Latest Articles (Page 651)

Yes, it's really been a year. Animal Crossing: New Horizons celebrates its first anniversary this week with new features, items, and the dreaded return of Bunny Day.

In early March, EA issued a lifetime ban to a FIFA Ultimate Team player who racially abused Arsenal football legend Ian Wright on social media. EA was praised for taking a strong stance against the former player, and Wright himself applauded the company's actions, saying: "they stepped up for me."

Tomb Raider's Lara Croft is part of the new Fortnite battle pass.

Red Candle's Devotion is one of the finest horror games of the past decade, and if you haven't played it already, it's possible you never will. Following its release this spring, the game was found to contain an unflattering reference to China's president, Xi Jinping. The discovery sparked an outcry among Chinese players, leading to the withdrawal of Chinese distributors, the closure of Red Candle's account on Weibo, one of China's largest social media platforms, and the removal of the game from Steam in China. Red Candle, which is based in Taiwan, has apologised at length for what it says was a placeholder asset, accidentally transferred to the final release. These comments were not enough to stem the backlash, however, and a week after sale, the developer pulled the game from Steam in all territories to perform unspecified fixes. Seven months on, it's unclear whether Devotion will ever see daylight again.

Total War: Warhammer 2 is getting a new character voiced by Iwan Rheon, the actor who played Ramsay Bolton in HBO's Game of Thrones.

For years, I am ashamed to admit that Dungeon of the Endless was one of those strange games I loved much more than I actually played. I longed to play it though, to be good at it - nobody is actually good at it - or at least to truly understand it. I was drawn in by the stylish French sci-fi, the elegant, elongated pixel art, this El Greco futurism with a brutal tower defence twist. But I felt frozen out. And now I'm finally in, I don't really know why I was so afraid. I think I was probably fretful about being overwhelmed, but in Dungeon of the Endless being overwhelmed is actually the central thrill.

Harvest Moon for the SNES could have been lost in the wave of excellent games released in Japan during 1996, yet the farming simulator grew into a well-established series that celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. During these years Harvest Moon has visited multiple platforms, experimented with different playstyles and even been renamed to Story of Seasons when, in 2012, Marvelous Inc. stopped licensing the series to Natsume. From 2014 onwards, Marvelous Inc. has instead used its own publishing brand, Xseed Games, to localise for western audiences, while Natsume began releasing its own farming simulator series using the Harvest Moon title, which, understandably, has confused many fans.

Developer SCS might still be hard at work on American Truck Simulator's previously announced Wyoming expansion, but its eyes are already on the horizon, with the studio having now confirmed that Texas is next in line for the DLC treatment.

Fall Guys is going full-on retrowave for its fourth season, flinging its bean-shaped heroes to a neon-hued - and a very 80s - future when things gets underway next Monday, 22nd March.

Developer Toby Fox's cult RPG Undertale is finally making its way to Xbox tomorrow, 16th March - more than five years after its PC debut - and it'll be available as part of Game Pass too.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla will deploy its next big update tomorrow, around midday UK time.

UPDATE 15TH MARCH 2021: Microsoft has confirmed FPS boosts for a handful of old Bethesda games on Xbox Series X and S - and they're out now.

Firaxis has announced the sixth and final DLC pack in the Civilization 6 - New Frontier Pass.

Outriders will be available from its 1st April launch date via Xbox Game Pass on consoles and Android devices, Microsoft has now confirmed.

It looks like Zack Snyder's Justice League accidentally uses an Halo icon.

We've already seen some pretty funky physics from Valheim's abyssal harpoon, but beyond NASA space programs Valheim players have now found a more practical use for the weapon: as a way of transporting heavy goods by waterski. Or maybe it's more like those inflatable tubes you can tow behind boats - but close enough.

Hello! This week we're going to be celebrating the intersection of music and games in many of its forms, and we're calling it Music Week. Kicking things off is Malindy and a piece about the pleasure of making stuff.

Next up in Music Week we're bringing you this lovely piece from 2011, all about the various leitmotifs that pull together a true gaming great.

Today in Music Week we're going back to 2005, to Nintendo DS, and to the experimental Electroplankton.

What better game to look at during Music Week than a narrative rhythm action adventure?

Hello! Welcome back to Music Week. Aamir Mehar explains how Zelda did for him what Chopin couldn't.

Hello! Welcome to a Someone Should... with a Music Week twist. A classic album tangled with a classic piece of hardware.

Music Week continues with Bertie meeting a composer whose work had a powerful effect on him, and whose processes aren't at all what he expected.

Next on Music Week, a look at how a specific movement in art and music might be an especially good fit for games.

Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've found ourselves playing over the last few days. This time: a Music Week special.

How better to draw Music Week to a close than with a look at what happens when the past and the present collide?

UPDATE 15/3/21: Former WB Games developer Troy Leavitt has now, as promised, released his own video discussing his departure from Hogwarts Legacy studio Avalanche Software. It's an edited recording of a farewell Zoom call to former colleagues, in which he also shared his resignation letter.

Loop Hero is nothing like Monopoly. What is it like? It's kind of an RPG, and kind of an idle game. But it's not as much of an RPG as it seems, and really it's nothing like an idle game to play half the time.

The PlayStation 4 communities feature shuts down in April, Sony has confirmed.

Controversial PC space game Star Citizen has shot through the $350m raised mark.