Latest Articles (Page 971)

You'll spend much of Outlast 2 navigating by the glare of a full moon, whose light gradually shifts, in what could be a nod to Bloodborne, from chilly blue through malevolent orange to a ghastly, climatic red. The quintessential feminine symbol, it's by turns an apt and awkward thematic device for a story that is saturated with casual misogyny, in which women exist largely to be bagged, brutalised and served up as bait to yet another of gaming's dopey white knights. The new Outlast has its moments as a horror game, thanks to some neat perception dynamics, but it's exceptionally short on subtlety or charm.

It's fair to say the reaction to Fallout 76, which is due out next week, has not been universally positive. With the move to a primarily online mode for the post-apocalyptic series still causing upset among fans, it's easy to forget there's a precedent here, from way back when publisher Interplay held the Fallout reins. Bethesda will no doubt be hoping the Fallout 76 story ends a little better than that of Fallout: Brotherhood Of Steel, a tale that begins not with Fallout, but another famous RPG series from the late 90s.

Well, that was something! Microsoft carried its powerful march towards the new generation with a good showing at XO18, with news of new studio acquisitions while it shored up the already impressive Game Pass for Xbox and plenty more besides. Here's everything as it happened.

The rumours were true: Microsoft Studios is buying Obsidian Entertainment. It's also, in an unexpected twist, buying inXile Entertainment.

Microsoft will bolster its Xbox Game Pass line-up with PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, which will join the subscription service this Monday, 12th November.

Playground Games has announced that the first of Forza Horizon 4's two expansions is called Fortune Island and will be released on 13th December.

Microsoft will roll out Xbox One keyboard and mouse support next week, and world-dominating battle royale game Fortnite will be among the first to include it.

Capcom has unveiled Devil May Cry 5's training mode, dubbed The Void.

Rare has announced that its multiplayer pirate extravaganza, Sea of Thieves, will be getting a "fast-paced" standalone PvP mode called The Arena, and it's due to arrive early next year on PC and Xbox One.

Final Fantasy 13 - the game apparently so good there's three of them - will soon be backwards compatible on Xbox One.

After multiple delays Crackdown 3 has a firm release date of 15th February 2019 - and a new trailer that shows off destruction in multiplayer.

The physical edition of Hollow Knight has been cancelled.

Fallout 76 recently saw its final beta session, and players managed to set off a nuke just before it ended. But to get to that point is a surprisingly tricky process that involves hunting for codes, finding a keycard and decrypting letters and numbers.

PlayStation users in Chicago will soon have to pay a nine per cent "cloud tax".

Nuketown arrives on the PlayStation 4 version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 next week.

Source code sleuth Lance McDonald has once again been poking around the innards of From Software's PlayStation 4 masterpiece Bloodborne, and this time he's uncovered an absolute blinder: a gargantuan Snake Ball boss that didn't make it into the final game.

Nintendo will suspend all video streaming services on the Wii from 30th January 2019.

The next major Overwatch patch will force a full reinstallation of the game, Blizzard has warned.

Ron Gilbert. We all know the name. Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion. Most recently, Thimbleweed Park. But, did you know that in the late 90s he made nearly 50 experimental Edutainment games in the SCUMM engine?

Dark Souls sleuth Lance McDonald has released a new entry in his fascinating video series unlocking the secrets of From Software's games, this time offering a glimpse at Dark Souls 3's sadly axed "Ceremonies" system.

Strategy guide maker Prima Games is to close its doors next spring, after 28 years of operation.

34BigThings, the developer behind 2016's excellent anti-grav racer Redout, is hard a work on a new intergalactic shooter spin-off set in the Redout universe. It's called Redout: Space Assault and there's a first proper look at its dogfighting action in a new gameplay video.

Australian developer Ballistic Interactive's promising supernatural investigation RPG HellSign is now available on Steam Early Access, and it's expected to remain there, being appropriately spooky, for the next 12 months.

We're fast approaching remembrance day on the 11th of November - but this year, the commemorative events will be of particular significance. 2018 marks 100 years since the end of the First World War, and to honour the centenary, Aardman (along with DigixArt) has done something a little unusual.

The Lord of the Rings Online has hopped on the World of Warcraft Classic bandwagon and launched its own legacy - Legendary, as it's called - service.

The developer Iron Galaxy Studios is fast carving out a niche for itself as a specialist in porting modern classics to the Nintendo Switch. Last year it partnered with Bethesda on the excellent Switch version of Skyrim, and this year it has joined forces with Blizzard to bring Diablo 3 to Nintendo's hybrid system. This is the first time a Blizzard game has graced a Nintendo platform in 15 years - since the Californian studio brought its classic games Rock n' Roll Racing and Blackthorne to Game Boy Advance, and before that improbably put StarCraft on Nintendo 64 - so there's quite a lot resting on Iron Galaxy's work.

Whenever World of Warcraft Horde warchief Sylvanas Windrunner was mentioned at BlizzCon 2018, division swept the room. Some people booed, some people cheered. Sylvanas is on a genocidal rampage, you see, and it's caused a schism in the Horde. Some people follow her - and will to the ends of the, um, Azeroth - while others openly rebel under the hashtag Not My Warchief.

Video games have a funny way of identifying different scales of productions. You've got triple-A and double-A, and now there's even some unsightly speak of 'triple-I', indie games with lavish production values of their own. Sometimes, you've just got to keep it simple though, as is the case with Steel Rats. This is an unabashed B movie of a game, a William Castle schlockathon of disparate parts that developer Tate Multimedia can't always get to hang together. But good lord is it fun to see them try.

Oooft, those arms. Since Ubisoft unveiled her I'm certain there's been many men and women dreaming of those incredible, muscular arms. I am of course talking about Assassin's Creed Odyssey's female protagonist Kassandra. A mercenary in Ancient Greece, both she and her brother Alexios are in peak physical condition, each of them a lean, mean, killing machine. Yet it's Kassandra's body that fascinates me. And not just because I'd love to be wrapped in those big, strong...well. Ahem.

Last night - well, early this morning - the unlikeliest gaming squad played Fallout 76. Ninja, of Fortnite fame, American rapper Logic, and Rick and Morty - yes, the fictional characters from animated show Rick and Morty - played Bethesda's upcoming multiplayer post-apocalyptic game to a peak of around 32,000 viewers on Twitch. And it went, well, I wouldn't use the word well. Rather, it just sort of went.