Latest Articles (Page 837)

Combat in all of its different forms is the pillar of most games, one that we've come to take for granted. But with the years, whether that's due to hyper-realistic styles making the violence in games seem more gruesome than ever, or simply out of a need for more gentleness in an increasingly relentless world, the number of games that re-think combat or forego it altogether has risen. I've been speaking to the developers of several upcoming games to ask them why they've started to look for alternatives.

Soon, Warframe players and their crew of shiny-helmeted chums will be able to take to the stars and engage in co-op space battles as part of the free-to-play sci-fi game's highly anticipated Empyrean expansion. Ahead of that, however, developer Digital Extremes is giving players the opportunity to prepare for launch in its Rising Tide update, out now on PC.

There were sad space-faces last month when Frontier Developments announced it would be giving Elite Dangerous' long-overdue Fleet Carriers another six month delay. The silver lining to that particular cloud of woe, however, was that Fleet Carriers were being sidelined in favour of some much-needed bug fixes - and the first of these are now confirmed to be arriving in January.

Developer Undead Labs' multiplayer zombie survival sequel, State of Decay 2, is, after a year and a half of Windows 10 Store exclusivity on PC, heading to Steam early next year.

This weekend marks Star Citizen's seventh annual CitizenCon, in which developer Cloud Imperium Games will almost certainly unveil more new features that players will be able to experience in the long-in-the-works space sim, assuming the earth isn't vaporised by our dying sun first. And to mark the occasion, Star Citizen is having another Free Fly event.

If you've been on the internet today, you may have noticed this:

Five of the Best is a weekly series about things you probably don't pay attention to when playing a game. Things like backpacks, zip wires, hands - we've had an eclectic bunch so far.

Pokémon Sword and Shield's Ball Guy is a masked vigilante that could explode at any given moment and I'm going to explain why.

Capcom will follow its successful Resident Evil 2 remake with a new version of Resident Evil 3, a report today suggests.

London's wildly popular Pokémon Center store will be back in 2020 - although, again, only as a temporary fixture.

Mortal Kombat 11 gets Sindel on Tuesday, 26th November as a DLC character, and developer NetherRealm has shown off her hair-raising new moves.

The Double-A Team is a newish feature series honouring the unpretentious, mid-budget, gimmicky commercial action games that no-one seems to make any more. Check out our archive of Double-A pieces here!

Valve has now officially announced its next Half-Life game, titled Half-Life: Alyx.

It might have taken its sweet time, but a new instalment in Valve's legendary Half-Life series is finally, officially, almost here. But as the shock starts to wear off, there are questions to be answered - with one of the most frequent ones seemingly being, exactly why is Half-Life: Alyx, after a wait of over a decade, exclusive to VR?

If you've been gripped with a sudden, feverish desire to wallop some magical, man-sized rodents this weekend, but are struggling to locate a suitable outlet for your needs, perhaps you'd like to head over to Steam, where developer Fatshark's enjoyable four-player co-operate rat-smasher Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is having a free weekend.

It's all change for Rocket League this December. After four years of monetisation built around randomised loot boxes and DLC, developer Psyonix will soon be jettisoning both.

I'm struggling to play Stadia games competitively online.

Fortnite's slowing down the pace a bit this week, and giving players a reason to holster weapons and pick up rods, all in the name of its inaugural fishing tournament.

Autonauts, the game about colony management and robot automation, released a big old roadmap today, laying out all the free DLC on its way over the next six months.

Xbox Game Pass really is the gift that keeps on giving. Tonight at X019, Microsoft has announced more than 50 new titles headed to the service in the coming months.

If you ever wanted to be Woody from Toy Story, boah do I have news for you. The Red Dead Redemption 2 PC mod which lets you soar like an eagle, play as missing Princess Isabeau or completely in the nip has had another update - and this time, it's all about size. Not that it's the most important thing.

In just two weeks time we'll all be able to terrify ourselves running away from Xenomorphs on the Switch, as Alien: Isolation gets a December release date on the Nintendo console.

Pokémon Sword and Shield contains a new appearance effect for certain Shiny Pokémon, fans have discovered.

Sea of Thieves might have had a relatively low-key few months in recent times, but Rare is pulling out all the stops in the multiplayer pirate adventure's latest update. Known as The Seabound Soul, it introduces a brand-new story mission, a series of slightly bamboozling limited-time voyages, fire and flammable ships, plus a whole lot more.

It feels like a bizarre fit. Remedy, developer of esoteric third-person adventure games such as Control, Quantum Break and Alan Wake, is making a military first-person shooter campaign for the biggest game on earth. I mean, Remedy has never made an FPS before. So, what's going on?

Pokémon Go is bringing back all of its 2019 Community Day creatures for a recap weekend on 14th and 15th December.

Pokémon Sword and Shield has sold over 6m units globally in its first week, becoming the fastest-selling Switch game ever.

When I close my eyes and imagine a game based on drug kingpin Pablo Escobar's life, Narcos: Rise of the Cartels isn't exactly what springs to mind.

Video games are a small window into Chinese life, but they're a window nonetheless, and video games themselves, in China, are huge. China accounts for more than half of the entire planet's PC gaming revenue. In fact, despite it being smaller than mobile gaming there, China's PC gaming market alone made over $15bn in 2018; more than half the entire amount of revenue made in the US gaming industry overall, including consoles, mobile, the lot. Going by the numbers of analyst firm Niko Partners, as of 2018 there were a total of about 630 million gamers in China - a little over 8 percent of humans on the planet.

Against all odds, here it is. 18 years on from the last episode, and well after most had given up hope that Ryo Hazuki would ever find his way out of the Guilin cave where Shenmue 2 so abruptly ended, perhaps the most remarkable thing about Shenmue 3 is that it exists at all. Even more remarkable, then, that director Yu Suzuki - himself an absentee from the frontlines of games development for almost two decades - has delivered a worthy successor to what many consider an all-time great. Shenmue 3 takes the template of those age-old Dreamcast games and refines it in small, numerous ways - delivering a game that's both faithful and finessed.