Latest Articles (Page 1785)

I know you shouldn't judge games by their visuals but, upon seeing a screenshot of Rogue Legacy, I knew it would be up my street. And such shallowness on my part was soon confirmed in spades. Rogue Legacy's influences, from games as diverse as the Souls series to Spelunky, are obvious but the way it weaves these elements into something new creates a kind of oxymoron; an original steeped in nostalgia.

Sony has today revealed a number of new tidbits surrounding PlayStation 4 - primarily that its party chat functions will be free to use, meaning you won't need a PlayStation Plus subscription.

It's odd, isn't it, that as the possibilities video game technology allows become ever more amazing, the keener developers are to recreate the real world. Contemporary games wear their verisimilitude like a badge of honour, while PR blurbs parp half-truths about 'authenticity' and 'realism' with depressing regularity. Imagine being that guy who went into game development full of excitement and ideas and ended up having to render the creases in Tiger Woods' immaculately modelled golfing slacks.

The boxed version of Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has beaten Nintendo's new release Pikmin 3 to win first place in the UK all-formats chart.

Cheeky open-world adventure Saints Row 4 has been slapped with a fresh ban after being resubmitted to Aussie censors.

Skulls of the Shogun originally released this January on Xbox 360 and Windows 8 devices, and to celebrate its arrival on Steam we're republishing our original review.

Whenever thievery is the focus of a game, it's natural to assume that the result will fall into the stealth genre. Tiny Thief, developed by Barcelona indie studio 5 Ants and published under the Rovio Stars umbrella, does have a little bit of stealth, but it's more point-and-click adventure than full-time sneak-'em-up.

Shigesato Itoi cried, so the story goes, on the way home from his first meeting with Shigeru Miyamoto, after Nintendo's most famous game designer had rejected Itoi's idea for a video game. At the time, Itoi was famous across Japan or his work as a slogan writer, the Nipponese Don Draper. In 1981 he co-authored a collection of short stories with the country's most successful contemporary novelist, Haruki Murakami, while his 1983 slogan for a Woody Allen-fronted advertising campaign for the Seibu Department store remains one of the Japanese advertising industry's best known. As well as providing voice acting for the seminal Studio Ghibli film, My Neighbour Totoro, Itoi wrote each of the movie studio's film taglines and even co-wrote songs with the Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. For this kind of multi-disciplinarian creative force, the emergence of the video game medium presented a beguiling opportunity.

Those of you who follow us on YouTube may have noticed that the Gamer Network family of video channels has grown over the past few months. You know about those swashbuckling hipsters at Outside Xbox, of course, but there's other stuff going on too. Since it's a quiet Sunday afternoon, we thought we would showcase a little of their work.

During E3, in a surprise move that no one saw coming, Fez creator Phil Fish announced that he was making a sequel to Eurogamer's 2012 Game of the Year, Fez. Now, in an even more surprising move, he's cancelled it.

UPDATE #2: Sony has issued a statement:

As a kid who watched too much X-Files, my dream career was Paranormal Investigator With 90s Haircut. It didn't happen, mostly due to uncooperative hairdressers, but finally I can live out my UFO-hunting dreams with The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, the subject of this week's schlocky Show of the Week. In it we examine The Bureau's protracted development history, which saw it switch developers, names and even genres en route to being a finished game.

There was a time when the side-scrolling platformer was perhaps the most popular genre in gaming, and when the announcement of a new Sonic or Mario game was met with the same level of excitement that a new Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty elicits today. But with the transition to 3D gaming, the genre gradually slipped into decline, and despite a recent renaissance fuelled by indie developers, higher-budget retail platform games remain a relative rarity outside of Nintendo's stable.

Arcades aren't dying, I've learned in recent weeks, but they're certainly evolving into some strange forms in their struggle for survival. Simon Parkin reported on Heart of Gaming over a week back, a fascinating compendium of the machines thought lost to the closure of Casino and the Trocadero and kept alive by the commendable dedication of the fighting game community and the hard work of one man, Mark Starkey. Gaming needs informed and passionate people like Starkey if it's going to hold on to its lustrous past, and as I stumbled upon another strange arcade earlier this week I realised there's another breed that's also vital to the future of the form.

12 reputable indie game developers have teamed up to make the free dozen chapter curio Experiment 12.

Escape Goat 2, the sequel to the XBLIG and PC puzzle/platformer Escape Goat, has been granted a release on 10th September, developer Ian Stocker has revealed on Twitter.

Experimental pixelated adventure Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP has sold over 1.5 million units since it launched on iPad in March 2011, developer Capybara has announced.

UPDATE: The recap of the liveshow is now up. I've updated the embedded video to show the rerun for those who missed it. The fun begins about five minutes in.

Minimalist fighting game Divekick has been dated for 20th August on PC via Steam, developer Iron Galaxy Studios has announced. This is the same day it will launch on North America's PSN where it will be a Cross-Buy title on PS3 and Vita.

Critically-acclaimed turn-based strategy game Skulls of the Shogun will be coming to PC via Steam on 29th July with its enhanced Bone-A-Fide edition, developer 17-Bit has announced.

WRC developer Milestone has announced World Rally Championship 4, the latest version of its long-running racing series.

"NOW FOR YOU, INSECTS! BOLDLY, YOU SOUGHT THE POWER OF RAGNAROS. NOW YOU SHALL SEE IT FIRSTHAND!"

Famed ex-Capcom producer Keiji Inafune will feature in Sweet Fuse, a Japanese dating game for PSP where you're able to seduce one of seven "steamy bachelors".

Activision has confirmed a line-up of six Wii U games this autumn and said it is "committed" to continuing support for Nintendo's struggling console.

Codemasters has given a date to its forthcoming F1 tie-in, with the 2013 instalment of its officially licensed series landing in stores on October 4th - just prior to this season's Korean Grand Prix.

Google has announced Chromecast, a low-cost TV dongle that allows you to stream YouTube videos, music and pictures from your smartphone, tablet or laptop.

Social games behemoth Zynga has reported another tough financial quarter - it lost a whopping $15.8 million (£10.2m) in the three months ending 30th June.

The number of World of Warcraft monthly subscribers has dropped to 7.7 million, Activision Blizzard has revealed.

Last spring a board game entitled The Doom That Came to Atlantic City drew a lot of attention on Kickstarter. $122,874 worth of attention, to be precise. Not too shabby for a developer only looking for $35K. Unfortunately, 13 months later, the project has been cancelled as the developer, The Forking Path, ran out of money.

Xbox One launch title Kinect Sports Rivals will no longer be available at the platform's release.