Dead Cells is set for some exciting news over the latter half of this month.  The game is adding its second DLC, Fatal Falls, on the 26th, and is backing up this launch with some big deals. 

To help celebrate the DLC release, it is being accompanied by the Dead Cells: The Fatal Seed Bundle. This bundle targets those who are new to the game offering up the base game, with all of its updates and the 2 paid DLC. All of these offerings are looking at sizeable discounts later this month that see the base game being discounted at 50% off, while the bundle is marked down 33%, and the first DLC, The Bad Seed, marked down 30%. The date for these sales will vary a little depending on what platform you're playing on so be sure to keep an eye out for them. 

Since Dead Cells debut in 2017, this will be the 22nd update to the game, and will come with 2 new biomes, some very cool new weapons, and a new entourage of enemies to slay.  The biomes, The Fractured Shrines and The Undying Shores, are intended to spice up your mid game run a little bit adding some variety to runs that may have gone through Stilt Village or Clock Tower. 

Did I mention the flying sword? Have I really made it this far without mentioning the flying sword?  One of the seven new weapons introduced, the new maniacal sword, does in fact fly and it looks great. Alongside the sword players will be able to test out new scythes that will follow you around, as well as a variety of other weapons designed to help with the new biomes. These new weapons, partnered with 10 new outfits provide new looks to don while facing off against 8 new enemies as well as one new final boss, The Scarecrow and his exploding mushrooms. Take a look at the trailer below for a preview of all of these updates. 

I am, and have always been, a giant supporter of PlayStation VR. The very night Sony's new VR accessory/system went on sale, I woke up at midnight to click the "Buy" button on Amazon with no regrets. I've always said that if VR ever became a reality I would be first in line. My shiny new VR system was waiting on my porch for me when I got home from work on launch day. This was well before I was writing about games on a professional level, and indeed my first published review was for Ubisoft's Eagle Flight on a now-defunct PSVR site.

Over my time at Gaming Nexus, and during my extended stint at PSU.com, I became the "PSVR Guy", reviewing almost every major release (and a mountain of smaller indies) on the system. I wore through my first PSVR's power supply and had to buy a second unit, after searching in vain for someone to repair the first. I spent hours, days in Sony's headset, comparing it when asked to "having an amusement park in your house". I love VR games, in particular the ones that let me hang out with distant friends and family in online virtual environments. PSVR suited me just fine, for a long, long time.

But after July 2020's release of the glorious PSVR version of Pistol Whip, requests to review PSVR games simply dried up and turned to dust. I have not been offered a single PSVR game for review since August, and my attempts to actively go seek out games out to review have been met with the sound of sad, lonely crickets. The other day I went to the PlayStation Store to check to see if any games had snuck to market without me noticing, and was shocked to find that the PlayStation VR header is completely gone from the store. There's no way to find PSVR games all together in one place anymore, let alone browse through a committed "What's New on PSVR" section. 

It's true that Hitman 3 is scheduled to be released on PSVR in late January, but that feels very much like the last hurrah of the system before Sony bails on the VR space entirely. In an October 2020 interview with The Washington Post, Sony Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan commented that "I think we’re more than a few minutes from the future of VR. PlayStation believes in VR. Sony believes in VR, and we definitely believe at some point in the future, VR will represent a meaningful component of interactive entertainment. Will it be this year? No. Will it be next year? No. But will it come at some stage? We believe that. And we’re very pleased with all the experience that we’ve gained with PlayStation VR, and we look forwarding to seeing where that takes us in the future."

Which sounds to me like PlayStation VR is dead as a doornail, and it isn't coming back any time soon, if at all.

I still went through the motions, ordering my camera adaptor to hook PSVR to PlayStation 5. It's still sitting in the mailer packaging on my dresser. Turns out, there's no real reason to hook it up. I played all the games that I own on PSVR extensively for review. I'm done with them, and there's nothing new on the market for me to play. After all the time I spent daydreaming about how Sony's next system would clean up the sometimes shady visuals on PSVR games, I haven't bothered to try it out. It just feels that - like the Vita before it - Sony has bailed on a viable system that still had a lot of life left in it. My PSVR sits in a basket in the corner of my living room, collecting dust along with the hated Move Controllers needed to play on it.

It seems that development for PSVR is over. I can only imagine that most of the development houses that were working on PSVR games (that hadn't already signed contracts with Sony) have pivoted over to Facebook's Oculus Quest 2, which is suddenly the most viable VR system on the market. So that's where I'm going, as awful as it feels.

I'll be frank here. Giving Facebook any money for anything ever is utterly abhorrent to me. I long ago deleted my Facebook account. Beyond being horrified by their policies and politics, I find being on Facebook to be tiring and soul-crushing. After enjoying the wild-west first years of Facebook's rise to power, reconnecting with old friends and long-lost relatives, I eventually grew weary of keeping tabs on all these people. I started realizing that people move in and out of your life for a reason; you aren't supposed to know everyone you've ever met forever. I just didn't have enough bandwidth to pay attention. So after a few false starts, I bailed on Facebook for good and deleted my account. 

But last week, I found myself opening a new Facebook account, much to my chagrin. Because Facebook forces Oculus users to have a Facebook account to buy and manage their games, and I really, really miss playing VR games. I don't have a PC powerful enough to run VR games (a fact that I am attempting to rectify), so I really relied on the PlayStation 4's (admittedly limited) power to fuel my virtual worlds. But now I need something stand-alone, and the Oculus Quest 2 is simply the best option on the market.

The Quest has the most games available, the best support, and the brightest future. Knowing that spending money on any VR system at all is risky, the Oculus Quest 2 simply seems like the best gamble, even if it means selling my soul to the devil and letting Facebook back into my house after an extended period of being Facebook-free.

But in our current world situation, I rely on VR to get me out of my house a little bit. I want to be able to once again explore other environments, taking a break from the walls of my house to virtually get outside a little bit. I love crawling virtual dungeons and haunted houses, and it's clear that PSVR just isn't going to do it for me anymore.

So here I am, forking over a decent pile of money to the evil empire so that I can play VR MMOs and space shooters. To say that I'm conflicted about it is an understatement. But despite my regrets, I'm still pretty excited to get my hands on some new tech; that's just the geek in me. And I'm pretty jazzed to rid myself of PSVR's cumbersome web of wires. I'm excited for the day my Quest 2 arrives; I like unpacking boxes with new gadgets in them. And in the end, I'm sure I'll have a ton of fun with my new Oculus Quest 2. VR is wicked awesome, after all. And maybe I'll be so delighted with my new Quest 2 that I'll tell my two Facebook friends all about it.

Persona 5 Strikers comes out in a little over a month and ATLUS released a new trailer for the game showing off all of the insane over the top action in the game. Despite being a Musou style game, it still looks completely like Persona 5 with the same atmosphere and beautiful art direction of the previous game. 

Persona 5 Strikers launches on February 23rd 2021 for PS4, PC and Switch

Here's a cabinet from Arcade 1Up that wasn't talked about last week. Gamestop has a posting for the Midway Game Cabinet with Riser Legacy Edition that houses 12 classic Midway games in a Mortal Kombat II designed cabinet. The cabinet also comes with a riser so you can make it a bit taller for adults to play with.

There's a 17" screen along with a Mortal Kombat II layout of buttons and underneath is a faux coin door that looks pretty slick for this cabinet. The entire package weighs about 80 pounds when all together.

Besides the first three Mortal Kombat games, there are some great classics included such as Joust and Rampage. The total list includes:

• Mortal Kombat™
• Mortal Kombat II™
• Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3™
• Joust™
• Defender™
• Rampage™
• Gauntlet™
• Paperboy™
• Rootbeer Tapper™
• Bubbles™
• Toobin™
• Wizards of Wor™

All told, a great collection of games to be had here. No price is listed, but this is one of the more exciting cabinets I've seen coming out of Arcade 1Up.

Shame on me for missing this one. But S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 showed signs of life at the cold-end of December a couple weeks ago. This Skif trailer (I don't know what "Skif" means) looks suspiciously like pre-rendered cinematics that are meant to show off the dream level of gameplay the developers want to aim for, but perhaps don't quite hit. Just ignore me, being all jaded about gameplay trailers. 

This trailer is a slow-fast, slow-fast run from room to room. Bash your way through some double doors. Watch some serious Chernobyl-ian weather (?) shove over full-grown trees. Watch an RTX-worthy campfire light up a room with a guitar and some backpacks. See some blood spray mess up a perfectly serviceable alcohol canteen, an unnatural red light spilling through curtained windows, and a tablet booting up in Russian. Just before stuff starts floating up off the ground. This kind of atmosphere is the only way you'll get me to play a first-person shooter.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will simul-release on PC and Xbox Series X—and will also be on Xbox Game Pass on console on day one.

Sean Hattingh

I am a big fan of Bloober Team's games. I played Layers of Fear on the Switch, and absolutely loved the way the game toyed with the environment to keep me off balance. I've also been toying around with Observer - which is a very different game, but equally creepy. Bloober Team knows how to get under my skin, and I deeply respect them for that.

A new live-action trailer for Bloober's new game The Medium dropped yesterday, and it has me very excited to check out what looks to be another horror-based tour de force. Unfortunately, that means I'm going to have to buy either an Xbox or a better PC, as The Medium is an Xbox exclusive. Oh well, been meaning to do that anyhow.

From a recent press release about the trailer: "The cinematic two-and-half-minute trailer brings to life the game’s unique atmosphere and art style inspired by painter Zdzislaw Beksinski as well as an inside look at the key characters central to the game’s mystery, including Marianna the titular medium, an enigmatic man named Thomas, a spirit called Sadness, and The Maw, a deceptive and hostile entity who can travel between the material and spirit world."

Sounds cool (and awful) to me. You can preorder The Medium (and save five bucks doing so) at the Microsoft Store here.

Boy, I remember vividly seeing a prototype OLED screen many moons ago at a CES and thought, "That's going to be the future of displays for gaming." It was a tiny screen, probably smaller than the cell phone screens we had today, but it was such a gorgeous picture.

Last year at Samsung's CES 2020 booth, I also saw a display that brought back the same feeling and that's using Micro LED. has been show a few times before last year, but the visual of The Wall as Samsung puts it, really brought forth what an amazing picture it can produce.

Not only do you get the darks of OLEDs but the brightness of LED and like OLED, each individual pixel is self illuminated. Incredible viewing angles, incredible HDR, and practically nonexistent bezels are other things that Micro LED can bring to the table.

Seeing a moving Micro LED display at Samsung's booth was also truly amazing. The ability to conform to multiple shapes and sizes makes this technology very versatile.

OLEDs are probably the de-facto standard for high end gaming with PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PCs equipped with Ampere NVIDIA video cards and Big Navi AMD video cards. Practically everyone recommends an OLED when asked which TV they should get to pair with the newest consoles and PCs.

The next step for me is Micro LED. Samsung will be releasing Micro LED TVs this year at 88, 99, and 110 inch sizes. Yes, they will be way out of the price range for any normal consumer to pick up and will for at least a few more years. But, once it becomes more mainstream and more affordable, I'm betting Micro LED TVs will be the next top of the line type of TV to grab for gaming.

Never let it be said that Games N Moorer's Joseph Moorer does not enjoy a beat 'em up. In fact, he loves Scott Pilgrim vs. The World so much that he played through the game in its entirety on Xbox 360 earlier this week, and then again on Google Stadia when the new Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game - The Complete Edition dropped yesterday.

I joined Joseph for his Stadia session, taking advantage of Scott Pilgrim's fancy new online multiplayer. While it is clear that this is not my sort of game, Joseph managed to kind of keep me alive as we battled through the first four levels. Honestly, if I were playing this game on my own, I would backtrack and grind for a few hours before moving forward. I didn't realize that the characters level up, and I could really use some of that experience because Scott Pilgrim is hard. 

Towards the end of the session, I made the mistake of bringing up Cobra Kai, which launched Joseph into a tirade about stuff that he loves, regardless of the internet's opinion. It makes for some pretty entertaining stuff: 

Of course, Joseph was all primed for the release of the new game, as the night before he had run through the entire original release on Xbox 360 with a fully amped-up Level 16 Scott Pilgrim. Joseph recovered his digital copy of the O.G. Scott Pilgrim with a bit of videogame archeology, and found that his character was still intact.

Joseph starts the game right out of the gate launching dudes with uppercuts and whooping butts. It's fun to take a look at this playthrough after struggling to get started in the game last night, as it reveals what the game can be if you put some time into it. With all of his powers intact, he rips through the full game in less than two hours. Jealous.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game - The Complete Edition is now available from Ubisoft on Stadia, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. I was playing through my Ubisoft+ membership, which is getting more-worth-it by the day.

Follow us on Twitter for announcements about when Games N Moorer is going live at @GamingNexus and @GamesNMoorer. Joseph streams on Facebook at http://facebook.com/gamesnmoorer/ and on Twitch at https://twitch.tv/gamesnmoorer .

The new trailer for Ranch Simulator fascinates me for many reasons. Perhaps it's the Sam Elliot sound-alike rambling through the folksy voice over. Perhaps it's my new found love of hunting wildlife, thanks to my recent Red Dead Online obsession. Maybe the idea of baha-ing across fields of flowers in my four-wheeler while pounding beers is what gets my blood pumping. 

But no, the real thing that grabbed me about this trailer was this scene, which I clipped for posterity:

Yup, that's three friends marching together across a field, blasting away at a hapless deer like he was Harvey Keitel in Reservoir Dogs, probably screaming "Get off of my land, you rotten deer!" When hunting, you gotta take care to plug those deer full of as much lead as possible. Handguns are clearly the way to go when hunting large fauna. I'm wondering if there are three more guys with pistols heading the other way, trapping that ugly dear in a crossfire hail of lead. I want to see that buck in tatters.

Ranch Simulator is entering early access on Steam on March 4, 2021. You can wishlist the game here. Developed by Russian developer Toxic Dog, it actually looks like a pretty cool game. And from the media the U.S. puts out into the world, its not surprising that Russians think that this is the way we hunt. But on a more mellow note, the idea of building out my house and barn appeals to me. But not as much as gunning down wayward deer like I caught them doing some back-alley crimes.