April Fool’s Day 2022 in video games – from Metal Gear NFTs to horses in Among Us

metro.co.uk:

It’s that time of the year when the games industry tries to prank the public with obviously fake April Fool’s announcements.

The games industry loves to make its April Fool’s jokes every year, but it can’t exactly afford to make them too convincing or appealing. Announcing a really cool game only to turn around and admit it’s fake will more than likely attract vitriol from an already easy to anger audience.

So, it tends to make do with obvious fake announcements that either aren’t that funny, are really bizarre (and not that funny), or do something odd within the games themselves.

We’ve experienced a number of them ourselves today (and there may be more to follow once America fully wakes up), so here’s a rundown of the stand-out April Fool’s pranks of 2022, for better or worse.

The best April Fool’s gags are usually ones that temporarily impact actual gameplay, allowing for harmless but entertaining deviations you’d otherwise never experience.

In Niantic’s case, it’s filled Pokémon Go with almost nothing but Ditto, the little pinkish blob whose only gimmick is that it can transform into other pokémon. The official website suggests that Professor Willow has been replaced with one too and maybe even you are a Ditto. Actually, this is starting to veer into something more Halloween appropriate.

Innersloth has added a free update to its social deduction game Among Us, called Horse Mode. As you can guess from the name, it turns crewmates into horses or, rather, gives them horse-like bodies.

The only other real differences, according to the game’s website, are a new ‘neigh’ kill sound and a new kill animation for imposters, one Innersloth describes as ‘anticlimactic.’ It’s