A recent patch for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has caused more issues than it fixed, fans say.

The game's most recent patch was released yesterday, with developer Rocksteady stating it would target "various crashes, progression blockers, connectivity issues and several server side improvements".

However, there are now numerous reports online of players encountering more issues than before. "The recent patches screwed the game, for a lot of people," one reddit user acknowledged when another player said their copy of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League now wasn't loading past a black screen.

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Hi-Fi Rush will skip the current Nintendo Switch and instead arrive on the console's currently-unannounced successor. That's according to a report from Insider Gaming, which states that the absence of a Switch version of the game in yesterday's Xbox multi-platform announcement was due to it launching on Nintendo Switch 2 instead.

Whether Hi-Fi Rush could still eventually launch for the current Switch as well - perhaps at the same time? - is unclear, the report concluded.

Certainly, a launch for Hi-Fi Rush on a Nintendo platform has been expected. Earlier this year, in-game clothing designs seemed to point to the rhythm action game going multi-platform in the near future. This apparent tease preceded any other multi-platform plans being discussed publicly by Microsoft, and the decision to launch four games on other consoles ultimately being laid out this month.

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Elden Ring DLC Shadow of the Erdtree will be available digitally only, even for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S exclusive physical versions.

A Shadow of the Erdtree Edition will be released, including both the base game and the DLC. However this will only be available physically on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S with the expansion an additional download not on the disc. PC editions are digitally only, while PS4 and Xbox One will only have the DLC as a digital extra.

The DLC, as a standalone addition, will cost £34.99 across all platforms - a significant increase from, say, Bloodborne's The Old Hunters DLC that was £15.99 on release. This perhaps speaks to the size of Shadow of the Erdtree as much as the rising cost of games.

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Surprise! Dead Island 2 has popped up as part of the Xbox Game Pass subscription, despite not being listed by Microsoft when it revealed a list of late February Xbox Game Pass titles earlier this week.

Dead Island 2 publisher Plaion has now confirmed the news, though in a blog post noted the game was "for Ultimate members". [UPDATE: Plaion has now confirmed to Eurogamer this was an error, and is available on console for Ultimate and standard Console subscribers.] Users have noted that the game's PC version was not added to Game Pass for PC.

The unexpected addition to Game Pass follows a free weekend of access to Dead Island 2 via Xbox's "Free Play Days" promotion last week.

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Arrowhead has taken aim at those Helldivers 2 squatters who were clogging up servers by remaining in a game even when they weren't actively playing.

A new patch for the game has implemented a function that will now boot players back to the title screen if they have been idle for 15 minutes. This is something the community has been asking for a little while now, with many players reporting long queue times to get into the game.

Other points from this latest Helldivers 2 patch include a number of crash fixes. Players should no longer get stuck in the defrosting or in the ship intro cinematic, as well.

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Hello. One of my favourite pieces of writing about games, not that anybody asked, is from Sid Meier. It's the fourth, I think, of his 10 rules for game design. The first rules have laid out the scene: choose a topic you have passion for, define your axioms, refine your axioms. All good stuff. And then, suddenly:

Double it or cut it in half.

This is what really good film cuts are made for. We have moved from the theoretical to the densely practical. We were at the blackboard, we were pontificating, and now we're right in it, locked in the kitchen, spaghetti sauce everywhere, and we're trying to turn things around before the cooker explodes. Double it. Or cut it in half. This moment calls for big things, not small things. This moment counts.

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Xbox has announced a PlayStation release date for Sea of Thieves, its popular pirate live service game from British studio Rare.

PlayStation 5 players will be able to wishlist the game beginning tomorrow, 22nd February, ahead of its launch on Sony's console on 30th April.

A blog post from Microsoft tonight also confirms PlayStation dates for Pentiment (tomorrow, 22nd February) and Grounded (16th April) - the same as the dates confirmed for Switch in the Nintendo Direct earlier.

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A PlayStation 5 release date for the currently-Xbox console exclusive Hi-Fi Rush has found its way onto the internet.

The Hi-Fi Rush PS5 launch date was today revealed to be 18th March, courtesy of a new trailer for the rhythm action game posted to Bethesda's Latin American YouTube channel [UPDATE: And has now been officially confirmed].

That video appears to have gone live a little earlier than planned, as it was soon taken offline by Bethesda - but not before the internet noticed. You can watch it via the embed below, now re-uploaded to social media:

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Paradox Interactive has announced a two-month delay for Prison Architect 2, with the management sim sequel now set to release on 7th May as developer Double Eleven opts for "extra time to identify more bugs and further optimise the game".

Prison Architect 2 - the sequel to the hugely popular 2015 original from developer Introversion Software (who sold the rights to Paradox in 2019) - was announced back in January, promising a take on the prison management formula reimagined in full 3D.

There was talk of some rather nifty looking multi-floor building, and a new connection system defining and impacting the relationships prisoners had with other inmates. All of that was originally due to launch for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on 26th March, but eager sorts will now need to wait until May following today's delay.

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A beefy update headed to Marvel's Spider-Man 2 will add a wardrobe of new suits and unlock a fresh New Game Plus mode for Insomniac's enjoyable superhero adventure.

Available on 7th March, the catchily-titled Update 1.002 will let you carry over your suits and unlocked abilities to a fresh save file, ready for you to play through the game again with a harder difficulty.

Unlocks here will include Ultimate Levels and Golden Gadget styles, new suit styles for Peter's symbiote story suit and custom colours for your symbiote abilities.

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Hidetaka Miyazaki didn't envision originating an entire genre. Yet such is the popularity of the Dark Souls games - right up to the more recent Elden Ring - that they've become collectively known in the gaming community as Soulslikes. That's shorthand for games with calculating combat, high levels of challenge and repeated death, though this is of course reductive of the awe and grim majesty Miyazaki's games evoke.

Soulslikes are everywhere now. From indie games utilising specific mechanics, to larger projects specifically trying to out-do FromSoftware at its own game. That's testament to the influence of Miyazaki's work, though he remains humble when discussing his oeuvre with me ahead of announcing the release of Shadow of the Erdtree, Elden Ring's upcoming major expansion.

"We certainly didn't come up with the term Souslike and we didn't envision it as a new genre or a new term for the industry," he tells me. "So of course when it first started cropping up... we were very surprised.

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FromSoft boss Hidetaka Miyazaki has discussed the possibility of a Bloodborne remake, and the benefits of waiting for new hardware on which to revisit the beloved PlayStation 4 classic.

"It is a title we hold very dear and just as much as our fans," Miyazaki told Eurogamer when questioned about the possibility of a Bloodborne remake, in an interview timed alongside today's proper unveiling of the Elden Ring DLC. "It does make me very happy to see that there are still so many people passionate about it."

But would a remake benefit from newer hardware to make the release worthwhile? FromSoftware's Demon's Souls, for example, was remade as a PS5 launch title after originally launching on PS3 - a double console generation leap that meant the re-release felt more significant.

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Elden Ring DLC expansion Shadow of the Erdtree finally has a release date: 21st June.

FromSoft boss Hidetaka Miyazaki told Eurogamer this is the biggest expansion the company has ever worked on.

The announcement comes with a new trailer you can watch below.

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Nintendo's February Direct Partner Showcase has come and gone. This presentation was focused around third-party games so, as expected, there was no news on any homegrown Nintendo titles or the Switch 2's expected arrival in early 2025. However, the broadcast was still full of annoucements for games headed to Nintendo Switch from other publishers over the coming six months. Here's a roundup of everything which appeared during the 25-minute show.

Fresh from Microsoft's confirmation it was bringing more of its Xbox console exclusives to other platforms, the show began with a look at Obsidian's Grounded - where you have to explore a massive garden as a tiny human. Grounded will support online cross-platform multiplayer on Switch when it's released on 16th April.

After this, we entered the dying world of Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist. You take on the role of Lilac as she explores the landscape alongside a homunculus (Fullmetal Alchemist vibes anyone?). Ender Magnolia Bloom will be released on the Nintendo Switch later this year.

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Today's just-finished Nintendo Direct included the surprise announcement of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble, a new installment in Sega's spherical simian series.

Launching exclusively for Nintendo Switch on 25th June, this new entry in the series features an online mode where up to 16 players can rush forth simultaneously across obstacles and towards each level's goal. It looks rather like Fall Guys!

Another big change with Banana Rumble is the addition of a Spin Dash move, which lets you charge forward and skip over short gaps. There's a new co-op Adventure Mode, too, and the ability to customise your chimp with over 300 options.

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And just like that, my excitement for Elden Ring DLC Shadow of the Erdtree has gone from bubbling anticipation to a fever pitch scream; alongside a first gameplay trailer for FromSoftware's eagerly awaited expansion, publisher Namco Bandai has now shared a release date, confirming it'll be launching for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC on 21st June.

But first that trailer, offering a full three-minute look at Shadow of the Erdtree, and the sprawling expanses of almost inevitable death and gleefully masochistic misery within. There are fields of wheat tainted with spectral tomb stones, gloomy swamps, and striking ruins high on hills - and what gameplay reveal trailer would be complete without a tease of the imposing enemies that'll no doubt be the cause of that aforementioned death and misery?

As for what it's all about, well, the specifics remain something of a mystery, although Miquella - long speculated to be the focus of the expansion - while not especially prominent in this reveal (possibly because he's currently stuck in an egg), does sort of appear, and there are further hints he's maybe not as benevolent as some might claim. Let the lore theorising begin!

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Mario vs Donkey Kong for Switch is a classic remake of the Game Boy Advance original, reimagining each stage in higher fidelity, turning interstitial stills into animated videos and even adding some additional content. Digital Foundry's John Linneman and Tom Morgan had the chance to play through the game on both platforms recently, summarising the differences between the two versions and the quality of the remake overall.

The deliberate resemblance between the two versions is evident even from the start screen, with Mario and Donkey Kong staring at each other from opposite corners of the screen on both Game Boy Advance and Switch. From here, there's a similar save data screen, then you're straight into a cutscene - with essentially a series of stills for the GBA version that have been turned into fully realised and high-quality 16:9 video for Switch. This sequence ends and Donkey Kong squeezes into a keyhole on both versions, starting the first level proper.

Looking at that first screen, it's clear that it's a 1:1 remake with the same tiles, background and scale - but the wider screen of the Switch allows us to see further to the right of these relatively small puzzle stages. Even the interface is nearly identical, with lives in the upper left and time in the upper right - just the score has been removed from the top centre for a cleaner presentation.

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Monster Hunter Stories, Capcom's first - and wonderfully successful - stab at adapting the series' classic monster battling action into a family friendly turn-based RPG, is, as per today's Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase, getting a Switch remaster sometime this "summer". Seperately, Capcom has confirmed it's coming to PS4 and PC too.

Switch owners have, of course, already had a chance to sample the Monster Hunter Stories series when its acclaimed second outing launched on Nintendo's platform in 2021. However, Nintendo's latest Direct has revealed the original game - first released for 3DS back in 2016 - is getting a thorough spruce-up for modern audiences.

Monster Hunter Stories 1 casts players as a Monster Rider, setting them loose in a colourful, cartoony rendition of the series' universe to indulge in some classic RPG-style questing and Pokémon-esque monster collecting, battling, and rearing - and very good it is too.

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Nintendo will add five classic Rare games to Nintendo Switch today, including SNES hit Killer Instinct and N64 great Blast Corps.

In Japan, Nintendo Switch Online subscribers will also get Mother 3 - the third entry in the legendary Earthbound series which has never made it to the West.

All of these games were announced in this afternoon's Nintendo Direct broadcast - though Mother 3 was only mentioned in the show's Japanese version. Sorry, rest of the world.

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Undersea Soulslike Another Crab's Treasure now has a release date, as announced at today's Nintendo Direct.

The game is set for release on 25th April across Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC and - in an additional reveal - PS5.

Further, the game will be available at launch on Xbox and PC Game Pass. Check out the new trailer below.

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Following last week's long-rumoured announcement Microsoft is bringing four of its previously Xbox-exclusive first-party games to Switch and PlayStation 5, we've finally got official confirmation of the first two games making that multiplatform leap: Obsidian's historical narrative adventure Pentiment comes to Switch tomorrow, 22nd February, while inch-high garden adventure Grounded arrives 16th April on Nintendo's platform.

Starting with Pentiment, it cast players as Andreas Maler, a master artist who finds himself embroiled in murders, scandals, and intrigue over a period of five years in 16th century Bavaria. It's fantastic stuff - Eurogamer's Christian Donlan called it a "brilliant narrative adventure that is filled with intelligence and heart" in his Recommended review back in November 2022 - and the choice-driven adventure is paired with a striking art style, inspired by the great manuscripts and the earliest printed books of the time.

As for Grounded, Microsoft's second Switch-bound Xbox title, it's a wonderful co-op-imbued survival and crafting adventure with a distinctly 80s twist, taking a leaf out of cinema favourite Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. As in that movie, Grounded's four protagonists are miniaturised and left to fend for themselves in a sprawling backyard garden, building bases and crafting armour to forge ahead against deadly bugs, fish, and other wildlife.

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Nintendo will hold its next Direct showcase today, Wednesday 20th February at 2pm UK time.

This showcase will last around 25 minutes, and feature games coming to Nintendo Switch in the first half of 2024 from Nintendo's publishing and development partners. Hit refresh on this page at 2pm and you will be able to watch it below!

So, what do we expect? Well, it might be easier to say what we're not expecting to pop up here. As this is a partner Direct, don't expect any big announcements from Nintendo itself - or from Pokémon, which has its own broadcast scheduled for next week.

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Pirates! Such an evocative word! But if it's swashbuckling tales of derring-do you're after, of sea monsters and high seas adventuring, of buried treasures on distant shores and smuggling escapades by the light of the moon, there are other, better ways to fulfil that classic pirate fantasy, because Skull and Bones' take is, regrettably, a bit of a bore.

It begins, though, as all good adventures often do, in the midst of battle, wood splintering and canons booming as your ship is pursued across the 17th century Indian Ocean by a British armada intent on delivering you to Davy Jones - a wonderfully cinematic opener slightly undone by the fact straying beyond an arbitrary boundary immediately presents you with a stroppy message to turn around. Fortune, though, is on your side, and you escape - after bobbing through shark-infested waters on a bit of flotsam - with the shirt on your back, a rickety old dhow, and a burning ambition to become the most renowned pirate in all the land.

In rather less romantic terms, it's a live-service progression track grind masquerading as a rags-to-riches story, but it's one that Skull and Bones, to its credit, tries really hard to sell. Over its near-decade of development and across countless iterations, Ubisoft's pirate adventure has doubtless taken many forms, but what I wasn't expecting to find - amid its live-service trappings and its flexible fusion of drop-in co-op and optional PvP - was quite such a lengthy, narrative-driven campaign. Granted, its story - a self-serious, by-the-numbers tale of factional warfare, populated by a cast of largely charmless characters that could have been wrenched from any number of blockbuster Ubisoft games - isn't a particularly engaging one, but it does at least give Skull and Bones' rather graceless tangle of underlying systems some narrative drive.

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Xbox boss Phil Spencer has addressed lingering questions around the company stance on physical media following last year's leaks of an "adorably all-digital" Xbox Series X refresh, saying Microsoft continues to be "supportive" of the medium, and insisting "getting rid of physical, that's not a strategic thing for us."

An all-digital (and distinctly cylindrical) new Xbox Series X design first surfaced as part of a mammoth leak of official Microsoft documentation during last year's court battle with the FTC over its Activision Blizzard acquisition plans. However, when Spencer later acknowledged the leak, he called its contents "old emails and documents", insisting that "so much has changed".

But still, the possibility of an all-digital new Xbox has continued to loom, whether that be a mid-cycle refresh or a future console, particularly following news of major layoffs acoss Microsoft's games retail teams. And Spencer has now shed a little more light on Microsoft's perspective on physical media as part of an interview for journalist Stephen Totilo's Game File.

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Five of the Best is a weekly series for supporters of Eurogamer. It's a series that highlights some of the features in games that are often overlooked. It's also about having your say, so don't be shy, use the comments below and join in!

Oh and if you want to read more, you can - you can find our entire Five of the Best archive elsewhere on the site.

Games have always struggled a bit with the fundamental truth that we, as humans, need to eat in order to survive. The problem is that cooking and eating slow us down and take us out of the action, because theytake time. It wouldn't do for Nathan Drake to hang about making a sandwich before exploring a Nepalese temple, now, would it?

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I'm never quite sure whether I'm doing the right thing in Last Epoch, yet as I float around as an undead vacuum cleaner - hoovering up my enemies' health bars while my minions keep them distracted - I know that I'm at least having a good time.

I've opted for a lich build, and thanks to the flexibility of Last Epoch's skill trees, I've been able to dip into other subclasses to create my own personal playstyle. Is it a viable build for the hardest endgame battles? Almost certainly not, but I'm glad I haven't succumbed to the urge to Google the current meta.

That's because tinkering and experimenting with different builds is the point of Last Epoch, and trying to find short-cuts to this would mean skipping the very best part of the game. Which, for me, is the experimentation found in the levelling and build-creation process. As I discovered towards the later stages of the campaign and the start of the endgame, however, this is a strength that gradually loses its potency. When the rate of progression slows down and there is no longer an obvious supply of new abilities or rewards to keep you entertained, Last Epoch starts to feel like it's running out of fresh ideas.

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Elden Ring aficionados, it's finally almost time to unclench! Just shy of two years since the launch of FromSoftware's magisterial open-world action-adventure, publisher Bandai Namco has confirmed it'll be sharing more on the eagerly-awaited Elden Ring DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, later today, with early rumours pointing to a June launch.

But first the confirmed stuff; over on its social media channels, Bandai Namco has formally announced Shadow of the Erdtree will be getting a first gameplay reveal as part of a three-minute long YouTube "presentation" today, 21st February, at 3pm UK time/4pm CET/7am PST.

And here we enter into less substantiated territory, with reliable Deallabs leaker billbil-kun (who has an impressive track record when it comes to accurately reporting unannounced PlayStation news) claiming Shadow of the Erdtree will launch on 21st June.

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Lady Gaga is coming to Fortnite, having famously once asked what "Fortnight" was all about.

Her arrival in the game marks something of a full-circle moment for the global music megastar, after her social media post in October 2019 simply asking "What's Fortnite" went viral. Five years on, Lady Gaga's account reposted her original message today with an image of her upcoming in-game character model, and the correction: "*fortnite".

The image is labelled with Fortnite Festival, which is the game's Rock Band/Guitar Hero-style rhythm game mode that launched late last year. Festival's second season kicks off this Thursday, 22nd February, following its first season that spotlighted The Weeknd.

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UPDATE 21/2/24: The first trailer for the Borderlands movie is now available, featuring Jack Black's voice as Claptrap and the expected amount of poo and pee jokes. Watch it below in full:

ORIGINAL STORY 20/2/24: Two new photos from the upcoming Borderlands film have been released.

The photos, shared by People, both feature the Academy Award-winning Cate Blanchett - with some very enviable red hair - as infamous outlaw Lilith.

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Everywhere developer Build A Rocket Boy has confirmed a round of layoffs at the company, which was founded by ex-Grand Theft Auto producer Leslie Benzies in 2016.

An unconfirmed number of job losses were first reported yesterday by PCGamesN. Now, the studio has confirmed "the removal of a number of roles globally" in a statement to Eurogamer.

Build A Rocket Boy is headquartered in Edinburgh, though also operates offices in Budapest, Montpellier and in China. The company is backed by investment from NetEase, and last month completed a further $110m funding round.

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Microsoft has announced the next wave of titles headed to Xbox Game Pass, which are set to be added to the subscription service over the tail end of February.

This includes the excellent Tales of Arise, the epic role-playing game from Bandai Namco's Tales studio that originally launched to a warm reception back in 2021. "There are missteps and a few bumps along the way, but this soft reboot of a long-running series emerges a triumph," we wrote in Eurogamer's Tales of Arise review.

Younger subscribers (or Xbox Game Pass owners with kids) will likely be keen to know that Bluey: The Video Game comes to the subscription this Thursday, 22nd February. You can explore the Heeler House and playground, plus play keepy uppy and Chattermax Chase.

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The other day I read an old interview with Hidetaka Miyazaki, the FromSoftware director behind Dark Souls and Elden Ring, and it seems particularly relevant here. "I'm a huge masochist, so when I make games like these… this is how I want to be treated," he said. "'I want to be killed this way!' That's how I make it! It's just that sometimes other people don't understand it; it's for my pleasure." His interviewer interjects: "Really? You want to be killed deep in the forest, getting punched by a huge mushroom?"

"Yes, yes. And the curse area… When I get cursed–"

Interviewer: "You want to die from a barrage of arrows?!"

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Few outside of Nintendo foresaw how huge last year's Super Mario Movie would turn out to be. It was a proper blockbuster phenomenon, and a reminder that when it comes to video game characters, the Mushroom Kingdom remains home to the most universally recognisable cast around. Still, it doesn't feel like chance that Nintendo seems to have smartly scheduled its subsequent year of Switch game launches with follow-up adventures for all of that film's supporting cast: a Luigi's Mansion 2 remake, a new Mario vs. Donkey Kong, and - no less than 18 years after her last solo outing - a fresh vehicle for Peach.

If you played the slightly odd Super Princess Peach on Nintendo DS, there are happily few hangovers here. Gone, thankfully, is the need for Peach to power-up by picking one of four emotional states for her to display (joy! gloom! rage! calm!), replaced here instead by 10 costumes which, in a sort of Mario-like manner, bestow a limited range of extra abilities. Princess Peach: Showtime is set within a theatre, and the conceit of being able to star in 10 multi-act plays based around each of these costumes is a smart one. At its best, there are shades of Luigi's Mansion 3 here - in the themed stages lying behind different doors, accessible from the theatre's multi-level lobby hub - and even Paper Mario, as elements of each stage are constructed with charm from tactile scenery, such as wooden prop grass and trees.

But while the set dressing may seem somewhat familiar, the game's opening suite of levels feel something of a more amateur production aimed at a younger audience, especially considering how low the difficulty of said levels are pitched. Arriving at the Sparkle Theatre for a night out with her Toad footmen, Peach's evening is interrupted by the arrival of the game's villain, a sorceress named Grape, and her minions, the Sour Bunch. With most of the theatre locked down, Peach must clear each of its many stages and spread cheer to the Theets - the theatre's disheartened acting troupe - mostly with a simple button press. When powered up, Peach can also perform the appropriate themed action befitting her current costume with the same button press.

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Sony is expected to launch a souped up version of the PlayStation 5 later this year, analysts have suggested.

A new CNBC report notes that there was now "broad concensus in the game industry that Sony is indeed preparing a launch of a PS5 Pro in the second half of 2024," quoting Tokyo-based games analyst Serkan Toto.

However, the report cautions that Sony is unlikely to see a large uptick in PS5 sales year-on-year as a result of the Pro's launch, and is also unlikely to cut the cost of the base PS5 model as a result. (Sony, unsurprsingly, has not commented on CNBC's report.)

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The Need for Speed team is celebrating the franchise's 30th anniversary with another year of live service content for its most recent release, Unbound.

"Surprise! We're still here," developer Criterion Games shared in a new blog post, where it detailed Need for Speed: Unbound's year two roadmap. "NFS turns 30 this year, and with that huge legacy, we couldn't stand idle. However, this year will be a bit different from the previous one."

The studio said it hopes players will make "new memories" with the Need for Speed series this year, but admitted it "can't build everything everyone wants right now". What it can do, however, is work with its community to decide what the series should look like in the future.

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The clever beings at PowerWash Simulator developer FuturLab know just how to keep us coming back for more. Not content with tasking us all with scrubbing Tomb Raider's Croft Manor or the Seventh Heaven bar from Final Fantasy 7, it is now setting us the challenge of cleaning up the grimdark universe of Warhammer 40K.

The PowerWash Simulator Warhammer 40K Special Pack will launch later this month, on 27th February across PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Switch. You can see a little teaser for it in the video below.

We first heard about this Warhammer 40K DLC last year, with the studio subsequently stating we could expect it to release sometime during Q4. This evidently did not happen, but the good news is that there isn't much longer to wait now.

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Cult 90s sci-fi film Starship Troopers has had a bit of a renaissance of late, which has been attributed to the releases of Helldivers 2 on PlayStation and PC.

According to online TV ratings tracker Television Stats, the 1997 release has seen its viewership stats, Wikipedia rank, and IMDB rank all see a significant rise over recent days.

A quick browse through social media will see several posts linking this renewed interest in Starship Troopers with the release of Helldivers 2 earlier this month, and this hasn't passed the game director by. Sharing some stats on X showing an increase in Starship Troopers' popularity, Johan Pilestedt said: "This is incredible!"

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There's no room for mistakes in Assassin's Creed Mirage's new Full Synchronisation Challenge mode, which arrives in the game via a fresh update due today.

The option essentially lets you try a permadeath run of the full game, which will end if main character Basim dies or commits any illegal actions (ie. killing civilians) that would normally see you kicked out of the Animus.

Full Synchronisation Mode will become available when you install today's patch 1.0.7 for Mirage, which launches at around 1pm UK time.

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A new Pokémon Presents digital event will broadcast next week, on Tuesday 27th January at 2pm UK time. That's 9am Eastern or 6am Pacific.

The showcase will contain "exciting news", a post on social media today teased, without going into further detail.

We're expecting to hear from The Pokémon Company on what the next Pokémon project to launch will likely be - and while it feels too early for a new generation of Pokémon, following 2022's Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, it seems likely that some sort of game will arrive in the next 12 months.

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Nintendo has announced a Direct Partner Showcase, which will focus on third-party games.

This showcase will go live tomorrow - 21st February - at 2pm UK time. It will be available to watch on demand via YouTube.

The showcase will last for "around 25 minutes", Nintendo said, and spotlight games coming in the first half of this year from the company's publishing and development partners.

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In this week's DF Direct Weekly, the Digital Foundry Team shares their thoughts on the Xbox business update podcast and attempts to fathom strategy from the PlayStation team in the wake of some ominous announcements that resulted in a 10 percentage point dip in Sony's share price. The bottom line looks stark and very straightforward: the audience for PlayStation and Xbox consoles is not increasing gen-on-gen, while the costs of making games to service that audience is increasing dramatically. Something has to change.

Let's deal with the Xbox business update first. My take on this is that Phil Spencer and his team really want to take a multi-platform strategy forward, and it's the obvious, logical solution to addressing the problem of the limit in total addressable audience. Not only that, with its ownership of Minecraft and now Activision-Blizzard-King, it's already one of the largest multi-platform publishers in the market. I can well imagine that the likes of Satya Nadella can't quite fathom why Microsoft is limiting its audience in the name of a legacy console model that seemingly isn't working for Xbox any more.

However, the pitfalls are obvious. Why buy an Xbox console if you can buy a PlayStation and get access to the next games from both platform holders? This concept of exclusivity as 'specialness' clearly resounds with the console audience, and I would imagine that the Xbox team spent a great deal of time honing its message for the business update because if the rumours were left unchecked, we could have been looking at another PR disaster on the level of the Xbox One debacle from 2013. On a more practical level, Microsoft does need to continue to make its consoles attractive, even in the wake of its 'every screen is an Xbox' messaging. A mechanism to make console sales attractive is required because - in the face of a less than stellar response from Game Pass PC - a home platform is required on which to focus its drive for subscriptions.

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Baldur's Gate 3 won Game of the Year at the DICE Awards last week, and unlike at The Game Awards, the developers were actually allowed to take some time with their acceptance speech. And let it be known, Larian used that time wisely, addressing both the current state of the industry and the importance of player experience.

When Larian's director of publishing Michael Douse took to the stage, he acknowledged that while this is a "really human industry" it can also be very "bad sometimes at showing developers what they're worth". He then discussed the wave of layoffs that have affected so many people and game development studios over the past year.

"I want you all to know that you are talented and that you matter, and that you are the future of this industry. Don't let that flame be extinguished by our collective mistakes," Douse said. "I know everyone here is scared because shit's really fucked up."

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UPDATE 4.45pm UK: Consider me educated. I have looked into this further, and it turns out not only is Trinity the name of the military order in the rebooted Tomb Raider games, but it is also the code name for the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, which was conducted by the United States Army back in 1945. And that could be what the Tomb Raider website is referring to. Whoops!

So, yes, the mention of Trinity on the Tomb Raider site may well be a coincidence that left the super fan in me a little too enthusiastic. Reader, I confess, I may have jumped the gun a bit here. I am going to send a message to the Tomb Raider team though and ask if they have any comment on the wording in the blog post, because my curiosity has now been piqued even more.

The original story continues below.

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Capcom has shared a post to celebrate the eighth anniversary of Street Fighter 5, where it apologised for the game's original state at launch.

"From the beginning to the middle of the release, there were network issues, lack of content, etc... We are truly sorry for the content that did not meet the expectations of many of you," Capcom's Japanese Street Fighter social media account shared over the weekend.

This is something we touched on in our own Street Fighter 5 review from 2016. As we said at the time: "Street Fighter 5's brilliant combat is let down by a barebones launch and server troubles."

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Nintendo shares have dropped slightly from a record high last week, following reports the company has internally delayed its expected Switch 2 release window into 2025.

Eurogamer reported last Friday that Nintendo was now looking to launch Switch 2 in early 2025, a change from previous, unannounced plans that had the new console pegged for later this year. Sources with knowledge of the delay told us it was designed to ensure the strongest possible line-up of launch games.

Bloomberg later corroborated the news via its own sources, and today noted Nintendo shares had now fallen 5.8 percent on the back of Switch 2's delay being made public. Nintendo is yet to comment on the reports.

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A Limp Bizkit mod for Fallout: New Vegas once thought lost has now been rediscovered.

The mod in question added Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst as an in-game companion. And, of course, he brought some nu metal energy with him, as he only spoke in lyrics from the band's discography. All very standard modding community stuff.

However, the mod had a very short shelf-life on Nexus Mods when it was first released around seven years ago, and there was very little evidence of it left online - an old Reddit post and YouTube video (which you can see below), were about all that remained.

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PlayStation-published Helldivers 2 had a hugely successful weekend on Steam, despite some continuing server issues, with a fresh player peak of 409,367 users yesterday.

That's a new record for Helldivers 2, according to official Steam figures, and puts the game's all-time player peak higher than Steam stalwarts such as GTA5, Rust and Destiny 2.

To say that Helldivers has been a hit on PC would be something of an understatement, especially in comparison to the middling popularity of some other PlayStation PC launches.

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The Convergence mod for Elden Ring is out now, offering an "exhaustive overhaul" of the game.

Available on NexusMods, The Convergence makes major changes from the very beginning of the game. Now players will need to choose from one of 27 new classes - each with its own unique progression path - that will determine the player's starting location in the world.

The original game features 10 classes, but these are starting points from which the player has freedom to develop in any direction. The Convergence, then, has a more formal structure for players to follow that cements typical builds.

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The upcoming return of Crazy Taxi will be a "AAA" game, Sega has said.

Sega first announced it was making a long-awaited new Crazy Taxi title in December last year, as part of a new wave of entries in many of its classic series.

Now, a Japan Times interview has shed more light on its scope, and revealed it is being worked on in part by Sega's relatively new Sapporo Studio, which was founded in the capital of Japan's Hokkaido prefecture in December 2021.

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Counter-Strike 2 is Counter-Strike. The formula hasn't really changed since the 1999 original - terrorists and counter-terrorists sparring to eliminate the other side or plant/defuse a bomb at one of two designated locations - but Valve's 2023 release runs better on modern hardware than 2012's Global Offensive and offers sparingly more gameplay possibilities too. Fundamentally though, the core combination of tactical, round-based 5v5 competition and satisfyingly difficult shooting mechanics remain as enrapturing and enraging as ever.

Competitive play is at the heart of the game, even more so than in CS:GO, with the Premier ranked mode taking centre stage. Here, solo and grouped players are placed into teams of five, go through a map veto process to select the stage and starting sides, then compete in a best-of-24-rounds match with their individual ELO rating on the line. These matches are a good deal shorter than CS:GO's best-of-30 contests, increasing the importance of the first rounds on each side and making it a little harder to stage a late comeback.

On the plus side, one-sided stomps are mercifully shortened, while still allowing for overtime in close matches and the exquisite economic interplay that differentiates the game from other shooters. Do you spend all of your hard-earned cash to try and steal a round against better-equipped opponents now, or save your money and accept you'll lose the next round in order to be on even footing in the round after that?

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