GamesBeat weekly roundup: Kojima partners with Sony, Call of Duty tips for old-timers

Welcome to another GamesBeat weekly roundup! This week, Smash Bros. gets more new characters, we discussed how Amiibo manage to succeed and fail at the same time, and we talked about the best Star Wars games ever.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

Pieces of flair and opinion

• The DeanBeat: My favorite games of 2015
• Some hackers just won’t go away — to the annoyance of big tech companies
• Watch the GamesBeat 2015 Game of the Year panel live tomorrow
• 6 classic Star Wars games to help you celebrate ‘The Force Awakens’
• Hearthstone gets huge in 2015 — and it’ll only get bigger in 2016
• 10 great mobile games to play with your kids this holiday
• 2015’s biggest gaming trends: Nintendo embraces online, open worlds take over, and more
• Read+Watch+Listen: Bonus material for Fallout 4 fans
• Nintendo’s Amiibo succeed and fail at the same time
• Awaken the hype with 2015’s best Star Wars games
• The best Hearthstone decks for your new Reno, Brann, and Sir Finley cards
• How Heroes of the Storm’s esports scene is surging into 2016
• BlackFlag: Win money playing League of Legends
• Tips on how old-timers and noobs can win in Call of Duty: Black Ops III multiplayer
• Teacher turns class into a video game — and now every student is passing

Above: She’s too cool.

Image Credit: Nintendo

News

• New Kingdom Hearts III and II.8 trailers coming tomorrow
• Xbox Live down for some gamers on Xbox One and Xbox 360
• Minecraft’s Wii U release caused Nintendo’s eShop to experience an intermittent outage
• Watch Star Citizen director Chris Roberts troubleshoot his PC for 5 minutes
• XboxDVR site makes it easier to get your Xbox One recordings on YouTube
• Super Mario Maker update introduces Koopa Clown Car(?), world records(!), and more
• Xbox One gets backward compatibility with Doritos Crash Course — and some other junk
• Steam Controller update lets you carry your custom configurations to any PC
• UploadVR raises $1.25M in funding from China’s Shanda Group
• League of Legends studio is now completely owned by China’s Tencent
• Japanese megapublisher Colopl announces $50M fund for virtual reality gaming
• Incredible Minecraft mod brings its redstone gadgets into the real world
• Halo 5 developer finally releases Forge mode as part of Cartographers Gift update
• CastAR will return $1M in Kickstarter money and postpone augmented reality glasses shipments
• Dying Light: The Following’s map is twice the size of the original game
• Virtuix delivers its first motion platform to Kickstarter supporters — way ahead of VR products
• It’s official: Kojima Productions is working with Sony
• We live in a world where Nintendo is making Cloud and Bayonetta Amiibo figures
• Cloud joins Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS today
• Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, 3DS gets Bayonetta
• Fire Emblem Fates’ Corrin joins Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS
• Heroes of the Storm’s spotty matchmaking gets a fix
• Half of Americans play games, but 10% identify themselves as ‘gamers’
• Ronda Rousey in World of Warcraft? Nope — meet Rhonda Cox
• Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima formally leaves Konami after nearly three decades
• Blizzard adjusts when Hearthstone gets new Tavern Brawls to fix server troubles
• 6 years on, Noby Noby Boy’s bizarre stretching quest is finally over
• Turok: The Dinosaur Hunter remaster launches Thursday
• Is your PlayStation 4 randomly ejecting discs? Here’s a few fixes
• MechWarrior Online celebrates Steam launch with $100K esports championship
• Gorgeous puzzle-platformer Unravel gets February release date
• Star Citizen crowdfunding passes $100M mark with over 1M backers
• U.K. startup Ndreams raises $3M for ‘year one’ VR games

Mobile and social

• Five Nights at Freddy’s has a tie-in novel, and it’s getting (mostly) good reviews
• Frogmind’s Badland 2 is the side-scrolling sequel to a 30M download hit
• F2P ad monetization: what works — and what turns players totally off (webinar)
• The mobile Star Wars card game you forgot about gets Force Awakens cards
• Tapjoy’s newest feature makes setting digital currency sales in apps and games easy
• Spellgun launches big budget Clash of Gods mobile game as China moves to the West
• DICE, King, and Rovio vets form new studio to develop for the midcore market
• Google’s top tech searches in 2015: iPhone 6s, Samsung Galaxy S6, and Apple Watch
• Glu wants Katy Perry Pop mobile game to melt your popsicle
• New Chrome experiment turns your phone into a Star Wars lightsaber
• Cut The Rope 2 gets more in-app spenders by using Gondola’s dynamic pricing
• Glispa launches audience platform to turn mobile data into revenue
• Guns Up! brings the casual nature of Clash of Clans to the console — with lag. Lots of lag
• Betcade launches early access for Android gambling apps
• Machine Zone launches new commercial with Ah-nold for Mobile Strike game
• SuperAwesome and Poke aim to target online U.S. family gamers with kid-safe ads

Above: With Dreams, it would take very little effort to paint all this grass purple.

Image Credit: Media Molecule

Previews and interviews

• SuperMonkeyFun wants to be the pioneer of VR games in India
• This virtual reality bike could kill the boredom of exercise
• How the creators of Monument Valley built their first VR game
• Media Molecule’s Dreams encourages incredible levels of user creativity
• How Pokémon Go will benefit from Niantic’s lessons from Ingress on location-based game design
• Crytek’s The Climb lets you scale cliffs in virtual reality that you won’t attempt in real life
• Watch us play Minecraft: Wii U Edition

Reviews and impressions

• Devilian’s short dungeons aren’t enough to make up for its boring loot cycle
• Nexon’s Ghost in the Shell embodies everything good about 2007’s Shadowrun shooter
• Fast Racing Neo is a more cerebral take on pioneers like Wipeout and F-Zero