Gaming April Fools Day Round-up

[Steven Bogos]

Gaming April Fools Day Round-up

Did you get fooled? We look at the best jokes of the gaming world.

Every year, a multitude of tech and gaming companies participate in April Fools day by trying to prank as many people as possible with the silliest-yest-still-somewhat-believable announcements they can think of. We scrounged the internet to find some of the best jokes from our favorite companies. Did you get fooled?

Hearthstone: Mankirk's Wife

[tweet t=https://twitter.com/PlayHearthstone/status/848158258867163138]

Hearthstone's April Fools joke references a long-standing World of Warcraft quest, which involves finding NPC Mankirk's Wife in the barrens. The vagueness of the quest led to dozens of players spamming chat with cries of "Where is Mankirk's wife?".

Google Maps: Ms. Pac Man



Google loves to transform its maps app into an interactive game on April Fools day. In years past, we had Pokemon, but since Pokemon Go has basically made that a real thing, this year we got Ms. Pac Man [https://www.google.com/maps/@-37.9224098,145.2384199,18z].

Nvidia: The GeForce GTX G-Assist


Nvidia's joke introduced the GTX G-Assist, which is billed as an artificial intelligence that uses the power of your GeForce graphics card to help you out in games. Pizza guy at the door in the middle of a Rainbow Six: Siege online game? Plug in the G-Assist to take over. Need to get past a particularly difficult boss monster? G-Assist is there. The more powerful your graphics card, the smarter the AI!

Sega: 8-Bit Bayonnetta



Sega's April Fools joke is great because it's not actually a joke: it's a real thing you can play! 8-Bit Bayonetta is a low-def de-make of Bayonetta, imagining what the game would look like if it came out in the era of the Sega Genesis. Get it on Steam [http://store.steampowered.com/app/567090] right now!

CD Projekt Red: Tub Geralt

[tweet t=https://twitter.com/witchergame/status/848082507543138304]

Of all the jokes we saw yesterday, this was the one we most wished was real. CD Projekt Red revealed an exclusive new Witcher 3 figuring featuring Geralt of Rivera taking a bath.

BlizzCon: Choose your Own Adventure



Can't attend BlizzCon this year? No worries, as Blizzard has announced a brand new way of attending: textual attendance [https://blizzcon.com/en-us/event-info/tickets/textual]. Clicking through the prompts plays out a kind of choose-your-own-adventure of what things may have been like if you were actually able to score tickets this year. Better luck next year!

Turtle Beach: F-bag

[tweet t=https://twitter.com/turtlebeach/status/848158036506152960]

Don't you hate it when you're gaming, and you have to take your hands off the controller to stuff food into your gob? Well, Turtle Beach's April Fools Joke offers a solution, with the "Feed Bag" or "F-Bag", which is exactly what you'd think it is.



Those were our favorites from the joking season. Were there any we missed that you liked better? Till next year!

Permalink

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

I got a chuckle at the Doom one.

[tweet t=https://twitter.com/DOOM/status/848188213009289216]

 

[Tanis]

@Kungfu_Teddybear:
I laughed at that one as well...if only because it reminded me that I have the original Doom ON FLOPPY!

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Actually...

GeForce's Shadow Play sounds really fucking awesome. Or at least for something other than what it's intended for. Shadow Play would actually enable you to set up bots to play with and against in ANY GAME WITH ANY KIND OF MULTIPLAYER. And the coolest thing is, it actually sounds halfway plausible.

 

[RJ 17]

Rito did something silly with LoL. The frontpage has (or at least had) a big window saying that they were beta testing new Advanced Bots (since standard bot matches only go up to "Intermediate"). It was an announcement that if you play normal/unranked games, you could randomly be set up to play a round against these Advanced Bots instead.

The trick is that you weren't actually playing against bots, you were still playing against actual players. The game just changed everyone on the opposing team's name to things like "Ashe Bot", "Yasuo Bot", "Karthus Bot", etc...which is what the bots in bot matches are normally named as. There was a decent amount of confusion for a couple hours until people started catching on and word began to spread.

 

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

Oh, was THAT what the Geforce thing was?

I skimmed the articles I saw and just read that helps you out with games, as in like...the GeForce Experience kind of way, where it helps choose optimal settings for a game on your system, just in a USB form for some reason.

Why wouldn't you just use GeForce Experience then? Exactly, that's why I skimmed the article and blew it off.

 

[Tohron]

I particularly liked the Starcraft II Coop mutation yesterday. The idea is that in coop you have two commanders with unique units and abilities completing missions together, and the weekly mutation takes a mission and adds special effects to make it more challenging.

On April 1st, they changed that by having the mutation pit you in a 1v1 multiplayer battle against your "partner". Totally imbalanced, but quite fun nonetheless.

 

[Veldel]

what no mention of the male rivals of Yandere Simulator?

 

[cathou]

gamespot did a video telling that in Zelda BotW if you cook a fang shard from each dragon, and a giant ancien core, you get a ancien key that allow you to enter inside a guadian and control it

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I think I liked Pro Jared's review of Madden 17 the best. It was a joke, but he wasn't wrong either.

As a football fan, I found it hilarious.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Courtesy of Koei:

Spoiler: Ein peasants Ein Shu-Han EIN XUANDE!

 

[Kurt91]

I kind of wish that the 8-Bit Bayonetta was a hint that the actual games were coming to Steam soon. I've been wanting to play those, but I don't have the right consoles to play them. (I have a 360, but it's at home buried in storage, not here at college)

 

[Majestic Manatee_v1legacy]

No man's sky 2 announcement with Peter Molyneux.

http://saveorquit.com/2017/04/01/no-mans-sky-2-announced-peter-molyneux-on-board/

At the EGX Rezzed, while everyone was trying to get an interview with Ken Levine we actually managed to track down Sean Murray. We had heard several rumors that his studio Hello Games was recruiting, and suspected that something big was about to be announced. After all, despite the minor criticism received by No Man?s Sky, the game has been a resounding monetary success. And hold on to your seats, the man himself confirmed it: No Man?s Sky 2 is in development!

Here is what Sean Murray had to say:

Our objective for No Man?s Sky 2 is to capitalize on the success of the first game and expand on what worked. Expect a bigger galaxy to explore, we had 18 quintillion planets, now bumped up to 36 quintillion. We noticed that by adding the huge dinosaurs, those that you could see in the original trailer for No Man?s Sky, we could actually create a whole new range of possible animal shapes to the game. There will be 80 new resources to collect and craft, and 30 new ships to buy.

I realize that the biggest disappointment in the first game was the lack of multi-player, so rest assured that this time we are going to make it crazy and memorable. We got inspiration from all the Battle Royale games with permanent death: in No Man?s Sky 2, the players all start at the edge of the galaxy and need to make their way to the center. If one player kills another, that player loses their ship and resources, and is sent back to the edge of the galaxy where they can start over. We believe that this is going to be a lot of fun!

And you know what? Mystery has always been the most important part of No Man?s Sky?s pedigree. We want to make sure that once again, reaching the center of the galaxy is an intriguing aim that should motivate the player. But we wanted something a bit different from last time, so we got the master to help us: Peter Molyneux himself (Goddus, Curiosity)! He designed the new mystery, and the first person to reach the center of the galaxy will receive something truly special!

The game will be released in December, pre-orders are starting later today on the official site! Stay tuned!

 

[Otaku World Order]

I kind of wish that the 8-Bit Bayonetta was a hint that the actual games were coming to Steam soon. I've been wanting to play those, but I don't have the right consoles to play them. (I have a 360, but it's at home buried in storage, not here at college)

Actually... it is. There's a link address hidden in the achievement images that goes to a Sega website with a countdown to April 11th over an image of Bayonetta.

No joke. Check the Steam reviews.

 

[Xorph]

The feed bag joke was done years ago on Tim & Eric, just sayin'.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

It would defeat the purpose of competitive gaming even more than the hackers do.

No it wouldn't. Cheaters already cheat and cheat hard. And it's not like Nvidia couldn't build something into the software to prevent this.

Also, anytime someone did something with even a modicum of skill, they would be accused of "g-assisting" even if they had no g-assist.

Technically no. Shadow Play looks at how you play and simply imitates your style. So if you suck, you're still gonna suck even with G-Assist on because it's imitating your terrible behavior. lol And even further, people are already being accused of cheating at the slightest modicum of skill.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Technically no. Shadow Play looks at how you play and simply imitates your style. So if you suck, you're still gonna suck even with G-Assist on because it's imitating your terrible behavior. lol And even further, people are already being accused of cheating at the slightest modicum of skill.

Unless you have a friend with skills train your g-assist. Or find a g-assist hackt hat gives you pro play data. Don't underestimate the capacity of people to accuse others of hacking baselessly as you said earlier.

This would be pretty isolated actually as the pro player will need to live physically near to the person who wants to cheat. And let's be honest, to find someone who's really super good at the game AND lives near you AND is someone you're actually friends with, the chances are very very low.