Switch 2 will feature Joy-Con controllers that connect to the main console using magnets, a new report suggests. Citing sources from accessory manufacturers, Spanish site Vandal states that the Switch 2 Joy-Con will stick to the console itself magnetically, rather than use the fiddly rail system of the current Switch and Switch OLED. Vandal previously reported correctly on various features of the Switch OLED before its unveiling, again based on information from accessory manufacturers, who are typically given early access to under-wraps hardware by console makers. Read more

Bungie has announced it will remove all power limits from legacy gear in Destiny 2, a major decision for fans and the final step in a now-complete U-turn on the controversial decision made four years ago. The decision to cap the power of Destiny 2 weapons - prodding players into the pursuit of newer options, at the cost of abandoning old favourites - was controversial when it was announced in 2020. Bungie later relented, and stopped capping weapon power in 2021, though an armoury of player favourites released prior to the Shadowkeep expansion remained in limbo. Now, that's no longer the case - as a consequence of Bungie's upcoming plans to allow new or lower-level players to jump into Destiny 2's upcoming climactic The Final Shape expansion quicker. This will be achieved by the new Fireteam Power system, where your whole party is uplifted to the approximate power output of its highest team member. Because of this, older weapons could have been made more powerful anyway - and so Bungie is now scrubbing legacy weapon power limits altogether. Read more

Capcom is discontinuing its Ace Attorney Turnabout Collection, which combines the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. The bundle will no longer be available to purchase on Steam from 31st May 2024, though existing owners will still be able to continue playing. The two games will also remain available for purchase separately. On the plus side, the bundle is heavily discounted and available for under a tenner. That's a discount of 67 percent, so consider this your PSA to grab the bundle now if you're keen. Read more

Some weeks picking a favourite game is pretty easy, but there's been a lot of lovely stuff in the mix of late. Stellar Blade brings a surprisingly pleasant sense of PS2 focus to proceedings, while Manor Lords and No Rest for the Wicked are both much-wanted early access games that promise to blossom in their own ways. Final Fantasy 16 had its own pleasures too. What a week!That said, I can't get away from Tales of Kenzera, the Afro-futurist Metroidvania that Ed reviewed at the start of the week. It's not just the appeal of the setting or the art or the thrill at seeing truly personal games that deal with personal experience. It's something Ed wrote in his review that made me realise I had been misreading an entire genre for years.Maybe ‘misreading’ is the wrong word. More like mis-weighting. It's more that I had been missing a vital component of what makes these games so special. When I think of Metroidvanias I think of the big, obvious stuff. These are intricate games in which you're dropped into complex spaces, and these spaces offer a lot of options for where you can go at any moment. They have different types of doors and many of these doors are unlocked by new powers you steadily collect as you explore. That, I had assumed, was it: the Metroidvania template. Read more

Legendary Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama has posthumously praised new release Sand Land, a month after he passed away. Sand Land, from Bandai Namco, released this week and is based on Toriyama's manga series that debuted in 2000. In celebration of the release, a statement from Toriyama has been shared on social media following the sad news of his death last month. The statement is from January this year. Read more

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: good manors and finger patterns.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 Manor Lords this week, ahead of its public Early Access release, and I really like it - I've written my fuller Manor Lord impressions elsewhere on the site. Read more

Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard has contributed to a boost in gaming revenue, but Xbox console sales have taken another massive hit. In its latest earnings report, Microsoft stated gaming revenue has increased by $1.8bn, or 51 percent year-on-year, while Xbox content and services revenue specifically increased by 62 percent. Microsoft admits this is due to the net impact from the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Hardware revenue, however, has decreased by 31 percent year-on-year due to poor sales of Xbox consoles. Even the release of major exclusive Starfield last year couldn't improve hardware sales. Read more

Yesterday's long-awaited Fallout 4 "next-gen" update is now available to download on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S - but has so far received a mixed response from fans. It was sadly to be expected that the update would break compatibility with a large number of Fallout 4 mods - and indeed, ahead of time, users of top modding site Nexus Mods offered advice on how to disable the patch from being automatically downloaded. The creators of Fallout 4's "DLC-sized" fan mod Fallout: London also had to delay the project's release. Still, many players have reacted with dismay that, yes, a number of mods are currently broken, with the game's Fallout 4 Script Extender add-on not yet supported. ("I am working on an update and cannot currently offer a timeline for its availability, nor whether there will be any critical technical issues that would block an update," the mod's creator ianpatt wrote. "Do not email with questions.") Read more

Bulletstorm and Outriders studio People Can Fly has brought development of its struggling Project Dagger to a close after concluding its commercial potential was "unsatisfactory". Project Dagger, which People Can Fly previously described as a new action-adventure IP, had been in development for around three and a half years, and was initially set to be released by GTA and Borderlands publisher Take-Two Interactive. In September 2022, however, it was announced Take-Two had pulled out of the deal, and that People Can Fly would retain the rights and continue development of the game for self-publishing. "We strongly believe in Project Dagger's potential," People Can Fly boss Sebastian Wojciechowski said at the time. Read more

Blizzard has revealed it won't be hosting its annual BlizzCon fan convention in 2024, but says the long-running event - first seen in 2005 - may return "in future years". BlizzCon has, of course, had a bit of a bumpy ride in recent times, taking an extended hiatus as Blizzard navigated health and safety considerations stemming from the coronavirus pandemic and reckoned with disturbing allegations in a State of California lawsuit accusing it of being a "breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women". Blizzard skipped BlizzCon entirely in 2020, switched to a digital-only format in 2021, then scrapped a planned digital event in 2022, making last year's BlizzCon the first in-person event since 2019. As such, it's perhaps surprising to see the publisher step away from the event again so soon. Blizzard announced the cancellation of this year's BlizzCon in a statement shared on its website, writing, "After careful consideration over the last year, we at Blizzard have made the decision not to hold BlizzCon in 2024. This decision was not made lightly as BlizzCon remains a very special event for all of us, and we know many of you look forward to it." Read more

UPDATE 11.40pm: Bethesda has taken to social media to address what it calls "confusion" around which versions of Fallout 4 on PlayStation are eligible for the free PS5 upgrade. "We've seen some confusion regarding the free Fallout 4 next-gen update for PlayStation Plus Extra members," the developer wrote on Twitter/X. "The Fallout 4 next-gen update will be available to PlayStation Plus Extra members through the PlayStation Game Catalog. Your patience is appreciated while the teams work on this." While that's certainly good news for PlayStation Plus subscribers that acquired Fallout 4 through the service's Extra tier catalogue, things are less certain for those that got their copy via the PS Plus Collection offered to new PlayStation 5 owners. Read more

An official life-sized replica of Malenia's arm, the notorious Elden Ring nemesis, is now available to pre-order. Bandai Namco has paired with high-end collectible company PureArts to create the model, which will cost $389 (around £310) and features high detail, an articulated wrist, and two display options: a metal base or a metal wall mount. It's available worldwide with an estimated delivery of December 2024. Read more

With more than seven years' worth of games to pick from, there's never been a better time to delve into the best Nintendo Switch games. The line-up of games for Nintendo's handheld home console hybrid is arguably the strongest it's ever been, because in case you didn't notice, the Switch continued to flourish last year. Not only did we get a brand new 2D Mario platformer, the fourth mainline Pikmin game, and another new Fire Emblem to add to the pile, but also another all-time Zelda game, too.That's before you start including all the countless indie games and third party launches out there as well, and of course, the Switch's huge back catalogue - many of which have graced previous iterations of our best games on Nintendo Switch list over the last couple of years. This is immensely exciting for anyone who has just picked up the console for the first time, so to help give you a steer on which games you should be picking up first, here are all of the best Switch games you must absolutely play right now, in no particular order.Surpassing 2017's Breath of the Wild was always going to be a monumental task for Nintendo, as many consider it to be not only the best Zelda game, but one of the best games of all time. But those geniuses actually went and did it. Tears of the Kingdom very much follows the same formula as its predecessor: a vast open-world holding secrets and mysteries galore, with utterly gorgeous landscapes, charming characters, and tough bosses. Read more

Pokémon Go has quietly added Wigglet, the white-coloured and suspiciously-shaped species similar to Digglet that debuted in Nintendo Switch games Pokémon Scarlet and Violet and raised a lot of eyebrows. Wigglet's introduction to Pokémon Go has been unusually low-key, with no official announcement of its appearance in the game on the official site. Still, Niantic has pulled off similar surprise-launches before, and Wigglet's appearance now seems tied to the rollout of Pokémon Go's admittedly very pretty new overworld visual refresh, which highlights the in-game biome you're currently located within. Fans quickly realised that Wigglet was only spawning in the game's new beach biome - which makes it relatively accessible for a lot of the UK. But not everyone lives near a beach, and with some further research, the creature's exact possible location can be nailed down. Read more

It's time to take another look at a range of Windows-based handhelds and this time, we're testing the most advanced, most powerful hardware on the market right now - the actual big boys of the handheld range - stacking them up against the established frontrunners: Steam Deck (in both LCD and OLED incarnations) and the Asus ROG Ally. Primarily, I looked at three offerings and you'll find their comparative specifications in a handy table below. They are all fundamentally based on the same AMD silicon (whether you want to call it the Ryzen 7 7840U or the Z1 Extreme) paired with LPDDR5 memory. The amount of memory varies - 16GB is generally enough, but we're starting to see titles that would prefer more (a factor of that 16GB being shared between graphics and system memory). With that in mind, the 32GB and 64GB of the OneXPlayer 2 Pro and AyaNeo Kun respectively can prove compelling. So far, so Asus ROG Ally, but form factors on these devices are remarkably different. They aren't afraid to supersize to the point where the already-quite-big Steam Deck and ROG Ally are dwarfed by all three of these jumbo machines. The Lenovo Legion Go is defined by a gigantic 8.8-inch LCD with 60Hz, 120Hz and 144Hz support and a resolution of 2560x1600. AyaNeo Kun and OneXPlayer 2 Pro are smaller-but-still-huge at 8.4 inches and the same resolution, albeit limited to 60Hz only. Read more

I've watched the Fallout Prime series and, like so many others, I have been dragged back into Fallout 4. The only problem is, I've done three playthroughs now - and this makes it hard to enjoy the game when I know how all the quests turn out. Or do I? Unbeknownst to me there were still some I just hadn't found, so this video is from me to you, for us folks who have played Fallout 4 to death but want to revisit it, as well as to those who are new to Fallout entirely. I've tracked down hidden, rewarding story-related content and missions that you may have missed in the Commonwealth so you can go forth and either enact the golden rule... or completely ignore it. From helping robots trying to run their own shopping centre to the heebie-jeebies that'll crawl down your spine as you explore the Dunwich Borers Quarry, these are a mix of unmarked locations (ones which will not be found in your Pip-Boy map) and quests that are just plain difficult to begin, with a message-in-a-bottle PSA thrown in there for good luck. Read more

No Rest for the Wicked feels like a bit of a missing link. In the same way that Salt and Sanctuary bridged a gap between Metroidvanias and the Souls series, No Rest exists as a stop on an imaginary evolutionary journey from Diablo-style action RPGs and the aforementioned Souls both Demonic and Dark. Taking the isometric view and randomised loot from the former, and the exploration and more measured approach to combat from the latter, No Rest attempts to craft something new from familiar ingredients.At first, I thought it was a horrible mistake. After a brief tutorial, you're shipwrecked on the island of Sacra and left to find your way to the nearest settlement. Almost immediately, the clash between the two disparate game styles becomes apparent, and the focal point of this dissonance is loot.Dark Souls and Diablo have two completely opposing philosophies when it comes to loot. In the Souls games, almost every piece of gear is deliberately placed, and even randomly dropped loot comes from specific enemies. Your pool of healing items is small, but it refreshes on every death and checkpoint. There's little guidance for building your character, but you can pick a starting loadout that is geared towards your preferred playstyle. You'll probably be able to complete the game with that starting gear too, since it upgrades, and the combat is designed more around preference than any given sword being obviously better than another. Read more

It's unlikely we'll see widespread emulation of GameCube or Wii games via emulators on the iPhone App Store, a new report suggests, despite Apple giving the green light to emulation for games from earlier Nintendo consoles. This isn't because these games are free from copyright, or because of Apple's vague stance that "retro" game emulation is allowed. Instead, this is because of technical limitations, as detailed in a new blog post from veteran Nintendo hacker and dataminer OatmealDome, who works on GameCube and Wii emulator DolphiniOS for jailbroken phones. In a nutshell, GameCube and Wii emulation on PC uses a technology that Apple typically does not allow on iPhones - something called just-in-time (JIT) compilation. Typically, Apple blocks apps that make use of JIT, with the suggestion this is due to security concerns that external code could be implemented. And without JIT, Wii and GameCube emulation is very difficult. Read more

As reported last year, the enjoyable Assassin's Creed Mirage features a seemingly-cut post-credits scene that boasts a huge twist to the franchise's lore. Dataminers discovered the unfinished scene several months ago and pieced what they could together from various files. (We'll remind of you what happens in the scene below, as it's unclear whether this is content Ubisoft ultimately decided against including, or files left lurking within Mirage to be activated by another patch down the line.) Regardless, Ubisoft has now for the first time acknowledged the scene exists - or existed - as part of a reddit AMA with Assassin's Creed fans. "All we can say is that what's not in your playthrough does not exist," Mirage's art director Jean-Luc Sala wrote, following this up with a winking emoji. Eurogamer previously contacted Ubisoft about the mysterious scene, but received no response. Read more

Capcom has revised its full-year earnings forecast after the success of Dragon's Dogma 2 and its other popular releases over the last year. In a statement released today, the company has raised its net sales forecast by 8.9 percent to 152.4m yen (£783m), and its net income by 8.3 percent to 43.3m yen (£222m). The reason for this is the success of Capcom's recent games, in particular Street Fighter 6 and Dragon's Dogma 2. Read more

Every Final Fantasy fan knows, there's nothing scarier than a Tonberry. Sure, the little green guys look sweet enough with their big shoes and bulging eyes. But let them get close and their knife attack means instant death. In Final Fantasy 16's The Rising Tide DLC, though, Tonberries look more terrifying than ever. In keeping with the game's grim and grounded tone, these creatures now have a more realistic, snake-like appearance, but with slimy green feet as they stagger towards you. And then there's the Tonberry King who's imposing enough towering over protagonist Clive in his ragged cloak, but the giant butcher's knife - cracked and worn from bloody overuse - is truly frightening. At least, the Tonberries scare until defeated and goofily laying face down in the dirt. Tonberries are an example of Square Enix plugging gaps in its second slice of Final Fantasy 16 DLC, The Rising Tide, with an iconic series staple curiously missing from the main game. Yet a bigger gap still was the gaping plot hole purposefully left behind by the developers on the off-chance the game would be successful enough to merit an expansion. With the inclusion of Leviathan, the lost Eikon, the story of Final Fantasy 16 is finally a complete package. Read more

Manor Lords releases on Steam in early access tomorrow, but pricing is still yet to be revealed. Tim Bender, CEO of the game's publisher Hooded Horse, took to reddit to defend the decision and explain further why the pricing will only be shared at launch. Bender explained the game will have regional pricing, just like other games on Steam, which aren't just different currencies but priced according to local standards. Read more

Garry's Mod developer Facepunch Studios has been ordered to remove all Nintendo related items from the Steam Workshop. In a statement on Steam, the developer confirmed the takedown notice is "not a mistake" and came from Nintendo, seemingly referencing fraudulent claims from back in February. "Honestly, this is fair enough," reads the statement. "This is Nintendo's content and what they allow and don't allow is up to them. They don't want you playing with that stuff in Garry's Mod - that's their decision, we have to respect that and take down as much as we can." Read more

I read a horrible theory recently that nature wants to turn lots of things into crabs. I think the theory was basically talking about crustaceans, but the gist of it was, regardless of the evolutionary challenges crustaceans faced, crabbiness seemed to be a preferred answer. The raised body and tail, the flat shell, the lofty pincers. Crabs are OP.And this came to mind when playing Another Crab's Treasure this morning. It's not just that there are crabs all over the place in this game - and there really are! It's that Another Crab's Treasure is a Soulslike, and the Soulslike increasingly feels like the equivalent of evolutionary crabbification for mid-budget video games.To put it another way, I can imagine a time, a few years back, when Another Crab's Treasure would have been your classic action platformer. Its setting - a kingdom on a micro-plastics-ravaged seabed - is perfect platformer stuff. There is outsize junk scattered in the sand that would have given simple jumping and bottom-bouncing that Carpet People vibe: here's a cliff made of an old flip-flop, here's an enemy hiding behind the curving gloss of a beer bottle. There are castles that are also sand castles, with lobster guards and fence posts made of cigarette butts. And actually, Another Crab's Treasure is a bit of a platformer still: I've just played a sequence that required finding a secondary path into a complex environment, and it had me jumping between battlements and drifting from one tower to the next like I was Yoshi. Read more

Disney Dreamlight Valley is stuffing the glitter cannons and oiling its gates as it readies to welcome two new guests, with Daisy Duck and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit both now confirmed to be joining the exuberant village life sim next Wednesday, 1st May. Daisy arrives as part of the free Thrills and Frills update for all base game owners, and will be indulging her entrepreneurial spirit as the manager of the valley's new boutique store. This'll serve as a place for players to display their custom-designed Touch of Magic items, and a means for visiting friends to acquire those designs for themselves. Additionally, Daisy will set weekly design challenges, unlocking boutique awards including new Touch of Magic items. Thrills and Frills is also set to feature a variety of quality of life updates, including enhancements to the camera tool. Players will, for instance, be able to take photos while perched on any of the Disney rides they've placed around their village. And speaking of rides, Thrills and Frills' new battle-pass-style Star Path promises more Disney park content, seemingly including - based on a glimpse in today's developer video - an Aladdin-themed flying carpet ride. Read more

The man arrested for sending death threats to Nintendo - which resulted in the cancellation of Nintendo Live Tokyo earlier this year - has reportedly been charged by Japanese police. As reported by Japanese newspaper Kyoto Shimbun (thanks VGC), the 27-year-old man, a resident of Hitachi city in Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture, has been charged with the forcible obstruction of business after sending 39 threats using the inquiry form on Nintendo's website. Kyoto Shimbun (via Google Translate) says the unnamed man wrote the threats between 22nd August and 29th November last year, sending messages including, "I'm going to make you regret releasing such a crappy game to the world" and "I'm going to kill everyone involved." Read more

I don't know if there's a universal winning formula for a great action game out there, but Stellar Blade sure has tried its hardest to reverse-engineer one. Like Bayonetta? Here, take an English lady zipping about in heels, annihilating monsters to a delectable soundtrack. Dark Souls fan? Rest at this camp to refill your potions, and better brush up on those parrying and dodging skills! You like God of War? How about a dozen different finishers that would make Kratos blush. Melee combat not for you? Have a gun.Turns out, cherry-picking from the last 15 years of video game action and pumping it into a single campaign of relentless hacking and slashing is fun. Really fun. The type of fun that turns "just one more hour" into "when did it turn 2am?". Part of the appeal with Stellar Blade is just the sheer breadth of options: parrying, dodging, counter-attacking, dashing, ambushing, throwables, multiple ammo types for your gun, nine special abilities, and a dozen combos combining light, heavy, and air attacks. Add over 60 enemy types - the monstrous Naytiba - to slay, most with their own unique attack patterns, and Stellar Blade is far deeper than its flashy visuals imply.To ease you in, only a few of these attacks are initially available to our protagonist, Eve, mirroring her rookie status as one of the cybernetically enhanced members of the 7th Airborne Squad, a super soldier group that operates from Earth's orbit. Eve is fresh off a failed mission to eliminate the Earth's supersized Alpha Naytibas, the monsters responsible for the planet's apocalyptic demise, and as you journey through city ruins and dusty wastelands in search of these Alphas, you steadily unlock her powerful new skills. Exactly how you want to devastate each poor Naytiba you cross is up to you from here. Investing in the Ambush perk could turn Eve into an assassin, for instance, or maybe you'd like to get better at timing your parry? Perhaps guns are more your speed, so sure, unlock those targeting missiles and watch enemies blow up like a fireworks show. Read more

Yesterday, in between bouts of Manor Lords, I popped down the road to do some food shopping, and bought bread, milk, vegetables, and some other things, then walked home. It took me about 30 minutes all in all, and the whole time I never questioned whether there'd actually be food in the shop when I got there. I didn't think about whether they'd had a good enough harvest to keep their stores full during the winter. I just popped in and popped out, squeezing a fundamental part of my daily subsistence into a lunch break. How much we now take for granted.Manor Lords has made me think about this because it's a game that pulls just getting by sharply into focus. It's a settlement-building game about the daily toil of living off the land and slowly, gradually, bending it to your will. It's a game about establishing something from nothing, and living in small villages alongside, and very much in view of, the other families who reside there. It's a game about crop rotation and people coming together for harvest time, to feed each other, or to help clothe each other - and eventually, to arm and protect each other. Manor Lords is a window into what life was like in the mediaeval era.It's also, famously, a game made by only one person over seven years, not that it feels like a solo effort in any way to play. Usually, there's an air of jankiness to solo projects like this, but that's not the case here. Manor Lords, in so many ways, is a remarkable achievement. Visually, it's a pastoral idyll of mist collecting on rolling hills in the morning as birds pass by, or sun throwing long shadows across the meadows by evening. It's the forests turning your horizon from green into shades of orange as the autumn comes, and then white as the snow carpets it all. Then in your village, there's the intricate beauty of seeing your people at work, tending the fields or working the market stalls. Some walk with oxen as they pull logs needed for construction, while the workers bark things like, "Need to house this timber to the gable!" In your ear, choral music and sweeping pastoral scores play out, reminding me more than once of composer Ralph Vaughan Williams' work, which is a very good thing. In the way it plays, there's beauty too. Simply placing a road and watching it dynamically curve around obstacles is a pleasure, as is watching a building you've placed being constructed. There's a confidence here I did not expect. Read more

The boss of embattled video games publisher Embracer has reflected on a turbulent year for his company which has seen it shed thousands of jobs, shutter numerous development studios, and now - as of this week - ultimately split into three smaller parts. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors said there was a "long list" of things he'd do differently, but that was "easy to look back in hindsight". "I'm sure I deserve a lot of criticism, but I don't think my team or companies deserve all the criticism," Wingefors said. "I could take a lot of that blame myself. But ultimately I need to believe in the mission we set out and that is still valid, and we are now enabling that by doing this [new three-part company] structure." Read more

First shown nearly three years ago under the name Project Eve, the Korean developed Stellar Blade has finally arrived and for me delivers an experience that feels like a proper, complete, polished console game. You see, in this age of incomplete games, buggy launches, and countless promises buried in patch notes, Stellar Blade launches in an impressively complete state. This is an impeccable, gorgeous, and fun action game that perfectly balances modern sensibilities with design elements that would feel right at home on the PlayStation 2 - and that's a good thing. Going into this one, it's fair to say that many of us were sceptical when Stellar Blade was first revealed. While the game was getting a lot of attention for its main character, there were a lot of questions surrounding the game - its developer, Shift Up, for example, had never made a large-scale console experience, focusing instead on mobile games. Furthermore, the various pre-release media showed unstable performance, leading us to wonder how the final game might perform. The good news is that the final product is a cohesive experience that harkens back to a time when Sony Computer Entertainment would publish games across a wide range of genres - the PlayStation and PS2 era were packed with first-party published games developed by partner studios that played in so many different genres and themes. That's exactly where Stellar Blade sits. In a sense, it feels like a game from 2002 built using modern technology and design elements. It's not another sequel or remaster - it's a highly enjoyable game. Read more

The original PUBG battle royale map Erangel is returning for a limited-time blast of nostalgia. Seven years on from the game's March 2017 debut, the return of Erangel - complete with classic weapon balancing and visuals - follows the temporary return of Fortnite's original island map at the end of last year. PUBG came first, of course, and while battle royales had existed before, it was the game to really make the genre explode. Now, it feels like PUBG is nodding back to the game that followed it - Epic Games' own take, which remains hugely popular. Read more

Valve has updated its refund policy on Steam, making a small but significant change in the process.This updated policy means players will no longer be able to exploit a loophole that allowed them to play an 'advanced access' game for more than two hours and still request a refund further down the line.Sharing news on its amended policy, Valve explained that "playtime acquired during the advanced access period will now count towards the Steam refund period", which itself states a player can ask for their money back as long as they have purchased the game within the last 14 days and played less than two hours in total. Read more

Few games this year have looked as good in action as Harold Halibut, the stop-motion-style adventure game that looks like you're watching something physical, made by human hands. And you are watching something made by human hands, of course, though not quite how you'd expect. The models shown in-game are based on real clay props, the sets real weathered models. It all fits the rusty, rattly spaceship on which Harold Halibut is set - and fits a very British retro aesthetic. But reducing the game to a throwback does it a disservice - at least, that's what friend of Eurogamer Jim Trinca from VG247 thinks. In his video here, he celebrates the game's art style. It's not a perfect model - but that's the point. Read more

Fallout 76 has just hit an impressive player milestone, almost six years after the game first released. According to Bethesda, over one million players were gallivanting around the MMO in a single day. Not bad for a game which, on its initial release in 2018, we called "a bizarre, boring, broken mess" in Eurogamer's Fallout 76 review. Resharing Bethesda's original post, Fallout 76 creative director Jonathan Rush said how "amazing" it was to see this influx of players. "A very exciting moment with many (many) more to come," he wrote on X. Read more

Nintendo's Switch Online service has today received two additions to its N64 catalogue. Extreme-G and Iggy's Reckin' Balls are both racing games originally released for Nintendo's 64-bit console, now available for Expansion Pack subscribers. Extreme-G is a high speed futuristic racer released in 1997. With its original trance soundtrack and various weapons, it was the N64's answer to PlayStation's WipEout series. This Switch version has local and online multiplayer. Read more

A recent patch for Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered appears to have removed a set of Lara Croft pin-up style posters in the game's Remastered graphical mode, despite them previously having been flagged by the official Tomb Raider website as a detail to go find. Fans spotted the posters' removal over the past week (thanks, Kotaku) when playing the game, and have expressed surprise at the change quietly occuring now, several months after launch, with no mention in any patch notes. The posters are still shown on TombRaider.com as one of 10 original details to go find, alongside Easter eggs pertaining to developer Crystal Dynamics and another of its games, Legacy of Kain. Eurogamer has contacted Crystal Dynamics and remaster developer Aspyr for more. Read more

Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler has defended the studio's decision to launch its latest game No Rest for the Wicked in early access. The dark fantasy game launched last week, but was criticised by players for its poor performance, which Moon Studios pledged to improve. In a lengthy statement on social media platform X, Mahler discussed the benefits of an early access launch and said he's "confident" more games will be released in this way in future. Read more

I both hate and love geolocation games. Take GeoGuessr. I hate to play it myself because I'm clueless at it. But I love to watch it being played by others. It suddenly opens up. It becomes something thrilling.GeoGuessr is a geolocation game that runs on a browser or on your phone. Load it up and it shows you a snapshot from a Google Street View camera or somesuch, taken from somewhere around the world. It could be from anywhere. You have to use what's visible on the screen to work out where you think you are on Planet Earth, and then you drop a pin into a map with your guess, and the game tells you how close you actually were. It's simplicity itself in theory, but playing it, and playing it well, is the absolute opposite of simple.To explain the problems I face with GeoGuessr, I did what I absolutely hate to do and played a round this morning. The image loads: a street terminating in what looks like a park. Urban - a capital somewhere given the scale and density of the buildings, the width of the streets. Cream buildings, a little dirty and scuffed. Anonymous modern cars. Definitely Europe. Could be Fitzrovia, but could be Paris, or Budapest, a city that I know often stands in for Paris on film. And if it could be Budapest couldn't it be Bucharest? Prague? Not Bratislava - the scale is all wrong. What a wonky list! How addled and misdirected by the whims of memory. I take a punt on the blurred license plates and guess London. And guys? It was Paris, 339 km away from where I dropped my pin. Read more

Lords of the Fallen has reached the final stage of its free content roadmap, as developer Hexworks acknowledges the technical difficulties that hampered the game's launch last year. Master of Fate, as the modifier is known, will allow players to randomise seven different aspects. Choosing to randomise enemy spawns and loot drops alongside permadeath, for instance, effectively turns the Soulslike into a rogue-lite. Since the launch of Lords of the Fallen in October, Hexworks has been frequently updating the game with quality of life tweaks, performance improvements, and new content. Read more

Flaming Fowl, the developer behind card battler Fable Fortune and the acclaimed Gloomhaven video game adaptation, has unveiled its new project - but, in an unusual move, has also announced it's shelving development and confirmed layoffs at the studio all at the same time. Flaming Fowl, which was founded in 2016 by former members of original Fable developer Lionhead Studios, embarked on its rollercoaster of announcements in a post on Steam, beginning with a reveal for its new project, known as Ironmarked - a "1-3 player co-op RPG with turn-based combat" - and the launch of an accompanying demo. In an unexpected and rather sobering twist, however, Flaming Fowl immediately followed Ironmarked's unveiling with some unhappier news, revealing, "Unfortunately, due to the current lack of funding in the games industry, we are putting production on hold and have had to downsize the studio, letting go of some amazing people." Read more

Steven Ogg, who played Trevor Philips in Grand Theft Auto 5, has revealed he "shot some stuff" for a DLC that would have continued the character's adventures, now working as an undercover agent for the FBI, but it "just disappeared and [Rockstar] never followed up on it." As those with long memories might recall, Rockstar announced it was working on "some very exciting" story DLC for Grand Theft Auto 5 all the way back in 2013. However, those plans were quietly shelved after it shifted its focus to the hugely popular GTA Online. Rockstar never officially revealed what it had been planning for its Grand Theft Auto 5 story DLC, but a few tantalising details have now emerged during a Q&A livestream hosted by Streamily. According to Michael de Santa actor Ned Luke - appearing alongside Shawn Fonteno, who played Franklin Clinton, and Steven Ogg - Rockstar was "originally... gonna do the continuing stories of Michael, Franklin, and Trevor". Read more

Amazon's Fallout adaptation was officially renewed for a second season last week, and now its showrunners have given us the briefest of teasers for what is in store next.Please note, there will be major spoilers for the first season of Fallout below. If you are yet to finish the show, and want to keep as much under wraps as possible, please head elsewhere now.Speaking with GQ, Fallout showrunners Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet addressed the final moments of season one. Read more

A new hybrid AI licence for voice actors has been launched by a leading audio tool company, with the aim of providing an ethical approach for AI usage. The somewhat ironically-named Speechless is a Swedish-based voice actor database and asset tool for developers. Its new AI licence will allow actors to provide their voice and earn a commission when used by developers. Speechless hopes this approach will provide an ethical way for developers to experiment with AI and establish best practice. Read more

Rounding out the initial quartet of Xbox Studio titles announced for PlayStation 5, miniature survival game Grounded has arrived on Sony's machine - and Nintendo Switch too. Given that we last looked at Grounded in early access on Xbox One and PC way back in 2020, these two new releases give us a perfect opportunity to reappraise all platforms today. And so, here we've got PS5, Switch, Series X, Series S and PC in focus, as we see how all compare in terms of fidelity and performance. Most importantly, does the PS5 edition recreate the Series X experience, or are there graphics changes as we saw in Hi-Fi Rush on its PS5 debut? And for Switch, how does its handheld play actually hold up with 30 frames per second as the target?For the uninitiated, Grounded is a survival game in the mould of Valheim or Ark: Survival Evolved that lets you loose on a garden after being shrunk down to the size of a figurine. You wake up to a jungle of looming grass blades, evade spiders, navigate all manner of discarded gadgets and junk, scavenge for food, and above all - through the power of science - seek a way to return to your normal size. The central conceit calls to mind Andy's garden from Pixar's Toy Story, or even Disney's comedy adventure Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. It's a great survival-themed backdrop - deploying heavy bokeh depth of field to truly sell the scale of its world. We're not getting an all-guns-a-blazing showcase for Unreal Engine here by any means. But still, it's a fun idea with solid execution, featuring a day-night cycle plus some beautiful volumetric lighting effects. Impressively, these latest ports to PS5 and Switch also include cross-play by linking to a Microsoft account, so up to four friends across multiple platforms can combine forces to build structures and survive the creatures of the garden. Read more

This year's EGX - the UK's biggest gaming event run by Eurogamer's current owner Reedpop - will take place as a joint shindig with MCM Comic Con, with both expos co-habiting at ExCeL London from Friday 25th to Sunday 27th October. On the EGX side, you should expect the usual mix of upcoming and classic games to play, and developers to hear from. On the MCM side, it'll be a similar vibe, but centered around wider pop culture - with past shows welcoming all manner of Marvel, Game of Thrones and Dungeons & Dragons stars as guests. TikTok will return as EGX headline partner this year, and will provide oppurtunities for fans to meet some of the best and brightest creators on the platform. Read more

After almost two years of cooking in early access, the team behind turn-based strategy adventure game Songs of Conquest has announced its full-fat release date. Mark your calendars, as Songs of Conquest is set to release into 1.0 next month, on 20th May. Sharing the news, developer Lavapotion along with Coffee Stain Publishing said the game's full release will bring with it a number of general new features and improvements. Perhaps most exciting, however, is the news that Songs of Conquest will have a new single player campaign, focused on the mercantile nation of Barya. Read more

The pre-release marketing for Lorelei and the Laser Eyes has suggested a particularly abstract experience. Strange trailers tease "unconventional concepts", "patterns, patterns, patterns", and "puzzles, puzzles, puzzles", hinting at an otherworldly concept and "maze of deceptions" all in eerie black and white. This was all intentional game director Simon Flesser told me last year. "We want to make viewers wonder, and think." After some hands-on time, though, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is actually a more straightforward game than Simogo would have you believe, at least initially. The developer's previous mobile games Year Walk and Device 6 featureed grim visuals and self-contained mysteries where the very games themselves were puzzles to unravel. In retrospect, Scandi dream-pop rhythm game Sayonara Wild Hearts stands out in the studio's oeuvre as a colourful sugar rush, but it's no less thought-provoking in its combination of video game and utterly brilliant playable music album. So how does Lorelei compare? Its premise is actually rather simple to explain. Playing as a young woman known only as Signorina, you must explore a maze-like hotel filled with bite-sized puzzles. She's been lured here by an artist called Renzo Nero to view his "magnum opus", though it soon becomes apparent Nero may not be referring to a singular piece of art but perhaps the hotel itself. It's almost like Luigi's Mansion, though I presume Nero won't turn out to be King Boo in disguise. Read more

If you were a fan of both Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail and want more from their developers, you can now pre-register for miHoYo's next game Zenless Zone Zero.Pre-registration for Zenless Zone Zero is available now across all platforms. That's mobile, PC and PlayStation 5.In addition, the studio is hosting a pre-registration event via Zenless Zone Zero's site. Read more

Metaphor: ReFantazio, the next game from Persona developer Atlus, finally has a release date: 11th October 2024. We already knew Metaphor was destined for release this year, but in a new streamed showcase the game's exact date was confirmed along with an in-depth look at gameplay for the first time. Metaphor: ReFantazio is set to be a "culmination of our RPGs," said director Katsura Hashino, following the studio's work on the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series. Its release marks the 35th anniversary of Atlus' first game. Hashino explained more about Metaphor's fantasy setting and election twist on familiar Persona gameplay. Read more

Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark. And there were cocoons everywhere. Sadly, I had a swing at a few, and this turned out to be a mistake. Mothy, woven foes emerged and I was overwhelmed. I woke up, cursing, in a glade surrounded by standing stones. Ahead lay a sort of tented bedroom, and the whole thing promised to start over.Repetition is at the heart of Hades, and it's at the heart of Hades 2. It's bound up in quite a tangled, complex way, I suspect. It was weird to hear that Supergiant was cranking on a sequel, given the studio's fondness for daisy-chaining delicate, unique games that all seemed to be in conversation with one another. But then, it was weird to hear that the first Hades was headed to Early Access back in the day, given the studio's fondness for shipping things that seemed, if not perfect, then deeply considered, thoroughly complete.Well, Hades 2 is a lot like Hades so far, and it turns out that that's exactly what I wanted, even if I didn't know it. Movement is still a decisive sock-clad glide over polished parquet. The world is still delivered in Euro comic book panels, with those delicate black lines and flashes of light to suggest smoothest stone. Combat still sees awkward players like myself clutching dash and attack in a kind of crow-footed death grip. The gods are still TikTok influencers deigning, now and then, to dip into their comments. Here's Aphrodite with an attack boon - it would not be an enormous surprise if she then launched into everything she ate at Coachella. Read more

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.For many years, there was a running joke - meme, I suppose - on Eurogamer whereby people would ask if a game had motorbikes in it. For the life of me, I can't remember why that was (please to enlighten me in the comments if you know). Nevertheless, it would mean a barrage of "does it have motorbikes in it?" underneath reviews and then, when hallelujah a game did have motorbikes in, a barrage of "motorbikes!" comments instead. Or rather, "|\/|0t0rb1kes!", as the preferred styling became. I like to think this is because motorbikes are always, secretly - or not so secretly - the most satisfying vehicles in games. They are the most fun, the most daring, and those that are the most removed from our day to day lives. The question is, in which games are motorbikes the best? Read more

Fortnite has added a new setting so you never again have to see or hear some of its most "confrontational" (read: toxic) emotes. These include such classics as Laugh It Up, where you guffaw with the sound of a braying donkey, and Take the L, where you dance from side to side holding - as Smash Mouth once said - your finger and thumb in the shape of an L on your forehead. Also included are Whipcrack, which does exactly what you'd expect, and Make It Plaintain, which lets you fire out banana-like fruit from your fingertips. Both of these emotes have previously been associated within the game's community with racist abuse. Read more

El Paso, Elsewhere - the ultra-stylish "neo noir" motel-in-hell shooter from developer Strange Scaffold - is getting the movie treatment following its acclaimed release last year. El Paso, Elsewhere takes players into the bowels of a reality shifting Texan motel - and across the boundaries of hell itself - as they hunt down their vampiric ex-girlfriend before she can end the world. Unfortunately, a whole supernatural army of werewolves, fallen angels, and other damned creatures lies in the way, leading to some seriously intense shootouts in what Strange Scaffold calls a "vivid slow motion love letter to action classics." It's mesmerising, almost overwhelmingly stylish stuff, so news there's an El Paso, Elsewhere movie in the works isn't all that surprisingly. As per Deadline, Academy Award nominee LaKeith Stanfield (Get Out, Uncut Gems, The Book of Clarence) is in talks to produce and star in the feature, hoping to take the lead role of James Savage. "While recovering from a toxic relationship," explains Deadline's synopsis, "[James] confronts both his inner demons and enigmatic ex-girlfriend, Janet, before she executes a world-ending ritual." Read more

Way back in 2021, documents shared as part of Epic's court battle with Apple confirmed what Nintendo fans had long suspected: that Samus was planned to appear in Fortnite's bounty hunter season but, for reasons unknown at the time, never made the cut. But those reasons have now been revealed, with former Fortnite boss Donald Mustard explaining Nintendo "got really hung up" about its characters appearing on other platforms when approached. Fortnite's bounty hunter season ran from December 2020 to March 2021, and included appearances from two major console mascots: Xbox's Master Chief and PlayStation's Kratos. Inevitably, there was plenty of speculation Metroid protagonist Samus Aran would be next to represent Nintendo, but the character never arrived. When court documents shared later that year confirmed Samus had at one point been planned for Fortnite's bounty hunter season, speculation only increased. Fans have long wondered if Nintendo's sticking point was that it didn't want its characters stepping outside the bounds of its own consoles - and it turns out, as per a new interview with Epic's former chief creative officer Donald Mustard, those theories were exactly right. Read more

Meta is opening its Quest mixed reality operating system up to third-party hardware makers to create "more choice to consumers and a larger ecosystem for developers to build for". "The growth of the mixed reality market and the rising popularity of use cases like gaming, entertainment, fitness, productivity, and social presence have created new opportunities for specialised hardware," Meta writes. "As we've seen with the PC and smartphone industries, consumers are best served by a broad hardware ecosystem producing both general-purpose computing devices and more specialised products, all running on a common platform." To that end, Meta says third-party hardware manufacturers will be able to make use of the Meta Quest operating system - now renamed Meta Horizon OS - and the company has announced a number of initial partnerships to create devices with "specific use cases". ASUS Republic of Gamers, for instance, is creating an "all-new performance gaming headset", while Lenovo is developing "mixed reality devices for productivity, learning, and entertainment". Read more

Microsoft's indie-focused ID@Xbox digital showcase is back next Monday, 29th April, with news on Life is Strange developer Don't Nod's Lost Records: Bloom & Rage and more. This year's ID@Xbox Digital Showcase kicks off at 6pm BST in the UK (that's 10am PT), promising "lots of indie goodness" including "epic trailers, fresh gameplay, and new reveals". Alongside the aforementioned Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, Microsoft has confirmed appearances from the persistently vampire-free Vampire Survivors (recently revealed to be getting a Contra-themed expansion soon, of all things), as well as the promising Dungeons of Hinterberg, and 33 Immortals - which comes from Spiritfarer developer Thunder Lotus Games. Read more

UPDATE 7.20pm: EA has confirmed Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is joining the EA Play line-up on Xbox and PC later this week, following word of a PlayStation release earlier today. As revealed in a post on Xbox Wire, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor officially arrives "for all EA Play members" on Thursday, 25th April - that's despite some users reporting success downloading and playing the PlayStation version already today. PC Game Pass and Ultimate Game Pass members gain access to Star Wars Jedi: Survivor this Thursday too, courtesy of EA Play's inclusion in Microsoft's subscription service. Read more

Popstar Billie Eilish will be the next music icon joining Fortnite. The Barbie and Bad Guy singer confirmed her entry into the Fortnite metaverse today on social media, with a first look at her in-game character design. Eilish will headline the next season of Fortnite Festival, the game's Rock Band-inspired rhythm mode, and become available to buy as a character skin. Eilish's announcement is notable for another reason, however, as it also adds a dollop of authenticity to a purported image posted online last week, which appeared to show Fortnite's full plans for the rest of 2024. The roadmap image correctly included the then-unannounced Eilish, and while this could still have been a lucky guess, today's reveal certainly gives weight to other parts of the image also being correct. Read more

Following a brief tease in September, the first trailer for Tales of the Shire - the cosy Hobbit game from Wētā Workshop and Private Division - is here. The trailer gives a quick look at some of the things we can expect on the game's release, including the ability to customise our Hobbit holes to just the way we like them. There will also be the chance to partake in a spot of fishing, go off to gather mushrooms and then cook everything up into a meal worthy of Bilbo Baggins. You can check out the trailer for Tales of the Shire below. Read more

A new version of the classic Konami code has been discovered in Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness 25 years after its release. A sort of director's cut of the infamously foggy Castlevania 64, Legacy of Darkness features multiple characters to play as but these must be unlocked by completing the game. At least, until now. It turns out the iconic Konami code can be used to unlock all characters, costumes and modes - just in a new form. Read more

Pokémon Go developer Niantic is taking feedback following the mixed reaction to its recent player avatar refresh. The game's new-look avatar system went live last week, and replaced all in-game character designs with a more adjustable default option, which now has sliders for weight and specific body parts, as well as more options for skin tones and hair styles. But the change has received a lukewarm response, with criticism of how the new avatar's faces look, and the sudden change in art style. Over the weekend, the main Pokémon Go reddit was flooded with complaints, while one player who claimed to have been part of an internal beta test where concerns were raised ahead of time said these had not been properly taken on board. Read more

Manor Lords has surpassed 3m wishlists on Steam ahead of its release later this week. The medieval city-building strategy game has been top of the most wishlisted games on Steam for some time, but has continued to build in popularity to pass yet another a major milestone. After the demo released in 2022, the game received 500k wishlists, which jumped to 2m wishlists after its 26th April release date was announced. Seven days ahead of its launch, it hit 2.5m wishlists - and now it's added another 500k on top of that. Read more

Last week, I took to Eurogamer to announce a Warehouse Sale for Digital Foundry merchandise, and this week we have development: new 'Bespoke' merch has hit the DF Store, featuring a fan-made design that really tickled us given our collective predilection for uttering this phrase. As well as the long-rumoured Bespoke tee, which comes in a double-sided blue/purple gradient design on a black shirt, you can also pick up a nifty metal pin (pictured above). Finally, the Bespoke Collection also includes a sticker pack, with a DF Approved seal of quality, a DF Retro PVM design and two #stutterstruggle frame-time graphs - including one blank design to chart your very own traversal or shader compilation stutters. We've been working on these designs for the past three months or so - and significantly longer in the case of the PVM design - so it's great to finally see them go on (virtual) store shelves. I think they've turned out wonderfully, having had the chance to test out some of the early samples, and I'm particularly happy that the excellent Bespoke design by community member Dacvak now has the chance to be appreciated by a wider audience. Read more

Of all the Metroidvania elements in Tales of Kenzera: Zau, my favourite are the trees. Simply enough, meditating inside a tree provides a health boost. It's here the camera pans out to reveal these great, almost magical, natural structures which provide safety, sanctuary and a moment of reflection. Protagonist Zau is a hot-headed and petulant young man desperate to revive his father, but sat quietly in the trunk of a tree, he's just a boy. The trees are a key example of how Tales of Kenzera transposes the genre to its African setting, but also where its heart lies: with the relationship between a father and son. The game's creator, voice actor Abubakar Salim (best known for his portrayal of Bayek in Assassin's Creed: Origins), has been particularly open about the personal inspiration behind the game: his own experience of grief following the death of his father. There's even a moving short film released ahead of the game. Yet even without knowing this, Tales of Kenzera itself exudes passion and love. It's a story-within-a-story set in the fictional Afro-futurist land of Kenzera, and it tells the tale of desperate shaman Zau who bargains with Kalunga, god of death, following the passing of his father. Zau must deliver three spirits to win back his father and, along the way of his adventure, he learns to cope with his feelings of grief. Kalunga becomes his father-figure guide who speaks in proverbs and commands Zau with stern yet comforting lessons; Zau in return listens, rebels, argues, and accepts. Read more

Developers from the original PS1 classic WipEout have formed a new studio, with a futuristic sports game on the way. Starlight Games is a new studio based in Liverpool, UK, founded by former Psygnosis developer Gary Nichols. He's joined by co-creator of WipEout Nick Burcombe, and Skate co-creator and former Horizon: Call of the Mountain director Andy Santos. Read more

Like a lot of people right now, I've been bitten by the radiocative bug that is the Fallout TV show. Because of this, I've been diving into Bethesda's back catalogue of games in order to get my Fallout fix now that I've binged my way through the series.On yesterday's VR Corner for instance, I installed a hefty mod list for Fallout 4 VR in order to try and create the most immersive experience possible. Unfortunately however, I'm basically computer illiterate and things didn't exactly go according to plan...For today's live stream (above), I decided to revisit Fallout 76, a game that I bounced off of quite hard back when it first released. The answer to the question that I've posed in the headline to this video post really does depend on personal opinion but, as you'll see in the video, I've actually been really enjoying my return to Appalachia. I played for approximately 90 minutes and it was great to see lots of NPCs in the current iteration of the game as they were completely absent when I first played it in 2018. Read more

PowerWash Simulator has passed an impressive player milestone, really proving that a little dirt won't hurt. In fact, it has given us a quite a lot of dirt, and we are more than ok with that.Earlier today, developer Futurlab announced that 12 million players had donned their overalls, grabbed their hoses, and washed away more grime than I ever thought possible since the game's early access release in 2021.This, Futurlab said, was all thanks to a number of DLC expansions, which include the likes of Warhammer 40K, Final Fantasy 7 and SpongeBob SquarePants. Read more

Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki Yoshida has promised the forthcoming graphical update will fix a number of issues spotted in the recent Dawntrail benchmark tool. The tool was released last week and allows players to create a character and test out how the game will run on their PC once the graphical update arrives alongside next expansion Dawntrail this summer. However, not everyone was happy with the changes as various issues were pointed out on social media. In a new blog post, Yoshida explained the character creator is over 10 years old and a number of issues will be resolved once the graphical update arrives. Read more

Spoiler warning: This article contains many details about the Ashlands update - now available to test publicly - that some players may wish to keep a surprise. You have been warned! For those who have journeyed through Valheim's biomes, the prospect of facing a gruelling challenge in the upcoming Ashlands update will not be a major shock. Its predecessor, the Mistlands, brought with it formidable foes, steep cliffs and visibility challenges - and with only the Ashlands and Deep North left to conquer in Valheim's storyline, it's almost a given that both these biomes will be tough to beat. Yet somewhat alarmingly, the dangers of the Ashlands begin before you've even set foot on dry land. As I sail towards the Ashlands in a preview session with Iron Gate lead artist Robin Eyre and senior developer Jonathan Smårs, the sea boils around us, red lightning flashes overhead, and a forest of pointed rocks hamper our progress towards the mainland. Birds mob our ship, and while carefully navigating a narrow passage, a terrifying bone serpent emerges from the deep. "It's going to be a really difficult, challenging place to go," Smårs admits. "It's going to be endgame."Our journey is made possible thanks to a heavy-duty boat: a massive ship called the Drakkar, which in typical Valheim fashion, can only be crafted with ingredients acquired from defeating the Mistlands' final boss. The Drakkar is immune to damage from the boiling water, which regular wooden ships cannot withstand for long before being destroyed. This is a lethal lesson I imagine some curious souls will learn first-hand, should they attempt to reach the Ashlands before they are ready. Unusually for a Valheim biome, the Ashlands does not border any other environments, and can only be accessed by sea. This difficult journey makes reaching the Ashlands a "chapter in itself," as Smårs explains it, but it also gives this biome a uniquely dangerous feel. There's no easy way of getting in - and once you arrive, there's no easy way of getting out. Read more

Fallout creator Tim Cain has plenty of praise for Amazon's recent TV adaptation.In a YouTube video posted over the weekend, Cain said how much he liked the show, stating it was surreal to see something he had "worked on really hard" realised in real life."They had huge sets with amazing production values on them... Amazing props. The acting was phenomenal. It was just surreal to watch Fallout recreated in real life like that," Cain enthused. However, he said the main reason he liked the show so much was because of the way "everything feels like Fallout". Read more

UPDATE 23/4/24: Top modding site Nexus Mods has issued an update on its efforts to stay online amidst a deluge of Fallout fans fresh from watching Amazon's hit TV series. "We are aware that over the last seven to nine days our website performance has been heavily degraded, with file download speeds being particularly slow," a blog post reads. "We know this has been incredibly frustrating for you and it's frustrating for us as well. We have spent two weekends battling to keep the site running as best we can and will continue to work at all hours to try and ensure as smooth an experience as possible." Traffic graphs shared by Nexus Mods show a huge rise in downloads for mods related to Fallout 4 and to lesser (and more recent) extent, Fallout: New Vegas. Read more

After numerous studio closures and thousands of job losses, embattled publisher Embracer will now split into three distinct entities, including one focused on its big bet to successfully develop games set in the same world as The Lord of the Rings. Embracer announced details of the plan this morning, and charted how parts of the company would now be named: Middle-earth Enterprises and Friends, Coffee Stain and Friends, and Asmodee Group. Each of the three will be separately listed on the Stockholm stock exchange. Middle-earth Enterprises and Friends will encompass many of Embracer's biggest studios and brands, including developers such as Crystal Dynamics (Tomb Raider), Eidos Montreal (Guardians of the Galaxy), 4A Games (Metro), Plaion and Deep Silver Dambuster Studios (Dead Island 2), Warhorse (Kingdom Come Deliverance 2), plus Tripwire, Flying Wild Hog, Vertigo Games and Freemode. Read more

Fallout fever continues to grip the world, with Fallout 4, New Vegas, and Fallout 76 all seeing a resurgence in popularity, and the latter breaking its own concurrent user record on Steam years after it first released.As noted in SteamDB, the 2018 action RPG – which debuted on Steam in 2020 – has hit 66,045 simultaneous players on Steam, the most concurrent users the game has ever had.Before this weekend – and, arguably, before the arrival of Amazon's hit Fallout TV show – the RPG had boasted a concurrent record of around 40,000 players, and that doesn't even account for the thousands of players who have likely jumped on on Xbox, as the Fallout series is available to Xbox Game Pass subscribers for no extra cost. Read more

Helldivers 2 is "suffering a minor outage" that is affecting progress tracking.Developer Arrowhead confirmed the issue on social media earlier today, announcing that the team was "looking into the issue". Read more

Stellar Blade will be "uncensored" in all regions, including Japan.That's according to the game's official social media account on X, which announced the news earlier today."Stellar Blade offers the same uncensored version in all countries, including the Japanese version," the tweet said in both English and Japanese, appending the message with a pixellated image with red X emblazoned across it, and the words "uncensored all countries". Read more

EA Sports FC 24's Team of the Season (TOTS) is now live.Designed to celebrate the "best and brightest players in the world", EA Sports FC 24 marks "an incredible season of global football" which, for the very first time, will "recognise the most deserving players in women's football", too.Whilst a long-standing staple in FIFA, this is the first time TOTS has come to EA Sports FC 24. Read more

7 Days to Die – an open-world zombie game that first released back in December 2013 – is finally leaving early access.Developer The Fun Pimps says that the next update will not only usher in new gore, challenges, and improved controller support, but also move the 11-year-old game out of early access for the very first time.It's not all good news, though, particularly if you already own the £30 zombie game on console. Read more

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is exactly what its lofty crowdfunding campaign promised it would be: a Suikoden successor in all but its name, built by a team of veterans who first made that classic in 1995. And so Hundred Heroes is another impossibly massive, turn-based, party-centric RPG. It tells another wartorn story about resisting an empire, cut through with goofball moments where an eyepatched Aussie kangaroo might yell made-up words.And - because doing anything else would be blasphemy - there's another 100-plus party members to find, cosy up to, and experiment with in your six-character party. Reclusive hunters, kings, talking sharks (shi'arcs here), a literal travel bag with glowing Jawa eyes, your cute auntie who does nothing but bake cherry pies - they're all here, and the cast's staggering size is still what sets the Eiyu-Suiko-den group of games apart.Trying to catch 'em all recalls the pleasures of a collectathon as you rapidly scan the screen for signs of unusually detailed NPCs to recruit. (No interview process required - everyone's allowed in, accused criminals included.) They can pretty much be found anywhere. You'll get dozens by just following the main quest. Dozens more are in towns on standby mode until you walk into their presence. Some will only appear in the open world when you've progressed to a certain point or met prerequisites. Read more

The Palestinian Relief Bundle available on itch.io is offering 373 games, soundtracks, comics, and other digital goods worth over $1600 (almost £1300) for a starting donation of just $8 (around £6.50).Initially, the bundle organiser had hoped to raise $100,000 for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, but that goal has since been stretched to $250,000."Palestinians are being persecuted from their homes in an ongoing genocide. Due to the armed actions of Israel, they lack access to essentials such as food, water, electricity and medical care," the bundle description explains. Read more

The first time I played Fallout 4 VR was in a tiny little booth after Bethesda's 2016 E3 conference. I called my short time with the game 'underwhelming' back then because the whole experience was little more than a stationary shooting gallery with bottles for targets. Even then though, it was still a thrill to feel like I was actually standing next to a real-life Red Rocket gas station.Fallout 4 VR finally released in December 2017 to fairly positive reviews, even though there was a lot of criticism about the VR implementation and its lacklustre graphics. Despite these faults however, most helmet-heads on PC were thrilled to have the opportunity to play through the entirety of Fallout 4 in virtual reality. Sure there were some corners cut here and there but still, props to Bethesda for even attempting this port in the first place, I wish more developers and publishers would do the same.In the roughly 6.5 years since Fallout 4 VR's release, enterprising modders have been attempting to improve the vanilla experience one tiny mod at a time. But there are some, like content creator, GingasVR, who have put together huge mod lists that aim to alter the original version of Fallout 4 VR and bring it up to the standards of something like Half Life: Alyx. Read more

Oh to be a fly on the wall when they pitched the Street Fighter 6 intro movie. See, there are rules for fighting game cinematics. You need a montage of assorted beefcakes, flexing and strutting for the camera, then coming to blows against the crescendo of a heavy rock track. These conventions are sacrosanct and cannot be broken. Everything from Tekken, to Guilty Gear, to King of Fighters, to Street Fighter 5 follows the same recipe. Only this time Street Fighter 6 decided, no, let's not do that, and instead how about we do a 1970s proto-rap-style piece of rhythmic poetry a la Gil Scott-Heron? With a neon graffiti aesthetic? And in lieu of a social message, let's get really existential about the meaning of strength! Reader, I do not know how this got past upper management. I cannot imagine how they sold it to shareholders. I don't understand why one of the biggest franchises decided to fiddle with the formula. But it's a breath of fresh air and poses that crucial question: What is strength?This might seem trivial, but in the context of fighting games, it almost makes sense. These games are notoriously difficult. Many use motion inputs, which for newcomers can take days to pull off reliably. Then you have to link them into tightly-timed, multi-hit combos. And then you have to whip out your combos in the middle of a match, all while blocking everything your opponent is hitting you with, desperately looking for an opening, and anticipating whatever sinister mind-game nonsense they'll throw out next. And for what? So you can go online and, maybe, if you're lucky, not get utterly eviscerated by some rando in their bedroom halfway across the planet. Why bother? The SF6 cinematic reaches the only obvious conclusion. 'We're all a bunch of fools'.I'm a bigger fool than most. For years, I'd get so hyped on fighting game trailers that I'd buy them all at launch. I paid full price for Tekken 7 and Injustice 2 and Samurai Shodown, and each time I'd enter ranked and just get humbled or humiliated or teabagged by Batman. When Street Fighter 5 came out, I wanted to get good so badly I even got a professional arcade stick, angrily rattling it while yet another Ken shoryu'd me in the face. So when I bought Street Fighter 6, I knew it was a mistake. Except, this time, miraculously, it clicked. I don't 100 percent know why this was the one, but it has something to do with Street Fighter 6's wonderful cast of fighting fools. Read more

21 April 2024 UPDATE: j0nathan has clarified that the image of Cillian Murphy used in his cryptic tease does not mean Murphy will star in the game."Attention: I NEVER said Cillian Murphy was going to be in the game. The image means something else," the leaker said.Original story follows. Read more

Take-Two has successfully defended itself against a lawsuit in which a tattoo artist claimed the publisher had used their copyright without permission when recreating the likeness of Lebron James' tattoo in NBA 2K.Yesterday, Friday 19th April, a jury in Ohio returned the verdict that Take-Two had not infringed on tattoo artist Jimmy Hayden's copyright after Take-Two's lawyers convinced the jury that – as it had secured permission to use James' likeness – that included the basketball star's tattoos, too.As reported by Reuters (thanks, VGC), Take-Two's attorney Dale Cendali claimed the case was a victory for "anyone who has ever gotten a tattoo and might have otherwise worried about their freedom to share their bodies with their tattoos". Read more

Sonic x Shadow Generations has been rated in South Korea.The South Korean Game Content Rating Committee didn't have much else to say about the game when it published the rating yesterday, but did at least confirm the "action" game was suitable for "all" users.Perhaps more interestingly, though, the publication of yet another rating for the recently-announced remaster will go some way to confirm to fans that the release window remains on schedule, and the game would appear to still be on track to release in autumn (Q3) this year. Read more

No Rest for the Wicked's first early access hotfix has been rolled out, and a second patch is "already in progress".As Victoria summarised for us yesterday, the Diablo-like game from Ori and the Blind Forest developer Moon Studios released to mixed reviews on Steam, but already the team is on the case in a bid to address "balance, durability, stamina, loot, stability, and immediate Quality of Life".In a lengthy update on the game's social media accounts, the team said: "Thank you again to all of you for making our Early Access launch so amazing. Today's hotfix is the first of many upcoming patches and updates to improve No Rest for the Wicked on the road to our 1.0 release. Read more

Bloober Team has seemingly amended the face of James Sunderland in its highly-anticipated Silent Hill 2 Remake.The switch came to light via an updated icon on SteamDB, leading some fans to speculate that the studio revised James' face in response to community feedback.Whilst it's not been confirmed by Bloober itself – or been replicated on any other of the game's storefront assets or screenshots – James' haggard, grief-soaked face has been smoothed out to make for a less tense, more youthful, look. Read more

Sea of Thieves stared off life as an Xbox exclusive, growing over time into a genuine hit with a large, committed community. Now, in an effort to increase its audience still futher, it's become a key part of Microsoft's multi-platform push. Yes, Rare's pirate co-op title is headed to PlayStation 5, kicking off with an open beta last weekend. So just how good is the port and to what extent does the experience vary between PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series hardware? This has been an interesting project for Digital Foundry, not just because of the new version - but also because we missed out on covering the game in its transition to current-gen hardware, so we also took a look at the game to see how it has evolved up against Xbox One X. The most interesting place to start is with a look at the brand-new PS5 version. To reiterate, we looked at beta code, and there may be changes when the game launches on April 30th, but it does seem quite polished at the moment. First impressions suggest a game that is very similar to its Series X counterpart - but when we look a bit closer, there are some differences. Shadows look quite a bit different on PS5, with a sharper outline and more visible detail. This holds true both up-close and at a distance, with far away shadows resolving more softly on the Series machine. This is definitely an odd change, and falls in line with a similar tweak found in the PS5 version of Hi-Fi Rush. If we boot up the PC version at max settings, the PS5 version more closely resembles the highest shadow quality option, though neither console is a perfect fit. The PS5 and PC exhibit similar looking shadow detail, with slightly stronger filtering on PC, but if we step down to the legendary setting, both consoles clearly offer better and cleaner shadow rendering. I can't quite tell if this just comes down to a difference in shadow filtering or if the PS5's shadow resolution has been upgraded relative to Series X, but it is very curious for sure. I tended to prefer the PS5's shadow rendering for what it's worth, though it's not a difference I'd fixate on outside of head-to-heads. Read more

Sony has confirmed LittleBigPlanet 3's servers will remain "offline indefinitely".The servers were taken down in January, although it was hoped at the time that it would be a "temporary" situation.Now, however, "ongoing technical issues" mean the servers will not be coming back online and all online services – including access to other players' creations – "are no longer available". Read more

There's something quietly quite exciting happening, and I wonder where it's going to lead. Earlier this week, Grounded - the Honey I Shrunk the Kids backyard survival game - arrived on PlayStation, and at the end of the month (30th April) pirating game Sea of Thieves arrives on PlayStation too. It's a momentous occasion, even though it might not sound it, because we've never had games conceived as Xbox exclusives arrive on PlayStation before. It's an unprecedented new approach by Microsoft and, should it work, it could open a whole Mary Poppins bag of possibility.I don't want to talk about the colder business case for it, because that's not what excites me. What excites me is what it means for players and, I suppose, for the games themselves. How wonderful it feels to be excited about these games again, which are now a number of years old. We first played Sea of Thieves in early 2018, and Grounded in mid-2020, and they were terrifically exciting then, but now they're not. They've been with us so long they've become familiar. No one's pulling you aside and asking you, raw enthusiasm in their eyes, if you've played them yet.Well, not yet. Read more

As the calendar continues its ceaseless onward march, Epic has announced its next batch of weekly Epic Games Store freebies, which this time look very much like Cold War shooter Industria and post-apocalyptic RPG bundle Lisa: Definitive Edition. Both games are free to add to your Epic Games Store library starting Thursday, 25th April, and if you need a nudge toward the 'download' button, here's what you can expect from each: Industria, coming from developer Bleakmill, describes itself as an atmospheric first-person shooter set in Cold War-era East Berlin. "Unravel the secrets of a mysterious parallel dimension while searching for a missing colleague," goes the official blurb. "Explore a haunting reality where the truth awaits. Discover the dark past that lies beyond." Read more

Telltale Games' long-in-the-works The Wolf Among Us 2 has resurfaced with new screenshots following last year's delay, with the studio saying it's "been heads down" on the project. The Wolf Among Us 2 - again set in the world of Bill Willingham's Fables comics - was originally announced back in 2017, but development halted when Telltale Games shut its doors the following year. That appeared to be the end for the sequel, until 2019 brought the news Telltale was being resurrected under new management - a surprise development that would eventually see The Wolf Among Us 2 re-announced. Our first proper look at the sequel arrived in the form of a trailer in 2022, but as its 2023 release date drew near, Telltale announced it was delaying the game in order to avoid burnout and crunch. Unfortunately, it looked like the project might have run aground a second time last October when reports suggested development had been heavily impacted by Telltale layoffs. Read more

If you've been eager to watch the animated Ark: Survival Evolved TV series, but your attempts have so far been thwarted by your failure to live in the US or Canada, there's some good news: it's now officially available in 11 other countries, including the UK, via Paramount+. Ark: The Animated Series follows the adventures of 21st century palaeontologist Helena Walker after she finds herself resurrected on a mysterious island populated by prehistoric beasts. "She must learn to survive with new allies from throughout time," explains the official blurb, "while trying to uncover the true nature of their strange new world." Ark's animated series has somehow managed to secure itself an impressive cast (presumably that 'somehow' is 'several extremely large buckets of money'), with the likes of Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh, Russell Crowe, Gerard Butler, Jeffrey Wright, Elliot Page, Madeleine Madden, Karl Urban, and David Tennant all lending their vocal talents to proceedings. Vin Diesel is also on board - he's a big Ark fan, apparently - ahead of his appearance in the delayed Ark 2. Read more

Everyone has their favourite Mario Kart character to play as, but is there really a best option? A choice which will actually give you an edge to beat your rivals - to go just a little bit faster, or recover that little bit quicker? Well, yes - some characters are mathmatically better than others. This is even true when you factor in the many different kart pieces - bodies, wheels and gliders - which you can mix and match to tweak your overall racer stat. So how do you pick? According to a fasincating and beautifully put together piece of research by data scientist Antoine Mayerowitz, there are 703,560 different build options to choose from when you cater to all the different characters and kart pieces. But many of these are carbon copies of each other - so you can quickly whittle that down to just 25,704 distinct statistical options. Read more

Kena: Bridge of Spirits, the gorgeous action-adventure from developer Ember Lab, looks to be making the leap to Xbox Series X/S, according to a newly spotted rating on the ESRB website. Kena: Bridge of Spirits initially launched in 2021 amid various timed exclusivity agreements: Sony snapped it up for PS5 and PS4, while the Epic Games Store snagged exclusivity on PC. Kena released on Steam the following year, but an Xbox version is yet to be seen. While no official announcement has been made by Ember Lab pointing to Kena's imminent arrival on Microsoft's platform, a newly discovered Xbox Series X/S classification by the US Entertainment Software Rating Board (thanks VGC) suggests Xbox owners wanting to sink into Kena's striking action shouldn't have too long to wait. Read more

In my humble opinion - or not so humble if you know me well enough - the Fallout series on Amazon Prime has struck an admirable balance between satire, absurdity, and ultra violence that epitomises its wasteland. Lucy, The Ghoul, and Maximus are the three archetypes of the characters you'll find in Fallout: the vault dweller, wasteland wanderer, and Brotherhood of Steel follower. So, if you'd rather be those characters rather than just meet them in your adventures, I am here. I've put together a character build for Lucy, the Ghoul, and Maximus so you can recreate the chaos of Amazon's Fallout in Fallout 4. Please forgive my very poor excuses for these character's lookalikes in the character creator, as it leaves a lot to be desired. However, if you're like me and play Fallout 4 in first-person then you won't see the face that much - so you won't be haunted by these... mimics. This is specifically for unmodded Fallout 4, we should note, but if you head over to Nexus Mods and have Fallout 4 on the PC I know you'll be able to find Fallout TV show-inspired mods that'll do wonders for these builds... Anyway, let's jingle jangle jingle on together. Read more

Arrowhead has a steady line it needs to walk with Helldivers 2. The developer needs to ensure it both fixes any bugs (not Terminids, the glitchy kind) while also adding new featurs and content to the game in order to "stay relevant". That's coming from Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt, who replied to a post on reddit (thanks IGN) saying the "competitiveness of this industry" meant the team had to ensure it did both to ensure the longevity of its game. "Arrowhead is independently owned by people working at the studio and not swayed by shareholders in the traditional sense," the Helldivers 2 head said. "Of course we are in a great partnership with Sony where we agree on targets to hit etc. But there isn't a forcing function or requirement per se. Read more

Prison Architect 2 has been delayed once again. The upcoming jail sim sequel will now arrive this autumn, following the discovery of "unexpected issues occurring too often". Originally due to arrive in March this year, and then later pushed back to May, Prison Architect 2 will now arrive on 3rd September. The game's publisher Paradox Interactive said in a statement today it had noted issues related to memory usage were impacting the stability of the game. Despite having a version of Prison Architect 2 ready to go on all platforms, it has opted to delay the game now to ensure it arrives in the best possible state. Read more

Capcom will release a new update for Dragon's Dogma 2 which will make some changes to Dragonsplague and adjust some Pawn behaviours, making them less prone to falling off the side of cliffs in the process. First off, let's talk about Dragonsplague, the affliction that can consume Pawns, resulting in some pretty devastating consequences. Capcom said its next patch will reduce the infection frequency of Dragonsplague, and also make it easier to spot. "For example, when infected, glowing eyes will be more noticeable," the developer explained. Read more

Netflix will no longer publicly share its subscriber numbers, the streaming giant has announced, as it reaps the rewards of its recent password-sharing crackdown. In a business update, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said the move was due to the ongoing evolution of its business model to incorporate revenue from advertising and from subscribers who now have to pay extra to add-on access for friends and family outside their primary household. This meant that deriving Netflix's success purely from subscriber figures was now "historical" maths, Peters said. Read more

No Rest For the Wicked launched in early access yesterday, but has unfortunately hit a few bumps on its debut. The Diablo-like game from Ori and the Blind Forest developer Moon Studios currently holds a mixed review average on Steam, with the top comment stating that while there are definitely the bones of a good release here, its developer "still needs to cook". "I want to like this, but the performance is just not in a good enough place for me to recommend it right now," one player wrote, while another adds: "Wait till further development/release if you have any self control." Read more