by the original two games. It also brings the game to Xbox and Switch 2, with an upgrade path for those who already own it on PC and PS4.
The Last Of Us Online game director teases new multiplayer project
Vinit Agarwal left Naughty Dog earlier this year to set up a new game studio in Japan. He recently shed more light on what fans can expect from the team’s next project, which includes fellow Last of Us Online lead Joe Pettinati. “A big part of what inspired me to [go independent] was seeing the potential in combining Naughty Dog’s specialty, cinematic action, with multiplayer,” he told GameSpark (via VGC). He said it’s a triple-I multiplayer game that’s still just a few months into production.
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