It’ll be ready when it’s ready At one time, Lab Zero Games planned to ship a PlayStation Vita port of its latest fighting gameSkullgirls 2nd Encore“a few weeks” after the PlayStation 4 version. However, it’s been a few months since the title arrived on PS4, and the the PS Vita release is still nowhere to be found. During a recentReddit AMA,Skullgirlsdesigner Earl Gertwagen addressed the issue, saying the Vita version “is still undergoing optimization, and there are a number of bugs to take care of that, while somewhat small, we feel are unacceptable to ship with....

Kuwabara kuwabara Having playedMetal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Painfor roughly 100 hours, I think I’m ready to make an assessment of it in terms of how it relates to the rest of the franchise. While it’s definitely up there, it’s far from my favorite in the series, and likely won’t crack my top five. That’s not becausePhantom Painis a lackluster game — far from it, as it’s better than the vast majority of AAA releases these days — but the other titles in the series are so phenomenal that they overshadow it....

Backwards compatibility arrives this summer in the US Revealed by Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Andrew House at CES 2014, the company’sGaikai-powered cloud gaming serviceis called PlayStation Now, and it’s coming sooner than anticipated — this summer in the United States. Through this service, PS1, PS2, and PS3 games will be playable over the internet on PS3, PS4, PS Vita, and also on devices like tablets, smartphones, and televisions. Even non-PlayStation devices will eventually support PS Now....

Grids, sharp art, and some Excel Last month, Square Enix releasedDungeon Encounters, a strange and unique RPG directed by veteranFinal Fantasydeveloper Hiroyuki Ito. It’s a minimalist dungeon crawler that relies on tiles, numbers, and interlocking systems to create a really fascinating role-playing experience. In a newSquare Enix-hosted interviewwith Hiroyuki Ito and producer Hiroaki Kato, the pair discuss the inspiration behind their team’s dungeon crawler. As it turns out, the inspiration came from a 3D map of the Tokyo subway system....

Today Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment announced (via1UP) that a closed beta is beginning forStargate Worldson October 15. The slots for this round of the beta are apparently already filled, so the industrious lot who desire to get in on someStargateMMO action will have to hound theofficial websiteandregisterfor a future opportunity to see the game in action. Stargate Worldshas been in development since mid 2005 and according to Cheyenne Mountain’spage, is based on the popular television seriesStargate SG-1....

Twitch integration arrives Mojang’s planned Twitch integration forMinecraftisn’t finished just yet, but it’s in a good enough state that you can try it out for yourself in snapshot 13w47c. To set this up, go into yourMojang account settingsand link your Twitch account. Once you have the new snapshot — obtainable by creating a new profile and checking the “Enable experimental development snapshots” box — and your accounts are linked, simply press the F6 key by default inMinecraftto begin streaming....

Bethesda Softworks went all out Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate great voice work and after seeing the lineup forThe Elder Scrolls Online, I don’t think the game will disappoint in that regard. But going for big-name, recognizable talent runs the risk of taking me out of the experience even if my ears are in heaven. I’m especially torn here because Bethesda got John Cleese. Other cast members include Bill Nighy, Kate Beckinsale, Alfred Molina, Michael Gambon, Malcom McDowell, Lynda Carter, Peter Stormare, Jim Ward, Jennifer Hale, and Kevin Michael Richardson....

Here’s the most recent roadmap Fresh off of launchingThe Pitt, Bethesda has reconfirmed theFallout 76December update timingin a new blog. First, the team will celebrate the Fallout 25th anniversary starting on October 4. Those festivities will ring in bonus weekends (double mutations and caps-a-plenty), and the From Beyond/Halloween-themed Spooky Scorched seasonal events. The next month, starting on November 3, Community CAMP Creations are being celebrated, with more bonus weekends (this time they’ll add double XP into the mix), and a legendary purveyor sale....

Destructoid’s one and only Britpop podcast, The Podcastle, records tomorrow and we have prepared an absolutebelterof a show for you. This week, for one week only, we will be unplanned, lazily recorded, unreasonably vulgar and not able to speak properly without shouting and screaming like a toddler who’s had too much Sunny D. We’ve never done somethingthisambitious before, so we’re looking forward to it. As a special one-off treat, you will also be allowed to post questions or statements in the thread following this message, which we might actuallyread on the show....

“I’m [a] Batman [game]” Bruce Wayne has had many ups and downs in his personal life, in just about every single iteration ofBatmanmedia that he appears in: it’s kind of his thing. And the same goes for the sea ofBatmanvideo games; which, quite frankly, is filled with sunken barges of ill-advised movie tie-ins and projects that just didn’t have as much love and care as they should have. 5 –Batman: The Video Game(NES) A dark horse pick that Bruce Wayne himself would have been proud of: the surprisingly influential movie tie-in game on the NES takes number five....

Gimme I still don’t know whyTheatrhythmdidn’t catch on. The 3DS has a massive installbase, Square Enix has a massive library of great songs, and the gameplay was there. Sadly, we only got twoFinal FantasythemedTheatrhythmgames in the west, as theDragon Questversion was relegated to Japan-only. I couldn’t resist importing it, but there’s no way I can get my hands on the thirdTheatrhythm Final Fantasyunless I physically go to Japan. Yep, the arcade edition has been trucking along for roughly a year now, and Square Enix is still adding new content to it on a steady basis....

Former Valve engineer’s project turns to Kickstarter The augmented-reality project hardware engineer Jeri Ellsworth was working on while at Valvedidn’t stoponce she was let go from the company. castAR, glasses that put “holographic-like” projections on a special surface, has appearedon Kickstarterseeking $400,000. They aren’t the prettiest things ever at this point, but that’s the point of this crowdfunding campaign — getting them ready for wider consumer use as well as the assembly line....

Hopefully, it’s more than meets the eye I’ve made it a rule to try and avoid writing about game announcements that are nothing but CGI trailers and I’m going to break that rule right now. One of the more curious announcements fromThe Game Awardswas for a newTransformersgame calledTransformers: Reactivate. From developer Splash Damage,Reactivatewill be a 1-4 player online action game planned for PC and consoles. In the game, a team of human survivors will Autobots to fight back against an extinction-level threat....