Latest Articles (Page 1353)

I really didn't know much about Stardew Valley before I started playing it. I'd never really played much Harvest Moon or the like either, as I'd never really seen the appeal of giving over your free time to cultivating the perfect crop of turnips. But Stardew Valley, at least, is a lot more than that. There's combat, supernatural conspiracy, and even a chance to get hitched and hear the pitter patter of tiny feet around the farm. Every couple dreams of owning a chicken coop, right?

Last month, Capcom took action against 30 Street Fighter 5 rage quitters, resetting their League Points and, as a result, dumping them back down the online ranking system.

DICE has signalled the end of new content for first-person shooter Battlefield 4.

Minecraft has long been a testing ground for people to explore and experiment, but the sandbox game will soon host players of a very different kind: artificial intelligences.

It's like having one last short to get your head straight before you leave the bar, or necking an espresso to bring you down as you head up for bed. It makes no sense, and it makes you feel horrible. Stardew Valley is a PC game that repeatedly needles you about how detached you are from the natural world and how soul-voiding it is to live your life through a screen. "There will come a time when you feel crushed by modern life and your bright spirit will fade before a growing emptiness," says your bed-ridden grandad, stretching his hand towards you with a serious-looking envelope. Cut to: your character, skivvying miserably at a computer for the oppressively cheerful Joja corporation. Cut to: my heart withering in ashy despair as I realise I too am hunched over a screen.

The Division is the UK's biggest ever game launch during the first three months of any year.

Early in time-manipulation adventure Quantum Break, you have to escape a university science lab as protagonist Jack Joyce accompanied by Jack's brother Will, who may have just caused time to catastrophically shatter.

This one caught our eye. Broforce is a gleefully bombastic 2D side-scrolling shooter in the Contra tradition - and available this month for free to PlayStation Plus members. However, it hasn't launched in the best of states, and its variable performance is a stumbling block to enjoying the experience we'd like. We're talking about a game that's designed to run at 60fps, but as shown in our video below, can (and very much will) drop all the way down to the teens. So what exactly is going on, and why might PS4 performance be struggling as it is?

Following the news that Lionhead Studios is to be closed, I thought I'd return to the game that, in my mind, showed them at their very best. That game is Fable 2 and I've been playing it again this weekend to see how well it holds up, almost eight years after its initial release.

With Lionhead Studios facing closure this week, we thought it would be a good moment to revisit this piece, originally published in October 2012, tracing all the intriguing games that never quite made it out of the Guildford studio and its predecessor, Bullfrog.

UPDATE 11/3/16 1.30pm: You no longer have to use The Division's famous laptop.

We've been on a mission over the last six months - to fully get to grips with the importance of the CPU in a gaming PC and that's involved benchmarking the lion's share of the processors on the market today, including a decent, representative proportion of the new Skylake line from Intel. On top of that, we've been road-testing various CPUs with each new major PC launch in an effort to understand where the sweet-spot lies in terms of price vs performance.

Here's a hot take that's both more than a little lukewarm and likely isn't all that controversial: I think I preferred Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes to its full-blown follow-up The Phantom Pain.

WildStar publisher NCSoft has let go of a number of staff from developer Carbine after canceling its plan to bring the sci-fi MMO to China.

Another Code: Two Memories, Hotel Dusk: Room 215 and Last Window: The Secret of Cape West director Taisuke Kanasaki has announced an upcoming 3DS detective game called Chase: Unsolved Cases Investigation Division.

Hearthstone's first expansion for 2016, Whispers of the Old Gods, launches late April to early May, Blizzard has announced.

What do Rocket League and Dying Light have in common? They're both multiplatform and they both have cars. That's not much, but it's enough for the developers of both games to team up and introduce crossover content with one another.

EVE Online developer CCP Games is porting its Gear VR shooter Gunjack to PC on 28th March with Oculus Rift support.

EverQuest Next, the ambitious MMO by Daybreak Games (formerly Sony Online Entertainment), has been cancelled.

Recently announced strategy sequel Frozen Synapse 2 has revealed its first gameplay in the following trailer.

UPDATE 11/03/2016 5.02pm: Overload squeezed past its $300k Kickstarter goal in the last two hours of its crowdfunding campaign.

In Play is a column taking a weekly sideways look at new game releases.

Blizzard has only gone and released an official patch for Diablo 2, a game that's 16 years old - and hasn't been patched in five years!

Assassin's Creed 3 was leaked on a plane. Hearthstone's latest expansion was leaked via a painting on a brick wall.

We've seen some pretty cool Fallout: New Vegas mods over the years, but The Frontier may be the most ambitious yet.

We wrote about the impressive real-life version of Hitman created for people to play earlier this week.

Flame Over isn't just another roguelike - although it definitely is another roguelike. There are procedural environments, for sure, and there's the constant, hovering fear of a punishing defeat, but what marks this particular game out is your role, and the enemies you're up against. In Flame Over, as you might have guessed, you're a fireman, and your ultimate foe is fire itself.

The end is in sight for the first week of what Ubisoft hopes, I'm sure, will be a long journey for a lot of people. I'm talking of course, about The Division, which this week has both proven to be Ubisoft's biggest launch and not without its problems.

There will soon be yet another collectible card game vying for your attention, this time from EA and Plants vs. Zombies developer PopCap Games.

Since its release this time last year, Cities: Skylines has sold over two million copies worldwide.