Fan-favourite WWE fighter CM Punk is returning to WWE 2K24 for the first time in a decade.
Punk marks his return as part of the ECW Punk Pack alongside Terry Funk, Sandman, and The Dudley Boyz, Bubba Ray Dudley and D-Von Dudley.
Players can also expect MyFaction Content which includes an ECW Paul Heyman Manager Card and unspecified MyFaction Superstar Cards when the pack drops on 15th May for all platforms.
Let's great straight to it - Penny's Big Breakaway is one of the best platform games I have ever played. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with this game to the point that even months on from its original release date, I still think about and play it regularly. It's the kind of game where within the first few minutes, you instantly know you'll be playing and replaying for years to come. Developed by Evening Star - the team behind Sonic Mania - what we're looking at here is a game that fully understands Sonic's momentum-based platforming on a level that is rarely observed, translated into 3D in a way that not even Sonic Team has truly managed.
In a sense, Penny's Big Breakaway is a game that feels as if it were built in 1995 during the rise of 3D graphics by time travellers from the modern era, bringing with them today's modern knowledge and know-how. It's a perfect blend of old-school sensibility and innovation: a rare treat in today's gaming industry. It's also a game built entirely using in-house, from-the-ground-up technology. This is not a Unity or Unreal project, it's entirely bespoke, running at native 4K at a full 120 frames per second on everything from Xbox Series S upwards - another rarity.
At its core, Penny's is a 3D platforming game. You play through a series of stages all based on different themes, you jump, you run and aim for the goal - with a twist - the Yo-Yo. Yo-Yo is Penny's personal multi-tool - harnessing its power, players can attack, fly and speed across the map - it's fast, it's original and it's fun. It's also the key to the game's momentum system: tap the Yo-Yo button and Penny hops on board, riding the Yo-Yo like a Razor scooter around the map. Even better, Evening Star has implemented a simple combo system allowing you to chain together moves as if you were playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater - the Yo-Yo basically works like a manual in that game chaining together combos along the way. The thing is, like Sonic, while the controls feel simple enough, there is a lot of depth there and, as you play, you'll find yourself adapting, slowly mastering the controls while executing increasingly lengthy combos.
After burning incredibly brightly for a short while, it feels like Content Warning's star might be dimming rather quickly now. One minute there were a million TikToks and streams about it, and the next... well, people seem to be moving on pretty fast. Faster than they did with the game's inspiration, Lethal Company at least.
Talking about Lethal Company, this week's featured flatscreen to VR mod for Content Warning has been created by the same talented modder who made the VR mod for Lethal Company, which we streamed a while back. DaXcess, as they're known in the modding community, has once again created a stunning (and best of all, free!) flat to VR mod for Content Warning that not only adds full 6DoF to the game but also proper motion controls too.
This means you can lean in and inspect absolutely every little detail of the games' chunky graphics, whilst also being able to hold and point the video camera (or any other tools) in any direction you want. It all feels very freeing in a way that flat gaming doesn't and being able to treat the game and its props in a way that you would if you were using them in real life is super immersive; as you'll see in this week's episode of VR Corner (above!).
UPDATE 6pm UK: Netease has apologised for "inappropriate and misleading terms" in its content creator contract.
In a statement posted in Discord shortly after the contract began to make headlines, the Marvel Rivals Content Creator Team said it "sincerely apologised" for the "miscommunication and your unpleasant experiences".
"We are aware that there are inappropriate and misleading terms in the commitment regarding sharing non-disparagement content," the full statement said. "We sincerely apology [sic] for the miscommunication and your unpleasant experiences!
Steam representatives are informing some Helldivers 2 players that the game's publisher, Sony, pulled it from sale in regions where PSN is not available, not Steam itself.
Earlier this month, Sony announced Helldivers 2 players on Steam would soon be required to link to a PSN account for safety and security. It said this was always going to be a requirement for players on PC, but due to issues at launch, linking was made optional for a period.
The news was immediately met with intense backlash, which resulted in an influx of negative reviews from Helldivers 2 players on Steam. Many asked for a refund as Helldivers 2 was pulled from sale in 177 countries where PSN is not available, eventually leading to Sony overturning plans to enforce mandatory PSN linking for Helldivers 2 players on Steam altogether.
PlayStation has reportedly formed a new studio consisting of former Deviation Games devs.
Deviation Games' co-founder, Jason Blundell, is also rumoured to be part of the new studio.
As posted to the Gaming Leaks and Rumours subreddit, former Deviation dev Michael Anthony wrote on LinkedIn: "Hey, I hear that a lot of previous Deviation Games employees have setup their own studio at Sony working on an undisclosed new IP.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson has revealed plans to "harness the power" of its game communities and use advertising as a "meaningful driver of growth" for the company.
In EA's latest financial report, Wilson fielded comments from investors, advising that whilst the megacorp needs to be "very thoughtful about advertising", given "many, many billions of hours" are spent on its games, "advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for [EA]".
"To answer your question on advertising broadly, again, I think it's still early on that front," Wilson said. "And we have looked over the course of our history to be very thoughtful about advertising in the context of our play experiences.
Be warned: this piece contains spoilers for Dragon Age 2.
As someone with South Asian heritage, I'm typical in that family is an essential part of my life story. I grew up amidst cousins and aunts, weddings and birthdays, weekly visits to my uncle and great uncles after school, and weekend drives with my grandmother as I sat in the back of my father's car, clinging to a book.
It's made me think. So many role-playing games I have encountered focus on gathering friends and romantic interests around the protagonist, but how much focus do they give to your character's family members? There are lots of games about found families, but could I think of one that was about siblings and parents and grandparents?
Sony and Lego are collaborating on a "well-known" IP, and rumour has it, it's Guerilla's Horizon franchise.
Earlier today, noted leaker Kurakasis suggested that "Sony is preparing something in collaboration with Lego", adding that it was "related" to a well-known series and that an announcement is "expected soon".
Shortly thereafter, Tom Henderson – a "Tier 1 / very reliable source" as determined by the Gaming Leaks and Rumours subreddit community – chimed in to concur with Kurakasis' claim, cheekily adding "an announcement is on the horizon".
Cyberpunk 2077 associate game director Paweł Sasko has thanked the game's community for the thousands of positive Steam reviews it has received in the last 30 days.
The open-world action-adventure game had a release so disastrous, CD Projekt investors considered suing the studio for "materially misleading information", and Sony refunded Cyberpunk 2077 players unhappy with the game's performance on PS4 even beyond the typical two-hour playtime limit before pulling the game from sale completely shortly after it launched.
Now, in the wake of its acclaimed Phantom Liberty DLC, 95 per cent of the 7000+ reviews left in the last month are positive, something Sasko said they "always believed" but "never thought [he] would actually see it".
God of War: Ragnarök is reportedly the next Sony game coming to PC.
Leaker billbil-kun – who has regularly, and correctly, let Sony-shaped cats out of the bag before – purports that they have "managed to determine" that a PC port of the hugely successful sequel to 2019's God of War will be announced "sometime in May".
Billbil-kun says they're unsure of the game's release date but reckons we may find out more at the next PlayStation State of Play showcase, which is also rumoured – but yet to be confirmed – to be taking place later this month.
Steam has been banned in Vietnam.
As first reported by Game Developer and spotted by our sister site, GamesIndustry.biz, it's unclear exactly why the PC platform has been banned, but GI.biz proposes it may be due to "Valve's business operations".
However, as reported in Vietnam.net, it's possible Steam has been taken down in Vietnam after local game developers complained about the scope and size of Steam's vast portfolio of games, claiming Vietnamese devs cannot compete with Steam's releases given they are subject to government approval and thousands of international games on Steam are not.
Steam is auto-refunding players who bought Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut in countries where PSN isn't available.
Last week – around the same time Helldivers 2 was being pulled from sale in 177 countries following the disastrous rollout of mandatory PSN linking – Ghost of Tsushima developer Sucker Punch confirmed that Steam players were not required to sign up to PSN if they only wanted to play the Director's Cut's singleplayer campaign on Steam.
Now, however, it seems digital storefronts like Steam and Green Man Gaming have either decided – or been instructed to – automatically refund pre-orders from people who live in territories where players cannot legally sign up for PSN.
V Rising was finally released in full this week, and so many players have jumped into the open-world survival game, it's breached 100,000 concurrent players for the first time since it released as an early access two years ago.
Developer Stunlock Studios marked the milestone on social media with a "Thank you!" and a simple graphic that confirmed there were "100,000 vampires in-game".
So far, the 1.0 edition is sitting on a "very positive" Steam rating, with almost 4000 recent reviews bolstering the early access release's similarly positive score.
Calm seas and sunny skies. I had not been back to Redfall in a while before this week, when events meant I suddenly knew I had to check in again. Spring has finally arrived in Sussex, so when I turned the game on one morning and sat down to play, a warming sun was already slanting in through the windows. The promise of summer! Redfall, of course, worked its spell. On the screen, a US flag hung limply from a pole against louring skies, while a stray breeze gathered and then scattered dry leaves, eddying, dithering, round and round. It was like stepping out on an Autumn evening. October Country. Everything that I wanted.
My idea was just to wander. Like a lot of people I struggled with Redfall as a fast-paced co-op action game, because it so clearly didn't want to be a fast-paced co-op action game. In my mind, perhaps unfairly, I see the pitch that I imagine was handed down from above as being something like: can you get us Stranger Things and Left 4 Dead in a single package? Arkane Austin was - feels weird and grim to say "was" - a famously smart bunch of people. I cannot believe the team didn't know where its strengths lay. Its strengths lay in slowing down, savouring the environmental storytelling and tactical options. Slow down, and this is still the game that Redfall is - the storytelling part at least. But you have to play across the game design to see it. You can't meet it head on. You have to go hunting for the magic, ducking around the gunfights, which are fine, and the bottlenecks they create. But the magic is here waiting for you.
My favourite moments playing Redfall the first time around were all on the first of two open-world maps. I loved the locations that spoke to a realistic, slightly up-itself seaside town in New England. There were boss fights and magical-realism moments in which you travelled inside a doll's house, but I preferred finding the gorgeously restored old cinema, itself a kind of doll's house contrivance with its brass railings and tip-up seats and classic movie posters. My favourite bit of storytelling wasn't about how vampires had taken over and messed with the sun. It was about a safe house that had once been a painfully contemporary smoothie bar where influencers could film themselves drinking luminous protein-and-berry blends filled with activated almonds.
Marathon, the 1994 video game that marked Halo and Destiny developer Bungie's first foray into the world of first-person sci-fi shooters, is - as Bungie previously said it would be - now available on Steam for free. And the remaining two titles in the series are due at a later date.
Marathon Classic, as the Steam release is known, has been developed by the team behind Aleph One - a fan-created engine based on the Marathon 2 source code - and promises "authentic gameplay using the original [Marathon] data files". However, it also features optional widescreen HUD support, 3D filtering/perspective, positional audio, and 60+ fps interpolation, "just in case," as the team puts it, "the original is too authentic."
"Alien forces have boarded the colony ship UESC Marathon in the Tau Ceti system, in orbit around humanity’s first interstellar colony," reads the scene-setting blurb for Marathon Classic. "The situation is dire, and as a security officer assigned to the Marathon, your duty is to defend the ship and its crew from the alien threat."
Among Us, the sci-fi social deduction game that singlehandedly brought the phrase "sus" back into style, has just received a new roadmap teasing a fresh set of features for 2024 as developer Innersloth continues its murderous rampage across the stars.
It's probably the announcement new roles are on the way - the first since 2021 - that'll be met with the most fan excitement. And while Innersloth has offered no hints as to what they might be, it notes each will feature "their own little quirk that makes for some very interesting lobbies." New roles, it says, are coming "soon".
Further into the year, Innersloth is adding better lobby filtering that'll feature a "more refined" set of search settings, alongside a bit of beatification for the lobby settings menu. "Say hello to snappy menus so you can easily see all the settings you can change as a host," it writes, "and have a quick view of the important ones as you join lobbies."
Fallout 4 will be getting another update next week, across all platforms.
While Bethesda hasn't been too specific about what this update will include, it has promised new options for graphics and performance settings, something many may still be looking forward to following the game's somewhat botched 'next-gen' patch earlier this year.
In addition, the studio has also promised general fixes and improvements across the board. We will update you when we get the full notes from the Fallout 4 team, so stay tuned for more.
Unreal Engine 5 has reached a new milestone release, version 5.4. Alongside technology that sets the groundwork for future iterations of the engine, developer Epic Games is promising substantial performance improvements with better CPU utilisation, potentially solving a common bugbear we've seen on PC and consoles this generation. Of course, the new release also includes visual improvements, including to the Nanite geometry system and Temporal Super Resolution (TSR) upscaling. We've tested this latest engine revision to see how everything works and to get a sense of the kind of performance improvements that might be possible in the new version.
As stunning as it was, the first Matrix Awakens Unreal Engine 5.0 demo back in 2021 already exhibited the core performance issues that Epic is looking to address with 5.4. Moving through the Matrix demo city at speed on PlayStation 5 was enough to cause precipitous performance drops, as the engine grapples with loading in new areas. This is just a demo, of course, not a shipping game, but the sub-30fps readouts and frame-time stutters coupled with dynamic resolution scaling suggested a severe CPU limitation on console hardware. This was confirmed with the City Sample demo on PC in 2022, where simple CPU and GPU utilisation metrics show severe CPU bottlenecking even on powerful modern CPUs like the Ryzen 7 7800X3D.
Logically, this makes sense. A lot of the most prominent UE5 features have significant CPU components, like MetaHuman, open world streaming, hardware ray tracing and Nanite, and therefore place a heavy demand on CPU performance. More critically, you tend to be limited by single-thread performance, so higher core count CPUs aren't able to meaningfully scale by spreading the load across multiple cores and threads. Given that both budget PCs and consoles tend to have core counts in the six to eight range and an increasing number of Unreal Engine 5 games are coming to market, that's a lot of untapped performance potential.
In conjunction with what appears to be warm weather in the UK, we've decided to do another free trial month on Eurogamer. This means you can try a month of being a Supporter for free, and make use of things like no adverts on the site and access to our exclusive Supporter content, which includes Five of the Best, Game of the Week, my Let's Get Evil series, and the Inside Eurogamer podcast. I just recorded an Inside Eurogamer episode with Ian and Ed all about streaming, which I found very illuminating.
There's plenty more coming through May and into early June. My next instalment in the Let's Get Evil series will likely bring my Dark Urge playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 to an end. It's been a deliciously horrid ride but will I hold my nerve and remain monstrous or succumb to nagging morals? We'll see. Also, once it finishes, there's the question of which game to terrorise next. I have a Dragon Age: Inquisition rampage to return to, which would be very well timed with a new Dragon Age game maybe dropping later this year, but what about something else? I'd love to hear your suggestions.
Five of the Best and Game of the Week will continue on their weekly schedules, and there should be time before the trial is over to squeak another episode of Inside Eurogamer in. And remember: it's on that podcast we answer your questions. I'll make sure you have a day or two's notice before we record so you can ask them. I'm also working on a key giveaway for a game that we loved last year, and that should land later in May or early June. But remember, key giveaways are for yearly Supporters so people don't sub for a month (for £3/€3/$3) and run. I have some other Supporters bits and pieces in the works, too, which I hope I can tell you about soon.
Are you a cosy game addict? Welcome in and take a seat among your fellow enablers as I, fellow addict Zoe Delahunty-Light, kick off my new weekly series Cozy Corner! This series follows me as I finally try to clear my backlog of 47 (and counting) cosy games in my steam library, and decide whether these games are relaxing enough to warrant the label 'cosy' at all. Cosy games have blown up over the last four years and because of it, there are more to try than ever before, and thus more competing for your attention. I'm going to find the best of the best so tune in for this new weekly series full of blankets, relaxation - I hope - and surprisingly harsh judgement.
Garden Life: A Cozy Simulator is the first game that's being subjected to the cosy interrogation. In it, you are responsible for bringing back life to the dilapidated garden belonging to the previous gardener Robin, and the spirit of the local community as they convene around you, the new gardener. But you're not on your own - Robin is unable to move on while the garden remains uncompleted and neglected, so they'll be there to guide you as you find your green thumbs. From creating bouquets to opening up new sections of the community garden, Garden Life: A Cozy Simulator is dedicated to gradual floral farming with heartfelt story elements. But just how cosy is Garden Life: A Cozy Simulator? Even though the word 'cozy' is in the name, it's time to put it to the test!
Physical copies of Hi-Fi Rush are still on the cards following the closure of developer Tango Gameworks earlier this week.
These physical copies of the rhythm-action game are coming from Limited Run Games, having first been announced back in February for both Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.
Following the shocking news that Microsoft was closing down the game's developer earlier this week, some wondered if these copies would ever actually be released. However, Limited Run has assured fans that, "unless we say otherwise, Hi-Fi Rush is a go!"
The forthcoming The Rogue Prince of Persia has been delayed by developer Evil Empire to allow players more time with Hades 2.
The roguelite game was originally set for early access release next week on 14th May, but has now been delayed to later in the month, with a precise date coming on Monday.
Why? Hades 2 entered early access at the start of the week and Evil Empire doesn't want to compete.
Xbox president Sarah Bond has responded to the recent studio cuts at Bethesda, describing the decision as "our commitment to make sure that the business is healthy for the long term".
Bond was interviewed at the Bloomberg Tech Summit yesterday, following the news earlier this week Microsoft has closed a number of Bethesda studios: Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, and Alpha Dog Games.
However, the interview has since gone viral due to Bond's seemingly weak answers that provide little insight into the decision.
Streaming giant Netflix has teamed up with Roblox to launch its own "digital theme park" on the gaming platform.
It's called Nextworld, and essentially acts as a hub where players can access areas, characters and games based on Netflix properties, such as Stranger Things (header image above) and One Piece (see image below).
Mini games include the likes of Is It Cake?, which is where players have to - yes - guess whether objects shown in the game are cake or not. It also has a Cobra Kai Miyagi-Do Balancing Board mini game.
Investors that put money, or buy shares, in a business want to make money on their investment. And for that to happen the company's 'value' needs to go up. It needs to grow bigger. Growth could be many things, but it typically refers to revenue (the amount of money a company generates) or profit (the amount of money a company makes after costs). And to investors, a loss-making company that is getting bigger every year is more exciting than a profitable business that is going the other way.
This may sound obvious, but we're about to get into why Xbox just closed three Bethesda studios. And it's important to keep in mind that focus on growth. Because ultimately it doesn't matter how rich Microsoft is, or how much profit it's making, it's all about getting bigger.
Let's pop back in time a bit. Xbox as a business has had a rough ride over the past decade. Following the calamitous launch of Xbox One, the company saw its popularity in the console space drop substantially. It's been stuck firmly in third place behind Nintendo and PlayStation. But despite the fall in popularity, the Xbox business saw its revenue increase as the games industry became more digital. Still, for long-term success, Xbox knew it needed to find new customers if it wanted to compete more strongly. It needed a new plan.
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Just days after a Poppy Playtime book was released, a film adaptation of the cult horror series has been announced.
The game's developer, Mob Entertainment, is working with Legendary Entertainment (which counts Dune: Part Two, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire among recent hits) as well as Angry Films (the Transformers series among others).
The film is presumably a ways off yet, but is yet another move outside games for the Poppy Playtime franchise.
Making sense of diaspora politics, regardless of culture and country involved, is a singularly painful dance with no fixed steps and no finale. It is a landscape littered with well-intentioned armchair warriors, white people, privileged expats, weird nationalists, and foetid trolls; everyone disagrees almost all of the time, with some blessed exceptions that bring people around the world together to ridicule a clown. Diaspora discourse might involve the fraying borders of a motherland or a monoculture, authenticity, racism, accents and code-switching, and dozens of other things that remain wholly untranslatable to an outside party. The psychology at play is a weird chimaera that can never be accurately captured in codified language of research and focus groups; the very idea of applying "accuracy" and objectivity to its study is a joke. It is also not the same repeated anecdote about white kids making fun of a stinky homemade lunch at school – friends, let's move past this as the core signifier of marginalised childhood. But it is always a mess, because the diaspora is chaotic by nature and necessity.
Sunset Visitor's speculative fiction adventure 1000xResist knows the fractal intensity of this mess well – so well that the game does an almost sociopathic job at mirroring the exhaustive cycles and repetition that define this world. At times it gets a little too solipsistic – understandable, given that the main premise is about clones facing the burden of existence – and at times I have to walk away because I'm just so damn tired. But it's also an extraordinary piece of work – one that places diasporic trauma front and centre in all its ugly glory.
This is a story that traces the echoes of Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution, which left a city-sized wound that hasn't yet closed or been allowed to scar with dignity. And as much as certain audiences might want to frame 1000xResist as a neat one-dimensional exploration of queerness, there is so, so much more to it than that. There is nothing especially unique about its structure or core concept – the difficult process of a character finding the man behind the curtain – and I certainly would not describe it as "the first game of its kind." What makes it so jarring and so open to these claims is the fact that it is simply not a game made for the white gaze, and I think that's beautiful.
Microsoft is set to open its web-based Xbox mobile game store in the coming couple of months.
The news comes from Xbox president Sarah Bond, who was speaking at yesterday's Bloomberg Technology Summit.
"In July, we are going to be launching our mobile store experience," Bond said. "We're going to start actually by bringing our own first-party portfolio to that." This will include games such as Candy Crush, which Microsoft now owns thanks to its acquisition of King's parent company Activision Blizzard last year, and Minecraft.
Stray Gods, the game musical from Dragon Age writer David Gaider, is getting surprise DLC.
The DLC will focus on rockstar Orpheus, performed by actor Anthony Rapp (Star Trek: Discovery, Rent), as he's returned to the world of the living by Hermes.
It's described as a "comedic feature length experience" and will continue the Greek myth story of the main game. It's set for release on 27th June on PC, with a console release to follow.
I don't know if you're familiar with the Mr Gum books, but I read them with my daughter when she was seven or eight, and I don't think I'll ever get over them. They're ingenious and hilarious and weird, and they all have this lovely sense of having been written at great speed, just conjured on the spot, with jokes and characters and plots flinging themselves together on the page at the pace of the author's typing.
Sadly, this isn't a Mr Gum fan-site - yet - but I want to talk briefly about one of the books which has really stuck with me. I can't remember which book - oh no you'll just have to read them all then - but Polly, the hero, is lost in the woods, and whenever she tries to leave a landmark behind - it's a windmill - she walks off and then finds herself, moments later, back where she started.
It's a scene right out of The Prisoner, but what makes it special here is that each time she finds herself back at the windmill, we get a new chapter. So her confusion in the woods impacts the structure of the book, with a bunch of short repetitive chapters one after the other, while the joke is how long the book will keep this loop going.
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, we celebrate one of the best characters in the Uncharted series, and perhaps in games; we live out our Star Wars fantasies; and we try a new Metroidvania in a well regarded series.
What have you been playing?
If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.
When Minecraft smashed down like a meteor all those years ago, the idea of chopping down trees in games - to make wood to make shelter - felt excitingly new. Before then, games weren't particularly concerned with the mundanities of survival, presumably in the name of what they thought was fun. Games were for extraordinary adventures, not ordinary ones. But Minecraft changed that. It made a feature of finding food and keeping yourself fed, and not thirsty, and it introduced us to a gameplay loop revolving around it. Make a shelter to survive the night, make a set of equipment, and then when you've got a stable footing in the world, you can find myriad ways to upgrade every part of that.
To say that the idea caught on would be an enormous understatement. Minecraft was an era-defining moment. It propelled the whole gaming movement on YouTube, and YouTube with it, and helped launch the careers of so many gaming influencers there. It showed that there was a massive, captive audience for this kind of open-ended, multiplayer, crafting survival thing, and a stampede of other game-making companies rushed to follow it. Years later, there are many really successful games in this area: Ark, Rust, Terraria, Valheim, Palworld, Grounded, The Forest, Enshrouded, Don't Starve, to name a few. The genre has become so influential it's spread to brands like Fallout, and elements of it can be found in huge games like Fortnite. The concept is now so familiar it's understood implicitly wherever it's used. We know the loop, we know what to do. But why have I never questioned it?
This rushed to mind while playing V Rising, which just fully launched in version 1.0. You might remember it having a moment a couple of years ago in early access. Time has passed but even now, it's got a really compelling pitch. You are a newly arisen vampire who must build a castle and make your Castlevania-inspired mark on an unsuspecting world. A world in which you'll worry about the daytime rather than nighttime and where you'll suck blood to absorb powers and wield powerful magic. A land filled with bosses to beat and where a PvP endgame awaits, based around territorial dominance, should you want it - there are private servers and PvE servers if you don't. V Rising has bulked out in early access and is a full package now. The problem is, it locks its really good stuff away.
A Highland Song, the acclaiming hiking adventure from 80 Days and Heaven's Vault developer Inkle Studios, is tempting players back into its rolling Scottish hills with its free new Harmony update, introducing new stories, new music, and more.
A Highland Song, which launched late last year on Switch and PC, tells the story of teenager Moira McKinnon who runs away from her life of relative seclusion on the edge of the Scottish Highlands after receiving a letter from her uncle inviting her to his lighthouse on the coast.
What follows is an often magical blend of gentle narrative and exploratory platforming ("deeply, richly evocative, poetic", is how Eurogamer's Chris Tapsell put it in his four star review) as players guide Moira along one of A Highland Song's many potential routes, each revealing new stories and secrets to encourage further playthroughs.
Elite Dangerous studio Frontier Developments has signed a deal with Universal Products & Experiences to make third Jurassic World title - and it'll be one of three new management games coming from the studio over the next few years.
While Frontier hasn't explicitly referred to the new game as Jurassic World Evolution 3, it seems unlikely it'll be anything else given the studio goes on to note its Jurassic World Evolution series is currently one of the strongest in its portfolio. Jurassic World Evolution 1 & 2 rank first and second respectively in terms revenue generated over their first two years - and that's despite Frontier previously admitting to "lower than expected" sales for the sequel on PC.
All Frontier has so far said about its next Jurassic World game is that it'll be another "creative management simulation" - and that it's one of three management sims the studio is planning on releasing over the next three consecutive years.
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It looks like the next chapter of Dead by Daylight will be based on Dungeons & Dragons.
Behaviour Interactive, the studio behind the multiplayer horror game, released a teaser trailer for the next chapter today ahead of a full anniversary showcase next week where further details are expected .
While this may seem like a move away from the horror franchises the game is known for, there's presumably plenty of dark fantasy elements that could easily work in the horror setting of Dead by Daylight.
Sea of Thieves, the piratical live-service romp from Rare, just topped the PS5 download charts in Europe following its debut on Sony's console.
The Xbox Games Studios-published title recently made the jump from Xbox to PlayStation, as part of Microsoft's plans to make more of its games multiplatform. Outside of Europe, it was also the third most downloaded PS5 game in the US and Canada for April.
Not bad, considering it only arrived on PlayStation towards the end of the month!
PC component and peripherals business Corsair has announced plans to acquire Endor AG, the parent company of sim racing brand Fanatec. The move comes a month after Fanatec announced a new CEO amidst widespread condemnation from the sim racing community over botched product launches, shipping delays and customer service failings, which have soured the reputation of a company that produces otherwise well-regarded sim racing gear, from wheels and direct drive wheelbases to pedals and other accessories.
There's clear logic behind the move, as Corsair doesn't currently have a sim racing brand in their (extremely wide) ecosystem, unlike rivals Logitech who launched their first direct drive wheelbase last year and Turtle Beach who did the same earlier this year. Corsair is also extremely proficient when it comes to the logistics of actually producing and selling its products worldwide, something that Fanatec has struggled with historically and has come to a head over the past six months.
As well as Fanatec having only EU and US stores, leaving UK buyers to face significant import duties and long shipping times, the firm also faced controversy over its policy of charging up-front for orders which may not be fulfilled for months. Black Friday discounts in November 2023 in particular resulted in a huge amount of interest, with the Fanatec website toppling over for much of the day, but many customers of the sale reported not receiving their orders well into 2024 and support queries going unanswered.
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This week, Elite Dangerous - the multiplayer space sim from Frontier Developments - has been met with a spate of negative reviews on Steam, resulting in a recent average rating of 'Mixed'.
This is all in reaction to the introduction of a new ship known as the Python Mk II. This ship is described as a "sleek" medium class vessel, with a focus on powerful combat. It also promises a smoother ride thanks to its advanced Supercruise Overcharge capabilities.
So, why the upset? Well, it is because the developer has essentially put this new ship behind a paywall for a few months. "The Python Mk II is available in shipyards for all Odyssey owners on PC from 7 August or you can unlock early access today via the ARX store!" reads the update post.
Nigel Lowrie, co-founder of indie game publisher Devolver, believes in "selling games first" over launching in subscription services like Game Pass and PS Plus.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Lowrie provided his stance on the current state of the industry, describing large-scale game development as "crushing under its own weight a little bit".
Further, he noted the growth of subscription services has tapered off and deals for indie developers to be included are getting worse.
Final Fantasy 14 has finally arrived on Xbox Series X/S consoles more than a decade after the MMO's relaunch in 2013, joining players on PC and two generations of PlayStation consoles. With an ever-expanding free trial and plenty of positive buzz, how does the game fare on Microsoft's current-gen consoles ahead of a big graphical update scheduled for July, and what's the score with the recently updated PS5 version?
Let's start with that relatively more mature PS5 version as the basis for our comparisons, given that the game has been available on Sony's current-gen platform since 2021 - and had some baffling performance issues even then. The PS5 version ran at a comfortable 60fps at 1440p, but suffered from distracting and regular frame-rate dips during traversal, even in basic areas, away from other players or when set to a 1080p output. This was fixed a year later, but the game still ran with a frame-rate in the 30s and 40s at 4K.
Now, the PS5 version finally seems (mostly) playable at that native 4K. Frame-rates seem to have improved by ~10fps in most scenarios, which is enough to (usually) stay within the PS5's 48Hz-60Hz VRR window and therefore avoid judder. The PS4 version also benefits from these optimisations, and the 'high draw quality' toggle is now a viable option when it tanked performance heavily before. A locked 60fps still isn't on the table on PS4, with plenty of judder evident, but at least things have improved somewhat.
In the dripping midnight glade there is a telephone resting on the earth. It's an antique. I can tell that from the limited 2D pixel art. Although it's just a few lines and dots and smudges of light, I can imagine the weight of the receiver in my hands, almost feel that strange matte chill of the Bakelite.
The telephone is important here in Animal Well. It's how you save the game, for starters. But the more I have explored, making those long looping journeys left, right, up and down, the more I have found myself heading further out in these directions than I had assumed was possible, and the more I worried that I had left the actual game design behind and was moving through a landscape of personalised glitches and oddities? The more I did all this, the more the sight of another telephone came as a sweet relief. A save point, yes, but also a sign that someone had been this way before me. A sign that even as I navigated bright mysteries, I was still on the right track.
There's more. The telephone is also a sign of a second world imposed on the first one, of technology, communication, cablings and wires and electrons, of messages buzzing through an artificial network threaded into this glade and into this world of trees and grass, rock and ruin that lies beyond it. If you're trying to understand Animal Well, to get to the bottom of it - good luck with that one by the way - or if you're trying to just get even the slightest grip on this game's dense, intriguing, endlessly playful and engrossing world, the telephone is probably a good place to start.
MultiVersus is set to make its return later this month, and - as previously rumoured - Mark Hamill's Joker will be joining the line up.
The news of Joker's upcoming MultiVersus debut comes with a reveal trailer, titled "Get a Load of Me". It all begins with Batman - voiced by the late Kevin Conroy - striding purposefully through an underground cavern-like area as green smoke billows around him. Other MultiVersus characters, such as Bugs Bunny and Arya Stark (I still find the whole line up quite bizarre) are also here, and look a little worse for wear. What, or who, could be doing this?
Of course, it's The Joker at the root of all this chaos. "Oh Batman, we have got to stop meeting like this," he teases with a laugh, before emerging from the smoke. You can check it out for yourself in the video below.
It seems like Rockstar is readying up to share some more GTA 6 news with us very soon.
As spotted by the aptly named X account @GTAVI_Countdown, the developer's page was recently updated to include GTA 6 in its database. This update included placeholder spots for four screenshots, cover art, and a release date.
This page was subsequently removed by Rockstar, but not before @GTAVI_Countdown managed to grab a screenshot. In a followup post, the account noted the code with placeholders still remains in the database, as do mentions of digital purchases.
Nintendo Switch owners will no longer be able to upload images and videos directly to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, as of 10th June.
The removal of posting to X was detailed by Nintendo today, in a blog post on the changes. You'll also no longer be able to find friend suggestions using your X login.
Changes specific to certain games include the ability to post Smash Bros. Ultimate screenshots to the Nintendo Switch Online app's Smash World section, which will become unavailable. Images posted via Splatoon 3's mailbox in Inkopolis square will be sent to Nintendo servers. Posting images to Splatoon 2's mailbox will no longer be possible.
The 360 years feel like a lifetime ago. This week, Xbox stunned the industry by announcing it had closed three studios, and repurposed a fourth into another service game support team. This follows the 1900 people laid off across Xbox at the start of this year, and those Xbox employees quietly caught up in the 10,000 layoffs Microsoft made the year before. It has been a disastrous piece of PR self-sabotage, particularly with the reputations of these studios in mind.
Arkane Austin struggled with the uncharacteristic co-op, online shooter elements of Redfall, but before that made the excellent 2017 reboot of Prey and the first, fantastic Dishonored that led to the immersive sim's modern mini-revival. Tango Gameworks, Microsoft's only Japan-based studio that was led, until earlier this year, by horror legend Shinji Mikami, made The Evil Within games and the critically acclaimed, BAFTA-winning breakout Hi-Fi Rush. Roundhouse Studios was founded by the makers of the original Prey, but is now presumably destined to make different coloured leather boots for The Elder Scrolls Online. Alpha Dog made mobile games, an area where Microsoft has been specifically looking to expand. More broadly, for two console generations now, Xbox has floundered under a clear and obvious lack of inventive, attention-grabbing exclusive games. It just bought these studios in 2021.
If it weren't for the people involved, in 2024, these closures would almost feel routine. This is far from the end of Xbox, of course - in Los Angeles next month, it'll hold yet another make-or-break press conference, that maps out yet another plan for rescuing a lost generation. But be it through exasperation or exhaustion - or the wider industry's sheer, pent-up rage - this feels like something of a nadir. Xbox has spun its wheels for more than a decade, lurching from U-turn to U-turn, strategic reboot to strategic reboot, acquisition to acquisition, closure to closure. The good times have always felt just over the horizon. Project Scorpio will set the tone; Game Pass is the future; the Series X will have the games; Starfield will jump-start Game Pass now it's stalled. The growing sentiment today is that they'll probably never come.
Earlier this week, Microsoft announced the closure of a number of Bethesda studios, including Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks. Directed by studio creative director John Johanas, Hi-Fi Rush was lauded for being a smaller, original game that went on to win a BAFTA at last month's awards.
Yet following the closure of Tango, head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty told Microsoft employees: "We need smaller games that give us prestige and awards," as per internal remarks shared with The Verge.
That's exactly what Hi-Fi Rush was. At the BAFTAs last month, Johanas told Eurogamer the game was "an intense labour of love" and there was a "good situation" at the studio due to the ability to take risks and own creative freedom.
Arrowhead CEO and Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt has said that, at times, the team has "gone too far" when trying to balance the game.
Pilestedt's comments come in response to one Helldivers 2 player, who said they were no longer finding the game fun due to balance changes. In fact, they felt the game had become "unplayable" with the amount of changes over recent months.
"Yeah I think we've gone too far in some areas," the CEO subsequently replied, adding he will now talk to the rest of the team about its approach to in-game balancing. "It feels like every time someone finds something fun, the fun is removed," Pilestedt said.
Seven years on from the launch of the first Hellblade game, Ninja Theory's long-awaited Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 launches this month - in just two weeks' time, on 21st May. It's one of only a handful of games from Xbox Game Studios to arrive in 2024 - and yet fans have commented that Microsoft hasn't yet made much of a deal about it.
The idea that Hellblade 2 might slip out under the radar would be a concerning one, considering the fate that befell Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks earlier this week. Despite a positive critical response to its award-winning game, its impact was apparently not enough to save the studio from being closed alongside Redfall maker Arkane Austin and others as part of sweeping Microsoft cuts.
Writing on social media platform X last night, Xbox marketing mouthpiece Aaron Greenberg told fans that Hellblade 2's "global paid media campaign started yesterday", and noted there was a "special Iceland creator event" happening now - where the company has apparently flown some YouTubers to visit the game's setting (not to the supermarket).
Closing in on four years since Microsoft's Perfect Dark reboot was announced, and a year since it was reported that "little meaningful progress" had been made on the project since its unveiling, it's now being claimed the reboot remains in "a very rough state".
That's according to journalist Jeff Grubb who, while discussing Xbox's surprise recent studio closures on the Giant Bombcast, told co-presenters, "I've been hearing for years that Perfect Dark is in a rough state, [but] it sounds like it's in a very rough state. It doesn't sound like it's really come together in any way since then."
In the wake of Grubb's comments, several other industry pundits (as spotted by VGC) took to social media with similar claims. VG247's Alex Donaldson wrote, "I have some crazy stories about the development of that game I have not put in print out of respect for a team really trying hard to push a boulder up a steep hill. But my patience is getting thin." Meanwhile, video game historian Liam Robertson wrote, "From what little I have heard about the development of the new Perfect Dark, it sounds like... a big, protracted mess."
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