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And returning characters confirmed. Developer Infinity Ward's next instalment in the long-running Call of Duty series, which was previously confirmed to be near-future sequel Modern Warfare 2 (not to be confused with the 2009 game of the same name), will launch on 28th October. Platforms have yet to be detailed. Activision Blizzard formally revealed Modern Warfare 2 and its logo in April - after months of rumours and even an official pre-announcement announcement in February. Following today's release date confirmation, specifics remain extremely light, but the gameplay-free trailer accompanying Activision Blizzard's announcement does include a description revealing a smidgeon more of what's in store. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Artwork Reveal. "Task Force 141 makes its massive return with a global squad of iconic veterans," it says. "These Operators include Captain John Price, Simon 'Ghost' Riley, John 'Soap' MacTavish, Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick and introducing Mexican Special Forces Colonel Alejandro Vargas." Luckily, leaks last month had a little more to say, suggesting that, alongside a single-player campaign and multiplayer mode, Modern Warfare 2 would also introduce a new "third mode", known as DMZ, reported to be an extraction-style mode similar to Escape From Tarkov. Additionally, serial leaker Tom Henderson claimed a number of fan-favourite maps from the original Modern Warfare 2 would return, including Highrise, Quarry, Terminal, and Afghan. Alongside the October launch of Modern Warfare 2 - which Activision Blizzard will be hoping helps boost flagging Call of Duty sales - a follow-up to battle royale spin-off Warzone, promising "groundbreaking innovations", is also due to be revealed later this year. Today's announcement comes as Activision Blizzard - which was acquired by Microsoft for $69bn in January - continues its attempts to put the last year of shocking allegations into its workplace culture behind it. Following a State of California lawsuit filing last July, which described the publisher as a "breeding ground for harassment and discrimination
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Destiny 2: Season of the Haunted is here, and with it comes a massive list of changes in the form of patch notes. Season 17 is going to be a big one for Destiny. Not only are Guardians getting another subclass rework with Solar 3.0, but old events like Iron Banner and Solstice of Heroes are seeing reworks as well. Then, of course, there’s the new content like all the new Season of the Haunted’s activities and the upcoming dungeon. Let’s break down the six major additions coming in Destiny 2: Season of the Haunted. For the complete Bungie patch notes, scroll down. Season of the Haunted Season of the Haunted is focused around the Nightmares of the past, The Leviathan ship, and the former Cabal emperor, Calus. Guardians will re-board The Leviathan and work alongside the Crown of Sorrow to stop Calus’ mysterious plot. There’s a new public event called Nightmare Containment, set aboard the returning space ship. There are also new missions called Sever, which take place deep in
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poly-lt-wire-logo Jorts (and Jean) in space! By May 24, 2022, 12:00pm EDT Image: Blackbird Interactive/Focus Entertainment Every morning, I wake up in my company-provided bed on the LYNX company space station, and I get a reminder that I owe the company $1.25 billion. This is the debt I incurred just for the privilege of having this job. With interest and fees, it averages out to $500k per day. Welcome to the 23rd-century workforce! So I suit up and set to work breaking apart spaceships with my future versions of a blowtorch and grappling hook. Scrap goes in the Furnace, composites go in the Processor, and electronics go on the Barge. I pick a ship and begin cutting off parts at conveniently labeled anchor points before guiding them to their destination. An automated voice chides me when I send something down the wrong chute and I watch the projected value of my work diminish. When I do everything right, I watch the value of my scrap accumulate. My goal is to make enough to break even for the day. If I can avoid penalties and rack up enough profit, I might even start paying down my monstrous debt. Image: Blackbird Interactive/Focus Entertainment via Polygon I’m happy as a productive member of the LYNX corporate family, generating value and efficiently meeting production goals. As I dutifully hack another chunk off the spaceship, I think back to the company-approved posters in my bunk, and I’m satisfied with performing a hard day’s work. And then I smack myself directly in the face with a chunk of ship. While I watch the oxygen leak out of my helmet through the newly formed crack, a warning reminds me that asphyxiation might prevent me from meeting my production goals. I jet back to the company vending machine to buy some more oxygen and a spacesuit patch kit — the cost gets added to my running tab. The next morning, I’m billed for the clone body the company gave me. Image: Blackbird Interactive/Focus Entertainment For a (presumably) straightforward physics-based sandbox game like Hardspace: Shipbreaker, that’s the extent of the corporate satire I expect. It’s a funny commentary and makes for an enjoyable experience, even if it’s not particularly unique. Shipbreaker is a meditative game when I’m not actively asphyxiating. I float around in space, untethered by gravity or concepts like up and down. I have to constantly reorient myself to get the best angle on a particular cut as I drift. Each ship presents me with a puzzle to solve — I have to figure out the safest (well, safest-ish) way to crack each one open to get at the more valuable parts inside. Each shift becomes more complicated (and more satisfying) as new hazards like explosive decompression or radiation rear their heads. And all the while I get funny reminders that my corporate overlords see me as extremely expendable. I honestly expected Shipbreaker to stop there, content with being a quiet and contemplative sandbox sim with a general anti-capitalist message. But then I get a call on my radio from a co-worker who asks me if I’ve ever heard of something called a “union” — a way workers used to be able to band together and fight for better hours, safer conditions, and better pay — and Shipbreaker becomes something more. Image: Blackbird Interactive/Focus Entertainment via Polygon Before my next shift, I receive an email reminding me how bad unions are, and corporate sends in a productivity czar to keep an eye on us. It’s not quite union busting, but it’s awfully close. The larger world of Shipbreaker plays out in the background, through brief radio conversations and emails. I get to know my co-workers and their struggles while we chat on the radio — at least, that is, until the corporate overseer shuts those unauthorized communications down. I get history lessons and corporate propaganda in between union organizing emails. I learn about conditions on Earth, where ever-worsening economic and environmental conditions toxify the planet, while at the same time reading about how wonderful it is that the LYNX corporation is basically an autonomous, quasi-governmental force. Yes, Hardspace: Shipbreaker is sci-fi, but its setting isn’t the far-off utopian future that the wandering space socialists of Star Trek promised. This is just today’s reality extrapolated into tomorrow. Every time I have to pay for the upkeep of my shipbreaking tools (which also adds to my debt), I think of the recent episode of Last Week Tonight about the trucking industry. Paying to do my space-job isn’t a made-up mechanic to gamify shipbreaking — it’s a reality for millions of people. Each email from the secretly organizing union would make Jorts (and Jean) proud. Jorts may have started out as just a cat whose trash bin mishaps made him a minor internet celebrity in late 2021, but he has since turned his influence into a force for labor movements and organization in the U.S. (with Jean’s help). Image: Blackbird Interactive/Focus Entertainment Each major story development happens as I get promoted. Before long, I’m getting pretty good at my job. I’m making progress — I’ve whittled my debt all the way down to $1.15 billion. But, at the same time, management is pushing me into more and more dangerous situations in the name of productivity and profit. They’re also forcing my co-workers to do yoga (via remote control of their suits), unceremoniously firing them, or just making them quietly disappear. It’s a strange pull in two directions — as I improve, I’m bettering myself and getting out of debt. But I’m also better at making money for the company. I’m getting messages from the company rep that, if I keep this up, I could move into management and leave all this blue-collar laboring behind (after I pay off the supervisor training fees, obviously). I’ve even got my own clandestine spaceship that I’m slowly repairing. It’s an option for escape, but it’s also somewhat hollow. Once the ship is repaired, I’ll be “free” to start my own spaceship salvaging company — it’ll be the same dangerous work, but at least I’ll be my own boss. Solidarity forever. Image: Blackbird Interactive/Focus Entertainment via Polygon And in the background, I’m getting emails from the union as they fight behind the scenes, reminding me that there could be a better way. At the time of writing, 75 Starbucks stores have voted to unionize. Chris Smalls currently is the president of the first Amazon Labor Union. (Full disclosure: As I’m writing this, our own union is in contract negotiations with management.) It almost makes you think this bonkers, futuristic, sci-fi fantasy of labor unions might just be a good thing. Haprdspace: Shipbreaker will be released out of early access on May 24 on Windows PC. These impressions were written based on playing on Windows using a pre-release download code provided by Focus Entertainment. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional
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Where to find Control Panels inside Command Cavern. Cut power to Control Panels inside Command Cavern is one of the Resistance challenges in Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 2. You will first need to patch The Imagined into a loudspeaker and collect Doomsday Control Keys before unlocking this Week 10 challenge. Completing this challenge will reward you with 23k XP, which will help you unlock skins from the new battle pass. Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 2 Resistance Story Trailer Control Panel locations in Fortnite Before you start searching for Control Panels, you must first establish a Device Uplink outside Command Cavern. Device Uplink locations near Command Cavern. Once you have established the Device Uplink, it's time to cut power to Control Panels inside Command Cavern. Even though the Control Panels appear as icons on your minimap when you get near them, you might be finding it difficult to actually spot one. This is because the three Control Panels in Command Cavern are located inside vents. You can find the first Control Panel by climbing the first set of stairs near the southern entrance to Command Cavern and turning right. Go into the vent located in the corner of this room, near some lockers, and through the next vent opening opposite it. To cut the Control Panel, just damage it with your pickaxe or gun. The first Control Panel is up the stairs by the southern entrance to Command Cavern. The second Control Panel can be found through a vent located near water, to the west of the southern entrance to Command Cavern. Look out for the vent near some yellow cannisters by the water, then climb through it and search for the vent door with boxes behind it. Go through and hit the Control Panel on the wall to cut its power. The second Control Panel is close to the water by the southern entrance to Command Cavern. Chapter 3 Season 2 has arrived! New additions include the Prowler skin, along with the return of jetpacks and Choppas. As we enter Season 2's final month, it's a good idea to know how to get XP fast in Fortnite. You can also complete Resistance
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Activision and developer Infinity Ward gave Call of Duty fans a tiny tease of this year’s game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, in a new video that reveals the game’s release date. According to a new teaser video that shows off artwork of the game’s principal cast, including Modern Warfare favorite Simon “Ghost” Riley, Modern Warfare 2 will be released on Oct. 28. That teaser also reveals a potential reveal date for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: June 8, a couple days before Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest kicks off. Otherwise, the teaser is a drone-captured look at real-worl
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Solar 3.0 is coming to Destiny 2: Season of the Haunted. Guardians will be able to take up new, flaming abilities against their enemies in the game’s second revamped Light subclass. In anticipation of the new season, Bungie released a short developer video discussing some of the new changes. Overall, Solar is moving away from the damage reduction it used to have — Overshields being a Void 3.0 thing — and instead focusing on the dual dichotomy of the sun: healing and burning. For example, all classes have access to healing grenades in Solar 3.0, spreading the healing identity to more t
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poly-lt-wire-logo Image: Marvel Studios Christian Bale plays the iconic alien who wants to kill every god By May 24, 2022, 12:10pm EDT Monday’s new trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder gave us our first good look at the movie’s villain, Gorr the God Butcher, as a heavily made-up Christian Bale ominously intoned: “All gods will die.” Movie viewers are likely more familiar with Bale than with the character he’s playing, and that’s entirely reasonable. Compared to Thor mainstays like Loki, Malekith the Accursed, Surtur, etc., Gorr is a relative stripling, first appearing in comics a mere ten years ago. He’s only really had two stories about him. But it’s the sheer quality of those stories that’s remarkable, from the minds of writer Jason Aaron and artist Esad Ribić, that catapulted him to the ranks of the greatest Thor villains ever put on the page. Here’s the most important thing to know about Gorr: He wants to kill every god who has ever existed. Image: Jason Aaron, Esad Ribić/Marvel Comics Who is Gorr, and why is he called the God Butcher? A the dawn of all cosmic time, Gorr was an unremarkable alien from a planet so unremarkable that it had no name. His home was inhospitable to life, plagued by drought, famine, earthquakes, and wild beasts. Still, his people believed their gods were watching over them, listening to their prayers, and that misfortune was ineffable divine will. Gorr questioned those ways, and — after the slow, individual deaths of his wife and all of his children — cursed his people’s gods, for which he was banished from his tribe of starving nomads to wander alone until he died. He was then present for a divine visitation — two gods, locked in battle, slammed meteor-like from the heavens into the desert, exhausted from their combat and succumbing to their wounds. As Gorr approached, seeing wit
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It’s a Vlad, Vlad situation Vampiric survival sandbox V Rising has, according to Steam’s player counts, entranced itself quite a following. That includes RPS’ own Ed, whose otherwise glowing preview mentioned some performance issues on Nvidia GPUs. I’m duty-bound to investigate any potential hardware hitches, though since V Rising is only in early access, this isn’t going to be the usual appraisal of how it performs on various PC hardware. That can wait until it’s had more of the spit ‘n’ polish treatment that typically comes with the status of actually being finished. That said, I have done a full sweep of V Rising’s graphics settings and their performance impact, so if your FPS count is melting like a Nosferatu on an ill-considered Corfu holiday, have a look below to see if you can make some fruitful tweaks. First up, the stuttering that Ed - and, I’m told, several of his vampire mates - experienced on Nvidia hardware. Indeed, testing on a 6GB GTX 1060 (not quite one of the best graphics cards in 2020, but above minimum spec), it was mere minutes into a new playthrough that I met these momentary FPS drops myself. As it turns out, these aren’t specific to GeForce graphics cards either. Guides ed Ollie has apparently been fine on his AMD Radeon card, but when I swapped the GTX 1060 for a Radeon RX 6500 XT, the stutters became both more frequent and more noticeable. This was pumping out higher average frame rates than the GTX 1060 as well, so faster GPUs don't necessarily provide cushions for big drops. After a few hours of looking, I’m sad to report that I can find neither a consistent, predicatble cause for V Rising’s FPS stutters, nor a surefire fix. Their appearance is, to the eyes of the beholder, random – meaning you might get none at all, or you might get several in a minute like I did on the RX 6500 XT. Them’s the risks with early access games; at least there’s no better time to bring the issue to the attention of developers Stunlock Studios. V Rising: best settings for early access In any event, it won’t hurt to give your non-stuttered FPS a boost, which brings us to V Rising's graphics settings. One oddity here is that all three of the presets – High, Medium, and Low – include some level of AMD’s FSR 1.0 upscaling tech. One: wot, no FSR 2.0? Two: this can trip you up if you use the presets alone, as Medium and Low both activate FSR quality settings that make it visibly lower-res than your monitor’s native resolution. And even High makes Ultra Quality FSR the default, so you’ll need to scroll down and manually turn off FSR if you want to run at native. With all that in mind, my GTX 1060 averaged 57fps at 1080p / Ultra, while installed in a system with a relatively high-spec Intel Core i5-12600K and 16GB of DDR5 RAM. This setup also produced 70fps on Medium and 86fps at Low, and while these speed improvements are largely fuelled by FSR quality reductions, there are a fair few individual settings you can change to get V Rising running, building, and exsanguinating a tad more smooth
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Revised maps, fresh content and plenty more besides. Battlefield is as famous for its troubled launches as it is its sandbox multiplayer, but even by its own standards 2042 has been something of a disaster - lumpy, incomplete and with some less than popular decisions along the way such as the expansive maps designed to accommodate the newly expanded 128 player count and the introduction of specialists. DICE at least does have some previous in turning around a shaky ship - Battlefield 4 went from a disastrous launch to become one of the most celebrated in the series - and is making the right noises ahead of the belated launch of Battlefield 2042's first season next month. While we're not yet privy to the full reveal, a discussion between creative director Lars Gustavsson, senior producer Ryan McArthur and community manager Freeman outlined the studio's commitment to Battlefield 2042 - interesting itself in light of comments made by EA boss Andrew Wilson to investors earlier this month that suggested development on the series is being rethought - as well as what changes to expect. Perhaps the biggest - and the least surprising - is the deprioritisation of Hazard Zone, the Escape from Tarkov inspired mode that was one of the cornerstones of Battlefield 2042 upon its release but one that's failed to draw an audience. "We had high hopes, we set out on a path but we haven't gained the traction" said Gustavsson as he reiterated that the mode will still exist within the game but will no longer be a focus for the studio. More positive steps include the revamping of existing maps, with the likes of Kaleidoscope and Renewal being given more cover and flanking positions as terrain is raised and new forward operating bases are inserted that make use of assets that can be destroyed, while attention has been placed on bringing capture points closer and breaking line of sight on maps which are at present punishingly open. A new map will also be introduced alongside the first season, though we won't get to see it in action until closer to the launch of the first season. As previously disclosed, the Breakthrough mode is moving from supporting 128 players to 64 players, while there was also mention of some weapons making it across from the Portal mode that supports legacy maps and modes to the All-Out Warfare mode where Battlefield 2042's more modern maps reside. Finally there was vague talk of specialists being addressed though the team isn't ready to share specific details just yet. "We're not walking away from specialists," said McArthur, "but we need to make sure we get it right." Beyond that, expect plenty more Battlefield 2042 in the future - it seems EA and DICE aren't turning their backs on it just yet - with four seasons planned which will bring more features, four new specialists and, of course, four new battle passes. Is it enough to turn around what's been a very troubled ship? I've returned to 2042 in recent weeks and have been pleasantly surprised by the progress made, but there's still clearly plenty of work to do - and it'll be fascinat
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Pokémon Go will soon get its first Ultra Beast, according to a tease from the game’s official accounts. Niantic and The Pokémon Company teased the impending arrival of Nihilego, the Parasite Pokémon, in Pokémon Go but did not provide specifics on when and how the first Ultra Beast will come to the mobile game. There are two important events coming up in Pokémon Go, however. The game’s current season of content, the Season of Alola, will conclude at the end of May, and Niantic is promising a bonus end-of-season Special Research story sometime after June 1, with a $4.99 ticket that will unlock bonus rewards. More details on that Alola to Alola event, which runs May 25 to June 1, ar
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Where you can show off your armour loadouts. This month's Assassin's Creed Valhalla update adds a fresh area to your Ravensthorpe settlement, tied into a neat new gameplay feature: gear loadouts. Constructing the new armory hut will let you show off up to five loadouts and easily swap between them via the game's main menu, so you can build gear for specific situations and shuffle amongst them on the fly. It's a handy feature which was also added post-launch to Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Valhalla's predecessor, and no doubt will also encourage a few people to go splash out further on some of this ga
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Suggests congestion is easing. The latest patch for Final Fantasy 14 has removed the automatic log out functio
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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild may be well over five years old now, but its community is still uncovering charming little details that have been tucked away by Nintendo. One such find has recently surfaced, and it involves the final memory Link uncovers towards the game's close. Those who have played through Breath of the Wild will know that Link slowly starts to regain his memories of the events before and during the Great Calamity as the game progresses (of course, this being Breath of the Wild, you could also blast through without collecting a single one of these memories if facing off against Ganon with the bare essentials is more your thing). Seven details worth noticing in Breath of the Wild. The final memory can only be discovered when players have collected the 12 others scattered across Hyrule and cannot be happened upon by accident (which incidentally is how I found most of them - my geographical recognition was pretty poor during my first playthrough). Impa will guide players towards the final memory by showing Link a picture of its location that she has up on the wall in her house in Kakariko Village. If players wish, they can take a picture of this picture on their Sheikah Slate, but of course they do not have to and could leave Impa's house there and then. But YouTuber Bigotilyou has discovered that, depending on if players have a picture on their slate or not, a slightly different cutscene will trigger when Link finds the final memory. If Link has taken a picture, the game will remember this, and Link will open up the slate as he recalls the memory. If he has not taken a picture, he will not bring out his slate, and as a result the cutscene will be shorter. It's a small difference, but one that further goes to show the attention to detail Nintendo implemented in the game. You can check out the video comparring the two cutscenes for yourself below. Breath of the Wild cutscene comparison by Bigotilyou. Earlier this year, we got the news that Breath of the Wild's sequel's release date had been bumped back to "spring 2023". Along with this announcement, we also got to see a
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Exact locations to clear this Resistance challenge quickly. Collect Doomsday Control Keys from high security IO locations is one of the Resistance challenges in Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 2. You will first need to patch The Imagined into a loudspeaker before unlocking this Week 10 challenge. Luckily, you don't need to find the Doomsday Control Keys in the same match, so don't worry if you get eliminated before collecting both. Completing this challenge will reward you with 23k XP, which will help you unlock skins from the new battle pass. Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 2 Resistance Story Trailer Where to find Doomsday Control Keys in Fortnite Before you start searching for Doomsday Control Keys, you must first establish a Device Uplink near The Collider or The Fortress. Establish a Device Uplink at either The Collider or The Fortress. It doesn't matter which location you establish the Device Uplink at, as both The Collider and The Fortress areas contain the Doomsday Control Keys you must find next. Once you have established the Device Uplink, it's time to collect Doomsday Control Keys. Doomsday Control Key map locations. Chapter 3 Season 2 has arrived! New additions include the
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. You won’t like him when He’s angry (Christ, that is) Just imagine for a moment what the world would’ve been like if Jesus, rather than forgiving us for our sins on the cross, had rolled out of the tomb with a proper nark on instead. That’s the basis of Polish author Jacek Piekara’s series of novels, now set to become third-person action adventure I, The Inquisitor, from developers The Dust. Somebody probably ought to consult the Archbishop of Canterbury for the PEGI rating, like. Watch the trailer below. Mordimer Madderdin is seeking an ancient evil in The Dusk's third-person action adventure I, Inquisitor. Set in the 16th century, I, The Inquisitor is described as “dark fantasy Renaissance” by the devs. You’ll play as Inquisitor Mordimer Madderdin (although who he’s madder than I’m not sure. Christ maybe?), and as you might expect from someone who inquires for a living, there’ll be detective elements to the game along with “grey moral choices” and some supernatural shenanigans. You can apparently be merciful in your dealings with other characters, but I can't imagine this world’s Church going for that. In any case, you’re sent off by the most metal Pope in existence to a town called Konigstein, where Mordimer will smack up the peasantry in the name of our Lord and try to stop an ‘ancient evil’. I’ll be the first to say this one sounds absolutely batshit – but I’m also kind of here for it? I don't think it’ll go down well with some people of faith but I’ve always been a sucker for alternate histories, and hoo boy does I, The Inquisitor sound like one of those. I honestly never thought I’d hear the words 'bloody’, ‘vengeful’ and ‘Christianity’ used together. I, The Inquisitor doesn’t have a release date as of yet, but it’s going to be out on PC via Steam as well as on the current-gen PlayStation and Xboxes.
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More chapters of the Hunter x Hunter manga may be coming in the near-ish future, potentially ending a years-long hiatus for the series. A Twitter account said to be run by Hunter x Hunter author Yoshihiro Togashi posted a small update on Tuesday: a photo of the corner of a manga page with a sentence that roughly translates to “4 more episodes for the time being.” The account is brand-new, so it is unverified, although the bio claims that it is, indeed, official, and that Togashi will be using it to update his progress. One Punch Man artist Yusuke Murata says that the account is Togashi, and Polygon has reached out to Viz Media, U.S. publisher of Hunter x Hunter, for confirmation. The most recent volume of Hunter x Hunter came out in 2018 in Japan. Due to frequent and severe health issues, Togashi has often taken hiatuses from his work. However, this most recent pause has been the longest yet. Togashi started Hunter x Hunter in 1998. The manga and the two anime series based on it take place in a world where licensed professionals called Hunters embark on fantastical adventures, such as finding dangerous monsters, tracking down criminals, or hunting treasure. The series follows a young boy named Gon, who takes the Hunter Exam in order to find his distant father, a legendary Hunter himself. Along the way, he meets Killua, the runaway heir of an assassin family; Kurapika, the last member of a murdered clan; and Leorio, a medical student. While Gon’s adventures have mostly finished up after the wild Chimera Ant arc, the most recent manga volumes pivoted to Kurapika. On a quest to avenge his fallen clan — and retrieve their stolen eyes — he joins a dangerous expedition to an unknown land, serving as the bodyguard to a baby princess. Leorio is also aboard the ship, serving on the Med Bay, but we don’t see much of him. In the meanwhile, the 2011 anime — which runs the majority of the manga, till this current arc — is available to stream on Crunchyroll and HBO Max.
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Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is seeing a surge in players, reportedly down to a meme. The Metal Gear Solid spin-off from Platinum Games was first released in 2013 on PS3 and Xbox 360 (with a PC release in 2014), but has recently seen a rise of 1000 percent in its average concurrent Steam players. That's been put down by some to the recent popularity of the Jetstream Sam meme, spotted by IGN. Eurogamer Newscast: Will we subscribe to PlayStation Plus Premium, and how does Xbox cope with the loss of Starfield this year? A year ago, the game had average concurrent players on Steam at around 122 players. But that's jumped significantly in the last couple of months, hitting 1213 players last month (according to SteamCharts
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Bel’Veth’s true power has finally been revealed. Riot Games revealed the newest League of Legends champion’s full kit on Tuesday, including her transformational Ultimate ability that reveals her more monstrous form. Most of Bel’Veth’s kit is centered around attack speed, including the fact that hers infinitely scales. Every time Bel’Veth kills an enemy champion or a large neutral monster, she will gain additional attack speed with no cap. Most of her abilities get shorter cooldowns the more attack speed she has, but she also gets to do a bit of additional true damage with more she attacks a single enemy champion. Of course, the real star of Bel’Veth’s kit is her Ultimate, which allows her to transform into her true form as a massive Void creature, shedding her human-sh
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The Imagined has something to say. Patch The Imagined into a loudspeaker is the first Resistance challenge for Week 10 in Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 2. Since the IO have built themselves something with obvious doomsday device vibes, it’s time for The Seven and their allies to fight back. (Again.) For this reason, you need to complete all of the Resistance challenges from the past week to unlock this challenge. Completing this challenge will reward you with 23k XP, which will help you unlock new skins and other rewards from this season’s Battle Pass. Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 2 Resistance Story Trailer Loudspeaker locations in Fortnite While this is quite a short Fortnite challenge, it involves visiting what, despite the name, can be quite a dangerous location - Sanctuary. Before you can start this Resistance challenge though, you need to establish a device uplink near Sanctuary. These locations are probably quite familiar to you now, because device uplinks around Sanctuary tend to be in the same location. Where you an esablish a device uplink near Sanctuary. Once you’ve made co
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I recently got a hands-off look at The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum, Daedalic's upcoming third-person stealth game which sees Mr Precious himself take centre stage. Flanked by devs and squidged between other journos, I saw two short demos, one right at the start of his adventure, and the other much further in. I saw him clamber around Mordor (I think; it was mountainous at the very least) and then stealth around an Elven king's abode. It was... fine. Yes, I saw an early build and things could change, but I left that booth feeling a bit underwhelmed, in all honesty. The earliest portions of the demo saw Gollum take part in a classic platforming tutorial. He jumped across large gaps, sprung onto ledges, shimmied, and dropped down. Vines helped him clamber up walls and acted as springboards for more parkour. While we couldn't get our mitts on the controllers, it seemed like Gollum handled well! And most importantly he moved like Gollum, in his wiry, scrabbly way. Later, Gollum has an internal battle with his alter-ego Smeagol: does he eat a beetle or let it go? The beetle is mercilessly consumed, much to Gollum's pleasure. This particular choice will likely not have a lot of impact on the game, other than maybe some shell in his stool. We were told that Beetle Gate acts as an introduction to Gollum's eternal tug-of-war with Smeagol, and that there will be more complex decisions later down the line with lasting story consequences. They wouldn't expand on this for obvious reasons, but did say that Gollum will make some friends along the way and that his decisions will affect them too. The game's locations do lo
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It’s going to be a Sméagol summer as The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, Daedalic Entertainment and Nacon’s stealth action-adventure game starring Gollum, finally has a release date. The new video game set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth is headed to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X on Sept. 1, Daedalic Entertainment and Nacon confirmed in a news release. A version for Nintendo Switch is planned for later this year. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was announced in 2019, and was originally expected in 2021. Daedalic Entertainment delayed the game to 2022, but had not communicated a firm release date before Tuesday’s news release. Gollum will be based on Tolkien’s books — not the Peter Jackson-directed film trilogy — and draws from Gollum’s behind-the-scenes experiences in The Fellowship of the Ring. The game will cover Gollum’s journey from the Misty Mountains to the dungeons of Barad-dûr to the realm of the Wood-elves in Mirkwood. As Gollum, players will sneak and climb through perilous situations in his search for his lost ring. They’ll also have to contend with Gollum’s other half, Sméagol, who can take over the decision-making process for Middle-earth’s famous hobbit-hater. In a news release, Daedalic says players will encounter “well-known characters from the books as well as a few new faces.” The Lord of the Rings: Gollum isn’t the only game set in Middle-earth due this summer. Electronic Arts announce
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Plus new screenshots and details revealed. Sneaky stealth game The Lord of the Rings: Gollum will release on 1st September for PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, developer Daedalic has announced. A Nintendo Switch launch will follow later this year, although there's no exact date for this as yet. "The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, based on the legendary The Lord of the Rings trilogy of books by JRR Tolkien, tells of Gollum's experiences from behind-the-scenes in the first chapters of The F
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. The trailer for ‘Season Of The Haunted’ had already leaked online Destiny 2’s seventeenth season starts today and will be the Season Of The Haunted, Bungie have revealed. This time around your Hunter, Warlock or Titan will get to become an ‘eater of fear’. Sounds tasty? “Where once we banished the nightmares,” the trailer says, “a new terror rouses them from their s
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Pokémon Go has teased the imminent arrival of Ultra Beasts - the powerful cluster of creatures that invaded Pokémon Sun and Moon via extra-terrestrial wormholes from another dimension. The below teaser shows Nihilego, a Rock/Poison-type which looks like a big space jellyfish. It's actually one of the more normal-looking Ultra Beasts, which were specifically designed to appear alien in the traditional Pokémon world. We also get a glimpse of a figure dressed in the uniform of the Ultra Recon Squad. Will these be new PVE e
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Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans are coming to Netflix. The Gray Man is a new international espionage thriller that just got its first trailer on Tuesday. Along with Gosling and Evans, The Gray Man will also star Ana De Armas, and is written and directed by Avengers: Endgame directors, The Russo Brothers. The Gray Man is set to release on Netflix on July 22. The Gray Man is based on a novel of the same name by Mark Greaney. The movie will also star Julia Butters (Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood), Jessica Henwick (The Matrix Resurrections), Regé-Jean Page (Bridgerton), and Billy Bob Thornton (Sling Blade). The Gray Man’s script is written by Joe Russo, Christopher Markus, and Stephen McFeely, the writing team that Russos worked with on both of their Avengers movies. While The Gray Man
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Image: Kyle Ferrin/Leder Games An interview with designer Cole Wehrle ahead of Leder Games’ next Kickstarter launch By May 24, 2022, 9:00am EDT Board game publisher Leder Games just won’t stop swinging for the fences. The company, founded in 2014, already has two critically acclaimed titles to its name; Root: A Game of Woodland Might and Right and Oath
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A first proper look at the DLC - and it's out soon! My daughter has a question about OlliOlli World. Simply put: in a game where you die and restart a lot, maybe ten, fifteen, twenty times a level, does it help if it's funny? Did the team at Roll7 make OlliOlli World funny on purpose, so we wouldn't all get furious? Thomas Hegarty, the co-CEO and co-director at Roll7 is surprisingly willing to field a question from an eight-year-old who didn't even make it onto today's Zoom call (she's busy Skyping with Bethesda). "So in my opinion," he pauses for a second. "It's not necessarily comedy so much as giving the player something, right? So in this case, we're giving them a laugh. But in other cases, y
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Welcome back to The Video Game City Week. Where else would we go for our city's rooftops? It has to be Jet Set Radio Future. The Skyscraper District The level I return to most often in Jet Set Radio Future - by now I've been returning for almost twenty years - is also the level that has never really made sense to me. As the name suggests, The Skyscraper District and Pharaoh Park is a level that covers two areas - a downtown hub of honey-coloured stone filled with pedestrians, and then...? Well, I'll get to that. Pharaoh Park is the bit that's never clicked. It's bright and somewhat tacky, a bunch of little pyramids and obelisks leading to a funny spinny building. Beneath it all is a sort of net, where you can skate
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Primo rewards for Mora fun. Genshin Impact codes can provide you with free Primogems, Mora, Hero’s Wit, Adventurer’s Experience, and more. There are some semi-permanent active codes in Genshin Impact, whereas others, like livestream codes, will only work for 24 hours before they expire. As there usually isn’t any warning before a working code expires, it’s best to know how to redeem codes in Genshin Impact and use all active codes as soon as possible. Be sure to check out our Genshin Impact 2.7 Banner details page to see who you can get for spending your free Primogems on. On this page: Genshin Impact codes May 2022 How to redeem codes in Genshin Impact Genshin Impact - Hidden Dr
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Someone may need to Apollo-gise. A new listing on the Xbox store has revealed the existence of a multiplayer "standalone DLC" for the Destroy All Humans! series known as Clone Carnage. The sales page reveals the game will have six new maps for players to frolic around in, as well as four new modes – Rampage, Armageddon, Race and Abduction (via ResetEra). Destroy All Humans! 2 Reprobed's gameplay trailer. Clone Carnage will seemingly support up to four-player multiplayer, or a local two-player multiplayer option with split screen gameplay. Additionally, it will support cross-gen play (at least on Xbox consoles) and have 4K Ultra HD. You can check out some screenshots below. Destroy All Humans! Clon
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Happy Volcano's raucous comedy driving game You Suck At Parking has come a long way since we last saw it in the autumn of 2020. When Imogen (RPS in peace) last sucked at stopping her colourful cartoon car in its devilishly placed parking spots, she did so alone in an alpha demo for its single player campaign mode. Last week, however, James, Liam and myself went hands on with an exclusive build of its new 8-strong multiplayer mode, accompanied by five members of Happy Volcano's development team to test it out - and let me tell you, if the battle modes of recent Mario Karts have left you feeling increasingly cold over the years, this is looking to be just the thing to grease those competitive wheels again. Parking is hard e
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Take-Two has now completed its eye-catching $12.7bn purchase of Zynga, the mobile and social games maker behind hits such as Farmville, CSR Racing and Words with Friends. The deal was first announced back in January, when it was briefly the most expensive video games acquisition of all time - until Microsoft's proposed $68.7bn buyout of Activision Blizzard. Take-Two is the company behind some of video gaming's biggest names, such as Borderlands and Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, BioShock and Mafia. Eurogamer Newscast: Will we subscribe to PlayStation Plus Premium, and how does Xbox cope with the loss of Starfield this year? Back in January, Take-Two said it wanted Zynga to be able to make mobile games based on
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Capcom has launched an anniversary website for its cult RPG Dragon's Dogma, leading to speculation about the future of the series. The game celebrates its tenth anniversary this May. Reads the website: "Thank you, Arisen, for taking up arms and braving through the impossible challenges laid ahead of you. We are forever grateful for your support throughout the years and hope you will join us in this momentous celebration of Dragon's Dogma!" But why would Capcom go to such an effort for this game in particular? Dragon's Dogma released in 2012 for PS3 and Xbox 360 to generally favourable reviews, including a 7/10 from Eurogamer (back when we did scores). Particularly praiseworthy was its pawn system, where the player
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Publishers learned their lesson from last year, he says One-man games industry Geoff Keighley has revealed that third-party publishers won’t be staging as many showcases of their own this summer. Keighley made the comments in a Twitter Spaces cast over the weekend, probably to everyone's great relief. Of course, he immediately followed up by explaining that the publishers with fewer games to show will be rolling their presentations into Keighley’s own Summer Game Fest, as well as first-party shows such as the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase. Summer Game Fest and The Game Awards will be shown in IMAX cinemas in the UK, USA and Canada this year. “There were a lot of shows last year where every
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A new report has detailed plans by TikTok to enter the video games market. The hugely-popular social app is conducting tests with in-app games in Vietnam, Reuters has said. In response, Tiktok confirmed the gaming push, and said it was currently looking at bringing HTML5 games to its app from third-party pubishers such as Zynga. Eurogamer Newscast: Will we subscribe to PlayStation Plus Premium, and how does Xbox cope with the loss of Starfield this year? Why Vietnam to start? As a country with the vast majority of its citizens under 35 - some 70 percent of the population - Tiktok may see a country primed to use its youth-orientated app. In the US, two mini-games are already available via Tiktok and, as you'd expect
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The second season of Babylon's Fall content - due next week - will now run for much longer, putting the future of the game into question. Publisher Square Enix had originally planned each season to last three months, but now that's been doubled. "Based on the feedback we have received from our players, we feel that we need a period to re-evaluate the game's future operating roadmap", according to a blog post from last Friday. "Season 2 will include the Ver. 1.2.1 small-scale update, but after that we will be using the extra three months of the season extension for development on the next update, and so will not be making any further updates or adding new content during that time. "The game will not see any content upd
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Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman worked on both The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge all the way back in the early 90's. Now, the duo are returning to the series in the aptly named Return to Monkey Island and in the run up to its release have revealed the one puzzle they regret from their original time working on the series. Chatting to GamesBeat, Gilbert and Grossman revealed the Monkey Wrench puzzle from LeChuck's Revenge, which saw Guybrush Threepwood using an actual monkey to activate a seemingly broken pump, was a mistake, calling it "notoriously unsolvable" and "not a good design on several levels". Eurogamer Newscast: After Monkey Island and Max Payne, what should get revived next? "Even if you are an English speaker from a location where the tool in question is commonly called a 'monkey wrench,' and you realise that that's what you need, you still have to make an astonishing predictive leap about how your actions will create that tool," said Grossman. "Nothing in the game sets any of it up adequately." Grossman went on to say he still uses the Monkey Wrench puzzle as his "go-to example of what not to do with puzzle design" revealing it has influenced his thinking "ever since". The Monkey Wrench in action in LeChuck's Revenge (Special edition). "The player has to be able to somehow visualise what to do, and if they do give up and look at a hint, I want their response to be, 'Oh, that makes sense, I should have thought of that!' rather than 'How on earth was I ever supposed to think of that, you ridiculous, unfair clowns?!'" On the flip side of things, the duo never re
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How to smash things properly with the Destroyer The Lost Ark Destroyer is useful if you want to start smashing some demons in the game. The Destroyer is an advancedclass offered to those who are attracted by the Warrior major class in Lost Ark - giving you a stylish full armor warrior carrying a massive hammer on their back who controls gravity to fight their enemies. It is an interesting concept that comes, of course, with positives and negatives. Don’t fret - because we explain how to master the Destroyer and what you should expect from this class, inclduing the best Destroyer skills, engravings and rotation. On this page: How to play as the Destroyer in Lost Ark Lost Ark Destroyer best skills Lost Ark Destroyer best rotation Lost Ark Destroyer best engravings Here's Ian exploring Lost Ark and playing a boring class, but he's got a really cool mount! How to play as the Destroyer in Lost Ark Destroyers are warriors who control gravity and fight with a gigantic hammer to smash their enemies. Instead of a fighter with a moveset full of stunts and fast attacks, you will find a very slow and heavy class if you choose to pick the Destroyer. However, their lack of mobility is compensated by a huge pool of health, the capacity of generating shields, and some brutal hammer attacks. This is not a difficult Lost Ark class for beginners and it is also quite flexible in terms of doing PvP (Player vs Player) and PvE (Player vs Environment) content. In general, Destroyers are the tank of the party, but they still can cause a lot of trouble to their enemies. Expect some
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It's boring to go alone. Take this. Long-time gamers likely remember the Game & Watch systems from Nintendo back in the 80's and early 90's. They were awesome little portable pieces of tech at the time, and on them you could play a classic Nintendo game and use it as a clock when you weren't gaming on it. 40 years later, there was a limited run of Game and Watch: Super Mario Bros. released by Nintendo which contained the full NES versions of Super Mario Bros. Nintendo has stopped making the Mario version now, but you can still find it on offer at some retailers for a reduced price. The new Game and Watch is a great collectible item to sit on the shelves or a games room display of any Nintendo Fan, and really stokes the nostalgia when you play it. More recently, Nintendo released a Legend of Zelda version of the Game & Watch which is now also seeing discounts. If you're a big Zelda fan, or just love retro-tech, then you'll be excited to hear that the Game & Watch: The Legend of Zelda is currently on sale at Currys for £34.99, and you can save a further £5 using the code FNDDGAMING at checkout bringing it to under £30! Game & Watch: The Legend Of Zelda - £29.99 at Currys with code FNDDGAMING and free click-and-collect (Was £44.99) You'll have to select the free click-and-collect option before you add the code at checkout, otherwise the £4 standard delivery or £5 next day delivery will cancel out the discount. The Game and Watch: The Legend of Zelda has double the games that the Mario version had. You can play The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, plus there's a special version of the game Vermin, that replaces the original character's head with Link's. The Game and Watch is a really tiny and lightweight handheld device that can actually fit in your pocket. You can play the English or original Japanese versions of the games, and of course, it has the default clock that has a variety of Zelda themed animations on the display. The Game and Watch comes and goes quite quickly, and the discount won't last forever eithe
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"I know that he's caused quite a stir in the furry world," says voice actor. It seems plenty of people are thirsting after Elden Ring's sexy wolfman Blaidd. So much so, Buzzfeed has done a thirst tweet reaction video with voice actor Scott Arthur. Blaidd, for the unaware, is an NPC in FromSoftware's epic who's half man and half wolf. He's involved in one of the game's main quests, helps players with one of the major bosses, and has had the furry community in a frenzy. Welsh voice actor Arthur admits it too. "I know that he's caused quite a stir in the furry world, which I didn't know anything about until I looked on the internet," he says at the start. He's also keen to clear up how to pronounce the character's name: "So, you pronounce it 'Blithe'. Not Blide, not Blythe - Blithe." And then the thirst tweets kick in. "Blaidd is so thicc and hot," says one post. "Please make more sexy animal men, fs, please!" reads another. "Listen, Miyazaki, that is a request," responds Arthur. "Not only did they make Blaidd a sexy half-wolf man, they gave him a sexy voice," reads another, which Arthur bashfully reacts to. He even suggests a new version of the game where you can kiss all the c
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Even with lack of PS3 streaming. Sony's revamped PlayStation Plus subscription has now begun rolling out worldwide, and is available first in Asia from today. The launch gives us our first proper look at the service's full catalogue of games - although fans say it contains far fewer titles in its catalogue than previously expected. Indeed, a guide to PlayStation Plus published yesterday on the PlayStation blog mentions "700" games available across the subscription's various plans - a rough figure we've heard from Sony before - albeit with the caveat that these games will vary "over time and plan". Eurogamer Newscast: Will we subscribe to PlayStation Plus Premium, and how does Xbox cope with the loss of Starfield this year? However, the list of games provided by PlayStation for Asia in the Hong Kong region currently run to 269 titles, far fewer than the 700 estimate. There's one major caveat here - this region does not have PS3 streaming games available (indeed, the higher-tier price is named "Deluxe" rather than Premium to denote this). However, there's no expectation of anywhere near 500 PS3 games being available elsewhere to make up the difference. One smaller caveat: below we've lumped PS4 and PS5 versions of the same game together whereas Sony lists them out separately, though this only affects a handful of titles. Additionally it's worth noting that both our lists below and Sony's own classify a trilogy pack (such as the BioShock Collection) as one title. (And while we're talking oddities, PlayStation Plus subscribers in Asia have also spotted some PS1 classics are present in their European PAL versions.) "These games are now available to play as part of the PlayStation Plus Asia launch," a note on PlayStation's website reads. "More titles will be added soon, along with the lists of catalogue games available in each country/region as PlayStation Plus rolls out." The assumption here is that Sony's figure of 700 games (or slightly fewer without PS3 games in Asia) refers not to the catalogue today, at launch, but to where Sony expects the subscription
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Don your cheese-hats, it's collective action time Quality assurance testers working for Activision Blizzard at Raven Software have voted to unionise within the Communication Workers of America, the first notable such union at a US-based studio. Three members of the Game Workers Alliance (GWA) group voted against, while 19 voted in favour. The vote means legal recognition for the group at the Call Of Duty: Warzone developers, which first organised in January in response to layoffs at the end of last year. The GWA tried to stream the vote count live on Twitch but technical issues forced them to use Twitter Spaces instead. Senator Tammy Baldwin, representative for Raven Software’s home state of Wisconsin, tweeted her congratulations to the group after the result was announced. Several members of the GWA celebrated their unionisation win by drinking beer and wearing cheese-shaped hats on their heads, as you do in Wisconsin. Bloomberg reports that, recently, management at Activision Blizzard and Raven Software had sent videos to staff to dissuade them from voting in favour by arguing that unions couldn’t guarantee pay increases and union contracts would threaten flexible working. Last week, Activision Blizzard was also found by US National Labor Relations Board prosecutors to have illegally threatened staff in relation to collective action amongst them. The company denied that they had acted wrongly. Activision Blizzard have been mired in controversy and legal action surrounding accusations of sexual harrassment, workplace discrimination and poor working conditions. Pension funds based in New York are currently seeking access to the company’s records in pursuit of CEO Bobby Kotick following Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which began in January and was approved last month. To add insult to injury, Activision Blizzard tried to roll out a ‘diversity space tool’ this month and had to roll it back, awkwardly.
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Lower refresh rates for some games. It appears that Sony is using the PAL version of PS1 classics in its PS Plus subscription. The subscription has now launched in Asia, but - as spotted by VGC - some PS1 games are using the PAL (Europe, Australia, New Zealand) version instead of the NTSC (Asia, America). That means they're presented in 50Hz instead of 60Hz, resulting in a lower refresh rate and therefore lower framerates. Eurogamer Newscast: Will we subscribe to PlayStation Plus Premium, and how doe
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All the confirmed specs, features and release info on AMD’s next gaming CPUs The AMD Ryzen 7000 family of CPUs is preparing for launch in 2022, two years after the Ryzen 5000 series. AMD have spent a good chunk of that time on its laptop chips, but back in the realm of desktops, Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake chips have leveraged major design improvements to beat the Ryzen 5000 series on performance and features. One suspects it would take a considerable rejigging for these Ryzen 7000 chips to get back i
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The sense of place can get downright uncanny. Welcome back to The Video Game City Week. Now: we'll need some arcades. Yakuza's Arcades I think some of the allure of Japan, for a foreigner, is the chance to see the world as it used to be - at least, some version of that world as you like to imagine it was, and not for too long, and filtered through a culture different enough to give everything a pleasantly dreamlike feeling. Visiting a Sega arcade in Tokyo felt like dropping in on someone else's hazily remembered childhood. Hospital-bright and hospital-clean, with pleasant electronic chirps and 8-bit musical queues designed to soothe and engage your brain, and an oddly studious atmosphere, as the other customers (tipsy, all about my age) zoned in on various high scores. It was a surreal place to walk around in, and not just because of the second-hand nostalgia. It was because I'd been there before - in Yakuza 0. In January Donlan wrote a lovely piece about the pleasure of small open worlds. I think A Short Hike is probably my all time favorite in this esteemed genre, but nothing can beat Yakuza's Kamurochō for detail, for sheer hand-crafted vibes. It's not quite as accurate in the open streets (the hired tough to punter citizen ratio feels a little bit off at 1:1), but in the interiors the sense of place can get downright uncanny. The harshly lit convenience store, the clinically friendly 'Smile Burger', the teeny-tiny upstairs salons with red trim couches, the intimate grot of the karaoke bar. The streets of Yakuza are packed with weird little nooks and crannies that I don't want to spoil, and I'm sure everyone has their favorites. But for me, hands down, it's gotta be the arcades. It's not just the spot-on atmosphere. If you don't know, the Yazua arcades have games. Real games. Games for days. Fantasy Zone, Space Harrier, bloody OutRun!!! These are all arcade classics taken wholesale from the Sega coffers, each one absorbing enough to warrant a full dive down the rabbit hole, to go back back again and again like a schoolkid with too much summer on their hands, trying to nudge up that score, break through to that next level. All of a sudden the realities start to overlap. You're not having some gorgeous approximation of the eighties arcade experience. You'r
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Halo from the other side. Everything you need to know about why I bounced off Halo Infinite shortly after launch can be encapsulated in a single word: crossplay. I'm an ardent, long-time fan of the franchise, but it's profoundly aggravating that I can't opt out of it, not least because at its best, Halo's multiplayer - whilst not without its issues - remains incredibly good fun. I've long considered it one of the fairest of its ilk, a game that awards not time spent but skill, effectively levelling the playing field. It's you, it's them, and it's standard loadouts and a handful of special weapons and equipment items - camo, overshields and the like - that periodically spawn in around the map. Forcing PC and Xbox players to crossplay together, however, flies in the face of that, and it's so frustrating that six months after release, this still hasn't been addressed - frustrating players on all sides, apparently. PC players are unhappy that console players have aim assist. Console players complain that, in fact, it's PC players that have the advantage, not least because of access to cheats like wallhacks and aimbots. No one's happy, and still, no one can opt out of it, even though the shooter's free-to-play multiplayer modes were released back in November. It's just one of a smorgasbord of issues that continue to cast a shadow over Halo Infinite, and even developer 343 Industries itself - which seems to be endlessly apologising to players via its Halo Waypoint updates and issuing numerous updates - has deemed the launch of its second season, subtitled Lone Wolves, as "bumpy".
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Destiny 2’s 17th season, Season of the Haunted, is Guardians’ next adventure, Bungie revealed Tuesday morning. Season 17 will take players back to The Leviathan, a massive, planet-devouring ship that’s been the setting of many previous activities. Guardians will also get the Solar 3.0 subclass rework, a new dungeon (a separate purchase from the season), and a host of new loot. Before Beyond Light, The Leviathan and its owner, Emperor Calus of the Cabal, fled Nessus’ orbit and our solar system. Now the ship has returned, making its home over the Moon and taking on some of its Nightmares. Players will board the ship to discover what’s going wrong, wield a powerful scythe, and “become the reaper.” Image: Bungie The new season features two activities. The first is Nightmare Containment, which is a free public event for all players and takes place on The Leviathan — likely in a free-roam area similar to the game’s other location, based on some image titles. Sever is only available through the paid season, and takes place inside the underbelly of The Leviathan and in some of the old raid arenas. Players will need to remove the Nightmares from Calus’ control and discover what he’s up to. In terms of loot, the Trespasser Exotic Arc sidearm is back from the original Destiny, and comes from the season pass track. There are also four new seasonal weap
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Everything you need to know about Seel’s Spotlight Hour. You'll be able to get your hands on a shiny Seel in Pokémon Go very soon indeed. It's probably the main reason you'll want to take part in this week's Spotlight Hour. There are many other reasons to look forward to the event. You'll be given the opportunity to catch as many Seel as you can, with the possibility of catching a 100% perfect IV stats Seel. You can find a preview of shiny Seel below. Seel’s Spotlight Hour falls on a quiet day in Pokémon Go, but you can still partake in the Go Battle League and fight Tapu Bulu in five-star raids. On this page: Seel 100% perfect IV stats in Pokémon Go Is there a shiny Seel in Pokémon Go? What does shiny Seel look like? Other reasons to catch as many Seel as possible Battling and catching the latest Pokémon Go legendary encounter, Tapu Fini. Seel 100% perfect IV stats in Pokémon Go This week’s Spotlight Hour is a great opportunity to catch a Seel with perfect IV stats. Once you’ve caught a 100% IV stats Seel, you’ll have the choice of evolving it into a Dewgong with perfect stats. While they don't exactly hold much sway in the Go Battle League, they can be useful in battling Team Go Rocket Grunts or in raids. The CP values that correspond to perfect 15/15/15 values are as follows: Level 30 (wild CP maximum) - 833 CP Level 35 (weather boosted CP maximum) - 902 CP The wild CP value aligns with your trainer level until you reach Level 30 and, due to the majority of the player base now being above this level, we’ve kept to these values for the sake of simplicity. These values will, however, be different if you’re currently below Level 30. Is there a shiny Seel in Pokémon Go? There is a shiny Seel in Pokémon Go. Shiny Seel, along with the shiny version of its evolution Dewgong, was released in May 2019 as part of a change in Field Research in Pokemon Go. If luck is on your side, you may find a shiny Dewgong in the wild, but, if not, then you can obtain one by evolving a shiny Seel using 50 Seel candy. Remember - Spotlight Hours only increase the number of Seel spawning in the wild, not its shiny rate. This means that, unlike a Community Day, the shiny rate for Seel will not increase during this event. Seel evolution tree. (Image credit: pokemon.com) New to the game is a long overdue Mega Evolution update, which has arrived alongside the A Mega Moment research. May 2022 in Pokémon Go includes the Water Festival, which celebrates the release of Dewpider and Araquanid. Tapu Fini has also been released alongside A Poni Adventure - the last Alola region-themed special research quest. Currently both the Ultra League and Element Cup are running in the Go Battle League. Elsewhere, we've recently seen the release of more Gen 7 Pokémon as part of the Season of Alola. The first details surrounding Go Fest 2022 have also been announced, including the event date. What does shiny Seel look like? As you can see in the picture below, shiny Seel has a slightly yellow/biege covering. This same look then applies to its evol
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"Even a small group of folks...can face up against a AAA studio giant like Activision, and come out the other side victorious." A group of 28 QA testers at Activision Blizzard's Wisconsin-based Raven Software studio have, despite the publisher's ongoing anti-unionisation efforts, won their vote to unionise. Quality Assurance testers at Raven Software formally announced their intent to unionise under the name Game Workers Alliance in January - amid then-ongoing strike action following the firing of 12 members of the developer's QA team - but when Activision Blizzard missed a deadline to voluntarily recognise the union, the group filed a petition with independent government agency the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to initiate a union election. Activision Blizzard contested the filing, but its arguments were rejected by NLRB, whereupon the publisher was reportedly began ramping up its anti-unionisation efforts. Activision Blizzard executives had already contacted staff during the Game Workers Alliance's initial push for unionisation, saying unions "could hurt our ability to continue creating great games" and were inferior to "active, transparent dialogue between leaders and employees", but with union elections looming, Raven management began organising meetings and town halls in which it was reportedly inferred unionisation would "impede game development and affect promotions and benefits". Studio employees were also send an email with an attachment simply reading "Please vote no". However, it's now clear Activision's efforts didn't have the desired effect. As reported by the Washington Post, the Milwaukee office of the National Labor Relations Board today counted mail ballots submitted by Raven QA testers, with the final tally seeing 19 voting in favour of unionisation and three against - making the Game Workers Alliance one of the first legally recognised unions at a major video game publisher in the US. Following today's results, Becka Aigner, a Raven Software QA tester who was part of the vote, told the Washington Post, "The outcome of this election, the voice of the people coming together to vote yes for this union, is further validation that even a small group of folks in Madison Wisconsin standing together in solidarity can face up against a AAA studio giant like Activision, and come out the other side victorious. "Now that the fight for recognition is through, we can focus our efforts on negotiations. We'll fight for respect, fight for better wages, better benefits, better work-life balance, fight for sustainability and job security, and continue to fight for our fellow workers in solidarity." An unnamed QA tester added, "What's even more exciting than what this means for us at Raven is the precedent this sets for the game industry. Quality assurance testers being underpaid and exploited is the standard and with unions we can change that. I hope that ours is the first union of many for QA workers and I'm really looking forward to seeing which studio is next." Activision Blizzard, however, was rather less enthusiastic followi
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Thor’s next adventure is coming soon, but it’s his whole supporting cast that looks most exciting in his movie’s latest preview. The new trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder shows off more of Jane Foster’s Thor (Natalie Portman), Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie, and, for the first time, Christian Bale’s Gorr the God Butcher. Along with the main cast from the Thor movies, Love and Thunder also includes all of the Guardians of the Galaxy, including Chris Pratt, Karen Gillan, Dave Bautista, Pom Klementieff, and the voices of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel. Marvel’s fourth Thor movie also brings in Russell Crowe as Zeus, the Greek god of thunder (and a lot of other stuff). Thor: Love a
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. $30 cheaper than last week as the GPU market con
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Sea of Thieves' sixth season of content is nearing its end, but there's still time for one last Adventure before we say farewell - and this final episode of the season is promising to be a biggie, asking players to determine the fate of Golden Sands outpost once and for all. Lost Sands will the fourth monthly instalment in Seas of Thieves' ongoing, seasons-spanning narrative, and is aiming to significantly raise the stakes by giving players the option to side with an in-game faction and make a permanent mark on the world. Golden Sands has, of course, been at the very centre of Sea of Thieves' current story arc, beginning in January when the beautiful tropical i
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If you buy something from a Polygon link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. The final page of this week’s Catwoman held a big surprise for fans of Batman: The Animated Ser
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Our planet’s oceans may or may not be the actual “final frontier,” but they were once home to the best dinosaurs Earth had to offer. Anyone who has seen a Jurassic Park movie or Mesozoic “documentaries” like Walking with Dinosaurs knows this; put simply, underwater dinosaurs absolutely rip. Perhaps this is why Apple TV Plus’ new Prehistoric Planet show starts with the GOATs in “Coasts,” its first episode. The latest docuseries to merge state-of-the-art CGI (pulling in talents who worked on projects like 2019’s The Lion King and The Book of Boba Fett) with scenic habitats is here to create a photorealistic exploration of life on and under the water 66 million years ago, give or take. In this Cretaceous period, life was simple and ruled by dinosaurs. And who better to represent the majesty of the species than the oceanic dinosaurs, as narrated by the great Sir David Attenborough himself? The star of such episodes (and the epic Jurassic World Sea World jump) is Mosasaurus, among the largest marine animals of all time. But there’s all kinds of fun here, including Tuarangisaurus, which evokes a nightmarish Loch Ness monster with its goony, sharp-toothed grin. Image: Universal Pictures The beauty of such undersea creatures is the fact that they kick ass in almost every respect. They are massive, fluid, and near unmanageable. Anytime Sir Attenborough mentions that the area we’re watching is “home to oceanic predators,” you know you’re in for a good time, though you never quite know how. With the physics and scale being so different for these creatures, the rules as we know them for moments like these feel inadequate. Giant lizards open their mouths for a baby fish only for Prehistoric Planet to set up a lesson we’d never see coming (real Hoffman’s Mosasaur fans know what’s up). It means seeing a ferocious reptile rest at the surface and make derp face before it immediately starts to brawl with a younger male. This is peak entertainment, folks! Prehistoric Planet isn’t immune to some of the problems that plague documentaries of this ilk. While the series — produced by Jon Favreau and the producers of Planet Earth — promises the “latest paleontology learnings,” it’s just as quick to indulge the dramatic cliches of the genre. In the world of Prehistoric Planet, each vignette is a dramatic epic. You can tell how the tides will change based on how the swelling orchestra responds. As Attenborough’s raspy, soothing narration often reminds us, “few get as far” as the few baby dinos we see flop, scurry, and tumble their way through climactic showdowns, narrowly living on to dino another day. But with those trite moments come the grand cinematic ones as well: a dinosaur emerging from a cloud of dust after a scuffle or ammonites converging in a shoal to mate and bioluminesce. As we watch mature dinosaurs make quick work of baby turtles, it seems an absolute miracle that turtles ever made it to the water of the shore they were born on, let alone to our time. “Coasts” doesn’t focus ex
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Sony’s revamped PlayStation Plus service is beginning its slow kickoff around the globe, bringing users varying amounts of downloadable and streamable games — provided they subscribe at the right price point. As the first concerted effort Sony has made to feature its classic back catalog in the current console generation, the new PS Plus scheme is significant. However, it may ultimately not be the best showcase for said classic games. Early reports on social media first surfaced by Videogames Chronicle appear to show that some of the PlayStation 1 games offered on the service are the s
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Over the last couple of years, Gloomhaven has become the gold standard for tabletop gamers looking to have a Dungeons & Dragons-esque experience without a Dungeon Master. Then, the game’s PC version made it among the best ways to have a dungeon-delving experience without a table, cardboard, or even friends in the area. Come next year you’ll be out of excuses as Gloomhaven finally makes its way to consoles. After that, I guess and the only reason to not do any dungeon diving is because you are somehow allergic, or because a dungeon killed your father and you swore them off for life. An
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Workers at Raven Software responsible for quality assurance on Call of Duty: Warzone voted Monday in favor of forming a union, the first of its kind at publisher Activision Blizzard. The nearly 30-person group mailed ballots to the National Labor Relations Board in April leading to an official count on Monday. Nineteen workers voted “yes” on the vote, with three votes against the union. The group, called Game Workers Alliance, will move into contract negotiations with Activision Blizzard (which Microsoft plans to acquire as part of a $68.7 billion deal), supported by the Communications Workers of America’s Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE-CWA). Activision Blizzard has not responded to Polygon’s request for comment. Raven Software QA workers began their union drive in January following a weekslong strike. Activision Blizzard announced a reorganization of QA workers in January, moving QA testers into “embedded” positions within other departments, a move that CWA organizing director Tom Smith called “nothing more than a tactic to thwart Raven QA workers who are exercising their right to organize.” Activision Blizzard denied that characterization, saying it was a “carefully considered” change that “brings Raven into alignment with the best practices of other prominent Activision studios.” Since then, Activision Blizzard announced it planned to convert another 1,000 QA workers to full-time positions, increase their pay to $20 per hour, and allow QA workers access to bonuses and benefits. Raven Software QA workers were not offered the same pay raises at that time; Activision Blizzard claimed that was because of “legal obligations under the National Labor Relations Act.” In February, Activision Blizzard contested the voting at an NLRB hearing, in which the company argued that the embedded structure redefines the terms of union-eligible employees — meaning that the entire company, around 230 people, should vote. The NLRB rejected this claim in April before setting the date for Monday’s vote, where nearly 30 Raven Software QA workers participated. Game Workers Alliance is the first group of employees to unionize under Activision Blizzard. A union push is also underway at Keywords Studios B.C., which has previously supported BioWare’s QA efforts. Like Raven Software’s QA team, Keywords Studios’ QA workers said they face low wages in high-rent areas, plus increased expenses thanks to the studio’s return-to-work mandate. Keywords Studios’ proposed union will be similar in scope to Raven’s, with around 15-20 members, with support from United Food and Commercial Workers Canada Union, Local No. 401. These union efforts were preceded by Vodeo Workers United, the Vodeo Games union that also partnered with CODE-CWA. Vodeo Workers United was the first North American video game studio to unionize, following winning campaigns at tabletop studios Paizo and Cards Against Humanity and a successful strike by Lovestruck: Choose Your Romance writers at Voltage Entertainment. Labor organizing and unionization in the video game industry is more common outside of North America; technology industry in North Americ
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Yelan and Kuki Shinobu debut in Genshin Impact's newest content update. The Genshin Impact 2.7 date has been announced along with all the new 'Hidden Dreams in the Depths' content dropping with the delayed patch. As always, there will be two Banner phases and new time-limited events in the latest update, with the Genshin Impact 2.7 Banner Wishes including two new characters, and some returning favourites. Below, you can find out when Genshin Impact 2.7 is releasing, who the new characters are, and what new events and weapons are getting added with the upcoming patch. On this page: Genshin Impact 2.7 Banner characters and weapons Genshin Impact 2.7 event list Genshin Impact 2.7 release date Genshin Impact 2.7 Banner characters and weapons There are two new playable characters making their debut in the 2.7 Banner Wishes: Yelan during the first Banner phase, Discerner of Enigmas, and Kuki Shinobu as part of the second Banner phase, Oni’s Royale. All featured Banner characters you can spend Wishes on during the 2.7 update include: Yelan (Discerner of Enigmas Banner - Phase 1): New Hydro 5-Star archer character with high DPS (damage per second) and swift movement speed, who can also be used in a support role. Xiao (Invitation to Mundane Life Banner - Phase 1): Returning Anemo 5-Star Polearm wielder with high DPS, who is also good at exploring. Arataki Itto (Oni’s Royale Banner - Phase 2): Returning Geo 5-Star Claymore character with very high DPS and critical damage capabilities. Kuki Shinobu (Oni’s Royale Banner - Phase 2): New Electro 4-Star Sword user who is best used in a support role, but also deals good Electro AoE (Area of Effect) damage. Has a huge drop boost during 2.7. The only new weapon Banner in 2.7 is the Aqua Simulacra, a 5-Star bow, which you can spend Wishes on throughout both phases. Phase 1 is expected to run for three weeks, then change to Phase 2 for three weeks until the 2.7 Banner events conclude in preparation for the 2.8 update. Genshin Impact 2.7 event list Along with a permanent new story in the Archon Quest Interlude Chapter, there are four time-limited events occurring during Genshin Impact 2.7. We don't know exactly when these events will happen yet, but we do know they will occur between 31st May and 12th July. Perilous Trail (Realms of Guile and War) These combat challenges will unlock as part of the Archon Quest Interlude Chapter. After each Domain round, you must rearrange your party according to the Domain’s rules. The event includes trial characters to use in each Domain to help under-levelled Travelers, or those who don’t own a lot of characters. A Muddy Bizarre Adventure This second combat event will take place in The Chasm. You must avoid mysterious dark mud while defeating monsters, escorting hot air balloons, and attempting to reach a high score in order to complete a rotating pool of challenges. The Almighty Arataki Great and Glorious Drumalong Festival As part of this musical rhythm-based minigame, you will receive a drum to use. Choose from Normal, Hard, and Pro
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Every kid is a goddamn dork. Some people - the cool kids of school - think they’ve got it all figured out, while others just mope about in their groups of indie kids, emos, and nerds, to name but a few very atypical retinues. It’s all a lie, though: in reality everyone’s an idiot as a kid, blissfully unaware of adult problems as they struggle through the most painfully awkward years of their lives. Floppy Knights revels in that dorkiness. A tactical card-based game that’s been in early access since last June, Rose City Games’ adventure stars Phoebe, an absolutely adorable and excruciatingly optimistic nerd who delights in tackling problems facing her community. To this end Phoebe’s only gone and constructed her own AI, Carlton, and the two help out townsfolk by destroying monsters with their own beasties. Floppy Knights’ story sort of plays out like a children’s book, and that’s no bad thing. Phoebe is your typical stay-at-home kid: always being told to get out more by her parents, and actually being pressured to move out permanently in some instances. But just like every other kid, she’s got a dream, and that dream is to ascend to greatness via a local competition with her Floppy Knights, proving herself as a genius inventor. There’s never a problem our hero has met that she's shied away from, or stranger that they met who they couldn’t somehow befriend through charm and sheer determination. Phoebe is never pushed into being sickeningly sweet, and so remains a loveable nerd who’s just really easy to root for. Add in a light and simple script, and you’ve got a slate of charming characters, like Bernard the big blue troll or Charlie the hyped-up competition MC, to meet and solve problems for. Battlefields themselves are a tiled board, and you’ve got an army of Floppy Knights to use via a card system. Playing a unit card like a Barrel Cactus - a cactus shaped like a barrel, if you can believe it - will grant you several corresponding action cards, like moving, striking an enemy, and a special ability like healing another unit. You’ve got a finite amount of Energy to work with each turn, and every card costs a pre-designated amount, so Floppy Knights becomes as much a puzzler as it is a card battler. The skill curve for Floppy Knight’s combat is nothing short of perfect here. Early game levels start out easy and introductory, with special bonus objectives to hit for more advanced players, and from there it ramps up beautifully to challenge players of all skill levels. Each biome’s early levels will introduce you to a new hazard, like lava in the volcanic region that’ll harm enemies passing through it. It’s your job to take this newly-acquired knowledge and put it to work throughout the rest of the biome, guiding your minions to victory with different demands. Speaking of, Floppy Knights is really good at challenging you with varying objectives. Levels start out as “kill everything that moves” but transition to “hold this objective for two turns” or “protect this person for eight turns” relatively qu
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Hours before Raven Software’s landmark union vote, the National Labor Relations Board announced that it “found merit” to allegations that Activision Blizzard allegedly threatened employees for discussing working conditions, wages, and ongoing investigations under the guise of an “overly broad social media policy,” according to a statement sent by the NLRB to Polygon. What happens next could include a formal ruling over whether or not Activision Blizzard broke established United States labor law. The announcement is in reference to a different group of workers than the Raven Software QA workers who voted “yes” on forming a union at publisher Activision Blizzard, an NLRB spoke
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Ape Escape! Hot Shots Golf! More! As Sony's revamped PlayStation Plus subscription service goes live across As
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Recently, YouTuber and modder LukeYui posited that Elden Ring — already a pretty great video game — might be even better with one straightforward tweak: Limitless co-op. In a few days, that mod will be out in the wild, putting that idea to the test. The news comes from LukeYui’s YouTube channel, in the form of a groovy new video showing off what folks can expect should they take the mod for a whirl when it becomes available for public beta testing Friday, May 27. For those who aren’t inclined to mod their games, or those who don’t game on PC, there’ll also be a collection of Twitch streams with a set of bug-hunting alpha testers to check out. The seamless co-op mod is an uno
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Using a combination of codes to unlock this super-low price. The Logitech MX Master is an incredibly popular se
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Following dismissal last month. Former PlayStation employee Emma Majo has launched a new gender discrimination lawsuit against PlayStation after an initial attempt was dismissed by a federal judge in April. Majo, an ex-PlayStation IT analyst, initially filed a suit against the company last November, claiming, among other things, that PlayStation paid women less than men in similar jobs, that women were denied promotions, and that she was wrongfully fired "soon after" submitting a signed statement to Sony in 2021 detailing the alleged gender bias she had experienced. Those initial claims were supported by a raft of new allegations in March, when eight more PlayStation employees, past and present, submitted statements alleging sexual harassment, bullying, gender bias, and an inability to properly investigate these issues at the company. A federal judge ultimately moved to dismiss the lawsuit in April, citing a lack of "specific facts", but said certain elements of the case could proceed - specifically those relating to Majo's dismissal from PlayStation, and any violation of whistleblower protection which may have occurred - and that the case could be resubmitted with more details. And that's exactly what Majo has chosen to do. As reported by Axios, an amended version of the lawsuit with a narrower focus has now been submitted to a California court, this time seeking damages for all women who worked at PlayStation’s California locations below vice president level, rather than for all female PlayStation employees across the US. Allegations in the new suit are said to be largely similar to those in the original November filing - including claims women were passed up for promotion in favour of male colleagues, alongside claims of unequal pay and retaliation - but it now explicitly incorporates "more specific facts about the classwide policies and practices [at PlayStation] which institutionalised gender-based discrimination and gender-based harassment". Notably, these include details based on the aforementioned declarations submitted by female PlayStation employees
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Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege Year 7 Season 2 is headed to live servers soon, and comes with the usual host of goodies players have come to expect from Ubisoft’s tactical shooter. But this season also has something much stranger are far groovier than the average Rainbow Six update: a crossover with Sega’s Yakuza games. If you’ve ever played as the Operator Echo and thought, “I sure love this character, but I wish I had the style of an early 2000s yakuza,” you’re in luck. Echo will get an exclusive bundle that visually transforms him into the star of Yakuza 0-6, Kiryu Kazuma. The Operator Hibana will also get a Yakuza bundle, turning her into Kaoru Sayama. Image: Ubisoft Montreal Ubisoft revealed a third, more mysterious bundle, also for Echo, which will turn him into another iconic Yakuza character — the tease suggests Goro Majima, occasional enemy and ally to Kiryu. The studio didn’t give prices or release dates for these skin bundles, but they’ll appear in the in-game store over the course of the next season. As far as the normal season is concerned, players will get a new Team Deathmatch map, a Reputation System upgrade, and a Belgian Operat
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Plus: thoughts on the controversial PS Plus games line-up. Is The Last of Us being remade for PS5 - but is it really arriving this year? Do Hitman 3's ray tracing hardware requirements make sense? And what's up with the PlayStation Plus games lineup? These answers to these questions - and more! - are all covered in this week's Digital Foundry Weekly show, hosted this time by Rich, John and Alex. It's the PS Plus relaunched games lineup that's the first port of call, as the team mulls the curious selection of titles from the newly expanded service's higher tiers - and the pleasant surprise that a selection of previously purchased digital PS1 and PSP games will be playable on PS4 and PS5 without a PS Plus subscription. The team passes comment on what was revealed last week, but maybe we've not seen the full picture quite yet as it appears that at least one Ridge Racer game will be added to the classics line-up. The rumoured Last of Us PS5 remake is also an odd one - after all, the game has already received a PS4 Pro release, so what scope for improvement still exists for a re-remaster beyond targeting 4K 60fps? Alex Battaglia has some ideas - vis a vis ray tracing, naturally - and John Linneman follows up with some thoughts on what actual gameplay changes would make the PS5 release a more compelling prospect. It'll be fascinating to see what direction Naughty Dog has chosen here, as there's room from anything from a by-the-numbers remaster for PS5 hardware to a much more substantive overhaul that takes advantage of the lessons learned from the development of the second game. While the Last of Us remake is rumoured for 2022, two other big games originally scheduled to arrive this year have been delayed. Starfield and Redfall, two releases from Bethesda that would have shored up parent Microsoft's Game Pass offerings, have had their release dates shifted to 2023. In some respects, this isn't a massive surprise - both looked to be massive AAA games that hadn't shown any substantive gameplay six months out from release - but it means that the 2022 game release calendar is loo
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While still a month away in the Americas, the new PlayStation Plus will go live in some Asian regions on May 24. With just a few days to go, some games have started appearing on the Malaysian PlayStation Store, giving players around the world a hint of what to expect when the update comes to their region — especially regarding original PlayStation and PSP emulation. While some classic games will be included in the PlayStation Plus Premium subscription tier, players who aren’t subscribed to the service will also be able purchase and play classic titles on an individual basis. These emulated titles aren’t just the same-old versions of the games you remember, now on your expensive, hard-to-find PlayStation 5. They come with some of the unique emulation features you might expect, like rewinds and save states. YouTuber Mystic tested out Oddworld: Abe’s Odyssey — the only game out at the time of this writing — to see how it played on PlayStation 5. In Mystic’s video, he shows off settings for video filter presets and aspect ratios, rewind to get out of tough spots or reverse failed jumps, and save states to rectify some early PlayStation frustrations — most of these games are from an era where players had to find save spots in order to save their progress. There are also graphics settings, which allow fans to experience the game as they remember, with retro classic scanlines, or a more “modern” look with less exposure. The prices on the Malaysian store also seem relatively fair for older games. Abe’s Odyssey, when converted from Malaysian to U.S. currency, will run players about $4.56. Worms Armageddon comes in at a bit more, and will cost American audiences about $8.89. (It’s highly likely PlayStation will round these prices up or down in their native markets.) Players who’ve already purchased any of these games on a PlayStation 3 or Vita won’t need to buy them again. Some of these games will have trophies, but they seemingly aren’t guaranteed or required — Abe’s Odyssey does not offer trophies, but Bend Studios has revealed that Syphon Filter will. Sony has already revealed a list of classic games coming to its Premium and De
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Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is coming home on May 24. The sequel to Sega and Paramount Pictures’ hit video game movie will make its streaming debut on Paramount Plus and on other digital platforms Tuesday, 45 days after its theatrical release in April. For fans of physical media, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 will arrive on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD on Aug. 9. The physical release will include “nearly an hour of bonus features,” Paramount said in a news release, including a new, exclusive animated short, “Sonic Drone Home,” featuring Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 stars Ben Schwartz as the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog, Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik, James Marsden as Sonic’s human pal Tom, Tika Sumpter as Tom’s human wife Maddie, Idris Elba as Knuckles, and Colleen O’Sh
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The new trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis dives into the darker side of fame, as Elvis Presley grapples with figuring out who he is and what the world thinks of him. “In that moment, Elvis the Man was sacrificed,” narrates Tom Hanks’ character, Elvis’s manager Tom Parker, as Elvis takes the stage to a screaming audience. “And Elvis the God was born.” Austin Butler (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Carrie Diaries) stars as the King of Rock and Roll alongside Tom Hanks, with Olivia DeJonge (The Society) playing Priscilla Presley. The movie will span more than two decades, focusing primarily on the relationship between Parker and Presley, and chronicle Elvis’s unexpected rise to stardom and his immense fame amid American’s rapidly changing cultural landscape. As with us
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When developer Rare introduced Adventures to pirate sandbox game Sea of Thieves, they chose to start things off with a bang. The very first Adventure saw a longtime safe harbor, full of familiar NPCs, cursed and its people kidnapped by the treacherous Lord Flameheart. In subsequent Adventures, players banded together to save the innocents and fight back against Flameheart and his dreadful Spanish fleet. Now, pirates upon the Sea of Thieves have a choice to make — should they work together to repair the cursed Golden Sands Outpost? Or should they indulge in the “loot and plunder” philosophy of pirating, and join the Reapers in stopping the reconstruction effort? The fate of Golden Sands is in your hands...Secure supplies to help rebuild? Or answer the summons to ensure it remains in ruins? Set sail and contribute to this community decision in the next Sea of Thieves Adventure, 'Lost Sands', from May 26th to June 9th. pic.twitter.com/N53XjOQMI9— Sea of Thieves (@SeaOfThieves) May 23, 2022 This is the first Adventure where players will be directly pitted against one another. The stakes are quite high — the fate of Golden Sands Outpost, one of the safe places in the
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. The Ukrainian team has now relocated to Prague Active development on first-person horror immersive sim S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart Of Chernobyl has begun again according to a discussion with developers GSC Game World on the game’s Discord server. The confirmation came on Friday from representatives of GSC Game World. One Discord user in the 'ask_gsc' channel on GSC Game World's Discord server had asked: “So how is going the game development at the moment? Is it continues?”. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 community representative Mol1t replied: “It continues.” Another user also asked whether work on the game was in progress and received a similar answer. Back in March, GSC Game World posted a video responding to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The video showed footage of motion-capture for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 before moving to imagery of the invasion. The developers said that development on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 had understandably “shifted to the sidelines” due to the conflict, but confirmed they would continue to work on the game in the future. VGC later reported that the studio had relocated at least some of their staff to Prague, capital of the Czech Republic. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was delayed in January from this month until December 8th, but it’s unclear if GSC Game World are still aiming for that now. When it does launch, the game will be available on Steam for £50/$60/€60, as well as the Epic Games Store and Microsoft Store.
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Pac-Man has a new theme song, which Bandai Namco commissioned for the franchise’s 42nd birthday. But it’s gonna have to sell about 1.2 million copies, make Billboard’s Top 10, and go on American Bandstand before I’ll accept it. A news release touts “We are Pac-Man!” as written by Bandai Namco’s Yoshihito Yano and Kazuhito Udetso, and performed by Kaho Kidoguchi, who also performed the theme song for Cartoon Network’s animé Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart. It’s definitely J-poppy! But as far as “theme song” goes it’s going to take a while before “We Are Pac-Man” overtakes Buckner & Garcia’s “Pac-Man Fever,” a touchstone of 1980s nostalgia, one-hit wonder pop radio, and the beginning of video game culture itself. If that’s not official enough for you, ABC aired a licensed TV adaptation on Saturday mornings in 1982, and its theme song became the basis for 1984’s arcade side-scroller Pac-Land. Finally, I’m not sure I could play “We are Pac-Man!” on a street corner and get 2 out of 10 people to recognize it as the franchise’s official theme song. But 10 out of 10 people would snap to attention at this: The new song is part of Bandai Namco’s marketing ramp up to the launch of Pac-Man Museum Plus, on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One — available on Xbox Game Pass at launch, too. Pac-Man Museum Plus is an anthology of 14 Pac-titles, from 1980’s Pac-Man to 2016’s endless runner Pac-Man 256 — but not, s
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Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore will be available on HBO Max on May 30. The movie premiered on April 6 and is the latest installment in the Harry Potter spinoff series. The film takes place in the same universe as Harry Potter, though it is set in the 1920s. The first movie centered on awkward magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), the author of in-universe textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Subsequent movies in the sub-series have moved further away from fantastic beasts and their dwellings, as Newt keeps finding himself entangled in the battle between go
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Pac-Man is celebrating his 42nd anniversary of wakka-wakka-ing his way through mazes eating pellets and ghosts. To celebrate, a colourful, psychedelic music video has been released for a new theme song: "We are PAC-MAN!" It's sung by Kaho Kidoguchi in Japanese and English, and Ann Una in Chinese. "The song aims at promoting people cooperating and connecting together to live a healthy lifestyle," reads a press release. You can watch the video below. Then, on Friday 27th May, Pac-Man Museum+ will be released. It features 1
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Scream if you want to go faster. Neve Campbell, best known for her role in the Scream series, has joined the cast of the forthcoming Twisted Metal TV show. She will star as the recurring guest character Raven, reports Variety, a character first introduced to the game series in Twisted Metal: Black. Campbell joins Anthony Mackie in the lead role of John Doe, as well as Thomas Haden Church (as Agent Stone) and Stephanie Beatriz (as a yet unnamed car thief). Mackie was cast last year when initial det
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It’s been three years since our last trip to Hawkins, so it’s not surprising that many of us found ourselves needing a recap of where the Netflix drama left off before diving into Stranger Things 4. But in order to get the most out of the new supersized episodes, it’s not only important to remember the events of season 3, but also Eleven’s life before the main events of season 1 even started. As Millie Bobby Brown told Jimmy Fallon in early May, Stranger Things season 4 is going “to dig deep into [Eleven’s] beginning, and how she became who she is with the people around her.” The first teaser and the first eight minutes of the season premiere also focus on Eleven’s past, showing flashbacks to her time at Hawkins Lab (and a very violent incident we’ll get into below).
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A new trailer for the bizarre Pokémon-esque Palworld has been released, showing more of its gun battles against cute creatures. Japanese studio Pocketpair is responsible for the multiplayer, open-world survival crafting game that sees Pals farming, working in factories, and being shot at. The latest trailer, see below, shows the player and Pals double-teaming against enemy creatures. The vibrant open world looks stunning, with Pals being collected in coloured balls and put to work building structures. But then the player character hunts down creatures with guns and bow and arrow, alongside elemental abilities from Pals. It culminates in a boss battle against a creature called Anubis, which has the player dodge
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A new interview has revealed at one point Square Enix handed the reigns of Final Fantasy 15 over to Eidos Montréal, the developer behind Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Speaking to TrueAchievements, former Eidos Montréal art director Jonathan Jacque-Belletête stated that before it went back over to be worked on in Japan, his team had a "really cool" Final Fantasy game in the works. "[Eidos Montréal] brought back Deus Ex. I was the art director on that - Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Then [I was] the executive art director on Mankind Divided. Then we tried to do Final Fantasy 15," he said. Digital Foundry chat Final Fantasy 15. "Then [Square Enix] decided to bring [FF15] back to Japan, which I think was a big mistake, but
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A new look at Palworld, the colorful, open-world survival crafting game from Craftopia developer Pocketpair Games, shows off its colorful cartoonish world, it’s Pokémonlike creatures called Pals, and a whole lot of violence that will probably make you think, “It is incredibly weird to see Pokémon on the business end of a shotgun.” Palworld’s newest gameplay highlights don’t offer too much new that we haven’t seen in previous trailers. We see a player character capturing a not-Wooloo with a not-Pokéball; the construction of a high-tech Pal prison; a deerlike creature brutally sniped in the head with a bow and arrow; a pack of Relaxaurus (definitely not a Goodra-Snorlax hybrid); and what appears to be a boss, Anubis (definitely not Lucario), getting shotgun-blasted in the t
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Ethan Hunt is back for another entry in the Mission: Impossible series and he’s already defying death in the film’s first trailer. The first look at Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One was released alongside the European premiere of Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick over the weekend and now it’s on YouTube, over a year before it’s set to be released in theaters on July 14, 2023. Joining Tom Cruise on the latest mission for the IMF is an all-star team from previous entries in the series. That includes regulars like Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, and Ving Rhames. Vanessa Kirby is also returning after her role in Mission: Impossible Fallout, and even Henry Czerny is coming back as Kittridge, who we haven’t seen since the original Mission: Impossible back in 1999. Along wit
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Valve un-break the MMO’s problematic launcher The Steam Deck only had a few weeks of getting to know Final Fantasy XIV before the latter’s 6.08 update wrenched them apart. In less undeservedly romantic terms, it was the MMO’s newly added launcher that – unlike the rest of the game – didn’t work well at all with the Deck’s Proton compatibility software. Two months later, however, Valve have released an update on Proton’s experimental branch that fixes the launcher, making FFXIV playable on the handheld PC once again. As spotted by Gaming On Linux, the latest
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poly-lt-wire-logo Learn the skills of an 18th-century French con man in Reigns developer’s latest By May 23, 2022, 9:05am EDT Image: Devolver Digital There’s a sumptuous, lived-in feel to Card Shark, a witty and pleasantly stressful game that casts you as a gambler and a cheat, cutting a swath through 1
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Just a short PSA for those who still use their 3DS and Wii U family of systems – today is the last day you can use a credit card to add funds to your account. On Nintendo’s Customer Support page regarding the upcoming closure of the Wii U and 3DS eshops to new purchases, it states: "As of May 23, 2022, it will no longer be possible to use a credit card to add funds to an account in Nintendo eShop on Wii U or the Nintendo 3DS family of systems." Eurogamer checked earlier, and at the time of writing you could still add funds with a credit card, so you still have time to get yourself topped up if this is your preferred method. Eurogamer newscast chats Cyberpunk 2077 and the end of game purchases via the 3DS and Wii U eShops
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Graphical improvements are on the way, too Square Enix and PlatinumGames have announced they're extended season two of Babylon’s Fall from three months to six in order to “re-evaluate the game’s future operating roadmap". The game's second season is still due to launch next week on May 31st, but will now run through November 29th instead of the originally planned date of August 22nd, the devs said in a statement on the game's Hanging Garden website. They also promised more info on season two in a livestream “coming soon”. Check out the best new PC games releasing
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Hello! Welcome back to the Video Game City Week. In this piece, Aamir makes the case for including Shenmue 3's wonderful Hotel Niaowu in our ultimate video game metropolis. Hotel Niaowu My parents used to take me on various holidays when I was a child. The hotels we stayed in were odd — simultaneously cosy and alien, a place to rest and eat with family while also encountering a swarm of strangers in a far too polished environment. I don’t think I’ve come across a hotel in a game that captures this cosy yet alien sensation quite as well as Shenmue 3’s Hotel Niaowu. The interior of Hotel Niaowu feels as perfectly tidy and elegant as the hotels I recall in reality, with its golden chandeliers and maroon leather sofas. The receptionist, on the other ha
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The Final Fantasy 9 animated series will be shown for the first time this week, following its reveal last year. That's according to an interview in Animation Magazine with Bruno Danzel d'Aumont, VP of international licensing and marketing at the Paris-based animation studio Cyber Group Studios that's looking after the series. Cyber Group will be showing a number of projects at the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas this week, including work on Final Fantasy 9. Eurogamer Newscast: Will we subscribe to PlayStation Plus Premium, and how does Xbox cope with the loss of Starfield this year? "It will be a great opportunity to share our upcoming plans with our licensees, agents, and new partners," said Danzel d'Aumont. "Additional
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Sony has begun the rollout of its new look PlayStation Plus subscription service, with Asian markets being given the green for go from 24th May. And, along with this new beginning, some more games have been made available on the PlayStation store. These games include the PlayStation 1 title Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee (which is retailed at RM 20.00, so about four pounds) and the PSP game Ridge Racer 2 (via ResetEra). Eurogamer Newscast: Will we subscribe to PlayStation Plus Premium, and how does Xbox cope with the loss of Starfield this year? The sales page for Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee has revealed the game will now have newly added features, including "up-rendering, rewind, quick save, and custom video filters." For a closer look
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Will also introduce Smart Access Storage for faster load times AMD have spilled a bunch of new details about their upcoming Ryzen 7000 CPUs, which were first teased at CES 2022 back in January. This time, AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su used a Computex 2022 keynote to reveal more about the gaming-focused chips, which are getting a major overhaul following the Ryzen 5000 and Ryzen 6000 laptop processor series. Of all the internal gubbins, the biggest change is the use of new Zen 4 cores. Compared to the Zen 3 cores in the Ryzen 5000 series, these are up to 15% faster in single-core workloads – like those often imposed by games – and can hit boost clock speeds of up to 5.5GHz. That equals the new Intel Core i9-12900KS, and AMD’s current top-spec CPU, the Ryzen 9 5950X, maxes out at 4.9GHz. That’s a big gap closed with Intel, who've produced most of the best gaming CPUs recently. You can watch the full keynote below; the juicy Ryzen 7000 stuff starts around 19m 30s in. Zen 4 chips will also come with twice the L2 cache size of Zen 3, possibly inspired by how the recent AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D uses a colossal L3 cache to boost performance rather than higher clock speeds. The Ryzen 7000 generation will evidently combine both the clock speed and cache size approaches, and although Dr Su didn’t offer any games benchmark results, she did show an unnamed 16-core Ryzen 7000 chip comfortably beating the Core i9-12900K in a Blender rendering speed test. Intel’s own 16-core CPU is a juggernaut in creative software, so that does at least bode well for this mysterious high-end model. On that
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. It won’t come unstuck from the UI The ‘Destined For Destruction’ update for fantasy action RPG Lost Ark arrived last week but it appears to have introduced a bug that makes the cursor stick to part of the UI and prevents clicking. Reddit user Sagezu was flummoxed by the bug over the weekend and shared their woe at crashing out of Lost Ark’s first Legion Raid, Valtan, which arrived as part of the May update. Judging by the comments, many other Lost Ark players were encountering the same bug. A few players chimed in to say they’d found ways to shake the UI off their cursor, like zoning out of the area or opening the marketboard and clicking register. Others had to log out of the affected character and sign back in to free up their mouse. Lost Ark’s developers Smilegate haven’t commented on the bug yet. Players also seem to be running into freezes and frame rates issues when taking on certain bosses since the ‘Destined For Destruction’ update was implemented last week. Maybe Smilegate should’ve chosen a different name for it? The update brought a new Advanced Class to Lost Ark, the hammer-wielding Destroyer, along with the first Legion Raids and the new ‘Relic’ gear rarity. ‘Destined For Destruction’ also offers the weird opportunity to turn into a chicken. If you’re looking for tips on which is the best class in Lost Ark then check out Rebecca’s guide. The full patch notes for the ‘Destined For Destruction’ are here
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Very sorry to anybody who knows me in the real world, but I’m never happier than when I’m playing a town simulator. When fully in the grips of My Time At Sandrock, my little made-up computer game life is all I can think about. My relationships with real humans fade into the background, to be replaced by an altogether more fulfilling kind of relationship, one based entirely on gifting the same jar of honey to a cartoon character over and over again until they admit that they love me. In My Time At Sandrock you play the folksy frontier town’s new builder, tasked with taking on various commissions to build machinery, tools and equipment for anyone who asks. Pretty much every feature and idea from every successful town simulator has come along for the ride. The town ticks along in a fast-moving day-night cycle. Seasons pass, special events unfold, and residents appear convincingly human through the simple act of just wandering around as if they’ve got to be somewhere. You can mine a handful of different types of metal ore and collect machinery scraps from the desert, which can be smelted into more useful items and used as components in more elaborate machinery and advanced tools. There are light RPG and combat elements, seeing you descend through dungeon levels to fight mutant lizards, level up your skills and discover rare loot and resources. There’s just a whole lot going on all of the time in My Time At Sandrock. It’s a relentlessly busy game if you try to take on too much. Some features, like the ability to grow and maintain crops, keep animals and cook food, could be a game by themselves. On Saturdays you can volunteer to rate and review items built by other workshops, which is effectively a 3D game of spot the difference as you rotate watering cans and cabinets in search of imperfections. Wooing the locals is an unexpectedly involved process too, though My Time At Sandrock stumbles into every icky romance trope going. You can bombard your crush with trinkets and compliments until they fall for you, and take them on dinner dates where you order their favourite foo
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Thanks to new PS5 bundle. Horizon Forbidden West is back at the top of the UK physical charts three months after its release. Sales of the game rose 94 percent week-on-week, largely thanks to a new PS5 bundle that includes the game with the console. Fresh console stock also means other PS5 games have leapt into the charts: Gran Turismo 7 is back up to tenth place with a 38 percent sales rise, while Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart re-enters at 15 with a 275 percent sales rise (thanks GamesIndustry.biz). Nintendo Switch Sports drops to second place in the charts after three weeks at the top of the chart - its physical sales dropped 37 percent. Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga drops to third place, while Nintendo rounds out the top five with Mario Kart 8: Deluxe maintaining fourth place and Pokémon Legends: Arceus rising from sixth to fifth. Last week's biggest new release was Evil Dead - The Game, which dropped this week from fifth to twelfth place. Below is the full top ten - remember these are just physical sales in the UK. Horizon Forbidden West Nintendo Switch Sports Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Mario Kart 8: Deluxe Pokémon Legends: Arceus Minecraft (Switch Edition) G
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And to start things off, a look at Hollow Knight's Queen's Station. Hello! This week we're trying something a bit special. It's Video Game City Week! Video games are filled with cities, and one of the great pleasures of a certain kind of game is getting to explore an urban environment that's been designed especially to intrigue you and keep you busy. So we started to wonder: what are the best video game cities, including both real and imagined places? And what are the best individual pieces from those cities? And what would a city look like if you pulled it together from your favourite elements of other video game cities? Which game would you turn to for the perfect rooftops, the perfect coffee shops, the perfect use of statues and freeways? (In a beautiful piece of synchronicity, Skyfaring author - and airline pilot - Mark Vanhoenacker's luminous Imagine a City was released last week - do track it down.) So that's the idea: a couple of short pieces each day in which writers argue for their favourite video game city and their favourite aspect of that city. First up are the Stagways from Hollow Knight, converging in the glorious Queen's Station. Last thing: special thanks to Lucy Grimwood for the absolutely stunning Video Game City logo art. It's just gorgeous. We hope you enjoy these pieces, and have a think about your own favourite cities. The Hollow Knight trailer. Queen's Station They say the best way to arrive in a city is by train. I think that probably holds true even when the train is actually a giant stag beetle, summoned by the ring of a bell. Actually, it's perfect - Hollow Knight's fast travel Stagways system blends the best of trains and hansom cabs. Victoriana of a certain kind - the pre-raphaelites, Christina Rosetti - shimmers through this world. The perfect way to arrive somewhere new. And this is never clearer than at the Queen's Station, the jewel of the Stagways system. When I think of Hollow Knight, a delicate, brutal metroidvania set in the moonlit world of insects, I always think of this place. It feels like it's the centre of so
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How Not to Make a Good D&D Party, as told by Stranger Things By May 23, 2022, 3:00am EDT Image: Netflix A balanced Dungeons & Dragons party is a fundamental part of creating an enjoyable gaming experience. Yes, you want to make sure you have strong fighters who can provide a variety of melee or ranged attacks, some magic users, and definitely at least one person with a healing spell. You want a range of stats for the non-battle parts so that conversations with innkeepers can go smoothly and potential dangers and traps can be spotted from a glance around the room. Most importantly, you want a group that will be fun together, one that might unexpectedly work together to succeed at their ultimate quest, whatever that may be. The first season of Stranger Things — which leaned on the Dungeons & Dragons of it all more so than the following two — exemplified a good, balanced party. The core group of kids played off each other neatly (and their official in-game character sheets certainly highlighted a nicely calibrated party). And no matter how you split up the characters, there was some great chemistry and wonderful character moments. But each successive season of Stranger Things has moved away from the D&D aspect — and also away from that ideal party. While the Duffer brothers bring back Dungeons & Dragons in Stranger Things 4, the group dynamics are weaker than ever. Even if the terror comes in full swing, the charm of the characters is completely sucked away, replaced by connections that just don’t work well together but are being forced to somehow. [Ed. note: This review contains some slight spoilers for the first half of the fourth season of Stranger Things.] Image: Netflix Sea
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New trailer shows ocean exploration. Tropical adventure Tchia has been delayed until early 2023. The last we saw of the game was at The Game Awards last year. It was originally set for a spring 2022 launch across PS4, PS5, and PC (Epic). "This extra time will allow us to really polish every aspect of the game and flesh out all the little details that we know will make Tchia a really special experience," said the developers in a Twitter post. "Thank you again for your support. We have a lot of exci
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Fortnite's latest collaborative cross-over is going to be with none other than 80's icon Pac-Man. An announcement on the Japanese Pac-Man website says that the collaboration between Fortnite and Pac-Man will start from 2nd June. Fortnite No Build gameplay trailer. From then, players will be able to purchase items with a 'Pac-Man' motif. So, perhaps we won't be seeing entire Pac-Man skins gobbling their way through Fortnite's map next month, but time will tell. However, please note that, at the time of writing, Epic has not reac
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Netflix’s anthology series Love, Death & Robots returned for a third installment on May 20 in all its edgy, red-band glory. It’s like nothing else in animation right now: Each episode tells a different, self-contained story ranging in tone from crass comedy to dark drama. None of the shorts shy away from gritty, hardcore elements: blood and guts, nudity and sex, horror and horniess galore. And unlike other staples of adult animation, like Big Mouth or Family Guy, Love, Death & Robots is a genre spectacle, adapting various science fiction and fantasy stories. Co-creator Tim Miller says he hand-picks the stories from the vast collection of short-fiction anthologies on his Kindle. Miller (director of Deadpool and Terminator: Dark Fate) and co-creator David Fincher (director of Seven, Fight Club, Zodiac, and much more) launched the anthology series in 2019, picking a wide variety of directors and studios to work on the shorts. One of those directors happened to be former DreamWorks director Jennifer Yuh Nelson (Kung Fu Panda 2 and 3), who directed season 2’s LDR short “Pop Squad” and season 3’s “Kill Team Kill.” She also serves as an executive producer this season. It might seem strange that the director of Kung Fu Panda 2 pivoted to helping manage a hardcore, edgy anthology, but Nelson tells us that moving into adult animation came completely naturally to her. “My natural sensibility is very dark, much more adult animation,” Nelson explains. “I grew up on anime. And so for me, animation is not supposed to be just a child’s medium. But that’s been what it’s been mainly in the U.S., especially if you’re going for big-budget world-building stories. When a chance like this comes along, where I can finally stretch into what I want to do, as far as trying to approach stories in a completely full-spectrum way and be free — this is what I actually have always wanted to do.” In the United States, animation tends to be shoved into a family-friendly, all-ages box. There are exceptions, of course, but big theatrical projects are usually PG affairs. While many animators fight this stereotype, jokes about animated movies being primarily for children continue to persist. But Miller and Nelson want to fight against that stereotype. They feel like the tide is slowly but surely shifting. One big reason? The growing popularity of anime.
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"We're excited to bring Gloomhaven to new players around the world." Asmodee Digital's video game adaptation of acclaimed co-op board game Gloomhaven is, after more than two years on Steam, finally coming to consoles. Although Flaming Fowl Studios developed the PC version - which came out of early access at the end of last year - Saber Interactive will seemingly be handling the console port. "We're excited to bring Gloomhaven to new players around the world with Saber Interactive," Asmodee Digital CEO Pierre Ortolan confirmed to press. "Partnerships like this are one of the great advantages we have available to us now as part of Embracer Group, and we look forward to tapping into even more opportunities to deliver for our fans in the future." “Our partnership on Gloomhaven embodies the very reason we brought Asmodee into the Embracer family," added Saber Interactive CEO and co-founder, Matthew Karch. "Games are truly a transmedia experience, and it’s amazing to have the opportunity to collaborate with the world’s best board game makers to bring their IP to consoles. This is the first of many announcements of its kind to come.” While no firm release date has been revealed - nor specific console platforms, for that matter - it's thought the console version(s) will release sometime in 2023. As Matt so wonderfully summarised for us at the time, the original board game iteration of Gloomhaven, designed by Isaac Childres, is a sprawling, turn-based tactical dungeon crawler set in a persistent fantasy world that's packed with characters, items, and scenarios, all gradually u
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Sony's revamped PS Plus subscription service launches in Asia this week and new details are already emerging. It's been revealed that various visual options for PS1 games will be available, including multiple resolutions (native, 4:3 for 16:9, and stretched) as well as three filters: default, retro classic, and modern. Retro classic is essentially a CRT filter, meaning it's replicating the visuals of old TVs for that vintage feel. Eurogamer Newscast: Will we subscribe to PlayStation Plus Premium, and how does Xbox cope with the loss of Starfield this year? Resetera user brokenswiftie shared images of the three filters, taken from Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee - a game that, incidentally, was not on Sony's original list but has been included in the subscription. Zoom in on the images below to see the filter. Default Retro Classic Modern It seems that Sony is going the extra mile with its classic games on the service. It previously stated that some "select" PS1 and PSP games will include save anywhere and rewind abilities. It's also added trophies to PS1 game Syphon Filter, suggesting some games will have trophies while others will not. The subscription service launches in Asia this week and Japan next week, followed by North and South America (13th June) and Europe, Australia, and New Zealand (23rd June). Check out the full list of games here.
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If you buy something from a Polygon link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. Two things particularly stand out about Hanna Bergholm’s creepy horror feature Hatching: the emotional performance from Siiri Solalinna as a wide-eyed preteen under the thumb of a perfectionist mother, and her co-star Alli, the dripping, toothy, gradually mutating bird monster she hatches from a giant egg. Where it’s been standard procedure since Jaws for horror directors to only reveal their central creatures with teasing glimpses until the climax of the movie, Alli is on screen throughout much of Hatching — a slimy, shrieking, blood-drinking monstrosity that Solalinna’s character Tinja is trying to keep hidden and safe, even as it gets bigger, stranger, and more dangerous. Bergholm, who directed the film from a script she co-wrote with Ilja Rautsi, knew that making Alli work on screen was crucial if the film was going to work. So she literally got online and Googled “the best animatronic designer in the world” to see who she should ask to work on her film. “We needed the best possible people to make it,” she told Polygon in an interview after Hatching’s premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. “These kinds of animatronics, this prosthetic makeup, it has to be perfect, or it just looks hideous […] Google told me that the best animatronic designer in the world is Gustav Hoegen, the lead animatronic designer in Star Wars and Prometheus and Jurassic World and so on. I emailed him, basically, Hello, I’m Hanna from Finland, I have a film — low budget but good story!” Photo: Sundance Institute Her boldness paid off. She says Hoegen “got fascinated with the story,” and between Star Wars projects — he handled animatronics on The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and Rise of Skywalker, as well as Rogue One and Solo — he agreed to bring his team to Bergholm to design and operate the Alli puppet. Similarly, Bergholm reached out to makeup effects designer Conor O’Sullivan, half of the Oscar-nominated team who designed Heath Ledger’s Joker makeup for The Dark Knight. O’Sullivan has done prosthetic makeup for movies from X-Men: First Class to Morbius to the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but he also agreed to sign onto a project from a first-time feature director venturing into horror. “I had admired his work so much,” Bergholm says. “Like Gustav, he got excited about the design and just wanted to be on board. And that was great.” Bergholm says she hoped all along that the Alli puppet could be a practical effect. “CGI nowadays is wonderful, but it still doesn’t really have physicality,” she says. “It looks great, but I didn’t want my creature to be too smooth. I wanted to have some roughness and ugliness. I had always admired ET, those kinds of old practical-effects films, so that’s what I wanted. And its physical presence and its physical interaction with the girl in the film was so important.”
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If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Sundays are for opening the oven and setting off your smoke alarm. Before you hear the beep, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things). Over on IGN, Rebekah Valentine wrote about Ukrainian developers persevering, and how game developers and event organisers in Ukraine have been affected by Russia's invasion. Such incredibly brave people. “After a while, you’re so bummed with all of the negative things that you hear, that you have no energy to do anything,” he says. “All you want to do is lay down and hope that it is going to end soon. And some people started to cheer up other guys. They were like, ‘It's all bad, but it is going to be better. Let's do some fun things. Let's make some jokes about the war.’ And it actually helps people to get to normal … And even though [Mutant Football League] is silly, it can help people to find an emotional shelter. For PC Gamer, Natalie Clayton wrote about Covid-19 and how it taught the games industry to be better. Interesting to hear from devs on how a shift to remote work can pay dividends. While companies (even outside gamedev) love to boast about the benefits of in-person work, it's often understated how many people aren't comfortable with being ferried into an office every day. For disabled, neurodivergent, queer or otherwise marginalised people, the assumed productivity benefits of office work simply aren't true, and some of their best work gets done when in an environment they feel safe and comfortable in. For the Video Game History Foundation, Kevin Bunch and Kate Willaert wrote about the woman who brought female representation to games. A fascinating follow-up to Polygon's search for Ban Tran. However, after working on an unreleased Solar Fox conversion the following year for the Atari 5200 at MicroGraphic Image, Tran simply disappeared. And while there are many people in the United States by that name, none of them appeared to be her. The article on Polygon concluded with musings that her old coworkers may have simply mis-remembered her name - As it turned out, they were only one letter off. Over on Vice, Patrick Klepek wrote about how preserving video game history sometimes requires partnering with the enemy. An interesting link to the Video Game History Foundation above and a deep dive into playing the preservation long game. “A few of them [collectors] were turds too, but most of them are decent people,” said Cifaldi. “They're all driven by the same love of video game history that drives me, even if they express that love differently than I do. Private collectors are part of the preservation ecosystem for literally any artform, if you don't believe that go ask any museum curator and they'll set you straight. My fostering those relationships, my going to retro video game shows since literally the first one and having facetime and real human interactions with collectors, is what has gotten many unreleased games online, either directly from my actions or be
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"This is a RPG in which players control mercenaries battling rival factions in a fantastical world." A surprise ESRB listing for Square Enix's newly announced The DioField Chronicle has revealed some additional details about the mysterious game. The DioField Chronicle is a new tactics game coming to PS4 and PS5 later this year, as well as PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. It was announced at PlayStation State of Play back in March. Beyond that, we haven't really heard all that much about it, so it was a pleasant surprise to see the tactics game pop up on the ESRB website (thanks, G
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A sticky mouse pointer is preventing players from clicking, even in the raid. A new game-breaking bug is seemin
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Ukraine-based studio GSC Game World has reportedly confirmed that development on Stalker 2 "continues". Development of Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl was paused back in March as the company is based in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, which has been repeatedly targeted during the ongoing Russian invasion. It's since relocated to Prague whilst the war persists. As spotted by polish site GRYonline.pl, (via VGC) however, the studio is now back at work, having confirming to fans on its Discord community that "it continues" development. GSC Game World had its website blocked by the Russian government last month. The Stalker 2 website, unsurprisingly, includes a message of
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"We don't go to Ravenholm", oh how I wish I'd listened to those wise words now... That's right, thanks to an upcoming flat screen to VR
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