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Shadow Labyrinth, an utterly bonkers riff on Pac-Man and sidescrolling Metroidvania games, will hit digital store shelves on July 18. Itll be available for Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The game casts players as Swordsman No. 8 as he befriends a yellow orb called Puck. For the gaming historians out there, Puck-Man was the original name for Pac-Man. The gameplay involves switching from the classic sword-wielding hero to Puck, with the latter able to crawl on walls and (surprise) gobble up yellow dots. Theres also a third form, a mecha construct called Gaia. The gameplay looks frenetic and fairly violent, which seems like an odd choice for everyones favorite perpetually hungry orb. Bandai Namco is making the game, however, and it made the very first Pac-Man all of those decades ago. Im going to give them the benefit of the doubt here. In any event, its not as if developers havent experimented with Pac-Man in the past. The famished fiend has been featured in racing games, platformers, endless runners, puzzlers and more. Whats one more genre to add to the mix? Shadow Labyrinth will be available in the original version and as a Digital Deluxe edition. That one comes with a digital artbook and the soundtrack.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/shadow-labyrinth-the-edgy-pac-man-metroidvania-arrives-on-july-18-185011811.html?src=rss
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Ubisoft is continuing its efforts to course-correct after several challenging years. Today, the video game company announced that it will launch a subsidiary centered around three of its most familiar franchises: Assassin's Creed, Far Cry and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. The as-yet-unnamed subsidiary will fold in the teams working on those three series, including Ubisoft studios in Montréal, Quebec, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Barcelona and Sofia. This new business will receive an investment of 1.16 billion (roughly $1.25 billion) from its longstanding partner Tencent, granting the conglomerate a minority ownership stake. Following the transaction, Ubisoft will narrow focus to its other franchises, such as The Division and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon. "Today Ubisoft is opening a new chapter in its history," CEO and Co-Founder Yves Guillemot said. "As we accelerate the companys transformation, this is a foundational step in changing Ubisofts operating model that will enable us to be both agile and ambitious." Ubisoft has been cutting costs and jobs over the past several months after several of its new projects flopped. There have been hints for a while that the company's leaders were interested in either finding a buyer or exploring a joint venture with Tencent to help reverse its fortunes. It's encouraging that the recent Assassin's Creed: Shadows has already reached 3 million players, but Ubisoft will probably need a few more wins to fully stabilize. There is some extra good news in the announcement. The description of the new subsidiary does specify that "it will drive further increases in quality of narrative solo experiences." So while we can expect to also see multiplayer and free-to-play offerings from the Ubisoft umbrella, they aren't giving up on single-player games.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/ubisoft-spins-out-subsidiary-with-a-billion-dollar-investment-from-tencent-183516992.html?src=rss
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Meta has spent the last few years remaking Facebooks main feed into a discovery engine that primarily serves up recommended content from pages, groups and accounts users dont already follow. But while the company has said the change is necessary to compete with TikTok, its also frustrated Facebook users who miss seeing posts from people they actually know. Now, Meta is trying to remedy this with a revamped Friends section of the app that will only show posts and content related to your Facebook friends. The company says the update is the first of many meant to bring OG features back into the 21-year-old social network. With the update, the Friends tab of the Facebook app that used to only be for friend requests will now be home to a feed exclusively made up of content related to your friends. This includes feed and Story posts, as well as Reels, birthdays, friend requests and people you may know suggestions. While Meta is spinning the change as a part of a larger push to make Facebook feel more social, its not the first time the company has offered dedicated feeds for friend only content. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg showed off dedicated friends feed in 2022 amid the companys push to bring more recommendations to users home feeds. That feed, which surfaces posts from friends in reverse chronological order, is still available, though its somewhat buried in the app. Its not clear what else Meta has in store for other OG Facebook features that could play on nostalgia for the 21-year-old social network. (Facebooks once infamous poke feature already had a brief resurgence last year.) But its apparently a priority for Zuckerberg. I actually think that there's this whole opportunity that I think is going to be pretty fun to to go after and build which is just to kind of go one-by-one and build up a a bunch of these things that used to be these joyful experiences that people had as part of Facebook that just kind of don't exist on the internet today, Zuckerberg said in a podcast appearance promoting the change.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/mark-zuckerberg-decides-content-from-your-actual-friends-is-an-og-facebook-feature-180803853.html?src=rss
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