Latest Articles (Page 1408)

Early Access dinosaur adventure Ark: Survival Evolved will storm its way onto Xbox One next week, on 16th December.

Tickets for Symphonic Fantasies - a live orchestral concert of classic Square Enix themes - will go on sale tomorrow.

Ramon Llull was a 13th-century troubadour, novelist, alchemist, friar, philosopher, and tutor to the king of Aragon. According to Ultimate General Entertainment, who've just published the Game of Eyes, he was also a video game designer.

Has everybody been playing Hearthstone? SteamWorld Heist tips its hat to Blizzard's CCG at the end of each mission, when you scan through the loot you've just robbed from whichever procedurally-generated space hulk you've been infiltrating, and open up the goody bags and treasure chests to see what's inside. There's a shudder as each package reveals its contents, and a flash of colourful light if you've found something really special. In reality it's just blasters and armour and assorted back-up items, but that light, that shudder, makes it all so thrilling. Very few games, I suspect, wouldn't benefit from a little pack-opening spirit.

Bethesda Game Studios, the developer of Fallout 4 and the Elder Scrolls series, has opened a new studio in Montreal.

Fallout 4's patch 1.02 went live last night, a 512MB file that puts to rights some of the game's outstanding issues on PS4. Stability issues, glitches and areas of performance are in the crosshairs this time - while Xbox One's patch is still pending. Based on its update notes, Bethesda singles out the Corvega factory as a focal area of gain on PS4 - a nightmare to play in its launch state, with drops to 20fps and under on the console. Thankfully, we have some good news on this front.

UPDATE 9TH DECEMBER: EA DICE has released a Star Wars Battlefront launch infographic that shows, among other things, Boba Fett as the most-played Hero or Villain. Luke is second, Han third, Leia fourth, Vader fifth and Palpy sixth.

Eye-catching open world sandbox The Tomorrow Children will slip into closed beta on 21st January, developer Q-Games has announced.

Linkle, the female Link-alike set to appear in Hyrule Warriors Legends, was originally meant to be Link's sister.

Private DayZ servers can now be monetised, which means you can - among other things - limit access to people who pay. In order to be able to monetise your server it must be approved by Bohemia, and those that are will be added to a publicly available list.

The big Elder Scrolls Online recruitment drive continues as Bethesda/Zenimax announces a free-play weekend on PC and Xbox One this weekend. PS4 isn't included because of its PlayStation Plus obstruction, presumably, but Zenimax is "working with Sony on a technical solution". However, there is a free PlayStation Plus weekend this weekend that would appear to solve that problem, so we'll see what effect that has.

Ubisoft will launch the final two entries in its Assassin's Creed Chronicles spin-off series in January and February 2016.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is getting a level editor in the newly announced DLC expansion Afterbirth †.

The Resident Evil Zero HD Remaster is now slated for a 19th January release on PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360 and PC, Capcom has announced.

HTC Vive, the VR headset co-developed by Valve, is now slated for an April commercial launch.

Apotheon developer Alientrap Games has released a free multiplayer component to its stylish mythological take on the "Metroidvania" formula. It's called Apothean Arena and it's out today on Steam.

Final Fantasy 6, i.e. the one with the opera, is coming to PC via Steam on 6th December, publisher Square Enix has announced.

Our Ian's a bit of a fan of Far Cry. He's played all of the games in the series, and has even attempted to string them all together in some sort of cohesive narrative - the brave soul. Anyway, given his superior knowledge, Ian went off to get an early hands-on with Far Cry Primal last week. Though he enjoyed his time with the game, an interview with Ubisoft Toronto's creative director Max Beland left him somewhat disappointed, as Beland confirmed that there would be no multiplayer mode.

UPDATE 8/12/15 4:52pm: We've been looking at more PlayStation 2 titles running under emulation on PlayStation 4, and it now seems clear that all the UK code we've tested is running at 50Hz with a crude frame-blending 'upscale' to the 60Hz output. We made an error in the original analysis below - GTA San Andreas under emulation does have some frame-pacing issues, but much of the judder we encountered is actually a result of the frame-blending, registering to our eyes (and our analysis tools) as unique frames when in fact they are simply the interpolated results of two images - we did think that it may be an artefact of the emulator working with PS2's original motion blur effect, but this is definitely not the case. Credit goes to commenter Malek86 for noting that his copy of Twisted Metal Black is definitely European code, albeit outputting at 60Hz - a situation we have also confirmed with Dark Cloud. This was originally a 60fps game in NTSC territories, running at 50fps on the PS4 emulator, then frame-blended back up to 60fps. As you may imagine, this is not ideal.

The first screenshots of second Witcher 3 expansion, Blood and Wine, have been released. They show a grand city and the palace of Beauclair basking in the sun, as well as a vineyard in the new Toussaint region, which is famed for its wine.

Blizzard has released a new video in Hearthstone's Designer Insights series, in which senior game designer Ben Brode talks about the thinking behind the creation and ongoing curation of the game's Basic set of cards. It provides a number of insights into how the team consider future card design, and the principles of power-creep in the game.

How we long for an update to Nintendo's F-Zero, so untapped, so overdue. The most recent major update to the futuristic racing series launched 12 years ago. It was an ambitious and, in terms of velocity, still unrivalled collaboration between the company's star designer Shigeru Miyamoto and Sega's Toshihiro Nagoshi, thoroughbred creator of racing benchmarks Virtua Racing and Daytona USA. In F-Zero GX, the rival companies came together for the first time: Nintendo's talent for character and sheen fused with Sega's natural genius at high speed. It remains a classic. Time has passed, expectations have mounted but there remain only rumours. In the series' parlance, F-Zero has been 'retired'.

Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star will nest itself onto Steam, PlayStation 4 and PS Vita this month, priced £6.99.

UPDATE 8/12/15 13.20am Sky is finally available on Xbox One today (thanks, Xbox One UK).

If you use the PlayStation App on your phone or tablet then take note - the app will lose its messaging functionality today.

52 pence bought me a morning exploring a sunken liner - a steamship that went to the bottom of the ocean in 1901, and took various weird and ghastly secrets with it. 52 pence is the sales price, I gather, but even when it's back up to full whack at 79 pence, Reveal the deep is still going to be a bit of a bargain.

Destiny: The Taken King launched months ago, long before the rush of autumn releases, yet millions of players still play for hours every day. It's a vote of confidence for Bungie but also a neverending workload, as the game's intensely loyal fanbase constantly demand fresh content.

UPDATE 07/12/2015 8.03pm: Sega has clarified that Yakuza 0 is only confirmed for a North American release in the west.

It's looking like the original Max Payne will be getting the PS2 Classic treatment on PS4, according to an ESRB listing.

Suburban sleuthing sim Gone Home is coming to PS4 and Xbox One on 12th January, developer Fullbright has announced.