It Takes Two was a breakout hit when it came out in 2021, and now the cooperative adventure game is coming to a fresh platform. It Takes Two is due to hit Switch on November 4th for $40, and pre-orders are open today. The game will take advantage of the Friend's Pass feature from developer Hazelight and publisher EA, unlocking co-op play even if one person doesn't own the game.

It Takes Two is a distinctly two-player experience, and on Switch it'll be playable three ways: in couch co-op mode, with two Switches over a local wireless network, or with a friend online. It's not playable cross-platform. The Friend's Pass feature is already a thing for PC and console versions of It Takes Two, and it allows someone who doesn't own the game to play with someone who does.

The Switch port was handled by Turn Me Up Games, the studio that brought Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and the Borderlands: Legendary Collection to Nintendo's latest console.

It Takes Two is also getting the silver-screen treatment, though its storyline is arguably the most distressing part of the game. Amazon Studios is adapting it into a movie, with The Rock rumored as a potential star.

Bayonetta 3 is primed to be a stylish, neon-splattered action title, and Nintendo has the gameplay trailer to prove it. Today the studio dropped nearly eight minutes of Bayonetta 3 gameplay footage on YouTube, showcasing Bayonetta's Witch Time, Demon Masquerade and summoning abilities, and how other characters will play. 

The game pits Bayonetta and her cohorts — a witch-in-training called Viola, the Umbra Witch Jeanne and a journalist named Luka — against an army of man-made bioweapons called Homonculi. Each character brings their own flair to the fight; Viola, for instance, can call upon a giant, maniacal Cheshire cat to help her take down massive monsters.

The Demon Masquerade feature allows Bayonetta to channel the abilities of various animals, including a moth, spider and scorpion. There's also a new accessory called Immortal Marionette that adds a one-button input mechanic for combos and defense moves to any difficulty setting in the game. 

Bayonetta 3 is set to hit Switch on October 28th.

The sequel to The The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is called Tears of the Kingdom and it's due to hit Switch on May 12th, 2023. Nintendo revealed the release date, name and a short teaser for the game during today's Direct showcase.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild debuted in 2017, the same year the Switch came to market. It was a huge critical and commercial success, and the sequel has been hotly anticipated since. The new game was originally announced with a release window in 2022, but in March, Nintendo delayed it into spring 2023.

It wasn't the only major game to be pushed out of 2022. A handful of titles from big publishers, including Starfield, Redfall, Hogwarts Legacy and Forspoken, were delayed into 2023 this year.

Just Dance is officially entering its live-service era with Just Dance 2023. The latest iteration of Ubisoft's dance-along franchise will support online multiplayer for up to six people at a time, unlocking the full game to be played with friends. The studio promises regular free content updates "for years to come," including fresh game modes, songs and themed seasons.

Ubisoft

Just Dance 2023 is due to hit PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Nintendo Switch on November 22nd. It'll come to Google Stadia at a later date.

This marks the first time in Just Dance history that players will be able to get down with friends live and online. The new Online Groups feature in Just Dance 2023 allows players to team up with people they know or other folks around the world, and it has an emoji communication system. The game supports cross-platform play. And, of course, there's always local multiplayer for in-person dance-offs.

Ubisoft

Just Dance 2023 will include 40 new universes and songs at launch, including "Physical" by Dua Lipa and "More" by K/DA. With a focus on transitioning Just Dance into a live service, rather than a series of discrete titles, Ubisoft will likely have a regular cadence of new material to drop on its dancers post-launch, so don't stress too much about the track list for now.

Ubisoft is bringing Assassin's Creed back to mobile devices with Jade, a new title set in China. The game takes place around 215 BC, filling in the timeline between Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Origins, and it's designed to feel like a mainline entry, parkouring and all. There's no release date quite yet and all Ubisoft has shown is the classic eagle-flying-over-a-settlement sequence.

One thing we do know about Jade is that it will support the ability to create your own character, a first for the series. There's no word on pricing or potential micro-transactions for the game.

Ubisoft has tried to make Assassin's Creed a thing on mobile devices for nearly as long as the series has existed. The first mobile entry was Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles, and it came out for the Nintendo DS in 2008, with iOS and Android versions the following year. The original Assassin's Creed, meanwhile, hit PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2007. There have been a handful of mobile-first Assassin's Creed games since then, but Ubisoft hasn't released an iOS or Android title tied to the series in four years.

In addition to Jade, Ubisoft is building a game based on the live-action Assassin's Creed series heading to Netflix. Of course there's also Assassin's Creed Mirage, the new mainline title set in the Middle East.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is navigating a ransomware attack on its information technology systems. The cyberattack originated over Labor Day weekend, starting on September 3rd, though it hasn't disrupted school operations and classes are scheduled as usual. The district says in-school safety and emergency systems weren't affected by the attack, nor were employee payroll and health care networks.

LAUSD officials are already working with the Department of Education, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to uncover the source of the attack, and they've implemented protocols to protect email and other internal IT applications. The district says that while investigations into the attack are ongoing, some business operations may be delayed, but transportation, food and Beyond the Bell services won't be affected.

"Los Angeles Unified is immediately establishing a plan of action, informed by top public and private sector technology and cyber security professionals, to determine additional protections for the District, and to provide an independent opinion on system-wide protective measures," officials said.

The district says it will establish an independent information technology task force that will develop recommendations for schools within 90 days, reorganize its departments to better safeguard its IT systems, and establish advisers to oversee cybersecurity best practices, among other responses. LAUSD officials said they will provide updates on the cyberattack as investigations progress, and you can find these on Twitter.

Night City is going to get bigger next year with Phantom Liberty, an expansion adding new characters and a fresh location to Cyberpunk 2077. It's a spy thriller starring V, the game's protagonist, and Johnny Silverhand, the ghostly character played by Keanu Reeves, and it involves espionage work for the New United States of America. However, Phantom Liberty is only heading to Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 5, PC and Stadia, skipping Xbox One and PS4 altogether.

CD Projekt RED's decision to drop last-gen console support isn't surprising, considering the difficulties developers had delivering a functional game on those platforms. Cyberpunk has received plenty of patches since its release in December 2020, with most of the focus on fixing major issues with the game's performance; it was incredibly buggy and unplayable in some cases at launch, and it particularly struggled on older-gen hardware. Phantom Liberty is a narrative and world update featuring new content, locations and characters, and it marks a significant step forward in the game's post-launch development cycle, even though it leaves Xbox One and PS4 players in the dust.

Ahead of Phantom Liberty, Cyberpunk 2077 is getting a bit of DLC tied to Edgerunners, the coming anime based on the game. The anime, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, will hit Netflix on September 13th, and the game update is live right now. Patch 1.6 is known as the Edgerunners Update and it adds items from the Netflix show to the game, including the protagonist's jacket and another character's shotgun. It also unlocks new secrets to be discovered in Night City — but like the Phantom Liberty rollout, these won't be available on Xbox One or PS4. 

"Due to some technical challenges, this change isn't available on the previous generation of consoles," the update blog reads.

The Edgerunners Update adds three new gigs, six new firearms and five new melee weapons, plus it unlocks cross-progression and brings a new mini-game called Roach Race to the arcade cabinets scattered throughout Night City. Roach Race is also available on Android and iOS today, no Cyberpunk required. On top of all this, there's a litany of gameplay, UI and other updates hitting Cyberpunk in Patch 1.6.

Elon Musk's lawyers today filed a motion to delay his trial against Twitter by a month, arguing they need more time to process recent claims by whistleblower Peiter Zatko, the former head of security at Twitter. With the motion, Musk's legal team is attempting to amend its counterclaims against Twitter, using details from Zatko's legal complaints against the company. The trial between Musk and Twitter is currently scheduled to begin in October, and the motion filed today would delay it into November.

This is the same tactic that Musk is using to try to end his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter altogether. Twitter originally sued Musk in July in an attempt to force him to follow through on their multibillion-dollar acquisition agreement, and Musk counter-sued, attempting to get out of the sale. Musk's legal team this morning filed a notice with the Securities and Exchange Commission asking to kill the acquisition agreement, citing Zatko's recent allegations of security deficiencies at Twitter. Zatko's claims build on Musk's original argument to end his Twitter takeover, which accused the company of dramatically underestimating the number of bot accounts on the network.

Zatko filed complaints last week with the SEC, Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission accusing Twitter of gross negligence when it comes to information security. Zatko accused the company of encouraging the propagation of spam accounts in the name of increasing user numbers, downplaying the amount of bot profiles on the platform, and running the whole enterprise on outdated software. There is already movement in Congress to investigate these claims.

Twitter said in court filings that Zatko's accusations are riddled with inconsistencies and lack context. The company has long argued that spam accounts make up less than 5 percent of Twitter's total user numbers. Musk, and now Zatko, argue the true figure is much higher.

Dead Island 2 is coming. The long-awaited zombie-slaying role-playing game is set to hit PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Google Stadia and PC via the Epic Games Store on February 3rd, 2023. Deep Silver showed off the blood-soaked sequel with a cinematic trailer and a gameplay video during Gamescom's Opening Night Live showcase.

Dead Island 2 will feature six playable characters with unique voice acting and traits, and it all takes place in Los Angeles. The game is designed as a love letter to cult-classic horror films and old Hollywood vibes: It has a pulpy narrative to follow, classic RPG elements and a co-op mode for up to three players. All six of the main characters are customizable, and a brand new skill system allows players to adjust their specs on the fly. There are dozens of individual zombie types to slay, too.

Dead Island 2 is the full follow-up to the 2011 hit Dead Island, though there have been smaller installments in the series. The game was announced in 2014 and it's essentially been in development hell ever since, lost among a handful of studio sales and team swaps. It's now in progress at Deep Silver's Dambuster Studios, which worked on Homefront: The Revolution.

Gotham Knights, the DC-soaked open-world title from Warner Bros Games, is due to hit PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC on October 21st. Yes, you read that correctly — the game was previously due to come out on October 25th, but it's now set to land four days earlier. Warner Bros didn't provide a reason for the rush, aside from saying it will allow "players to jump into the action four days early." Which, yeah.

The new release date follows delays and platform changes for Gotham Knights. The game was originally set to come out in 2021, but it was pushed back to 2022 less than a year after its announcement. It was also supposed to hit PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but it's no longer coming to those consoles.

The updated release timing was revealed during Gamescom's Opening Night Live, at the end of a new trailer for Gotham Knights. The trailer focuses on the villains, showcasing Harley Quinn and Clayface. The game also features Mr. Freeze and the Court of Owls, but notably not Batman. Instead, players step into the boots of Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood and Robin.