FreshRSS

Zobrazení pro čtení

Jsou dostupné nové články, klikněte pro obnovení stránky.

Ubisoft's Watch Dogs the latest game series to get the movie treatment

Watch Dogs, Ubisoft's open-world sci-fi hacker series, is reportedly the latest in an ever-growing list of video games to get the live-action movie treatment, with Talk to Me actor Sophie Wilde said to be in talks to star.

That's according to Deadline, which reports the Watch Dogs movie will be helmed by director Mathieu Turi (who's currently adapting A Plague Tale for television), working from a screenplay by Christie LeBlanc - the writer behind Netflix's 2021 French sci-fi thriller Oxygen.

The Watch Dogs movie is in development at New Regency Productions but, beyond word of Talk to Me actor Sophie Wilde's potential involvement and the rather obvious note from Deadline that it'll be "set within the universe of Ubisoft's" series, details are limited.

Read more

Playing Ori dev's new Soulsborne, No Rest for the Wicked

Ori and the Blind Forest is well known for its tear-jerker of an intro cutscene so for developer Moon Studios, the dark and damp, gore-soaked world of its next game No Rest for the Wicked, seems like a radical change in direction.

But how well has the studio managed the switch from magical Metroidvania to a swords and sorcery Soulsborne-like? Well, I went in blind and you can join me in my journey of discovery as I learn the ropes in the gameplay video below, where I play through the first 90 minutes of the game.

In No Rest for the Wicked, you play as a Cerim, a holy warrior imbued with remarkable powers (that you have to earn back before you can use them it seems) and, after a tragic accident at sea, you wash up on the backwaters of a land called Isola Sacra which is awash with something called 'the Pestilence'.

Read more

Sea of Thieves devs discuss "surreal" PS5 launch and 2024's "year of the sandbox"

Sea of Thieves, you might have heard, is heading to PlayStation 5 next month. It's a significant moment for all sorts of reasons – it's perhaps the biggest of the four Microsoft first-party titles recently confirmed for Sony's console, and it's also the first time developer Rare has released a PlayStation title in its nearly 40-year history – but it's also an opportunity for a whole new group of players to experience (and I say this as a huge Sea of Thieves fan) a wonderful, genuinely unique game. And with the multiplayer pirate adventure's 30th April launch on PS5 looming, I spoke to creative director Mike Chapman and executive producer Joe Neate about this latest milestone, the state of the game, and the team's big sandbox focus for 2024.

"We've had [the PlayStation 5 version] running really since late last year," Neate explains of Sea of Thieves' journey to a new console. "We've been testing internally and we're getting into the 'take home' stage, where we're playing at home with our little hands on the [PlayStation] controllers, and kind of going, 'This is insane!'". But how did the pair react when they first learned a PlayStation version was happening? "I think it's such a surreal moment we have this opportunity," Chapman responds. "Sea of Thieves at its core is about taking barriers away, allowing crews of would-be pirates to sail together on the waves, to share ships, and the fact we're now adding one more platform so people can create their ideal crew and enjoy the game, it's monumental, absolutely monumental - if you'd told me this back in 2018, I don't think I would have believed you. It's amazing."

"And having this new influx of players," Neate adds, "this new influx of feedback and perspective, for the strength and health of Sea of Thieves as an ongoing, evolving game, it's just a great moment… It's a really good time for Sea of Thieves."

Read more

Fallout TV trailer includes nods to New Vegas, hints at The Ghoul's backstory

Od: Liv Ngan

With a little over a month until Amazon's Fallout TV adaptation airs, Prime Video has released another trailer for the series.

It provides our best look yet at the show, with three minutes of footage for us to pore over. And dare I say, it actually looks… decent? To my surprise, I quite liked it?

I've rewatched the trailer several times now to see if there's any new information we can glean hidden in the details, and there are a few things worth pointing out (as well as some references to my all-time favourite in the series, Fallout: New Vegas).

Read more

Summerhouse review - a house-building toy that contains genuine magic

There is an island in the Aegean, an island of stray cats and tumbling bougainvilleas, that has an instagram account devoted exclusively to its many doors. This account is a catalogue of variations on a theme, the theme being how you get in and out of a building, the variation being - well... Where to start? Modern doors, ancient doors. Doors of wood and doors of iron. Doors that are perfectly kept up, doors that are leaning, addled, barely hanging in there. Doors set with glass and doors set with grillwork. The doors are great individually, but it's together that they truly shine. You glimpse something of us as a species, I think, in their endless twists and reconfiguring, their fitness and anti-fitness for purpose.

If you are the kind of person who likes the idea of exploring the endless variation found within doors, Summerhouse is for you. And it's not just doors. Oh, the doors are great. They're nifty! Metal doors with an industrial feel, but also wooden double doors, perfect for an old junk shop. Sliding convenience-store doors. A round Hobbit number - painted green, of course.

But there are windows, rooves, finials and oddments like signage, rattling drainpipes, posters and hoardings. Fancy a polite little noticeboard? Fancy a lone payphone set, lollipop-style, upon a stick? Fancy trees and shrubs, wild and in pots? Walls of stone, walls of wood. Keep scrolling; even before the unlocks bring you a ghost amongst long grass and a cat lounging on an air-con unit, it's all here.

Read more

Fortnite Chapter 5 Season 2 launch delayed due to last-minute snag

Today's long-awaited arrival of Greek gods and legendary lands on the Fortnite battle royale Island is taking a little longer than planned, developer Epic Games has now said.

Chapter 5 Season 2: Myths and Mortals was set to go live this morning, UK time, but will now launch at 10pm tonight at the earliest.

This is due to a last-minute issue discovered during the game's still-ongoing downtime today, which will take at least the rest of the UK day to resolve.

Read more

Nintendo says to wait for Princess Peach: Showtime's credits to find out which developer made it

Nintendo hasn't announced which of its many development studios or partners is making Princess Peach: Showtime, this spring's biggest new Nintendo Switch game, and doesn't seem likely to before it debuts later this month.

"The development team will be credited in the game credits," a Nintendo spokesperson simply told me today when I enquired which developer had made the game.

There's no reason why Nintendo has to say who has made the game, of course, but fans have said it feels odd that the answer remains a mystery, just a few weeks away from Princess Peach: Showtime!'s 22nd March debut, after press have already played a preview build of the game, and following the launch of this week's public demo.

Read more

New York Times takedown domino effect hits nearly 2000 Wordle clones

Od: Liv Ngan

The New York Times has issued a takedown notice to Reactle, a Wordle clone, which has meant around 1900 other versions of the game have now been taken down.

Reactle was an open-source project created by an individual, the brilliantly-named Chase Wackerfuss, that contained instructions on how to create Wordle spin-offs, such as variations in different languages or themed answers. The code repository is no longer available on Github, following the DMCA takedown notice from the NYT.

"I write to submit a revised DMCA Notice regarding an infringing repository (and hundreds of forked repositories) hosted by Github that instruct users how to infringe The New York Times Co.'s ('The Times') copyright in its immensely popular Wordle game and create knock-off copies of the same," reads the notice, as reported by 404 Media.

Read more

Former Netflix-exclusive Valiant Hearts: Coming Home out now on PC, consoles

Valiant Hearts: Coming Home is now available across consoles and PC, following its previous launch for smartphones via Netflix.

The game is now available on PC, PlayStation, Switch and Xbox consoles as part of a new collection, suitably titled Valiant Hearts: The Collection, which packages together Coming Home and its predecessor The Great War.

For a reminder of how it looks, there's a new trailer below where you can "experience the full emotional journey of love, sacrifice, and friendship". The colleciton will set you back £20.99. The game can also be purchased separately for £12.99.

Read more

What we've been playing

Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing over the past few days. This week: first impressions, mazes, and zombie apocalypses.

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.

I've been playing a lot of Nightingale in the last couple of weeks, and I think there are good ideas there but also a lot of frustration. The game is too eager to have you grind, and it suffocates all of the more interesting things it's trying to do. I wrote about this in much more detail in my Nightingale Early Access impressions piece published yesterday.

Read more

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 update adds debug menu and potential DLC spoilers

Developer Insomniac Games released its much anticipated New Game Plus update for Marvel's Spider-Man 2 yesterday, however it slipped up a tad and also accidentally gave players access to a development menu.

In a social media post soon after the update went live, Insomniac said a hotfix was on the way, as using this menu could corrupt saves and players' trophy progress. "There is no risk associated with playing the game as intended," Insomnia said.

However, despite the studio's efforts, this menu was of course accessed, and players have discovered content that was not in the base game, suggesting it was either cut ahead of release, or may be used later for DLC. Please note, potential spoilers lie below.

Read more

Game of the Week: Snufkin's adventures in Moonminvalley show how finely judged a licensed game can be

Odd as it sounds, part of me misses those old licensed games. Everyone who came up in games journalism in the early 2000s will have been given some of these things to review, and it was always a fascinating challenge. I remember a former editor of Eurogamer telling me that the first game they ever put a score on was The Golden Compass, the spin-off game for the wonky big-budget adaptation of His Dark Materials. Now I think about it, my first review was Miami Vice for the PSP. Better than The Golden Compass, at least. Actually, it was quite good?

That was the thing. Sometimes these games were quite good. Sometimes they were more than quite good. But there was always a sense around my friends who took video games really seriously that licensed games were not worth messing with. Over the years I kept a fond eye on them, though. I have pleasant memories of a Hey Arnold! GBA game, and then there was the developer who once told me that licensed games occupied a role that sounds a bit like the role occupied by the church in medieval painting: providing a nice commission where you could work out some of your own interests while crowbarring in what the patron wanted. So maybe you used a film license to nail rain animation for your own non-licensed game. Raphael would be proud.

Things are different now, though, and that rambly introduction brings me to our game of the week: Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley. Somehow, I played this simultaneously aware that it was a game about Moomins, but unaware, really, that it was a licensed game. I knew that the Moomins were a thing, I just didn't think of that thing as being a license.

Read more

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons remake - UE5 Nanite and Lumen come at a heavy cost

Even to this day, developer Starbreeze Studios' 2013 classic Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is fondly remembered. This adventure puzzler was released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 just months before the next console generation, and packed a real emotional punch for those that caught it. Jump forward eleven years and we have a new remake for a new generation on PS5, Series X and Series S - so how does it hold up on new platforms, including the less powerful Series S, across both performance and quality modes?

In terms of its tech, this is a significant remake: the original game's Unreal Engine 3 is jettisoned for Unreal Engine 5, with Milan-based studio Avantgarden putting in serious work to re-imagine every environment with vastly improved detail via the engine's Nanite and Lumen technologies. Beyond improved visuals, the release also includes new cutscenes, tweaked controls and adjustments to difficulty. Even its soundtrack was re-recorded from scratch, with original composer Gustaf Grefberg returning to the project.

Despite all of those changes though, it's a relief to find that great care has been taken to stick closely to the original's core gameplay design and story. From the main menu design to the physics for its puzzles, the game logic running underneath is often identical. As before, you take control of two brothers simultaneously in a top-down view, with one brother on the left analogue stick and the other on the right. The goal is to navigate an eerie, beautiful fantasy world - full of trolls, wolves and sentient trees - in a quest to find a cure for their dying father.

Read more

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided one of two Epic Games Store freebies next week

Epic has revealed the next titles it's giving away on the Epic Games Store, with Deux Ex: Mankind Divided and The Bridge getting the freebie treatment from Thursday, 14th March.

Deux Ex: Mankind Divided is the fifth instalment in Square Enix's stealthy, shooty sci-fi series and a direct sequel to 2012's Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Once again cyber-augmented protagonist Adam Jensen returns, and the ensuing adventure was deemed to be a "smart, handsome and weighty addition to the stealth-action genre" in Eurogamer's review.

As for The Bridge, it's a gravity shifting puzzle game created by Ty Taylor - and described as "Isaac Newton meets M. C. Escher" - that challenges players to manoeuvre the world and reach the exit each stage. Eurogamer quite liked this one on release in 2013, even if it sometimes felt like "the taster course for a more satisfying meal kept frustratingly off the menu."

Read more

Dune: Awakening developer seeks to reassure fans following religion concerns

Funcom, developer of the upcoming Dune: Awakening, has issued a statement regarding the role of religion in the game after fan concerns erupted on the internet this week.

In Eurogamer's preview of Dune: Awakening, Funcom chief creative officer Joel Bylos mentioned how "for the large part, we sort of sidestep religion" as part of the game's "alternate history approach" - something which, as we wrote at the time, was likely to initially set Dune nerds' alarm bells ringing.

But the decision to "sidestep" Dune's overtly religious aspects in Awakening has been taken out of consideration for the series' lore, our Chris Tapsell wrote, and refers to one "religious aspect" in particular. That said, religion is still a theme in the game - something seemingly evident by its focus on the Butlerian jihad: the war between humans and AI.

Read more

Crypt of the NecroDancer online multiplayer DLC out next week on console

Od: Liv Ngan

Roguelike, rhythm-based dungeon crawler Crypt of the NecroDancer's multiplayer Synchrony DLC will release on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch next week.

Synchrony entered early access on Steam in August 2022, and added a wealth of new features including three new playable characters, online multiplayer, a new Versus mode, and full mod support.

Developer Brace Yourself Games announced the Synchrony DLC is finally coming to PS4 and Switch, and will leave early access on PC at the same time.

Read more

Final Fantasy fans debate Rebirth's moogle redesign

Final Fantasy fans are arguing over the redesigned moogles in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

Moogles are, of course, the adorable little white flying creatures that are regulars in the series, with each game having a slightly tweaked design.

In Rebirth, though, they're quite different: elongated bodies, round eyes, and... teeth.

Read more

Helldivers 2 mechs are nearly here, but first they need to be liberated

UPDATE 8/3/24: Helldivers 2 players have completed yesterday's mission to liberate Tien Kwan, unlocking mechs in the game for use by all players.

Mechs, or specifically the newly-unlocked EXO-45 Patriot Exosuit, can be unlocked from the Ship Management menu's strategem tab. For the price of 20,000 Requisitions, it can be called in twice a mission to cause carnage with its rocket launcher and chain gun.

Players are currently reporting that mechs have been briefly made free however - so everyone can give them a go. If you can get on the game's servers, that is.

Read more

In Nightingale the fun is always just around the corner

Somehow, I've spent nearly 40 hours playing Nightingale, but I'm still searching for the fun. I've seen glimpses of the game I feel we've been promised - the Victorian fantasy where friends glide through the air on umbrellas, fighting mythical beasts together in strange fae lands - but only ever glimpses. Mostly, I've been in dogged pursuit of an excitement that eludes me, hoping it'll be around the next corner I turn, in the next gear tier I unlock. But every corner seems to just bring another corner, and so around and around I go, getting somewhere but never there.

It's a shame because as a concept, and even in practice, there are things I love about Nightingale. The setting! A Victorian world of old-fashioned explorer garb and backpacks, of canvas and ironwork. And the fantasy world lurking just beside it, filled with unexplained phenomena and menacing faerie folk. It's pulled almost one-to-one from the pages of Susanna Clarke's brooding fairytale Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which I adore - they've even cast Marc Warren from the television adaptation to reprise his role as a faerie, which he does with sinister brilliance again. In Nightingale, the doors to the faerie realm have been blown wide open, and humanity scattered throughout the immeasurable archipelago of rae realms. Now, humanity is trying to find a way home, hopping through portal after portal as it tries to get back the eponymous city of Nightingale.

It's a refreshing set-up that's perfect for a survival crafting game, because it can be broken into myriad small realms to adventure on. These self-contained realms can be procedurally generated and offer varying threats, treasure, resources, depending on whatever seed you generate them from - the seed in this case being cards, which are another of the game's big ideas. These are craftable and collectable and open doorways depending on the cards you use. Match a desert or forest biome with a card representing a certain difficulty, and it will then appear. It's a great idea that works brilliantly with the setting of Nightingale to make the game feel distinct.

Read more

Unknown 9: Awakening is an ambitious new transmedia bid

What came first, the video game or the tie-in novel? Typically it's the former - and only after it's proven to be successful. But this isn't the case with Unknown 9: Awakening, a historical action adventure published by Bandai Namco originally announced back in 2020. Back then, it was due for launch the following year. Now, it will rather belatedly arrive this summer, long after a number of other Unknown 9 things have already debuted: a comic, the beginnings of a novel trilogy, a Spotify podcast. There's no Michael Fassbender movie in sight just yet, but the hope is that Unknown 9: Awakening will supercharge interest in all that, and act as an entry point into this fresh storytelling universe.

If you tuned in to last night's Xbox Partner Preview showcase, you'll have seen a bit of Unknown 9 in action. At first glance, it looks like a cross between Assassin's Creed and modern Tomb Raider, starring a character named Haroona played by Anya Chalotra (Yennefer in Netflix's version of The Witcher). But while last night's trailer was combat heavy, an extended look I was given offered plenty of moments for quieter, stealthier tactics, and smarter gameplay using a suite of special powers.

So, what's it all about? Well, you know how Assassin's Creed has an ancient civilisation and modern day clandestine societies vying to exploit its secret knowledge to promote rival causes centering on the nature of control or free will? It's very much like that.

Read more

Baldur's Gate 3 leads BAFTA Games Awards with 10 nominations

Larian's Baldur's Gate 3 leads the 2024 BAFTA Games Awards with 10 nominations, including Best Game, as it celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

BAFTA today released the shortlist of nominees for this year's awards, with Marvel's Spider-Man 2 receiving nine nominations, Alan Wake 2 receiving eight nominations, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor both receiving six.

The coveted Best Game will be awarded to either Alan Wake 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Dave the Diver, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, or Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

Read more

Fallout TV series' latest trailer reveals a familiar Bethesda post-apocalypse

Four years after a live-action Fallout TV adaptation was officially announced, the show is almost upon us. And ahead of its Amazon Video debut on 12th April - and following years of official images, unofficial behind-the-scenes shots, and even a sizeable teaser - we've got our best look yet at the adaptation, courtesy of a new three-minute series trailer.

Going by the trailer below, the adaptation makes a positive first impression, convicingly capturing the Fallout games' ever-shifting tone - blending gee-whizz '50s Americana with grubby post-apocalyptic mayhem as Ella Purnell's Vault Dweller protagonist Jean leaves her lifelong underground home to venture out into the Los Angeles Wasteland.

Speaking during a press panel ahead of today's trailer reveal, co-showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet explained that while the adaptation is set in the world of Fallout, it's also a "new story that comes after the events we've seen" in the games. "The show is built on 25 years of creativity and thinking and building," co-showrunner Graham Wagner added, "and we sort of thought the best thing to do is to continue that versus retread it. Because that's sort of what has worked with Fallout over the years. It's traded hands... it's a living thing... and we felt like we ought to take a swing at trying to build a new piece on top of all of that."

Read more

Pokémon Go Fest 2024 dates, locations detailed

Pokémon Go Fest will head to the Spanish capital of Madrid for this year's big European event, developer Niantic has announced.

The smartphone game phenomenon's biggest annual gathering will once again comprise three big in-person meetups, before a worldwide finale that can be played anywhere.

Go Fest 2024 will kick off in Sendai, Japan on 30th May to 2nd June, before its European leg in Madrid on 14th to 16th June. This year's US dates will see Go Fest return to New York between July 5th and 7th, meanwhile.

Read more

Spider-Man, Alan Wake, Ridiculous Fishing devs speak up in support of consultancy studio Sweet Baby Inc

Od: Liv Ngan

Mary Kenney, associate narrative director at Insomniac Games, has discussed the current online discussion surrounding narrative development and consultancy firm Sweet Baby Inc.

To recap, Sweet Baby Inc. recently became the target of a group which claimed the company was forcing studios it worked with to increase diversity within its games, and accused it of pushing a "woke agenda" into the industry. Following a report into the claims by Kotaku, a number of game developers have spoken up to clear up misconceptions about what companies like Sweet Baby Inc. actually do.

Kenney, who has written for games including Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Telltale's The Walking Dead and the upcoming Marvel's Wolverine, posted a thread on X yesterday. "Some of you don't seem to understand how narrative consulting on games works," she began, "but don't worry: I do!"

Read more

Card-slinging occult stealth sim Sleight of Hand comes to Game Pass next year

Last night's Xbox Partner Preview showcase gave us our first look at Sleight of Hand, an occult noir deckbuilding stealth sim from RiffRaff Games. And, it looks Ace (see what I did there?).

On Sleight of Hand's release next year across Xbox Series X/S and PC (including day one on Game Pass), players will take on the role of Lady Luck, a former occult detective "fated to return for one final job". And that job? Taking down her former Coven after a "less than amicable departure" which saw her lose her left hand.

"Too tired to fight fate any longer, and with more overdue bills than bucks to her name, Lady Luck strikes out to Steeple City with a cursed deck in hand, ready to track down everyone from her past life," reads Sleight of Hands description.

Read more

Minecraft testing eight wolf variations

If you have been playing Minecraft for the last decade or so and been thinking, 'I really enjoy this game, but I wish they would change up the wolves up a bit', then I have good news: Eight new wolf variations are coming to Minecraft, first via the Bedrock Edition beta and preview builds and Minecraft: Java Edition's latest snapshot.

In a blog post shared yesterday, Mojang detailed each new wolfy variant. The wolves all live in their own, specific areas, with the Rusty wolf "hiding between the jungle vines". The Spotted wolf, meanwhile, can be found in the Savanna Plateau.

Other wolves currently being put through the test are: The Black wolf, the Striped wolf, the Snowy wolf, the Ashen wolf, the Woods wolf and the Chestnut wolf. Meanwhile, Minecraft's original wolf is now going to be known as the Pale wolf.

Read more

Princess Peach: Showtime! demo out now ahead of opening night

Nintendo has released a free demo for Princess Peach: Showtime! ahead of its full release later this month.

The demo can be downloaded now on Switch. It begins at the start of the game and offers two levels to play, featuring Swordfighter Peach and Patisserie Peach.

If you've missed it so far, the game has players as Peach helping to save a theatre by playing dress up in various costumes that provide different powers.

Read more

EU investigating Apple's block of Epic developer account

Od: Liv Ngan

UPDATE 8/3/24: The war of the Tims continues with the news that, following EU intervention, Apple has reinstated Epic's developer account, meaning its plans to launch an App Store competitor on iOS can continue. It should also mean the return of Fortnite to Apple's platform.

In an update on its website, Epic wrote, "Apple has told us and committed to the European Commission that they will reinstate our developer account. This sends a strong signal to developers that the European Commission will act swiftly to enforce the Digital Markets Act and hold gatekeepers accountable. We are moving forward as planned to launch the Epic Games Store and bring Fortnite back to iOS in Europe."

EU commissioner Thierry Breton, in reponse to a social media post from Epic boss Tim Sweeney applauding the EU's "swift inquiry", also addressed Apple's reversal, writing, "I take note with satisfaction that following our contacts Apple decided to backtrack its decision on Epic exclusion. From Day 2, [the Digital Markets Act] is already showing very concrete results!".

Read more

Baldur's Gate 3 hotfix live for PC, PS5, and Mac, but Xbox has to wait

Developer Larian has issued another hotfix (number 21) for Baldur's Gate 3 across PC, PlayStation 5 and Mac. However, those on Xbox will have to wait a little longer for this and the game's previous hotfix to arrive, as they are still going through testing.

Sharing details of its most recent fix, Larian stated it had found a crash bug that was only affecting Xbox. "We're taking the time to investigate and solve that issue, so your future adventures go a little smoother," Larian said.

A knock on effect of this delay means cross-saves are currently not loadable on Xbox consoles, if they come from other platforms which have been updated with to include hotfixes 20 or 21. The developer apologised for this, and said it is working to sort these Xbox fixes "as soon as possible".

Read more

Rogue-like poker hit Balatro sells 500k copies in 10 days

Developer LocalThunk's Balatro might have hit a bit of a bump last week after an unexpected ratings change, but that hasn't stopped the acclaimed poker-inspired rogue-like deckbuilder from selling over half a million copies in ten days, according to publisher Playstack.

That's an impressive figure for what's a fairly unassuming card game at first glance. Balatro, if you're unfamiliar, challenges players to progress through a series of stage-like Blinds by exceeding each one's target score. A maximum of four poker hands can played each blind, and failure to reach the target, in classic rogue-like fashion, results in a game over.

As you can probably guess, though, there's a lot more to it than that, with successful Blinds rewarding in-game money to spend on the likes of fancy combo-boosting cards, exotic upgrades, and, crucially, a heap of rule-bending Jokers that quickly turn a relatively unremarkable set-up into an outlandish game of ludicrous, score-busting synergies.

Read more

Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy's PlayStation exclusivity clarified following reporting error

UPDATE 21.31pm: The Washington Post reporter responsible for a story claiming Square Enix's Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy had been confirmed as a PlayStation console exclusive by Sony has partially retracted the statement.

Originally, the report claimed, "Securing the Final Fantasy 7 trilogy as a console exclusive is a feather in the PlayStation cap", but, in a note on social media, Washington Post games reporter Gene Park offered a clarification, writing, "It was a mistake on my part to write the sentence like that." Park now says, "The entire FF7 trilogy is NOT yet confirmed to be Sony exclusive. The article has been amended to only mention Remake and Rebirth."

Of course, with Remake and Rebirth still being described as PlayStation console exclusives in the Washington Post report (an assertion you'd assume has now been very thoroughly run by Sony and Square), it would be unusual if the third entry in the series proved to be an outlier - but for now, consider the exclusivity status of part three still unconfirmed.

Read more

Action-adventure critter saving game Creatures of Ava releases later this year

Od: Liv Ngan

Creatures of Ava, an action-adventure creature saving game, was announced by publisher 11 Bit Studios during tonight's Xbox Partner Preview.

The game is co-developed by Spanish indie studios Inverse and Chibig, with Tomb Raider writer Rhianna Pratchett involved in creating the narrative.

Players will take on the role of Vic, an adventurer who is on an expedition in a land called Ava. An infection is affecting Ava's local species of wildlife, causing them to be aggressive rather than their usual friendly selves, and players will help to heal the creatures and learn about the infection's origins.

Read more

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess reveals first gameplay at Xbox Partner Direct

Od: Liv Ngan

We've finally got more information on Capcom's upcoming game Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, which was shown during the Xbox Partner Preview showcase earlier today.

The game is a single-player, action strategy game in which the protagonist Soh must protect a maiden with divine powers called Yoshiro as she travels to cleanse villages of an "evil defilement".

The game is split into day and night sections. During the day, Soh will explore villages, purge defilements, and rescue villagers. The villagers can then be selected to help defend Yoshiro during the night, when evil spirits called The Seethe will siege the village.

Read more

Everything announced in the Xbox Partner Preview showcase

The Xbox Partner Preview showcase offered us a look at a number of the third-party games heading to Xbox Series X/S this year. We were shown a variety of trailers during the 30-minute presentation, including a taste of the Japanese mythology inspried Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess and the announcement of The Sinking City 2.

Whether you missed the presentation or want to revisit one of the spotlighted titles, there's a roundup of everything shown during the Xbox Partner Preview showcase below.

The showcase began with a look at Unknown 9: Awakening from Reflector and Bandai Namco. This body-hopping adventure will be arriving in the summer of 2024. Unknown 9: Awakening has a very strong Assassin's Creed vibe, so, if you're an Assassin's fan, this might be one for you.

Read more

Original Stalker trilogy makes its way to Xbox and PlayStation

For those who want to prepare for the release of Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl later this year by replaying the series' original trilogy, I have good news. They are now on Xbox and Playstation, making it the first time these games have been available on console.

The Legends of the Zone bundle groups together Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, and Call of Pripyat in one nice package. If you would rather just pick the games up one at a time, you are able to do that as well.

The Legends of the Zone bundle retails at £33.50, while the games individually cost £9.99 each, on the Microsoft Store. Over on the PlayStation Store, the trilogy is currently listed for £15.99. [UPDATE: I rechecked the PlayStation Store this morning, and the pricing has changed. The Legends of the Zone bundle is now listed for £32.99.]

Read more

Persona 3 Reload gets The Answer after all

Persona 3 Reload is receiving an expansion pass, adding the much-requested expansion The Answer.

The remake was criticised for not including all expansions from previous versions of the game, though dataminers discovered hints of this expansion pass last week.

As announced at tonight's Xbox Partner Preview, Episode Aigis is coming in September 2024 as the third wave of the expansion pass.

Read more

The Sinking City 2 will "pivot" to a horror focus

Ukrainian developer Frogwares has announced The Sinking City 2, for launch on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2025.

Set once again in a Lovecraftian 1920s United States, this sequel will tell a separate and standalone story from its predecessor.

But, as detailed during tonight's Xbox Developer Direct, this entry will pivot to a "horror-first" genre focus, and also boast technical advancements from being built in Unreal Engine 5.

Read more

Frostpunk 2 release date finally revealed

This War of Mine developer 11 bit studios has at last unthawed a launch date for Frostpunk 2. The chilly society survival sequel will launch for PC on 25th July.

As previously announced, Frostpunk 2 will also launch straight into PC Games Pass. There's no further news on the console version today, though that will launch on Xbox Game Pass when it does arrive.

Once again, you'll be tasked with building a city to survive the elements and balance the various threats your small civilisation faces, now set 30 years after the original game.

Read more

Epic's EU game store and Fortnite iOS plans stall as Apple bans developer account

Epic's plans to launch a version of its Epic Games Store on iOS in the EU have stalled after Apple terminated its developer account, calling the company "verifiably untrustworthy" - and the much-trumpeted return of Fortnite to iOS has been impacted too.

Epic announced it would be launching an iOS version of its store in Europe back in February, following Apple's confirmation it would be complying with the EU's Digital Markets Act requiring it to allow sideloading and alternate marketplaces on its devices. While Epic boss Tim Sweeney immediately launched a social media tirade in response to the announcement - calling Apple's planned implementation of the EU's rules "hot garbage" - Epic soon confirmed it had officially received an Apple Developer Account and would be launching a version of its Epic Games Store, operated by Epic Games Sweden, sometime this year.

Now, however, Epic claims Apple has terminated its Epic Games Sweden AB developer account, preventing it from developing an iOS store - a move it says is "a serious violation of the DMA and shows Apple has no intention of allowing true competition on iOS devices."

Read more

Twitch will launch redesigned mobile app this year

Twitch will continue to improve its mobile experience this year, with a new mobile app on the way.

CEO Dan Clancy shared an open letter today detailing the company's plans for 2024, including making the platform more mobile friendly, helping streamers make more money, and improvements to the Clip Editor for easier shares on social media.

Back at TwitchCon Paris last year, Twitch announced its Stories and Discovery Feed features would be added to the Twitch mobile app. Both of these will form the backbone of improvements coming this year.

Read more

WWE 2K24 blurs out some footage of Vince McMahon

Od: Liv Ngan

WWE 2K24 players have discovered footage of former WWE boss Vince McMahon has been blurred out in the game, following confirmation he would not be a playable wrestler.

McMahon had previously been expected to appear in the game's roster, but publisher 2K confirmed both McMahon and Brock Lesnar had been cut after allegations of sexual assault and trafficking against the former were made earlier this year.

Despite this, McMahon appears in some parts of the game's showcase mode, which allows players to play through iconic moments in WrestleMania history. The showcase includes real footage and in-game recreations of the events, with McMahon censored in some places.

Read more

Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut gets May release date on PC

Following rumblings of an imminent release date for Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut on PC, Sony has made it official. Developer Sucker Punch's open-world samurai hit will launch via Steam and the Epic Games Store on 16th May.

Ghost of Tsushima launched for PlayStation 4 and PS5 back in July 2020, and a Director's Cut - bundling together the acclaimed base game, its Iki Island expansion, and cooperative online multiplayer Legends mode - arrived the following year. It's this version that'll be hitting PC in May, with Sony having now detailed some of the game's PC-specific enhancements.

As revealed in a post on the PlayStation Blog, Ghost of Tsushima for PC will offer unlocked frame rates, various graphics settings and presets, customisable mouse and keyboard controls, plus "extensive" controller support. It is, for instance, possible to use Steam Input to remap and customise the controller of your choice, and those using a DualSense controller can take advantage of its haptic feedback and adaptive triggers.

Read more

Inside Kingmakers: the big Digital Foundry tech interview

Recently revealed game Kingmakers seems to perfectly capture the childhood thrill of smashing together characters from different worlds, with its debut trailer featuring a huge medieval army being demolished by a modern soldier with automatic weapons, a beat-up pick-up truck and command of a helicopter. Beyond that now-infamous plot twist at the 23 second mark, there's a lot going on: third-person shooter gameplay, real-time strategy elements and a massive scale to the proceedings with thousands of soldiers on-screen; it's like dropping a guy from Battlefield into Medieval: Total War.

The developers behind the title are Redemption Road Games, best known for the Road Rash spiritual successor Road Redemption that featured in our retrospective of that iconic series. Following that piece's publication late last year, the development team reached out to offer an interview about what they were working on next.

Here's that interview, which features John Linneman speaking to four members of Road Redemption Games: co-founders and programmers Ian Fisch, Paul Fisch and Daniel Balazs, and programmer Trace Myers. As usual, the text has been lightly edited for length and clarity, with the full interview available via the video embed below.

Read more

Fallout Xbox controller revealed ahead of Amazon Prime show debut

Amazon's Fallout TV adaptation is set to debut next month, and to get us all in the mood, Xbox has added a new Fallout-inspired controller to Design Lab.

The design in question features a Fallout top case and side caps, with outlined Vault Boys adorning the cover. One chap is in colour, wearing his iconic blue and yellow ensemble while playing on an Xbox controller of his own. I won't lie, I really like this design and now want one for myself.

As you would expect from Design Lab, those who fancy grabbing themselves a Fallout-inspired Xbox controller will also be able to customise it with a variety of button styles, triggers and D-pad options (although Xbox has laid out some ideas inspired by Vault Dwellers, the Brotherhood, the Pip-Boy and, of course, mutants).

Read more

With gaming's internet usage climbing, how do internet providers keep up?

When Modern Warfare 3 released last year, it pulled in some serious numbers for internet service providers (ISPs). The game's launch and pre-load period resulted in record traffic across EE and BT, which the companies reported as the "biggest single game contribution to a broadband peak". But what does this really mean? And how do ISPs cope when gaming traffic spikes occur? I spoke with EE's director for gaming and future propositional development Sam Kemp to find out.

Inside EE's network - as with any ISP - are records of games and other media in a cache, or CDN. "CDN is a content distribution node inside our network," Kemp says. "Whether it's the latest Apple software release, the latest Fortnite download or the latest Call of Duty game, we work with all of our partners globally to bring all of that content into our network... so when you call down on that film, that game, those maps, it's already in our network." This enables ISPs like EE to provide these downloads as fast and as directly as possible, with metrics "we know are really important to gamers", Kemp says, like "jitter, packet loss, latency, packet sequencing".

He compares EE's work adjusting internet signals - specifically when gaming on a smartphone - to a musician tweaking the "fine-tuned dials at the end of a violin or guitar. If you turn them all in the right way, you get the best sound".

Read more

Capcom announces salary increase for all employees this year

Od: Liv Ngan

Capcom has announced it plans to raise salaries by at least five percent on average in the next financial year, as well as an increase to starting salaries for graduate hires in 2025.

The change will also be accompanied by a one-off payment to all current employees and those who join the company from April 2024 onwards, Capcom revealed in a press release.

The changes are part of Capcom's HR investment strategy, and the company said it is committing to "pursuing further investment in human capital and the acquisition of exceptional talent".

Read more

Elden Ring fans find Shadow of the Erdtree reference hiding in plain sight

Elden Ring fans believe they've found a link to expansion Shadow of the Erdtree that was hiding in plain sight all along.

Ahead of the DLC's announcement, Miyazaki told IGN there was still a secret yet to be discovered, which of course sent fans off to find this nugget.

"For me personally, there is a small element that I feel has not yet been discovered. So, whether that's up to user interpretation or up to just further investigation and playing, that's something I'm looking forward to," said Miyazaki. "I think it's a question of when and not if, but there may be something small still missing."

Read more

Five of the Best: Fishing mini-games

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.

I've always thought it strange that games should include fishing - games that aren't about fishing, that is. Take World of Warcraft as an example, a game that's included below: it's already a game that sucks away your time, so why would you want to do something even more time-consuming like fishing within it? Yet, fishing has definitely become a thing. There isn't a crafting game or an online game that goes by without fishing included. It's become a must-have. I only wish I had the patience for it. Do you?

Read more

Mediterranea Inferno's dazzling, pulverising Italian summer horror is out now on consoles

If you're looking to bring a bit of summer sun into the lingering bleakness of a waning winter, then boy do I have a recommendation for you - assuming you're up for some pitch-black, emotionally pulverising horror. Mediterranea Inferno, last year's dazzling visual novel from The Milky Way Prince creator Lorenzo Redaelli, is out now on PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch.

Mediterranea Inferno follows a trio of beautiful, fashionable Milan club kids in their early 20s as they reunite, after two years apart due to lingering COVID restrictions, for a three-day vacation in the blazing heat of a southern Italian summer. What follows is an artfully orchestrated descent into nightmare - a vicious, emotionally pummelling, and unabashedly queer tale of friendship and post-COVID trauma where players, in Redaelli's own words, can push "three bourgeois twinks...towards the most horrible and gruesome endings".

It's an absolute sledgehammer of a game - "a dense, provocative, playful, exasperating, horrifying, poetic, often very funny, and occasionally even profound rumination on the sometimes paralysing search for a place in the disenfranchising shadow of modern-day life", as I wrote in my five star review - and easily the most relentlessly stylish game of 2023.

Read more

Dragon's Dogma 2 feels like a perfect second try at the original - but could the "Isekai" theories be true?

The original Dragon's Dogma is one of my personal favourite games - but I can't deny it has a few shortcomings. What's surprising is in the brief time I got to speak with him I learned Hideaki Itsuno, Dragon's Dogma 2's director, felt exactly the same way. To him the original game is a flawed example of the dream game he's always wanted to create, which is why I assume he only spoke of Dragon's Dogma 2 with an infectious glee.

So much of what I experienced in the time I played Dragon's Dogma 2 gave me a very strange, but comfortable feeling of deja-vu. Have you ever gone back to play a game from your childhood, only to feel disappointed that it didn't look or play as well as you remembered? Dragon's Dogma 2 feels like the inverse of that sensation: as if I'm replaying the original ten years later, but it feels better and looks prettier than I remember.

My adventure in Dragon's Dogma 2 began in the city of Battahl, a large Beastren settlement with striking similarities to the original Dragon's Dogma's Gran Soren. The Beastrens are a newly playable race in the sequel, something Itsuno-san was keen to include from its outset. "I was really glad to implement them into the game in the scale I always wanted to," he told me. "Not only do different Beastren characters appear throughout the game, but you can play as one as well. This is the level I wanted to bring the Beastren to originally, but was never able to achieve in the first game, as they only had a small appearance in the original."

Read more

MultiVersus social media comes back to life suggesting relaunch news soon

Eight months after Warner Bros.' platform-brawler MultiVersus went dark, following an announcement its open beta would be shutting down until a return sometime in 2024, its social media account has sprung back to live, teasing an update announcement soon.

MultiVersus launched into Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, and PC open beta back in July 2022, and got off to a flying start - ratcheting up over 10m players in the space of a month. However, its player numbers rapidly dwindled and by the time developer Play First Games pulled the game offline last June, its Steam concurrent player count had fallen from a high of 153,000 to just 448.

As to when MultiVersus would be likely to return, that remained vague, with Play First Games only saying it expected servers to come back online sometime in "early 2024". And it's proven to be a particularly controversial period of downtime, not only for its length but because Warner Bros. refused to refund players for any packs, passes, premium currency bundles, or cosmetics they'd purchased across MutliVersus' nearly year-long, multi-season open beta, insisting all purchased items would be usable again once the game returned.

Read more

Hades' acclaimed rogue-like action hits iOS via Netflix later this month

Hades, the acclaimed rogue-like dungeon-crawler from developer Supergiant - and by 'acclaimed', we're talking Game-of-the-Year levels of good here - launches for iOS as part of a Netflix subscription later this month, on 19th March.

Hades, the fourth game from Supergiant - following the studio's impressive Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre - charts protagonist Zagreus' attempts to escape the Underworld and reach Mount Olympus, all with a little bit of help from an entire pantheon of Greek gods.

It's an isometric action-adventure built around a wonderfully punchy combat system that follows the classic rogue-like template by offering handy permanent upgrades after an escape attempt fails, all in aid of helping Zagreus inch just a little bit closer to freedom each time.

Read more

Warner Bros. focusing on mobile and free-to-play instead of "volatile" AAA console games

Warner Bros. Discovery gaming boss J.B. Perrette wants the company to move away from the "volatile" market of AAA games for consoles.

Speaking during a recent Morgan Stanley event (thanks Gamespot), Perrette said the company would combat volatility by focusing on its biggest franchises and bringing some to the mobile and free-to-play space in addition to live-service games. The aim is more consistent revenue.

"We're doubling down on games as an area where we think there is a lot more growth opportunity that we can tap into with the IP that we have and some of the capabilities we have on the studio where we're uniquely positioned as both a publisher and a developer of games," he said.

Read more

El Paso, Elsewhere studio reveals "horror fantasy kidnapping" simulator

Od: Liv Ngan

The studio behind last year's supernatural, neo-noir shooter El Paso, Elsewhere has announced its next game Life Eater.

Strange Scaffold, which also developed Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator, Sunshine Shuffle, and An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs, revealed Life Eater alongside the news it has signed a deal with indie publisher Frosty Pop to release five games.

Life Eater is described as a "horror fantasy kidnapping simulator" set in suburban America. You'll play as a modern-day druid who must kidnap and sacrifice people to the dark god Zimforth. He must perform this ritual every year, otherwise the world will end.

Read more

Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley review - it's just lovely

You can't throw a rock in Brighton without hitting a moomin. There are boutiques and galleries devoted to them. They're on our teacups and our beach towels. They're on plant pots by our windows and on the rough-papered covers of fancy Tove Jansson reprints stocking our libraries. It's not surprising that they've made it to video games, but it is surprising - to a moomin outsider, at least - to discover that the sort of thing that middle-class Southern idiots like me lap up so readily has a little bite to it. Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley, a musical stealthy exploration game, is the best kind of surprise.

What kind of bite does the world of the moomins bring? Yesterday, I was wandering along in Moonminvalley taking Snufkin, the series' pipe-smoking philosopher, for a bit of a stroll. Beyond the rocks and trees we spied a carefully laid-out park, the shrubs suddenly cut into polite shapes, the desire paths we'd followed through scrub and long grass replaced with neat little paving slabs riddled between polite lawns. Trees suddenly had low fences around their bases. There were fences around everything, in fact, and patrolling police officers, too, or people who looked very much like it. Park officers!

This called for stealth - for muddling out patrol routes, avoiding visibility cones and sneaking from A to B. But it also called for a series of set-piece moments in which Snufkin reached a sign of some kind - a sign telling people not to loiter, or step off the path, or whatever else it is that signs tell people not to do. Whenever Snufkin reached one of these signs, he pulled them out of the ground. And once he got them all, there was a fabulous cut-scene that showed Snufkin trashing the park in general, wiping it off the surface of Mooninvalley, and returning the whole thing to a place of messy, freeform nature. What a brilliant goal for a game such as this.

Read more

Cataclismo is a game of castle walls and terrible mistakes

Cataclismo is the new game from Digital Sun, the team behind Moonlighter, so I was waiting for the twist from the moment I started. Moonlighter's a straight-up dungeon crawler, until you crawl out of the dungeon with all your loot and have to face a far more terrifying foe than any monster you encountered in the depths: supply and demand. Moonlighter was a dungeon crawler, then, and also a game about stocking a shop and making a profit. Risk your life to find stock, and then return to the surface and try to find the right price for it. The horror!

So what's the twist with Cataclismo? My recent demo began in a dark autumnal woods. I'm controlling an archer, clicking to move them through forest paths between spectral, bronzing trees and dark abysses that make the whole thing feel very claustrophobic. Is this an action RPG? No, up ahead I find another troop type, a lobber, who flings bombs or rocks or somesuch. Height and distance come into play as we fend off an attack by mysterious horrors, who all look like plucked but uncooked turkeys. Oh, this is an RTS!

And it is. But then we come to a clearing with a broken bridge and no way to get across. Here is the twist! It's an RTS in which you can build. It's an RTS in which you have to build, in fact. Pretty soon I'm fixing the bridge with wooden pieces, making sure that each piece I place is supported and safe. Further on I get a staircase that needs repairing with stone, so I'm dealing with cheap, flimsy wood, and heavy, more dependable stone. Next comes a proper castle, already built, and night is falling so I place my troops and fend off hordes of those turkey enemies. It's tower defence! Stop it already.

Read more

Control Ultimate Edition leads Xbox Game Pass games for March

Xbox has announced the new games coming to Game Pass this March, including Control and day one games Lightyear Frontier and MLB The Show 24.

This is the Ultimate Edition of Control, Remedy's third-person shooter, including expansions The Foundation and AWE. If you've recently played Alan Wake 2, now's your chance to play the game that came before - and could be important for its DLC.

Two brand new games will be available from day one. Lightyear Frontier is a farming sim using mechs to grow alien crops; while MLB The Show 24 is the latest in the baseball series.

Read more

Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition PC requirements revealed

Horizon Forbidden West is set to make its PC debut later this month, on 21st March, as part of the Complete Edition. Ahead of this, the teams at Nixxes and Guerrilla have shared a few more details on what to expect.

Along with the PC specifications, which are shown below, the studios have also shed more light on the graphics presets and other variables players will be able to select.

Presets range from low to high, with the Forbidden West team stating this will allow those with the latest tech to "push their systems, while also providing a great experience on less powerful PCs".

Read more

TimeSplitters Next cancelled gameplay footage appears online

Footage showing Free Radical Design's sadly-cancelled TimeSplitters project has surfaced online, revealing five minutes of gameplay.

The video, posted to LinkedIn by a former Free Radical Design staff member, shows a version of the game from July 2023 - roughly five months before the project was cancelled and the studio shut down by parent company Embracer.

TimeSplitters fans will likely be excited (and upset, seeing as the project is now dead) to see numerous familiar elements return, including an expanded Siberia dam level, iconic weapons, fan-favourite characters and GoldenEye's classic health/shield UI.

Read more

Bandai Namco mech shooter Synduality Echo of Ada gets closed beta test

Bandai Namco has announced a closed beta test for its new PvPvE extraction shooter Synduality Echo of Ada.

The game was first announced at Sony's State of Play broadcast in September 2022 and news has been quiet since then. It's basically Armored Core as an online extraction shooter.

The CBT test will be available across all platforms - PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC - from 28th March to 1st April. You can register on the Synduality website.

Read more

Meta deleting Oculus accounts at the end of the month

Od: Liv Ngan

Meta Quest owners have a little over three weeks to make sure they've migrated their old Oculus accounts to a Meta one.

On 29th March, Meta will delete any remaining Oculus accounts and all apps, associated store credits, achievements, and friend lists. Past that date, it'll be lost unless users migrate to a Meta account using the email address on their Oculus account.

Meta has been sending emails to Meta Quest owners to remind them of the deadline (via The Verge), following a gradual shift from Oculus accounts, which are linked to Facebook accounts, to email-based Meta accounts.

Read more

Capcom announces two showcases this month for its upcoming games

Capcom has announced two showcases over the next week detailing its upcoming games.

Capcom Highlights, as they're known, will begin on Thursday 7th March at 11pm UK time with a look at Dragon's Dogma 2 and Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess.

Then, on Monday 11th March at 10pm UK time, we'll get a look at Street Fighter 6, Exoprimal, Monster Hunter Stories and Monster Hunter Now.

Read more

Baldur's Gate 3 is the first Xbox game on four discs

The Xbox physical version of Baldur's Gate 3 will be released across four discs, making it the first Series X game to do so.

Earlier this month, Larian's director of publishing Michael Douse suggested the Xbox physical version of the hit RPG may release on four discs, rather than the original plan of three, calling it a "very dynamic situation".

However, he has now confirmed that that extra fourth disc is indeed needed. As previously announced, the PlayStation 5 version will ship on two discs, while the PC version just has the one.

Read more

Titanfall director reportedly making new Titanfall game that's not Titanfall 3

A small team within Respawn are making a fresh game set in the Titanfall universe, it's been reported - but this project won't be Titanfall 3.

We knew of this team already - and the fact it is being led by Titanfall and Titanfall 2 director Steve Fukuda - via an Axios interview with Respawn boss Zince Zampella earlier this year.

Now, Giant Bomb's ever chatty reporter Jeff Grubb has stated this team is working on a "Titanfall game" set in the same universe as the series' first two entries - but stressed that this was not currently planned to be Titanfall 3.

Read more

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's first season adds The Joker this month

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's first season of post-launch content gets underway on 28th March, introducing The Joker as a new playable character. Additionally, the delayed Epic Games Store version of Suicide Squad is now scheduled to launch on 26th March.

When developer Rocksteady detailed its post-launch plans for Suicide Squad in January, it confirmed each of the four seasons it's currently committed to will bring a new playable DC character (each yanked from an alternate-reality Elseworlds), plus a new playable environment, new activities, new weapons and gear sets, mid-season updates, and "more".

Season 1's Elseworlds Joker has already raised a few eyebrows, thanks to his dainty mace and not-exactly-on-brand rocket-powered umbrella that'll let him launch into the air, drift, and grind on buildings to knock enemies out of the way. If that appeals though, he arrives alongside his new environment, two new episodes - featuring missions, activities, and strongholds - new boss fights and enemy variants, new Riddler content, and new DC Villain-themed weapons and gear.

Read more

There's an official SpongeBob SquarePants Xbox Series X on the way

Behold the ultimate form of the Xbox Series X; Microsoft has unveiled an official SpongeBob SquarePants special editon of the console that makes the best, most glorious use of its oblong shape yet. Unfortunately, it's US-only at present, so boo.

Microsoft's new 'Xbox Series X – Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 Special Edition Bundle' has, as its name very strongly suggests, been created to promote last year's Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2, a Smash Bros.-style fighter that pits (yes) a bunch of Nickelodeon characters against each other in a family friendly fight to the family friendly death. That includes Invader Zim and Rocko from Rocko's Modern Life, so you'll hear no bad words from me. Needs more Pete & Pete though.

Anyway, the highlight of Microsoft's new Xbox Series X is undoubtedly the console itself, which transforms the machine's usual oblong heft in the absolute most perfect way, turning it into a beaming yellow SpongeBob that would look at home in any living room - assuming the living room owners have very specific tastes. Additionally, it comes with a genuinely awesome controller featuring Squidward, Gary, and Mr. Krabs, plus a copy of All-Star Brawl 2.

Read more

Switch emulator Yuzu shuts down as creator agrees to pay Nintendo $2.4m

Tropical Haze, the developer of open-source Switch emulator Yuzu, has agreed to pay $2.4m in damages to Nintendo and cease all operations in response to the Mario maker's recent lawsuit.

News of Nintendo's legal action against Yuzu surfaced last week, with the company claiming the emulator facilitated piracy "at a colossal scale". By way of example, it said over 1m copies of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom had been illegally downloaded ahead of its official launch - and that "many" pirate websites specified the game file was playable on Yuzu.

"Defendant [Tropic Haze] is thus secondarily liable for the infringement committed by the users to whom it distributes Yuzu", Nintendo's lawyers argued, with the lawsuit ultimately seeking damages and demanding the emulator be shut down.

Read more

Fortnite's giant hand event was a return to the game's uniqueness of old

This weekend, Fortnite simultaneously did something it had never done before, and something it hadn't done in ages. On the game's storied battle royale Island, players looked on as a giant hand made out of rapidly-cooling lava burst out of the ground, clasping an enormous treasure box that then lay, danging, high up in the air.

The hand's appearance had been much anticipated. Rhythmic rumblings had been tracked by fans to a spot outside Ruined Reels - a sort-of Greek amphitheature turned open-air cinema - and a slowly widening crack in the ground nearby. A new character, the aptly-named Odyssey, had already appeared nearby to dole out some much-needed exposition and teasing for Fortnite's incoming Ancient Greek-themed new season. And outside the game, dataminers quickly discovered what was about to happen and posted it all on social media. The stage was set.

So when the hand emerged, people knew what to do. That big box? It could be opened, if the chains around it were broken. And so players got to work. Some ignored Fortnite's normal battle royale rules completely, sticking instead to simply landing on the Island and shooting/pickaxing the chest's restraints, breaking them over the course of several hours, one-by-one. Others, predictably, decided to capitalise on all this by setting up camp nearby and sniping those trying to open the box. Debate raged about player etiquette - something which took me back to the outrage at people who wiped out upwards of 50-players at once as they settled in to watch Fortnite's first ever in-game event, the rocket launch, back in 2018.

Read more

Pokémon-like Temtem ditching monetisation in June ahead of one last major patch

Developer Crema has announced it'll be removing all monetisation from its Pokemon-like creature-battler Temtem in an update scheduled for June, with one final major patch to follow before updates refocus on bug fixing and balance changes.

Crema shared the news in a lengthy post on Steam, which spent a lot of time addressing ongoing player complaints around a lack of major new content since launch, such as more islands, new Temtem, or additional multiplayer features. Broadly, the studio says Temtem's early access demonstrated major new content didn't have a significant impact on the game's player base, making it difficult to justify the development resources required - although other issues, such as mounting technical debt, are also cited as concerns.

After a lot of words, including some regret over having described the game as an "MMO" in its marketing material, Crema gets to the crux of its post: that it will release two more major updates for Temtem before development switches to more modest bug fixing and balance patches, as the studio's focus turns to new projects.

Read more

Dune: Awakening won't feature sandworm-riding at launch - and no penis-sliders either

Sandworms play a major part in Dune: Awakening, the big survival MMO coming some time soon from Funcom, the developers behind Conan: Exiles - but the game won't feature the novel's famous sandworm-riding come launch. And, presumably much more importantly for Conan fans, there'll be no penis sliders either.

There will be sand-walking, though, and there's no ruling out of sandworm-riding down the line. We spoke with Dune: Awakening's creative director Joel Bylos at some length in our preview, and he explained the decision like this:

"We actually looked into it. It's just a very strong technical cost, and also a very - it needs a purpose. And we haven't got what the movie has, which is like, 'Go through the southern sandstorms, get to the southern part [of Arrakis]'. So yeah, we don't have that yet."

Read more

Now someone's made the Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience in Fortnite

Od: Liv Ngan

"Explore Jonesy's whimsical chocolate factory!" says the tagline for Jonesy's Chocolate Factory Experience. Billed as appropriate for 3 years and above, and advertising fun and exploration, I used up 40GB of my precious, SSD space to install Fortnite and visit Jonesy's whimsical chocolate factory.

Yes, I'm still thinking about the infamous Willy Wonka Experience held in a sadly-decorated warehouse in Glasgow. I didn't visit it in real life for myself, but all of us have already been able to experience it vicariously through memes, quotes from frustrated parents, and interviews with the poor actors who had no idea what they were getting themselves into when they signed their contracts.

And now it's in Fortnite. After trying it myself, I imagine the actual thing was pretty similar to Jonesy's Chocolate Factory Experience, a Fortnite Creative map made by player ImSachiko. With a complimentary jelly bean being handed out and children crying in the corner, it does not disappoint.

Read more

Dune: Awakening devs explain "alt history" approach to Conan: Exiles' vast, intricate follow-up

It's hard to think of a science fiction universe as inseparable from its canon as Dune. And yet at the same time, it's a universe where so much can vary from one interpretation to the next (as you'll be swiftly reminded any time you catch a stray set photo of a greased-up Sting.)

With that in mind it probably makes a lot of sense for Dune: Awakening, the survival MMO from Conan: Exiles developer Funcom, to take its "alternate history" approach. Dune: Awakening takes place "a few years" before the events of the books, but those events are entirely different timelines, with Awakening imagining a scenario where a "significant moment" in the books, where someone makes a decision of some kind, is decided differently.

Joel Bylos, Funcom's chief creative officer and creative director on Dune: Awakening, was coy about what decision that was, let alone what the consequences of it might be. "It's not Paul that makes the decision," he would at least say, referring to protagonist Paul Atreides. This was after I'd asked whether it might be his drinking of the Water of Life that decision was referring to - the moment where Atreides effectively chooses the path of war in Frank Herbert's novels, and now Denis Villeneuve's films.

Read more

Watch today's Xbox Partner Preview here

Od: Liv Ngan

Join us to watch Xbox's latest Partner Preview broacast, which is set to air will air today - Wednesday 6th March - at 6pm UK time. That's 1pm Eastern, or 10am Pacific if you're over the pond.

The video presentation will last 30 minutes and showcase a selection of upcoming third-party games coming to Xbox, with a mix of trailers, gameplay videos, and additional behind-the-scenes information.

So, what do we expect? Well, Xbox has teased a closer look at combat and traversal in the EA-published Metroidvania Tales of Kenzera: Zau from Assassin's Creed Origin star Abubakar Salim, new gameplay of Capcom's Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, as well as another look at The First Berserker: Khazan, a Nexon-published action-RPG which was announced at The Game Awards 2023.

Read more

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth patch will fix "very scary" lighting on some characters' faces

There's a Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth patch in the pipeline, which will aim to improve the graphics in the game's Performance Mode, and "very scary" lighting on some characters' faces.

Speaking to One More Game, the game's director Naoki Hamaguchi said the Rebirth team had received "a lot of feedback" on the graphics in the game's Performance mode from fans wondering if anything will be improved.

"We hear you, and we are currently working on an update patch to improve that aspect," Hamaguchi said, adding he doesn't think a release date will be "far away from now".

Read more

Sony Xperia 5 V review: Compact and powerful with a great camera

Sony's Xperia 5 V was described to me by a representative as their more trendy flagship, designed for younger people and influencers. Well, on the first part, I feel like I'm the target market; the second part perhaps not so much. Priced at £819 and seemingly only available in the UK at present, the Xperia 5 V represents the mid-range option with Sony's latest Xperia lineup of handsets, flanked by the flagship Xperia 1 V and the much more affordable Xperia 10 V.

The Xperia 5 V comes with last year's flagship Qualcomm chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor (the same as the recently reviewed Honor Magic V2 RSR Porsche Design), 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. There's a reasonable dual camera setup with a 48MP main snapper and 12MP ultrawide, while the display is a tall and skinny 6.1-inch 2560x1080 OLED. You also get a Micro SD card slot and a headphone jack, rarities on any phone these days.

In the hand, the Xperia 5 V feels excellent. Its matte finish is smooth to the touch and is comfortable to hold. In terms of its looks, the Xperia 5 V is reminiscent of Sony phones from years gone by, opting for a thin slab with more rounded corners. This design may be a little out of kilter compared to more modern flagships and mid-range choices, but I don't mind it.

Read more

Halo composer Marty O'Donnell announces Republican bid for Congress

Marty O'Donnell, the former Bungie composer best known for his Halo and Destiny soundtracks, has announced his intention to run for US Congress as a Republican candidate.

In a lengthy post on social media platform X, O'Donnell said he "never wanted to be a politician and I still don't" but felt he needed to "step up" after seeing "the leaders of our country being influenced by the toxic divisions that are tearing apart our families and society".

O'Donnell's campaign website is now live, with a notable Halo-esque vibe. Visitors can donate to O'Donnell's war fund, learn more about the composer's history in the video games industry, and "join Marty's army" to receive campaign updates.

Read more

Here's what's leaving Xbox Game Pass this month

Xbox recently updated its Game Pass page, revealing three games that will be leaving the service soon.

Shredders, Ni no Kuni Wrath of the White Witch Remastered and Hardspace: Shipbreaker will all be removed from the Game Pass catalogue in the next two weeks.

If you want to keep playing any of these games once they have left the service, you will need to purchase them. Game Pass members will get a 20 percent discount.

Read more

Octopath Traveler delisted from Nintendo eShop

Od: Liv Ngan

Square Enix's RPG Octopath Traveler has been delisted - temporarily, at least - from the Nintendo eShop.

The game's disappearance was noticed at the end of last week, though it's still available on Steam and the Microsoft Store.

Some fans have linked Octopath Traveler's delisting due to an apparent change in publisher. Archived versions of the game's eShop product page show that its publisher was changed from Nintendo to Square Enix a some point between 11th February and 1st March.

Read more

EA's Star Wars strategy game still in development, following layoffs

The Star Wars strategy game from Bit Reactor and EA is still in development, following the cancellation of a Star Wars shooter by Apex Legends studio Respawn last week.

EA's latest round of layoffs will affect five percent of staff - around 670 employees. The publisher said it planned to move away from "future licensed IP" toward its "owned IP, sports, and massive online communities". EA said this decision would not impact every team at the company directly.

Now, developer Bit Reactor has shared an update on X, confirming its Star Wars strategy game was "unaffected" by the changes at EA.

Read more

What is going on with layoffs in the video games industry?

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom shipped 10m copies in a weekend. Hogwarts Legacy sold 24m units in a year. Palworld is on 25 million players. Spider-Man 2 was Sony's fastest-selling game. Starfield broke Bethesda records. And then there's been Diablo 4, Super Mario Bros Wonder, Baldur's Gate 3, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Resident Evil 4... sales records have been broken consistently over the past 12 months.

But then there have been those other headlines. You've seen them, too. 860 layoffs at Epic. 1800 redundancies at Unity. 1900 by Xbox. 900 by PlayStation. 530 at Riot. Nearly 700 at EA. I would give a running total of how many people have publicly lost their jobs in games over the last year, but the likelihood is that by the time this article comes out, the number will have gone up.

What the hell is going on? The answer has multiple facets to it, and to fully explain I need to take you back to 2019 BC (Before-Covid).

Read more

Steam smashes yet another concurrent record with 36.4m simultaneous players recorded earlier today

Steam's done it again: another weekend, another concurrent user record broken and a new one set.

According to SteamDB, over 34.5 million of us were simultaneously online earlier today, setting an all-new concurrent user record of 34,649,583 players.

And of those players, 11,146,564 users weren't just idling, but actively playing a game when the record was set.

Read more

Greedfall 2: The Dying World will launch in early access

Greedfall 2: The Dying World will launch in early access.

Citing the game's ambition as a reason, producer Reda Isber explained in a recent livestream that the team would be "relying heavily" on the feedback of players during the early access period to ensure development was "heading in the right direction".

The team also alerted players that saves won't be "compatible between the various updates", so that's something to bear in mind if you were thinking of getting involved.

Read more

Helldivers 2 director says there's no need to "compare" it with Halo - "just let gamers enjoy both"

Helldivers 2 creative director has hit back at fans pitting the Helldivers 2 franchise against Halo, saying we "need more compassion and union in the world, and less rivalry."

Responding to the rivalry on X/Twitter, Arrowhead Game Studios' CEO and Helldivers 2's creative director, Johan Pilestedt, said that we should just "let gamers love and enjoy both, either or neither".

Read more

Switch emulator Yuzu responds to Nintendo's lawsuit

Tropic Haze – the company behind the emulation software Yuzu – has responded to Nintendo's summons that accuses the company of "illegally circumventing Nintendo's software encryption".

Earlier this week, Ed reported Nintendo was suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu, claiming more than one million copies of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom were pirated ahead of its release.

In the lawsuit, Nintendo claimed that by allowing Yuzu emulator users to play its games illegally by circumventing its software encryption, Tropic Haze facilitates piracy "at a colossal scale".

Read more

Fallout TV show "almost like Fallout 5"

Amazon Prime's original Fallout show is "almost like Fallout 5".

That's according to showrunner Jonathan Nolan, who told Total Film that it was the idea of telling an original story set in the Fallout universe that got Bethesda and the team "most excited" about the idea of a TV Show.

"From the first conversation with Todd [Howard], we were most excited about an original story," Nolan said.

Read more

Upcoming Alan Wake 2 patch drastically improves GTX 10-series performance

Alan Wake 2 was one of the most visually stunning games of 2023 - but also one of the most demanding for older hardware. Owing to its use of DX12 Ultimate mesh shaders, the game could run on older hardware but often delivered an unplayable experience, especially on Nvidia's GTX 10-series GPUs built on the Pascal architecture. This is an issue because so many of them are still in use: around nine percent of the Steam Hardware Survey's GPUs are 10-series cards. Last week, Remedy approached us with the chance to preview a PC patch going live on March 6th, which radically improves matters for Pascal users. At the same time, it's a golden opportunity for us to revisit Remedy's other work on the game since launch.

Nvidia's GTX 1060 remains one of the oldest and popular GPUs still in use, so it's a good initial focus for this piece. Its lack of mesh shader support is its undoing in Alan Wake 2. Mesh shaders give developers greater control over how much geometry is rendered on screen at any given moment, potentially allowing for much greater level of detail. Alan Wake 2 is a mesh shading showcase, with some incredible, highly detailed assets that look great viewed from far away or in extreme close-up.

The game does function on GPUs that don't support mesh shaders, but poor performance and visual errors are the problem: the GTX 1060 at 1080p on FSR 2 quality mode, married up with PS5's performance mode quality presets delivers a game typically running under 60fps, more usually hitting circa 15fps. Game frame-rate is so low, even game speed and audio playback are compromised.

Read more

Arcade Paradise VR plays great on the Quest 3 but the lack of fully immersive controls may turn people off

Arcade Paradise was a charming management/simulation game set in an old laundrette. In it, the player had to complete menial tasks in order to earn enough cash to build an awesome 90s video game arcade at the back of the building in an attempt to prove themselves to their cranky dad.

The wonderful Chris Donlan, who reviewed the game for us in 2022 called Arcade Paradise a "quirky slice-of-life that will transport you back into the past", which is totally spot on, but, thanks to the magic of VR, that feeling of transportation will get even stronger this Spring when Arcade Paradise VR releases for the Quest 2 & 3!

While there's no set release date for it yet, eager arcade owners can watch me take a preview build of Arcade Paradise VR for a spin (geddit?) on the Quest 3 in this week's episode of VR Corner. And it all kicks off with a close up of a massive poo smear in the bowl of a toilet. You're welcome!

Read more

Starfield's Steam account has just had an "unknown app" added to the DLC section

According to SteamDB, Starfield's Steam listing was recently updated, adding an "unknown app" to the Steam backend that's widely speculated to be the Shattered Space DLC.

Whilst there's been no formal word that the new content – which was bundled in with premium editions of the game – is coming any time soon, similar "unknown apps" were added to prior Bethesda games like Fallout 4, which later turned out to be expansions like Nuka-World and Valut-tec Workshop.

No, this is not definitive proof that any DLC is coming, let alone Shattered Space, but it's our strongest hint yet that additional content is on the way for Starfield fans. So watch this space, eh?

Read more

Here's some The Sims-inspired jewellery for that special someone

Still looking for that perfect gift for Mother's Day? How about a curated selection of jewellery inspired by The Sims 4?

Based upon the Crystal Creations Stuff Pack that dropped last week, EA has released The Sims Plumbob Collection. Consisting of a necklace, ring, and earrings – all of which are sold separately – the set is made from 18k gold electroplated stainless steel with natural green agate.

All three pieces are available now on ShoptheSims.com, with the "statement" ring retailing for £41, the layered necklace for £39, and the drop earrings for £37. You'll need to pay shipping and tax on top of that, too – that's around £8 and £25, respectively, to ship to the UK.

Read more

How did Final Fantasy 7 capture so much humanity?

It's evident in one of the very early scenes, a flashback where two children (the central character, Cloud, and another main character, Tifa) sit by their village well at night and make a promise together as stars shine overhead. A woman named Elmyra cries at her kitchen table, reading a letter that tells her that her husband has died in a war. Two former friends, Barret and Dyne, try to talk over the trauma of their loss in a prison. A serene gondola ride during a date, fireworks exploding outside while Cloud and a flower girl, Aerith, peer out through the window. 'I want to meet...you,' she tells him, even though they have already travelled together for a while. He doesn't understand, and he won't until it's too late.

There's the death of a main character too, one that resonated to the point of almost defining the legacy of the entire game in itself. Tetsuya Nomura (the character and battle visual director, and the person who made the call to kill said character) explained that he wanted to convey how it feels to hurt, to suffer loss. As a nine-year old watching the scene at night while my older sister played the game, I don't think I really grasped that hurt completely, even though I still found it saddening. Perhaps, like Cloud on the gondola, I wasn't ready to understand.

Final Fantasy 7, which was made by Square before their merge with Enix, is still a masterpiece. The surprisingly deft storytelling contains one of the best examples of unreliable narration in the video game medium. The music resounds with character, tender and soft in 'Flowers Blooming in the Church', exhilarating in 'Still More Fighting', while 'You Can Hear the Cry of the Planet' is somehow both ominous and soothing. The pre-rendered backgrounds have a real sense of atmosphere and character; there is the honeycomb warmth of Costa del Sol, for example, and Cosmo Canyon is the colour of autumn leaves.

Read more

Diablo 4's "fixed non-linear" Dungeon The Gauntlet goes live next week

The Gauntlet is coming to Diablo 4 next week.

As revealed by the team at yesterday's Campfire Chat, The Gauntlet – which goes live on Tuesday 5th March – is a fixed, non-linear dungeon that "will pit players of the same class against each other for top rank". The Gauntlet will reset at 4pm UK time every Tuesday, with the next trial going live at 6.15 p.m. the same day.

"Obtain Proofs of Might by slaying demons, opening chests, and completing events," the team teased. "Pillars are scattered throughout the Gauntlet and can increase the number of Proofs earned from each Monster kill.

Read more

Ghost of Tsushima PC port news coming next week, insider suggests

A PC port of Sucker Punch's critically-acclaimed Ghost of Tsushima could be announced as early as next week.

That's according to XboxEra's Nick Baker, who hinted on X/Twitter that news about the long-anticipated port could be coming as soon as next Tuesday, 5th March.

"I’m hearing that we might be getting something about the Ghost of Tsushima PC port pretty soon. Maybe around the 5th?" Baker posted.

Read more

Starfield's next big update lets you smile in Photo Mode

Bethesda has revealed that the next big Starfield update will deploy in Steam Beta form next week.

In a series of tweets posted to X/Twitter, the team confirmed that this update was focused on quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes in preparation for "more features and content" coming later this year.

The full details aren't expected until next week, but Bethesda has teased that you'll finally be able to use your scanner whilst harvesting resources or opening doors, and should you set course for an inactive mission, the UI will auto-magically set it active once more.

Read more

❌