Latest Articles (Page 923)

I am hopelessly in love with Orik. SteamWorld Quest has heroes instead of classes - a handful of lovable clanking misfits, each of whom bring their own decks and their own focus to the turn-based card battling that makes up the campaign. They're all brilliant. One of them hammers with massive fists and heals with boundless love. Another inflicts shrapnel wounds by literally pelting foes with money. Then there's Orik. Orik the elegant mystery man with the masks. He stands tall and straight, always, seemingly, attentive and yet easy - if that combination is possible. When he strikes, his rapier shifts from stance to stance, slicing baddies to courtly ribbons. The masks change as the moves change, each with its own bonus which lasts to the end of a turn. His deck takes a while to understand, but it is wonderfully brisk and wounding when you get your head around it. The word for Orik is decisive. His sense of poise gives me poise. He is never out of my line-up.

BioWare has delayed a raft of additions to Anthem - including its much-hyped Cataclysm, the game's first four-person raid-like activity.

A new Bloomberg report has pegged the launch of Nintendo's upcoming, unannounced cheaper Switch model for release "by the end of June".

It's a huge claim, but one that could actually be true. Frontier's working on another entry for the Planet franchise, and this time it's ditching coasters for critters. The developer seems determined to make this an authentic zoo management game with an unprecedented level of detail. So much, in fact, Frontier believes it's creating "the most authentic, most realistic animals in any game".

Modern marketing techniques require hype for big budget games well before their official reveal - and so here's a group of American footballers who say they've played the still-unannounced Call of Duty 2019 at a private event (thanks, AGB).

Epic Games has come under fire in a damning new report claiming that its Fortnite teams face regular 70-hours-and-above working weeks in order to meet the phenomenally popular game's gruelling, ongoing update schedule.

"Imitations they may be, but together, they make a fine spectacle..."

If you've been hankering for some Puyo Puyo action unsullied by Tetris (not that the two aren't a great match), then your dreams have finally been answered: Sega has announced that it will be launching Puyo Puyo Champions on Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC on 7th May.

Big things are happening in Sea of Thieves next week, as Rare's massive, game-changing (and free) Anniversary Update finally sets sail on 30th April. And you can take a look at one of its most significant additions - the brand-new Tall Tales story campaign - in a newly revealed trailer.

Developer Vblank Entertainment has announced that Shakedown: Hawaii, its long-awaited Retro City Rampage follow-up, will be coming to Switch, PlayStation 4, Vita, and PC on 7th May.

An often-repeated tip for life is to own your mistakes - something Walmart Canada is taking quite literally, as the retailer is offering the "limited E3 2018 leaked Rage 2 sleeve" as a pre-order exclusive.

Square Enix is having another crack at holding an E3 show.

As anyone following the weird and wacky world of video game regulation will know, the games industry hasn't been having the best year in China. After temporarily freezing game approvals and blaming games for causing eyesight problems, the Chinese government chose to restrict playtime for kids, even using police databases to enforce the rules.

Kingdom Hearts 3 will get its new, tougher Critical Mode later today via a free update.

Last week, after seven years of work, Nintendo fan ZeroPaige finally released a working port of Super Mario Bros. for the Commodore 64.

Fortnite's puzzling rune event is proving tough for fans to figure out - although, last night, there appeared to have been a breakthrough.

Update 23rd April 2019: Dragon's Dogma is out now on Nintendo Switch, so we're repromoting Sam's excellent piece on how the cult RPG's character creator changes the game.

My copy of Drop7 - if you can call the file on a smartphone a copy - is having a Groundhog Day moment. Every time I load it up I join an ancient game part-way through. Level 3 on classic mode, 17,003 on the board and a 2 hovering above the playing field ready for me to land. I got you babe. It's weird. I can't remember starting this game, and I never play Classic anyway because I prefer the immediacy of Blitz - although people who know better than I do tell me that Classic is actually more of a challenge. Anyway, every time I open it up it's the same story: Level 3, 17,003, where do you want to put this 2?

Arguing about the best Final Fantasy is a risky, often fiery business - they're a nebulous group of games, each offshoot and strand having devotees and detractors in equal number - so let's argue about something a bit more straightforward instead. Where can you find the best cuisine in the world? There's only one real answer: Malaysia. It's not even up for debate.

Like 80 Days, Inkle's previous game, Heaven's Vault is a piece of interactive storytelling that drops you into a dense mesh of narrative choices. The whole thing's as intricate and inter-connected, perhaps, as one of the tiled abstract patterns that decorate the walls and doorways of the game's Middle-Eastern and North-African-inspired environments. What a place! There are big decisions to be made here, but, most thrillingly, throughout the course of the adventure I found myself surrounded by the constant fluttering of smaller choices - how much to reveal to an ally, how to respond to my companion's latest micro-aggression, and whether, even, to interpret it as an aggression at all. Somehow, all these hubs and spokes come together in a busy kind of snugness. As a player I felt both autonomous and well-cared for. I could play the game as I saw fit in any moment, but whatever I did, the overall story refused to become an ugly, artless blob formed by my actions.

Yeah, so that isn't quite how that hashtag usually goes. You know the one I mean, I'm sure - the one that's the very first to pop up in response to anything Konami-related in recent years, as the company that built its name on superstar series such as Metal Gear, Castlevania and Silent Hill slowly - and, in some cases, messily - turned away from traditional big budget console development. It's not as if Konami's bottom line has been hurt by this all, but its reputation has perhaps been irreparably damaged.

The first reveal - of sorts - for PlayStation 5 has been and gone, with Sony confirming specs including an octo-core Zen 2 CPU, custom Navi graphics, hardware-accelerated 3D audio, solid state storage and PS4 backwards compatibility. Specifics such as CPU/GPU frequencies and memory allocation remain unknown, but some unlikely - if not downright unbelievable - detective work may have helped to fill in the blanks. This is a story I've been following with interest for three months now with varying degrees of scepticism, but the evidence is starting to look compelling. Bizarrely, it seems that a next-generation gaming processor is being tested on PC benchmarking tool 3DMark - and there's a reasonable possibility that it's PlayStation 5 silicon.

Spider-Man has plenty of Easter eggs. Some revolve around other Marvel characters, such as Daredevil and Iron Fist. Others are nods to characters from the comics you wouldn't immediately think of. You'd think, given the tremendous popularity of Insomniac's fun-filled PlayStation 4 exclusive, that no stone was left unturned over half-a-year after the game came out.

The high-profile Fortnite World Cup got underway last weekend - and already Epic has banned thousands of participants for cheating.

As expected, Nintendo is moving to delete what it deems inappropriate user-generated Super Smash Bros. Ultimate levels after the stage creator feature went live earlier this week.

Assassin's Creed Unity is currently getting the review-bomb treatment on Steam - but this time it's a little different.

15 minutes of PlayStation 4-exclusive Days Gone gameplay has hit the internet.

Mortal Kombat 11's street date was shattered this week - and now publisher Warner Bros. is desperately trying to plug leaks.

Hello! Welcome to the third instalment of our new semi-regular series in which we'll be looking at world-building, the art of creating interesting settings, and, where possible, talking to the people who do this stuff for a living.

Giles Goddard, alumni of 90s Nintendo, one of the first western employees within the company's Japanese dev team and a key figure behind the original 1080° Snowboarding, has begun work on a spiritual successor. And it sounds pretty amazing.