Tchia takes us on a stunning tropical open world adventure where you play as a young, imaginative girl who can turn into animals and objects to explore. Tchia, our protagonist, is looking to...
The post ‘Tchia’ Turns Into Animals & Objects to Explore a Tropical Island appeared first on Indie Games Plus.
The release date for Unknown 9: Awakening has been announced.
During Gamescom Opening Night Live, developer Reflector Entertainment along with publisher Bandai Namco revealed Unknown 9: Awakening will release on 18th October. It will be available across PlayStation 5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC (Steam).
You can check out the live action trailer for Unknown 9: Awakening, which stars The Witcher's Anya Chalotra as the game's protagonist Haroona, below.
Gamescom Opening Night Live 2024 is done and dusted for another year, but it's certainly kicked off this year's Gamescom with a bang - and we've got all the news, trailers and announcements right here in one handy summary. Whether you missed the show itself or just want a handy reminder of everything announced at Gamescom Opening Night Live this year, read on below.
Of course, alongside the main show, this year's ONL also had a 30-minute pre-show that was stuffed with announcements as well, which we'll quickly run through here before getting into the detail of the main show announcements below. Here, we got new trailers for Dave the Diver's latest crossovers, spooky co-op adventure Begone Beast and construction sim Roadcraft, alongside Italian Soulslike Enotria: The Last Song, Cairn (that shouty, but lovely looking climbing game from Summer Game Fest), life sim Inzoi from PUBG publishers Krafton, as well as a Terry showcase for Street Fighter 6.
There were also new game announcements in the pre-show in the form of Sniper Elite Resistance (coming 2025), the Donkey Kong-esque platformer Nikoderiko: The Magical World (with music from David Wise, no less), "first person farming horror allegory" We Harvest Shadows, the also quite spooky-looking Aila, a tease for the sequel to Journey to the Savage Planet (aptly named Revenge of the Savage Planet), action RPG Tribe Nine from the creators of Danganronpa, and the Lashana Lynch-led Directive 8020: A Dark Pictures Game.
It's been two years since Mafia developer Hangar 13 confirmed it was working on a new entry in its open-world crime series, and the time has finally come for it to be revealed to the world. It's called Mafia: The Old Country and is heading to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC next year.
While 2016's Mafia 3 shunted the series forward in time to the late 60s (the first two games spanned the 1930s, 40s, and 50s between them), The Old Country is going backward, presenting players with a "gritty mob story set in the brutal underworld of 1900s Sicily."
"Fight to survive in this dangerous and unforgiving era," teases the scant bit of blurb accompanying today's teaser trailer, "with action brought to life by the authentic realism and rich storytelling that the critically acclaimed Mafia series is known for."
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, the long-awaited next game from the team behind the original Life is Strange, will arrive in two parts.
The first installment launches for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on 18th February 2025, with its concluding slice then a month later on 18th March.
Tonight also brings an initial look at gameplay from Don't Nod's latest teen adventure, which has a dual timeline split between 1995 and 2022, when its young protagonists are now adults - and dealing with the consequences of their/your actions.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - the Microsoft-owned-Bethesda-release set to arrive on Xbox and PC this year - is also coming to PlayStation 5.
At this evening's Gamescom Opening Night Live event, host Geoff Keighley revealed that everyone's favourite fedora sporting professor will be cracking his whip on Sony's platform as well.
In addition to this news, Bethesda announced a release date for the game. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will release across Xbox Series X/S and PC on 9th December. Its PS5 release will then follow a few months later, during the spring of 2025.
By the time you read these words, Peter Molyneux will have taken to the Opening Night Live stage at Gamescom and formally announced his new project to the world. Masters of Albion marks Molyneux's return to the genre he is widely credited with creating. It ditches his studio 22cans' previous focus on mobile development to instead target consoles as well as PC. And it's being made with help from several of Molyneux's old colleagues at his previous studios - Lionhead, Bullfrog - whose design CVs, like Molyneux's own, include a litany of 90s and 2000s classics.
On paper, all of this should inspire a positive reception. But, sitting opposite Molyneux a week before today's announcement, in the quiet boardroom of his small Guildford development studio, the veteran video game designer is clearly nervous. Those 90s and 2000s hits are now a long time ago, and much, of course, has changed. It's been 12 years since 22cans was founded and Molyneux's Curiosity cube caught the headlines, for good and bad, and the subsequent decade has not gone smoothly - crowdfunding concerns with Godus, continued accusations of broken promises, a fractured relationship with the media, and, most recently, an odd foray chasing the NFT fad with a blockchain game unfortunately titled Legacy.
Molyneux, now 65, is visibly older, softly-spoken. Last year, on social media, he described his mental health as "fragile". As we sit down, he asks if I mind whether he vapes as we talk - a habit he tells me he's picked up due to stress. He's not been sleeping well, he says, due to the anxiety of talking to the press once again. At times, when we discuss what this new project means to him - what it potentially could still mean for the latter stages of his career - his voice slows, emotion rising. But, at others, when he's discussing game mechanics, or keen to tell me more than he's strictly allowed, his old enthusiasm shines through, at one point swinging back and forth like a child on his chair.
ARC Raiders - the free-to-play PvPvE extraction shooter from The Finals developer Embark Studios - has resurfaced following an extended period of retooling, and is now launching as a premium title for PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5 next year.
If you're struggling to remember much about ARC Raiders, that might be because few details have been shared since its announcement back in 2021. It was originally set to release in 2022, but its launch has continued to slip since then - first into 2023 so Embark could focus on The Finals, and latterly while the studio continued to tinker with the title following a genre change.
But it turns out its switch from co-operative third-person shooter to PvPvE extraction shooter (its original form "wasn't really fun", Embark admitted during a recent press event) wasn't to be ARC Raiders' only notable change. It's now been re-announced as a $40 USD premium title, jettisoning its previous free-to-play form, albeit while still remaining a live-service game.
Civilization 7, the very long-awaited latest instalment in developer Firaxis' beloved 4X strategy series, finally has a release date and will be launching for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, and PC on 11th February next year.
But that's not all! As well as providing a date for strategy fans to furiously circle in their 2025 calenders, Firaxis has shared a first look at Civilization 7 in action following June's moody, if ultimately rather uninformative, cinematic trailer. And today's gameplay debut reveals a new aesthetic somewhere between the vibrantly cartoony (and somewhat divise) artstyle of Civilization 6 and the more realistic approach of earlier titles in the series.
And there's more where that came from; Firaxis will be expanding on the features glimpsed in tonight's trailer as part of a 20-minute gameplay showcase set to air at 9.30pm BST/1.30pm PT on Twitch, shortly after Gamescom Opening Night Live is through. And you might also want to stick around Eurogamer, as we'll have plenty to say about Civilization 7 ourselves.
Those Xbox players among us who have been waiting to get their hands on open-world adventure RPG Genshin Impact, I have good news.
At this evening's Gamescom Opening Night Live, the team revealed Genshin Impact will be making its way to Xbox Series X/S and Game Pass on 20th November. It is available to wishlist now on the Microsoft Store.
The news was shared along with a new Natlan gameplay trailer (below). Earlier this year, Genshin Impact was once again accused of cultural appropriation from fans and voice actors in response to the reveal of its new cast of Natlan characters.
It's been nearly four years since Tarsier Studios waved goodbye to Little Nightmares after being snapped up by Embracer Group, giving developer Supermassive a crack at the much-loved Bandai-Namco-owned horror series. So what's Tarsier been doing since then? Well, it turns out the studio hasn't quite shaken off its fascination with spooky kids in scary places, as one look at its latest project, the newly unveiled Reanimal, makes clear.
Reanimal's gloomy nightmare-fairytale aesthetic, its gangly-limbed monsters, and its two young protagonists - all evident in its announcement trailer - are unquestionably reminiscent of Tarsier's Little Nightmares series. And while that's certainly no bad thing given the studio's oft-brilliant work on those games, it's not entirely clear after a half-hour press briefing, just how substantial a departure - beyond two key features - Reanimal will be from what's come before.
Reanimal tells the story of an orphaned brother and sister trapped in hellish version of the island that used to be their home, as they embark on a quest to rescue their three friends. It's a violent world of gloomy forests and decimated buildings, where empty bags of skins hang from trees and hideous, animalistic creatures roam. It's also one that's aiming for a "darker and grittier" tone compared to Tarsier's previous horror games.
Dying Light developer Techland has shown off a new game in its zombie series that began life as a DLC for Dying Light 2 Stay Human.
Announced during Gamescom Opening Night Live, Dying Light: The Beast is a solo or four-player co-op experience pitched as a "tight" 18-hour ride through a fresh area of the franchise's world.
Dying Light protagonist Kyle Crane, once again voiced by Roger Craig Smith, returns here, a decade on. In-game, Crane has been in captivity, and experimented on. The upside? You have zombie DNA powers to unleash that beast on enemies.
We already knew it was coming, thanks to a post-credits teaser at the end of 2022's The Devil in Me, but developer Supermassive has now confirmed its sci-fi horror outing Directive 8020 will launch for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC next year.
Directive 8020 essentially takes one fist of Alien and another of The Thing then smushes them together, placing players aboard the colony ship Cassiopeia, where its crew must escape an alien organism capable of mimicking its prey.
"Earth is dying and humanity is running out of time," teases Supermassive. "12 light years from home, Tau Ceti f offers a small sliver of hope. When the colony ship Cassiopeia crash lands on the planet, its crew soon realise they are far from being alone... As they battle to survive, they are confronted with the hardest choice of all: to save themselves, they must risk the lives of everyone on Earth."
Amazon Games has announced King of Meat, a new game from ex-Lionhead and Media Molecule developers.
The party game is part co-op action multiplayer and part dungeon builder. Players team up online in the fictional King of Meat TV show to complete dungeons filled with enemies and traps; then dungeons can be created from scratch and shared with the game's community.
Developer Glowmade is led by Jonny Hopper who previously worked for Lionhead on the Fable series and Media Molecule on LittleBigPlanet, along with other staff from those companies.
Microsoft has confirmed the next batch of titles headed to Xbox Game Pass for the latter half of August: Atlas Fallen, Core Keeper, and Star Trucker.
Then there's that little known game called Call of Duty Black Ops 6. You'll be able to participate in the early access open beta when it kicks off for Xbox Game Pass subscribers on 30th August, 2024, with pre-downloading available from 28th August.
"Sure, it takes itself way too seriously and the loot chase can get monotonous, but everything outside of the monster-slaying is just an excuse to get right back to the monster-slaying. Or make the monster-slaying cooler with upgrades," we said in our Atlas Fallen review.
Sony is pulling Horizon Forbidden West from its PS Plus subscription service in the coming weeks.
The first-party Sony game is now listed under the 'Last Chance to Play' section on PS Plus, along with the likes of NieR Replicant, Marvel's Midnight Suns and Alien Isolation.
This upcoming removal of Forbidden West comes just a few months after Horizon Zero Dawn was also removed from the service, which as Tom wrote at the time seemed a surprising move by Sony.
Paradox Interactive's streak of game delays continues with the news its Chinese-Room-developed Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is now targeting a release in the "first half of 2025", rather than its previously announced "late 2024" window.
In a post on its website, Paradox called the delay a "proactive decision" derived from its commitment earlier this year to deliver "high-quality games" to its players. "Though [Bloodlines 2] is in a good enough place that we could have maintained our planned release window," it wrote, "Paradox and The Chinese Room collaboratively decided to prioritise polish."
Paradox says the delay will "create a quality assurance buffer, giving more time between testing and launch, ensuring we release the game when it's ready." More specifically, The Chinese Room will use the time to expand Bloodlines 2's story, providing twice as many endings as its predecessor, and to "adjust certain areas" such as Fabien - the voice in its protagonist's head.
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Just when Geoff Keighley had started to fade from your memory, he comes rubber-banding back with a vengeance - snap! It's Gamescom week and it kicks off with Opening Night Live this evening from 7pm UK time (other Opening Night Live timings here). A pre-show with additional announcements will begin at 6.30pm UK. We'll be watching and reporting on it live, as always, right here, so you can either keep abreast of announcements while you do something else, or you can join in with your thoughtful and amusing comments. Please keep us company. Please.
What do we expect to see today? Well, probably Geoff Keighley, but also the new Indiana Jones game, Monster Hunter Wilds, and Dune Awakening. We're also expecting Little Nightmares creator Tarsier to unveil its new project, which could be exciting. On top of that: Diablo 4 expansion Vessel of Hatred, Civilization 7, hero shooter Marvel Rivals, Lost Records (the project made by the creators of Life is Strange), Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (which was recently delayed), and Black Ops 6. Keighley's best pal Hideo Kojima has also been tweeting enigmatic silhouetted pictures of actors who are presumably playing roles in Death Stranding 2.
And before you ask, "Yes, there will be new game announcements," Keighley said on X.
UPDATE 2pm UK: Between first publishing this story a few of hours ago and now, Black Myth: Wukong's player numbers have continued to climb.
Now, over two million players have taken to Steam to give the game a whirl. Its concurrent player peak as it stands is currently 2,125,077.
As a result, Black Myth: Wukong is now the second most played game of all time in terms of concurrent player numbers on Steam, having bopped both Counter-Strike 2 and Palworld down a place.
Black Myth: Wukong is nothing if not ambitious. As many of its early trailers and tech demos implied, this was a game punching above its weight. It wasn't just a lavish retelling of the epic Chinese novel Journey to the West, a work that games have rarely engaged with outside of Asia (Ninja Theory's Enslaved: Odyssey to the West notwithstanding), but it also seemed to be demonstrating a level of technical mastery and visual pizzazz we hadn't quite seen before. It immediately put developer Game Science on the map, even if it wasn't always for the most savoury of reasons.
But now, after spending upwards of 40 hours retracing the steps of its titular simian hero as the silent but deadly Destined One, Black Myth emerges as a game that frustrates more than it delights. Its plentiful supply of grand, sweeping boss battles set the heart alight at regular intervals, its mythological menagerie bristling with the same kind of malicious energy and intent as their FromSoft equivalents. They are the tentpoles that hold this game aloft, their sharp claws, vicious fangs and powerful hoofs often tearing up the screen in exquisite and sumptuous detail. Indeed, they're the kind of bosses that will probably go down as some of the most dramatic of this generation, with its glistening dragons that rage across icy lakes and rippling pools, muscular tigers that sup in temples of blood, and giant bears, wolves, rats and spiders that command the elements to devastating effect.
But outside of those pulse-racing encounters, Black Myth is an altogether more mind-numbing experience, its thrilling highs undone by baggy world design, an uneven difficulty curve and disjointed storytelling. Ostensibly, this is a quest about reviving the legendary Sun Wukong, who scattered himself to the wind in the form of six relics after being defeated in battle centuries earlier. As the Destined One, you'll travel through forests, sand, ice, ash and more to bring them back to your mountain home, winding your way through its alternately narrow and wide linear environments until you reach the big bad in possession of it.
MachineGames' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will reportedly launch for PlayStation 5 in the early half of 2025, following an Xbox Series X/S and PC release at the end of this year.
That's according to industry insider Nate the Hate (one of the first people to break the news of Microsoft's multi-platform plans at the start of this year) who made the claim on social media. "MachineGames' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will release on Xbox & PC this holiday (Dec) as a timed console exclusive," they wrote. "After this timed-exclusive window expires, Indiana Jones & the Great Circle is planned to come to PlayStation 5 in the first half of 2025."
Nate the Hate's claim tallies with a report by The Verge back in February, which said Microsoft was planning to go beyond its initial slate of comparatively low-key multi-platform releases by launching some of its flagship games on competing consoles. These were said to include Starfield and MachineGames' Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, with the latter supposedly due to arrive on PS5 "some months" after its Xbox and PC release.
Ever since its reveal in 2020, Black Myth: Wukong has been an alluring project. Developer Game Science has been surprisingly open in comparison to other AAA studios and the game's apparent ambitions have been reinforced with each and every press release: a hero-focused action game retelling the story of Journey to the West, and a graphical tour de force using the latest Unreal Engine features. In fact, on PC Wukong uses the Nvidia branch of UE5 to enable full ray tracing, promising an even more impressive presentation. With the full game in hand, it's time to see if Game Science has fulfilled the graphical promise of that first trailer, how the RT features work on PC, and what optimised settings can be used to deliver a smooth experience on a range of hardware. Enough monkey business then, let's get right into it.
From the moment the game starts up, it's clear that Game Science has delivered a level of graphical fidelity that surpasses that of the initial trailer. The dazzling intro to the game dazzles, with titanic mythical beings looming over you and an entire area replete with unique volumetric rendering that's unfortunately rare in the modern age.
With each and every dash, staff swipe and bit of movement, the main character and his nemesis distort and move the physical volume of fog that they find themselves in. Beyond Housemarque's Returnal and some legacy PhysX titles, real physicalised particles like this are rare, and Game Science made sure to use this GPU-intensive effect effectively to add a mystical flourish to game moments and character entrances.
Final Fantasy 16 will launch on PC on 17th September across both the Epic Games Store and Steam.
The PC version has been long-awaited since the game was released as a PS5 console exclusive last year.
Today's news comes with a new PC specific trailer, see below. A demo is available to try out now.
Modern military shooters are in a strange place at the moment. Battlefield is licking its wounds after stepping on the landmine that was Battlefield 2042, while Call of Duty is running around like the dog that caught the car, the massive success of Warzone leaving the mainline series at a loss with what to do with itself.
It's a chaotic, uncertain time in one of multiplayer gaming's biggest spheres, and the various shenanigans of EA and Activision have left room for something new to make its mark in the genre. Enter Delta Force: Hawk Ops, which you'll be shocked to hear is not a Trauma Team-style game about performing surgery on birds of prey. Instead, it's a free-to-play military shooter in the Battlefield/CoD mould, based on the series that predates either, and it could be the shot of competence and stability that the genre sorely needs.
Currently running a month-long Alpha, Hawk Ops provides access to two of its three game modes. The first of these, Havoc Warfare, is a classic large-scale attack/defence scenario similar to Battlefield's Rush, with the attacking team trying to capture a linear sequence of control points, and the defending team attempting to hold back the tide until the attackers' collective pool of lives runs dry.
Konami has dropped a brand new story trailer for its highly-anticipated Silent Hill 2 Remake.
The teaser essentially matches the original's acclaimed 2001 E3 trailer, and the script is almost identical, too, all set against a fabulous reimagining of (one of) Silent Hill 2's end themes, Promise.
The Remake trailer is below. For comparison, here's the 2001 E3 trailer for Silent Hill 2:
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This week's launch of Black Myth: Wukong has brought further controversy to the game with the leak of a document sent to influencers requesting they do not include "politics", "feminist propaganda", or references to Covid-19 in their coverage.
Over the weekend, a document from the marketing team at co-publisher Hero Games leaked, which was sent to influencers and streamers ahead of coverage and contains a list of do's and don'ts.
While the do's simply reads "enjoy the game", the don'ts includes a number of caveats. "Do not insult other influencers or players" and "do not use any offensive language/humour" are both understandable, but other requests are far more political.
Silent Hill 2 remains one of the all time survival horror greats - and its story of grief, framed by fogged streets and flashlight lit corridors, remains as haunting today as on its initial release. All of which is to say, there's a lot riding on developer Bloober Team to nail the details of its remake's atmosphere when it arrives on 8th October. To be blunt, the team has had an uphill battle to inspire confidence in long-time Silent Hill fans, not helped by a poorly pitched 'combat trailer' at Sony's State of Play in January that completely missed the brief. Since then, later gameplay showings have put the remake's intentions in much better light. And thankfully, in playing its opening three hours at a recent Konami event - from the start right up to the first Pyramid Head boss - I am now much more positive about it. Despite my worries going in, I'm glad the remake does even dare to make key changes to the game, complete with new puzzles, updated combat, plus the promise of new, additional endings.
Before we get to that, a quick Digital Foundry-style aside. On booting the game there were two graphics modes on PS5: a 30fps quality mode, and a performance mode that targets 60fps. Dynamic resolution appears to be used more aggressively for the latter, but I happily stuck with the 60fps option, which ran Silent Hill's south vale region and later Wood Side Apartment block smoothly. The only problem spot was an early graveyard area - with its obvious sub-60 drops in the build shown - but that might improve by release.
Speaking with the team at Bloober directly, it's also confirmed that both modes use Unreal Engine 5's Lumen technology on PS5 - enhancing its reflections with a software-based approximation of ray tracing. The result being that the rain-slicked streets reflect every shop sign crisply, even if they're out of your camera's view (a problem for the SSR method, which is still used as a fallback behind Lumen here). Added to this the team confirms that Lumen is also used for ambient occlusion, albeit only on the 30fps quality mode. Also, for a bit of fun, an additional 90s filter toggle is included in the remake's menus to change its colour grading to more closely match the fade of the PS2 original's - if you're that way inclined.
15 minutes of Astro Bot has once again leaked online, giving us a premature peek at what to expect when the game releases on 6th September.
In news unlikely to surprise you, the video has already been removed from YouTube (although you can still find copies of it if you're prepared to go looking), but eagle-eyed fans nonetheless managed to get a peek at the main hub, as well as a sneaky glimpse at some of the bots we can expect.
If you'd prefer to keep everything a surprise, head back to the main page now. For those excited and happy for a little head's up, read on…
This week's DF Direct 'drops' a little early owing to a somewhat busy and congested week for us, and our usual two-hour-long chat show begins with a look at the Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool - and the fact that (when we filmed, at least), the developer had not shown any video footage of the PlayStation 5 version in action. Reviewers were told not to expect PS5 code pre-launch. However, yesterday, a short snippet of gameplay captured from the console did appear online, so we scrambled to take a look at it and append some thoughts about it to our show.
Let's talk about the footage itself, hailing from PlayStation China (though we picked it up from the developer's feed, which linked to IGN China instead). First of all, there are clear issues with the quality of the footage. The appearance of developer IP addresses in the top-right may suggest that the PS5's system level video recording system was used, which was then re-processed by YouTube's systems, creating a very muddy picture, heavy on compression artefacts. Even so, we can see that the game is targeting 60fps, albeit with some heavy hits to frame-rate when screen-filling effects present on-screen. Black Myth: Wukong as presented here doesn't have any screen-tearing.
Beyond that, it is difficult to tell you much more about the game when we have no context on how the clip was captured and what settings (assuming the console version has settings) it was using. To be honest, the murkiness of the footage has left me with more questions than answers - especially after carrying out performance analysis on the clip. It's not easy to gauge frame-rate from lossy video, but we've done it in the past with streaming services and the technique is pretty straightforward and boils down to manually scrolling through the clip frame by frame and marking up duplicates. In the process, we got to see how the game looks from one frame to the next and there's some evidence here to suggest that AMD FSR 3 frame generation is being used in this footage.
Ubisoft has updated the PC requirements for its upcoming Star Wars adventure, Star Wars Outlaws, and released a new teaser showing off what kind of performance PC players can expect when the game releases on 30th August.
Taking up a modest 65GB, the settings shouldn't be too punishing for those looking only to meet the minimum standards – although you will need to have DLSS or FSR – but those pushing for the "ultra" experience will need a decent rig.
Check out the details below:
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is one of Digital Foundry's most eagerly anticipated games, effectively hitting the beats that made the first series entry so enjoyable. The grand scale of the environments, the dense swarms of tyranids, the absolute carnage of combat - it's all back in Space Marine 2, enhanced by the impressive technical capabilities of the Swarm engine. Focus Entertainment recently shared a preview build of the PC version of the game, and we're eager to share our impressions with you. We're liking what we see - but Space Marine 2 pushes hardware, which poses interesting challenges to the current generation of consoles, especially on the CPU side.
Saber Interactive has taken on development duties for this game, and our first impression is that it's done a fantastic job of capturing the Warhammer 40,000 aesthetic: colossal, heroic figures, massive-scale gothic architecture stretching out into the far distance and an enviable wealth of animated detail in the immediate area. The sense of density is only heightened once you get your first taste of combat: dozens of tyranids rushing you, while hundreds (possibly even thousands more) can sometimes be seen massing in the background.
Density in detail at close range also impresses, though it's not quite to the same extremes as Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. That said, as third-person game up against a first-person experience, that's not actually a bad thing. It works exceptionally well. The emphasis on detail also means that something has to give elsewhere: Space Marine 2 doesn't seem to be using cutting-edge lighting or global illumination technology, but you do get accomplished versions of mature technologies like shadow maps, screen-space reflections and screen-space ambient occlusion, while the GI solution (which does seem pre-calculated or 'baked') does give a good impression of light bounce. The quality of the physically-based materials also works well.
Destiny developer Bungie says it has addressed an issue where players have had their usernames changed by its "name moderation tool".
After "actively investigating" the issue for 24 hours, Bungie advised that while it had "identified the issue that was forcing a high number of Bungie name changes", it was "continuing to investigate" what happened and how "to address player accounts that were impacted".
Although Bungie acknowledged that a "high number of account names have been changed", the studio stopped short of confirming exactly how many players were affected.
Hello! You might be seeing a few Black Myth: Wukong reviews going live at the moment, and so we wanted to let you know where ours was.
In brief: we need a bit more time with this one. It's a big ol' game, and we haven't had very long with it, meaning we've not had enough time to make significant enough progress for a full review.
There are a couple of other factors worth bearing in mind. There are some quite tight embargo restrictions for what we could talk about in an early review for this one - though that's increasingly the norm these days really - and also, we've been informed there is no PlayStation 5 code available for the game at all until on or after launch. That doesn't necessarily mean anything should be read into there - code for one platform is often available before another - but it is just one more small reason for us to sit tight a little longer.
Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney has said he has "no regrets" over his company's decision to break Apple and Google's terms of service back in August 2020 - something that saw the hugely-popular Fortnite booted off both iPhone and Android storefronts.
The carefully choreographed stunt sparked four years of legal wrangling over Apple and Google's app store policies - and has ultimately led to Epic Games launching its own mobile store today on Android worldwide and on iPhone in mainland Europe, thanks to policy changes demanded of Apple by the EU.
"We've probably lost a billion dollars not having Fortnite on iOS the past four years," Sweeney said, in a briefing to press ahead of the Epic Games Store on mobile going live. "But what's the price of freedom?"
Kaitlyn Dever, the actress portraying Abby Anderson in the second season of HBO's The Last of Us adaptation, required extra security during filming for her own protection.
This comes from fellow castmate Isabel Merced, who is playing Dina in the show. Speaking with Josh Horowitz on Happy Sad Confused, Merced discussed the strong emotions the series can spark within some that have resulted in volatile reactions from so-called fans.
When Horowitz said he was concerned about Dever, and the toxicity she will likely receive "through proxy of being Abby", Merced stated there are "so many strange people" who "genuinely hate" the character. This is despite her being completely fictional. And, because of this, Dever was required to have extra security during the filming for the second season.
The enhanced version of classic point-and-click adventure Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars now has a release date: 19th September.
This "Reforged" version will be available across PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Series X S, Nintendo Switch and PC (Windows, macOS and Linux).
The game's redrawn visuals have been upgraded to 4K, but there's also a new story mode UI including subtle hints aimed at new players.
Call of Duty has become an absolute hard drive hog in recent years, with 2023's entry managing to consume over 200GB of storage in some cases. That all might be about to change, however, as Activision has announced major changes to the way it'll be handing installs with this year's Black Ops 6, promising "smaller and more customised downloads" as a result.
Activision shared the news in a post on its Call of Duty blog, explaining its optimisation work will begin with a revamp of "the experience formerly known as Call of Duty HQ". This revamp is set to roll out over the course of several updates ahead of Black Ops 6's October launch, and will promises to introduce a streamlined interface, direct access to games, more control over downloads, and expanded texture streaming technology to reduce file sizes.
A first update to reorganise game content arrives on 21st August. Then, following Black Ops 6's open beta on 30th August, a new user interface and other "remaining updates" are scheduled for mid-October. After these "larger initial updates", Activision says future Call of Duty downloads will decrease in size and existing files will take up less space on players' device.
Flame Fatales, the all-women and femmes charity speedrunning event from Games Done Quick, returns for another week-long programme of impressively swift gaming feats this weekend.
This year's Flame Fatales (which will be the event's fourth outing since its launch back in 2021) gets underway on Sunday, 16th August. More specifically, things kick off at 6:15pm BST, with a Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores 100% speedrun by RE_doc19.
Seven days - and more than 50 speedruns - later - this year's Femme Fatales comes to a close at 4:06am BST with a Super Mario Odyssey Talkatoo% speedrun by CheeseJay. In between, you can expect speedruns for the likes of Persona Dancing, Sonic CD, Broken Age, Stray, the Resident Evil 2 remake, Rez, and plenty more - as outlined in this year's full schedule.
New World: Aeternum, the latest expansion/do-over for Amazon's middling MMO New World, is having an open beta on 13th September ahead of its full PC and console release in October.
Aeternum, if you're unfamiliar, emerged back in June, amid some confused messaging that didn't entirely make it clear exactly what it was. And, truthfully, Amazon's marketing remains as baffling as ever. The gist, though, is that this is the same MMORPG released back in 2021, albeit with new features and a bit of finessing ahead of its debut on Xbox Series X/S and PS5.
It's got a pacier story (told through in-game cinematics and pre-rendered cut-scenes), combat improvements, cross-platform play, enhanced controller support, and more - while still retaining its other MMO bits like classes, crafting, and questing. Then there's New World's first-ever large-scale PvP zone, a new 10-player raid, end-game solo trials, and other additions.
For many, scaling Mount Everest has stood as the ultimate challenge of one's strength and endurance. An achievement of a lifetime. For long-time Doom players, however, there is an equivalent: NUTS.WAD. Legend has it that NUTS.WAD descended upon Doom players in the year 2001: a map from the future in which players are dropped into a single map with more than 10,000 enemies and a handful of power-ups. And now - for the first time ever - it's playable on a games console.
I'm half-joking, of course, but the ability to load in any Doom mod is just one great feature found in the latest version of Doom and Doom 2. Helmed by Nightdive in cooperation with id Software and Machine Games, this new version is worth looking at as it is the most feature rich, best-performing version of Doom on consoles. It's available on PC, PS5, Xbox Series consoles, Switch and even last-gen PS4 and Xbox hardware. The game was transitioned over to Nightdive's KEX engine and brings with it a vast array of enhancements - 120fps support on consoles, 16-player multiplayer including co-op, and a new soundtrack from the legendary Andrew Hulshult.
But it was the mod support that was my first destination and with it, the chance to see how Nightdive's work would cope with the NUTS.WAD challenge. This pushes beyond the limits of what Doom engine was intended to handle and now we can test it on console and the results are interesting. Before we go on, it's worth stressing that all current-gen machines can handle 4K gaming at 120fps - and yes, that includes Series S. The engine is optimised and fast - all the included content and every map I tested runs like greased lightning. I wanted to raise this caveat because the challenge of NUTS.WAD is so extreme and cruel that I don't want people to get the wrong idea. The fact that you can run NUTS.WAD at all is cause for celebration!
UPDATE 20/8/24: Well, there you go. Following last week's Deadline report, Amazon has officially unveiled Secret Level, a new "adult-animated anthology series featuring original stories set within the worlds of some of the most beloved video games".
It's a 15-episode series from the creators of Love, Death & Robots, and it'll feature stories inspired by Armored Core, Concord, Crossfire, Dungeons & Dragons, Exodus, Honor of Kings, Mega Man, New World: Aeternum, PAC-MAN, Sifu, Spelunky, The Outer Worlds, Unreal Tournament, Warhammer 40,000, and a variety of PlayStation Studios games.
And if that takes your fancy, you'll be wanting to circle 10th December on your calendar - which is when the series arrives on Prime Video - then check out its teaser trailer below.
Sony has announced August's PlayStation Plus games.
Those on the subscription's Extra tier will get the following titles:
In addition to the above, those on PS Plus Premium will also get access to the below:
Activision sure is dragging out its reveal of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's Zombies mode. But if you're sucker for the undead stuff, there's more where last week's trailer and gameplay reveal came from, with developer Treyarch having now offered a tour of Zombies' Terminus map.
Terminus Island is one of two maps that'll be available at launch (the other being the West Virginian town of Liberty Falls), and Treyarch calls it "one of the largest round-based Zombies maps ever created". Black Ops 6's Zombies mode takes place in the early 90s - five years after the events of Black Ops Cold War's Zombies mode - and Terminus Island serves as a prison for some familiar Requiem faces. After their liberation early at the start of the story, players can explore the prison itself before moving out to investigate its tropical island surroundings.
There's a secret research facility specialising in "weird science" (in case you were wondering where the zombies might spring up from this time), as well as the ocean, and assorted smaller islands - all of which players will visit as part of Terminus' main quest. It's described as a "living world" full of scripted encounters, ranging from zombies smashing out of vats and prison guards still trying to control the undead threat, to less fortunate souls being chomped on.
Among Us developer InnerSloth has announced a collaboration with Dungeons and Dragons web series Critical Role.
This collaboration means players can now bedeck their little space beans with a number of items worn by those intrepid members from Vox Machina, Mighty Nein, or Bells Hells. I am talking about Artagan's Incredible Brows Visor or the Dust of Deliciousness Nameplate, to name but two.
"Getting to work alongside the wonderful crew of the hit TTRPG show Critical Role to bring some of their magic to Among Us for Gilmore's Curious Cosmicube has been mind blowing," InnerSloth said. "Be sure to go to our in-game store and spend some Stars before the Cosmicube is gone."
Tomba! or as best I know it as Tombi! is a classic platform adventure game originally released for the PlayStation and is a game I am excited to get back into as I had a blast playing this growing up. Now anyone confused by the name, the European version of Tomba! was known as Tombi! which still seems to be the case today as the version of the game I have on PlayStation 5 displays it as Tombi! Special Edition although the home screen background, game title and marketing of the game lists it as Tomba! so that’s what we will go with.
In Tomba! Special Edition you play as a feral pink haired wild child who has his grandfather’s bracelet stolen by evil pigs that now plague the land and now he sets off on a journey fully throwing pigs around himself while doing so. So what is Tomba! Well the game itself is a platforming game with RPG elements. From the offset it looks like your average platformer. You collect apples, throw enemies and swing across the dangerous terrain in order to progress but underneath all of this is an adventure that has more to it than meets the eye.
As already mentioned Tomba! is a platformer with some RPG elements so aside from platforming you have a world of NPC’s all eager for some help and just from the beginning of the game you will find yourself with a few tasks which pop up on the screen with an AP reward which when finished adds to your total AP which is shown in the top right corner. To begin with you will complete these tasks as you go such as getting the tornado and using it to clear the fog into the next area, This is a must as you cannot progress otherwise. The game also has an inventory system and you can pick up quest items which can be used from there also, there are useable items such as feathers which will will whisk you away to other areas. There’s also various weapons and pants which you can equip which can alter your attack and mobility and change how you interact with the environment.
After meeting the 100 year old wise man you gain the ability to open chests and you will be able to open ones that you previously went past as well as any future ones. Not all chests though as there’s many different types. Remembering where these are is important as you will need to backtrack once you get the ability to open them. You will also come across AP boxes which can spew out rewards and these will become available once you have amassed enough AP as shown on them.
Tomba! is a colourful game , not only is it vivid and full of colour but is also wacky and crazy in many ways. Once you get to the forest full of laughing and crying mushrooms you will understand why.
Tomba! is by no means a big game but there is so much crammed into its small world that some events are well hidden and won’t be found by your average player. You don’t need to do these to finish the game, but if you want to absolutely 100% everything then it’s certainly worth trying to mess around with the terrain no matter how insane that may seem. Those pink plants that excrete gas in the beginning of the game for example are not just for show. Tomba! is definitely one of those where do I go next kind of games as in that I definitely do remember getting stuck when I first played it and admittedly it is one of those games I did not finish however after a bit of perseverance I can say I have now finished it and enjoyed it just as much as I remember.
Now while I have talked about the game as a whole how does it differ from it’s 90s counterpart? Well Tomba! Special Edition does indeed come with some new features. Most notably is the rewind feature allowing you to rewind the game should you fall into difficulty, again Tomba! is not a difficult game but some areas are tricky to navigate like the pesky mushroom forest and this alleviates the annoying of waiting for the game to load again should you lost a life, you can get straight back in without much downtime now. You can also save anywhere now whereas you would previously have had to use the signs which can be found at the start of each area. The game does not feel it has improved in any capacity in terms of graphics but actually seems to have aged quite well. What you do get however is the ability to play with different display methods and also use different borders to display around the game screen, a nice retro touch and if you wish to play with the original audio you can also do that but if you want something a bit more modern then that is an option too as the whole soundtrack has had a remaster. The games sound and music is top notch although the mushroom forest is where I did turn it down just for the sheer annoyance of that zone, you will see for yourself if you don’t already know. The game also features a museum crammed with a load of original artwork, documents and creator interviews if that’s your sort of thing.
So is Tomba! Special Edition worth picking up? Most certainly, it is a charming game full of character and does feel like a retro cult of the 90s. It’s one of those hidden gem kind of games and one which at the time was certainly unique in every aspect. The game looks and plays as great as I remember and I look forward to uncovering all the hidden secrets I missed as a kid.
A PlayStation 5 review code was provided by Limited Run Games
The post Review – Tomba! Special Edition (PlayStation 5) appeared first on GameHype.
HIGH Fast action. Intense enemy design. Impressive visuals.
LOW Puzzles can be offputtingly difficult in single-player.
WTF There are challenge modes to make things harder???
Teagan wasn’t expecting to start her morning tied to a stake and being burnt as a witch. She certainly wasn’t expecting to be rescued by the spirit of a deceased witch and forced to run for her life without time to mourn her fallen brother, Edwin.
Finding out that she is descended from a line of witches tasked with maintaining the flow of time and preventing the fall of mankind was almost too much to bear. Now she must master her newfound powers, attempt to save Edwin by going back in time, and also defeat hordes of enemies under the thrall of the mysterious Dark Puppeteer.
TimeMelters is a game that nearly defies genre classification.
It’s partially an action title where players control Teagan from a third-person perspective as she navigates through a fantasy equivalent of the Scottish Highlands while battling foes with an array of magic bolts and life-draining powers.
However, it’s also something of a strategy/tower defense hybrid. Teagan gains the ability to go into spirit form, allowing her to fly above the map for a quasi-bird’s eye view to activate summoning and infusing powers while time slows to a crawl.
Alas, the Dark Puppeteer’s forces are legion, and Teagan, while powerful, is a glass cannon. It takes only one enemy slipping through her defenses to kill her. This is where TimeMelters debuts its game design coup-de-grace in the form of a third aspect — a time rewinding feature that grants the ability to reverse the flow of time and create copied echoes of herself. These echoes will repeat Teagan’s previous actions exactly, up until the moment that echo would have been killed.
For instance, the player can move Teagan past a group of enemies the previous version of her has already have killed (tenses are hard when it comes to time travel!) allowing her to concentrate on other foes or achieve other objectives the first echo wasn’t able to. It’s even possible to further alter the timeline by using an echo to distract an enemy that the player can now ambush or lead in yet another direction towards a trap. It’s astonishing to watch in action.
I know how this sounds, but read it all again — it makes sense, even if it makes one’s head hurt — but the brilliance of this design cannot be understated. Using time manipulations and copies of Teagan to defy the odds and solve puzzles that would otherwise be impossible made me feel like a genius. However, therein lies the rub. I am not super-great at three-dimensional, multi-linear thinking, so this was a real challenge.
Thankfully, handy markers display the numbers of enemies in a group and the route they are currently taking, which then help the player plan the best use of the limited mana and small number of clones Teagan has at her disposal. For instance, she can kill enemies closing in on her position to gain mana, then switch to spirit mode to scour the map for groups she can ambush so she doesn’t have to deal with them later. While this all takes a little bit of getting used to, it becomes second nature far more quickly than I would have believed when I first started playing.
…Then I discovered the co-op campaign.
With a friend joining in via the Playstation Network, two people can take control of Teagan and her brother, traversing the many levels in TimeMelters‘ campaign, though with slight adjustments in the storyline, dialogue and mission structure.
For instance, Edwin starts one mission at the opposite end of the map from Teagan, providing cover for an NPC who needs to be protected as he slowly meanders towards the mission goal — a task which Teagan had to coordinate on her own alone in the singleplayer version.
Players share a mana pool and the rewind feature but they otherwise act independently, so planning and coordination are a must. However, this is offset by bringing double the firepower, which makes battles and puzzles much more manageable than in the single-player campaign.
Despite the fact that I was being pushed to creatively think and temporally strategize in ways that games have rarely asked me to, TimeMelters is a must play — especially for players who have someone to share the cognitive load with.
Even at its most frustrating, the brilliance on display here is addictive. It would be goofy to say TimeMelters is the best action/strategy/time clone hybrid involving witches I’ve played all year, so let me broaden it a bit and say that it’s one of the best games I’ve played this year, bar none.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Autoexec Games. It is currently available on PS5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. Three hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood and Violence. This game features witches using magical forces to kill both human and non-human enemies. The protagonist absorbs the souls/spirits of dead opponents to power further magical attacks. The game features heavy occult themes and not-for-kids moments like burning suspected witches at the stake as well as necromancy used as a secondary attack for the protagonist. There is blood, but not excessive amounts, and most players have seen far worse in other games.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. All story-based dialogue during cutscenes is fully subtitled. The majority of in-game dialog is fully subtitled, with occasional declarations by the main character(s) being voice-only. These additional declarations do not cause the player to miss anything plot specific, but they do add flavor to the moment. I’d say the game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.
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