Ubisoft shared its upcoming plans for the Assassin's Creed franchise today. Along with the news of a remake for its piratical entry, the game company also announced that a visual upgrade is coming for a title from way back in 2014. Assassin's Creed Unity will receive a free patch tomorrow to offer 60 fps performance on the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X/S. 

The company bringing a performance upgrade more than a decade after launch feels like a fitting close to Unity's development. The game suffered from bugs and performance issues from the jump, and while most of those did get addressed, no amount of big fixes or free DLC could fix this howler of a story or make Arno any more compelling as a protagonist. But every fan has their own passionately argued take on which titles are the worst, so just because I found Unity to be a particularly low point in the series doesn't mean it's not going to be a fave for somebody else. So if you are someone who, as Ubisoft put it, has been waiting a long time for a chance to dive into Unity on modern hardware, then tomorrow is your lucky day. Amuse-toi bien. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/assassins-creed-unity-is-getting-a-free-60-fps-patch-tomorrow-210109721.html?src=rss

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Humble Games' library has returned home, so to speak. Indie publisher Good Games Group (GGG), led by former Humble leaders, has acquired the full back catalog of over 50 Humble Games titles from Ziff Davis. Alongside the purchase, GGG has rebranded to Balor Games, positioning itself as a force in "triple-I" gaming.

"For the developers we have worked with over the years, this moment is a reunion," Balor Games CEO Alan Patmore wrote in a statement. "[It has] the same leadership and the same commitment to thoughtful publishing remain in place. What changes is our scale and our focus. Balor Games is built for inventors and backed by believers. To that end, it exists to be a seal of quality for independent games."

The Humble Games lineup includes (among others) Slay the Spire, A Hat in Time, SIGNALIS, Forager, Coral Island, Monaco and Wizard of Legend. Separate from the Humble transaction, Balor also bought the complete catalog of Firestoke Games (which shut down last August) and publishing rights to Fights in Tight Spaces. In total, the young studio now owns the publishing rights to over 60 indie titles.

Humble Games is separate from the Humble Bundle storefront. The latter is still owned by Ziff Davis.

Balor Games

The seemingly happy ending comes after quite the rocky road. In July 2024, Ziff Davis laid off all 36 employees of Humble Games. But later that year, Humble Games' former leaders (Patmore and Mark Nash) formed GGG and cut a deal to help manage their old studio's back catalog. Now, with Ziff Davis in a selling mood, that library is back in Patmore and Nash's hands. Balor Games, it is.

The pair view the newly anointed Balor as a developer-friendly publishing house. As for its name, Balor is a supernatural being in Irish mythology. It's sometimes depicted as having three eyes. Triple-eye, triple-I… Clever devils!

The triple-I moniker is a more recent addition to the gaming lexicon. It typically means something defined by indie creativity and passion — with a budget far less than AAA but more than a tiny two-person passion project. (Balor says it's about "high-quality, impactful games.") You wouldn't be blamed for wondering how that's different from AA. But the slant here is to define the genre less by budget and more by "indie" intangibles.

Nash detailed the company's vision in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz (which, curiously, is a Ziff Davis property). "We felt that what's becoming more and more critical is that as game development becomes more diverse, more complicated, and expectations continue to rise, we feel it's important that a publisher can match the needs of each individual project," Nash said. "We are spending a considerable amount of time with anyone we are partnering with, figuring out what they need specifically."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/humble-games-former-bosses-buy-the-studios-back-catalog-183831194.html?src=rss

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As if you needed reminding, next week is March 10, or MAR10 Day, as the marketing wizards at Nintendo have been calling it for the last decade or so. You can usually rely on Mario Day for some plumber-related goodies, and Nintendo has announced that three retro games are coming to Nintendo Switch Online next week.

Those games are Mario’s Tennis and Mario Clash for the newly launched Virtual Boy app, and Mario Vs. Donkey Kong for the Game Boy Advance. Both the GBA and Virtual Boy emulators are part of the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership plan, so you’ll need to be on that tier to play them this Mario Day.

Both of the soon-to-be added Virtual Boy titles originally came out in 1995. Mario Clash is something of a 3D reimagining of the arcade Mario Bros. game, while Mario’s Tennis was actually the first game in the Mario Tennis series, making it a nice companion piece to Mario Tennis Fever, which recently launched on Switch 2. They join 3d Tetris, Galactic Pinball, Golf, The Mansion of Innsmouth, Red Alarm, Teleroboxer and Virtual Boy Wario Land in the Virtual Boy NSO library so far, with more titles on the way. Remember that you’ll need either the $100 Virtual Boy replica or $25 cardboard headset to play them on your Switch.

Mario Vs. Donkey Kong for the GBA is a more unexpected addition, not least because Nintendo remade the charming puzzle-platformer for Switch just a few years ago. Having the source material available on the console too via NSO is obviously nice, but there are other still absent Mario games from the iconic handheld’s enviable library that I’d personally have liked to have seen sooner (*cough* Mario Tennis: Power Tour).

All three games will be playable on March 10.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/three-retro-mario-titles-are-coming-to-nintendo-switch-online-on-mario-day-130223937.html?src=rss

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