Latest Articles (Page 1139)

Can you believe it? This week marks the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Kart - the original, pioneering Super Nintendo release. Many imitators have come and gone, but that 1992 release set the template for seven sequels - eight if you count the excellent Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Switch - and we felt that was worthy of celebration. But beyond the anniversary itself, the importance of Mario Kart's evolution across the years is significant - each series entry defines the strengths and weaknesses of its host platform, and demonstrates the values, practises and philosophy that set Nintendo apart from its competition.

The Destiny 2 beta finally arrived on PC this week, delivering a vast upgrade in terms of customisation over the console builds. Adjustable quality settings, unlocked frame-rate and field of view along with HDR support take pride of place in a package that seemingly does everything it can to capture the heart of the PC gaming enthusiast. It also gives us some idea of just how optimal the core code is, how well it scales across different hardware - and perhaps provides some insight into whether the upclocked CPUs in PS4 Pro and Xbox One X might be able to handle 60fps gameplay.

In chaos theory, there's a well-known concept called the butterfly effect. In essence, it's about how small causes can have large effects - an idea with its roots in weather forecasting, but one with deeply poetic underpinnings. What if you had the ability to avoid a devastating future through the smallest of actions?

The immersive sim has seen a kind of mini-renaissance in the past couple of years. Prey, Deus Ex, and of course Dishonored 2 stand out as games that recently arrived to varying, but all positive, degrees of critical acclaim. But that critical reception was conclusively unmatched by sales - so much so that it is now very easy to draw less-than-optimistic conclusions about the future of the entire genre itself, and indeed the series within.

We've made our return from Gamescom in Germany, completing both our primary objective of playing lots of upcoming games and our secondary objective of eating our own weight in sausages and pretzels.

It's one of gaming's most terrifying introductions. You awake in a cryotube on the medical deck of the spaceship Von Braun. Illegal cybernetics have been implanted into your brain, and your memory has been wiped like a hard-drive. You're contacted by Dr. Janice Polito, who summarises the situation. Nearly everyone on the ship is either dead, or infected with a strange organism that mutates them and turns them hostile. There's an explosion, and Polito tells you to get out of cryobay, because soon there'll be another explosion, and then everything in the area will be sucked into space.

I'm 200 miles from home, holidaying in a part of Devon with no phone signal, barely any roads of sensible passing width, and two moaning, groaning children in tow. It's hammering it down outside, ponds forming on driveways - the very epitome of a British summer's day. The DVD collection available is a lot of seen-its. My Neighbor Totoro fills a pocket of the day, alleviating some of the boredom. But man, it's grim out there. No sandcastles at the beach today, kids.

A year after Microsoft published Dead Rising 4 as a timed-exclusive on Xbox One and Windows 10 PC, the game is coming to PlayStation 4.

FIFA's story mode, The Journey, already has Frostbite-powered cutscenes where you make decisions using a conversation wheel. Well, now they're in Career Mode.

This is the first gameplay trailer for Frostpunk, the new city-builder by This War of Mine developer 11 bit Studios.

The team behind a fan remake of Tomb Raider 2 has released a playable demo.

Super Play was my favourite video game magazine of the 90s. As a teenage SNES obsessive I never missed an issue. I loved Wil Overton's manga-influenced covers (I still have the Cybernator one somewhere), the features on Japanese role-playing games that never came out on these shores and the sheer passion that screamed from every page. Each month Super Play transported me into a SNES-fuelled world of wonder, and I was sad to see it go in September 1996.

If you've been playing the Call of duty: WW2 multiplayer beta (check out Edwin's impressions here), you'll have noticed the new Overwatch play of the game-style feature that displays at the end of a match.

The Switch version of FIFA 18 is a bit of an oddity. It's certainly the most fully-fledged FIFA we've had outside of the console and PC versions - Ultimate Team on a handheld console is quite something - but it's also, for obvious reasons, still a more limited version next to all their Frostbite-powered glory.

Imagine a playable race inverting the rules of a game, where healing hurts but poison heals, and where non-player characters run away because they're scared. On the upside there's no need for lockpicks because one bony finger will do, and playing dead is as simple as lying down. The undead race in Divinity: Original Sin 2 has finally been unveiled.

Dino Dini's Kick Off Revival comes out on Steam on 12th September.

Destiny 2's raid goes live a week after the game comes out on 6th September.

Has there ever been a console more exotic than the Neo Geo? A rarefied beast in the 90s that boasted near mythical power, its games exuded a certain class; a selection of muscular, meaty 2D action titles, they're often as beautiful to behold today as they've ever been. And they're much easier to behold now than ever before, too, seeing how ubiquitous ports of Neo Geo classics have become. I don't think there's an appliance in my house that a Metal Slug 3 port isn't available for - not that that's a bad thing, of course.

It's only a tiny slice of the final product of course - a taster of three years' hard graft from one of the most respected developers in the business - but the arrival of the Call of Duty: World War 2 beta gives us our first look at how Sledgehammer Games has evolved one of the most significant console engines of this generation, and how its work scales between PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro.

Despite radio silence for a short while, the Metal Gear movie is still being worked on - and not only that, it seems it's in very good hands.

Puzzle Fighter is back, this time on mobile and developed by the team behind Dead Rising.

Sega has announced Sonic Forces comes out on 7th November in Europe.

Earlier this week, H1Z1's Battle Royale style spin-off, King of the Kill, released its first big update in what seems like an age.

17 years ago, Human Head released Rune, an action adventure PC game based on Norse mythology. It was pretty good and quite a lot of people liked it. The PC game box looked like this:

Capcom released Street Fighter 5's latest DLC character on Tuesday and already players are doing crazy things with her.

Niantic has revealed how you'll catch Legendary beasts Raikou, Entei, and Suicune in Pokémon Go.

Developer Team 17 has announced turn-based strategy game Worms W.M.D will invade Nintendo Switch later this year.

Battlefield 1's next expansion, In the Name of the Tsar, comes out 19th September on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, EA has announced.

Human Head and Digital Extremes have announced Survived By, a free-to-play PC game that looks like a load of other popular games rolled into one.

Charity speedrunners Games Done Quick has announced it will hold an event to raise money for those affected by Hurricane Harvey.