Latest Articles (Page 1458)

A lot of classics follow the same story: a brilliant artist creates a piece of work, critics don't think much of it, it's a commercial failure, then, many years later, it takes on a cult following. This was the case with Moby Dick. It was the case with Blade Runner. It was the case with Abbey Road. But we don't see this so often in games. If something comes out and gets mediocre reviews then sells poorly, it all but disappears and is relegated to clearance bins, destined to quickly fade from memory. Nier is an exception.

Despite the drama surrounding the PC release leading to its subsequent withdrawal, there's a sense of success in the console space as PlayStation 4 owners, and indeed those on Xbox One, get a superb rendition of Batman: Arkham Knight. It's fair to say Rocksteady sized up each console's strengths well ahead of producing its first current-gen title, and it's paid off in one of the best Batman games we've seen in years. But in playing the game this week, the evidence strongly suggests that Unreal Engine 3's impressive Samaritan tech demo in 2011 paved the way for many of the game's crowning technical achievements.

We originally published this article on the PlayStation 4 PlanetSide 2 beta on April 26th, and were all set to produce a new piece for the game's launch. However, once the EU servers came online, we found that our thoughts on the game - along with its overall performance profile - remain largely unchanged. That being the case, we're re-publishing our original piece for those that may have missed it originally.

It's hard to believe it's already been a week since E3 2015 - mostly because my weak, spongy body gave out the moment I got home and I'm still not back to full health. Anyway, enough of my problems, we've got a perfectly good show to watch.

It was a night no E3-goer will forget in a hurry. Sony's extraordinary press conference last week opened with the return of The Last Guardian - almost 10 years into development and almost five since its last appearance before the press. The shocking revivals didn't end there as Sony, playing fairy godmother to ageing gamers, continued to grant their deepest and most apparently hopeless wishes with the launch of Yu Suzuki's Shenmue 3 Kickstarter and the announcement that Square Enix would attempt the impossible - or improbable - and remake its classic role-playing game, Final Fantasy 7.

Native Alaskan folklore-based platformer Never Alone is coming to the European Wii U eShop on 9th July.

Three-player dungeon-crawler The legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes now has 15 minutes of gameplay footage taken from E3 via Polygon.

Yesterday Apple removed several games that displayed the controversial Confederate flag, a banner representing the South, i.e. the side that wanted to keep slavery legal, during the United States' Civil War.

Star Wars: Battlefront is getting a closed alpha on PC next week and invites are going out now.

Those who purchased Battlefield Hardline's Ultimate Edition for PS4 are unable to play its Criminal Activity DLC that came out last week for Premium members.

UPDATE 26/06/2015 4.52am: We've acquired a couple of statements from game developers affected by this.

Early in 2011, I travelled to Sony Japan Studio's offices in Tokyo and saw the the last live demo of The Last Guardian. Four and a half years later, sat in a hushed demo theatre somewhere above the brouhaha of E3, just as the show opens, I'm seeing the first demo of its revival as a PS4 game. I'm feeling a sense of déjà vu.

Nintendo has reissued a number of its harder-to-find Amiibo figurines.

Sony's long-in-development Uncharted film sounds like it is back in development hell, according to a new round of reports.

"We really wanted to send her on her first great tomb-raiding adventure. It's inspired by real-world adventurers, people like Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who climbed Everest," says Crystal Dynamics creative director Noah Hughes. That's all well and good Noah, but I'm struggling to recall when exactly Hillary or Norgay killed a grizzly bear with a poisoned arrow crafted from mushrooms harvested from an old tree stump. But hey, I'm not saying it didn't happen; my history is rusty at best.

Tetsuya Nomura apparently didn't realise he was directing the remake of Final Fantasy 7 until he saw his name appear in the credits.

Last week, EA finally revealed the full name and release window for Mass Effect 4 - which we'll now have to remember is actually named Mass Effect: Andromeda.

The outstanding Total War series has been around for 15 years, and to celebrate, you can play the games for free this weekend via Steam. Should be just enough time to conquer a continent.

Nintendo has set a date for Splatoon's first Splatfest event, which will see the game's maps plunged into darkness for night-time neon paint battles.

UPDATE 26TH JUNE 9AM BST: Batman: Arkham Knight creator Rocksteady has pledged its best engineers to the job of fixing the PC version, as one would hope. The PC version of Arkham Knight was - optimised might be the wrong word - tailored by Iron Galaxy.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 supports up to 20-player multiplayer, at least on PS4 and Xbox One.

Star Wars Battlefront developer DICE has explained its decision to limit the game's AT-AT walkers to movement along a preset path.

UPDATE 25/06/2015 5.49pm: Bethesda has accepted Seth's bottle caps as legal tender to pre-order Fallout 4, but only because he was the first to do this. So don't go out getting smashed and sending Bethesda your caps in hopes of attaining its highly anticipated sequel.

UPDATE 25TH JUNE: I followed the following statement up with ArenaNet: "In the future, if we release further Guild Wars 2 expansions, we plan to offer all of the prior expansions, the core game, and the latest expansion for one single purchase price."

UPDATE 25TH JUNE: Apologies for the very late update - the EU servers are back up. This happened around 16 hours ago. There have been brief bouts of maintenance since.

Microsoft is doubling down on its Games With Gold initiative by offering two free Xbox One games per month for Xbox Live Gold members.

CORRECTION: This article originally claimed that Frontier had launched a "crowdfunding campaign" for Planet Coaster. Frontier has been in touch to clarify that game is fully funded and will be made regardless of the success of these pre-order sales, so we've altered the headline and some of the text to reflect this.

After all the announcements and big studio posturing to come out of this year's E3, my game of the show was a quiet little indie game I'd barely heard of before. On my last day at the show, I was ushered into a screening room tucked at the back of 505 Games' media room, far away from the show floor (and, appropriately, in room 505 of the LA Convention Centre). There, I put on a pair of headphones and all the noise and bluster and gunfire I'd been subjected to for the last three days just washed away.

2D survival sandbox Don't Starve will also get a release on Xbox One.

The Collector's Edition content for upcoming Destiny expansion The Taken King's will now be made available separately, Bungie has said, priced at $20.