Latest Articles (Page 86)

You could call this week's DF Direct an assemblage of patch tests as they arrived thick and fast for a range of titles, in varying degrees of scale. The addition of a 40fps 'favour quality' mode in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora strikes an excellent balance between resolution and visual features for Xbox Series X and PS5, while Lords of the Fallen's 1.5 update finally addressed the long-standing '0fps' problem we reported on back in the day. However, by far the highest profile addition is the 'next-gen' update for Fallout 4 - and it's swiftly unfolding into a bit of a saga.

Steam hit Manor Lords shifted 1m copies in its first 24 hours, publisher Hooded Horse has said.

With the success of the Fallout TV show, the recent release of the next-gen update for Fallout 4 and the fact that (in my humble opinion) Fallout 76 is well worth a go nowadays, there's a high chance that you are one of the millions of people who are currently jumping back into Bethesda's post-apocalyptic adventures, or indeed trying them out for the very first time.

A Stardew Valley mod will add the likes of Astarian and Shadowheart from Baldur's Gate 3.

The dinky yellow Playdate handheld has plenty of odd games already - but here's an even odder proposition we thought we'd never see: WipEout.

It took me around 110 hours to finish and much of that, now, is a blur. Sure I remember some of the key beats - emerging from the catacombs into the world at the start, battles against Godrick and Rennala, the countless defeats against Malenia - but mostly the words "You Died" repeatedly on the screen. Incidentally, that was my housemate at the time's nickname for the game, much to my shame.

The next fighter to join the Street Fighter 6 roster will be the demon Akuma, who arrives on 22nd May.

There's a snazzy new video to celebrate 25 years of Lego Star Wars and within it, for the first time, we can see a minifigure Cal Kestis.

If you are anything like me, many of your deaths in Helldivers 2 have been the result of friendly fire. It is all part of the game's charm, really. Many an apology has been made over my headset as fellow Helldivers have been recalled back into the fray after a rogue bullet or two went astray.

Before I was even old enough to qualify as a teenager, I was obsessed with the works of Akira Toriyama. Dragon Ball, Dragon Quest, Dr Slump, Chrono Trigger - everything Toriyama-related I could get my hands on blew my 13-year-old mind.

A mysterious tease from Returnal developer Housemarque Studios has promised an imminent announcement from the studio behind the hugely-popular PlayStation and PC roguelike.

A new massively-multiplayer online RPG set in the world of Game of Thrones is reportedly being worked on by Korean publisher Nexon.

The Tekken 8 team has revealed its roadmap for season one, with a range of battle adjustments, a free photo mode and its second DLC character all on the horizon.

Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler has compared its new game No Rest for the Wicked to Lord of the Rings, stating there's plenty to come after the game's 1.0 release - so don't expect a third Ori game "any time soon".

Discord has taken action after a report earlier this month detailed a web of accounts that were tracking users and archiving messages on a massive scale.

Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate has released a second statement after it u-turned on a decision to lock an "exclusive" PvE mode to its €300 Unheard Edition following player feedback, saying it is "very sorry that fans and the game community in general are experiencing these feelings".

I didn't realise this while I was recording the video, but this week's VR Corner subject, ConVRgence was made by the same developer as another game that I previously featured in my Corner, Paradox of Hope.

Manor Lords developer Greg Styczeń wants your help deciding what he should do about the game's global market supply mechanic.

Paramount's Knuckle show – which only debuted on Paramount's streaming service, Paramount Plus, earlier this week – will also be available to buy physically.

Few games have left such an immediate impression on me as The Collage Atlas. Here are anchors dropping from a white sky, razor-thin keys opening butterfly locks, and books swarming in the wakes of ships as if they were murmurations of starlings. Brought to life with a hand-drawn pen-and-ink aesthetic, the game's calm spaces and wealth of illustrative detail work together to encourage self-reflection. Having immersed myself in the game over the last few weeks, I wanted to know more. That's why I find myself talking to its solo developer, John Evelyn. He's the man who built this game and literally drew it into life.

Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone has pushed out another update for Stardew Valley.

Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate has u-turned on a decision to lock an "exclusive" PvE mode to its €300 Unheard Edition following player feedback, but insists it is not reneging on its promise to give End of Darkness edition owners "all subsequent DLCs" because "PvE gamemode is not DLC".

Bloober Team has two unannounced projects in the works: "Project C", a brand-new IP being developed in partnership with Take-Two Interactive, and "Project R", a 2025 release based on a Skybound Entertainment IP, the entertainment company owned by The Walking Dead creator, Robert Kirkman.

Path tracing? In Dragon's Dogma 2? The game shipped with ray-traced global illumination but a path tracer sits within Capcom's code - exposed thanks to a new mod for the PC version of the game. Graphics Suite Alpha, made by developer EXXXCellent, is available on Nexus Mods and includes path-traced lighting, shadows and reflections, all running in real-time. So, how does it look, how well does it run - and why exactly is it there in the first place?

WWE 2K24 has unbanned modder WhatsTheStatus following complaints from its community.

Bloober Team says it is "very confident" and "excited" about Silent Hill 2 Remake.

Aspyr has confirmed it has restored posters that were "inadvertently" removed from Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered in its last patch.

This week, everyone's been talking about early access releases again. Why? The headline moment was No Rest for the Wicked developer Moon Studios defending a bumpy early access release by saying, "It's already pretty clear that going with EA is one of the best decisions we could've made." And then unexpectedly it added: Dark Souls 1 could have been better had it had an early access release too - an odd addendum and I'm not sure I agree with it, but OK. The other thing this week was mega-Wishlisted game Manor Lords arriving in early access in, again, an unfinished state. Neither of these things is remarkable. We know how early access releases go by now - we've had them for the past 10 years (god is it really that long?). We know games aren't finished when they arrive, though there's still a part of us that sees a game being sold for full-price-like money and expects a full-price-like experience from it. So around Manor Lords and No Rest for the Wicked, a familiar discussion has resurfaced, of when are - and when aren't - early access releases a good thing?

It mightn't be a huge surprise to hear - given we're talking about one of Steam's most wishlisted games in recent times - but solo developer Slavic Magic's Manor Lords is off to a flying start; the medieval city builder/strategy hybrid is currently Steam's best-selling title and its fourth most played game just hours after launch, with over 156K concurrent players at the time of writing.

Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate has drawn fan ire after unveiling a €250 (€300 after tax) special edition that, alongside special advantages some are calling pay-to-win, contains an exclusive co-op PvE mode that won't be made available to those that bought a previous edition promising access to "all subsequent DLCs".