Starfield Will Support One Of Xbox’s Lowkey Best Features

An astronaut explores a distant planet.

Image: Bethesda / Microsoft

Starfield is the latest Xbox Series X/S exclusive to support Xbox Play Anywhere, the feature that lets players buy the game once and then access it on both console and PC. No, it doesn’t count for Steam versions of the game, but in a world where the biggest console blockbusters are increasingly getting ported to PC, Starfield is a reminder of why the feature can be so useful.

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Xbox Play Anywhere was a major talking point for Microsoft toward the end of the Xbox One era. Outclassed by the PlayStation 4 library, the tech company pivoted to other, broader initiatives aimed at alleviating some of the biggest headaches associated with console gaming like crossplay and backwards compatibility. More recently, Play Anywhere has kind of faded into the background, not because Microsoft abandoned it but because there just haven’t been that many big new games to showcase it.

Starfield, if it lives up to the hype, will probably be the best evidence yet of why it matters. While tons of people will play the open-world RPG on console, mod support, higher performance, and other perks will make it one of the biggest PC releases of the year. Take me for example. Built in 2016, my modest gaming PC is on its last legs. I’ll probably build a new one sometime next year. It’ll be nice, having already bought Starifeld on Xbox Series X/S, to not have to purchase it again to take advantage of all the bells and whistles on PC, with save data also transferring over.

The console and PC gaming ecosystems used to be more isolated from one another, but the lines have blurred more in recent years as both Microsoft and Sony have put their games on Steam. Regular ports of the biggest PlayStation exclusives have been great to see, but it also means double-dipping for fans who already played on console. Thanks to Microsoft’s self-operated storefront, Xbox players are in a different boat.

Play Anywhere was easy to overlook, but if Starfield and Forza Motorsport later this year really are the first in a steady stream of new Xbox exclusives, it could prove to be just as useful as Smart Delivery, another seemingly perfunctory perk that ended up being a big deal.

            

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Black Desert Devs’ Next Game Looks Dope, Features Horse Drift

Gif: Pearl Abyss / Kotaku

Gamescom’s Opening Night Live kicked off Tuesday, August 22 with a smattering of trailers for Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Black Myth: Wukong, and Little Nightmares 3, among others. Tucked into the presentation was a trailer for Black Desert developer Pearl Abyss’ next game and, y’all, it looks pretty cool.

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Crimson Desert was announced in November 2019 and has since had a handful of details spill out, with a big reveal landing in December 2020 at The Game Awards. Billed as an open-world action RPG, Crimson Desert’s ONL appearance featured a new gameplay trailer showing tons of cool stuff.

Crimson Desert

It looks like an interesting amalgam of Assassin’s Creed and Devil May Cry with brutal combat, transformations, and horse drifting. Yes, horse drifting. At one point during the trailer, the character gets a horse to make a sharp left turn that’s almost giving racing sim or maybe something closer to the 2022 indie online co-op racing battle royale game Knightfall: A Daring Journey. It’s over-the-top in a very video game sort of way, and I’m absolutely here for it.

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Interestingly, according to PC Gamer, Crimson Desert was originally planned as a prequel to Black Desert. However, the project outgrew that property to the point where Pearl Abyss saw fit to treat Crimson Desert as a separate IP. While it’s unclear just how connected the two games are, Crimson Desert is built using an upgraded version of the engine that powers Black Desert.

Crimson Desert doesn’t have a release date, but it is expected to come to consoles and PC.

 

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New WarioWare-Like Game Features 56 Minigames From Hell

Gif: Onion Soup Interactive / Kotaku

The world needs more silly minigame collections. This is something I’ve long believed. Yes, WarioWare is nice. But we need and deserve more. Lucky for us, Super 56—releasing on PC soon—seems to be answering the call and providing a new collection of odd, retro-inspired minigames that are controlled entirely by one single button.

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First announced in March 2022 as Press A For Achievements, the re-titled Super 56 is seemingly inspired by minigame collections like WarioWare and Cooking Mama. As in those games, Super 56 features 56 (hence the name) tiny, bite-sized minigames. However, Super 56 is from Hell according to the game’s lore, which also says the collection was banned by the government and all copies were buried in a desert. But recently some Super 56 carts have appeared in Hell and some demons have saved up their money to buy a copy and experience the forbidden minigames.

The big difference between Super 56 and other minigame collections is that the entire game and all of the content in it is controlled using one single button. The developers even claim the game’s menus only rely on that same, singular button. If you are worried that might limit the variety of minigames in Super 56, a new trailer shows that isn’t the case.

IGN / Onion Soup Interactive

In the game’s official trailer, you can spot a dozen or more minigames that all seem to feature different art styles and gameplay mechanics. At one point the player is seen shooting demons in a Doom-like shooter and then a few seconds later they can be seen catching fish in an Animal Crossing-like world. There are also some very odd moments involving giant floating heads and people wearing hazmat suits in a low poly bathroom. I’m starting to understand why Super 56 was “banned” and sent to Hell.

Super 56 will also support online multiplayer, daily challenges, leaderboards, and unlockable modifiers and avatars. If you want to play Super 56 you can check out the game’s demo on Steam right now. 

As for when Super 56 will be released outside of Hell, no specific release date has been set but the husband and wife developers behind the game promise it’s coming soon to PC.

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Looks Like Starfield Features An Iconic Halo Planet

Starfield has an absolutely massive galaxy to explore, so it was only a matter of time before players started discovering Easter eggs and subtle nods to other sci-fi franchises that came before it. Recently, a certain habitable planet in the Eridani system has fans convinced it’s a recreation of a rather unfortunate world in the Halo series.

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Players have discovered that Starfield’s version of the Epsilon Eridani star system, a real star system that’s also a major part of Halo lore, includes a planet that bears a striking resemblance to that of Reach, where 2010’s Halo: Reach took place. Described on Halopedia as featuring “towering mountains, deserts, and weather-beaten forests,” Starfield’s Eridani II has similar terrain to Reach. Sadly, no one’s discovered any weird ostrich-like birdies.

A star map in Starfield shows the planet of Eridani II.

Screenshot: Bethesda Game Studios / Kotaku

And like Reach, Eridani II is the second planet in the Eridani star’s orbit.

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As mentioned, Eridani II is a real star system out there in the void. It was first written about in Ptolemy’s Catalog of Stars, which listed over 1,000 worlds, as well as other Islamic works of astronomy. In the 1900s, it was estimated to be about 10.5 light-years from our solar system. Early on, SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project which scans the skies for signs of other civilizations) took interest in Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti—which is also in Starfield and featured in Marathon, another Bungie shooter—as a likely spot for habitable planets, either featuring extraterrestrial life itself or possibly proving a good candidate for future space travel.

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A star map shows the distance to the Eridani star system from Alpha Centauri.

Screenshot: Bethesda Game Studios / Kotaku

If you’d like to visit Eridani II in Starfield, you can do so very early on in the game. Starting from Alpha Centauri (home of The Lodge and other early story moments in Starfield), go down and to the left on the star map and you’ll find the Eridani star system, which is only a mere 19.11 light years away.

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Once there, simply navigate to Eridani II and touch down on any of its biome regions for comfortable weather and mountainous terrain. As some fans have pointed out, Eridani II’s locations are closer to what’s seen in the Halo: Reach level “Tip of the Spear” than its more lush, grassy areas shown in other points of the game’s campaign. This is a prime location for Halo fans to build their first outpost (and you won’t have to deal with the challenges of extreme environments).

A lone helmet sits on the ground before some mountains.

May your trip on Eridani II be a bit more fortunate than a certain Spartan.
Screenshot: Bethesda Game Studios / Kotaku

You also won’t have to deal with, you know, Covenant.

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