August 2023

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is right around the corner, but outside of the initial reveal trailer, we didn't know much about Nintendo's latest 2D platformer. However, today's showcase was packed to the brim with gameplay reveals and new details, and now we've got a much clearer picture of what this game will look like. Wonder no longer: here's everything we learned from the Super Mario Bros. Wonder Direct.

The game starts when Prince Florian, ruler of the Flower Kingdom, has his castle stolen by Bowser. After fusing with a Wonder Flower, the king of the Koopas is able to fly over this new land, populating it with his chaotic cronies. As always, it's up to Mario and friends to save the day, but this time around, he's got more buddies than usual. In addition to Luigi, Peach, and a pair of Toads, Toadette and Daisy are also along for the ride. Unlike some past games, each character here plays the same, meaning Peach has no built-in floating ability and Luigi jumps just as high as Mario.

For younger or less-skilled players, you can also play as Yoshi or Nabbit, the latter of which is returning from his debut in New Super Luigi U. Neither of these characters takes damage from enemies, so they're useful for people who want to play the game with less of a challenge. The Yoshis also retain their signature flutter jump and swallowing abilities, and they can even be ridden by other players.

It’s high time for another RPS Game Club chat! This month we’ve been pondering Aperture Desk Job: a "playable short" Valve created as a Steam Deck accompaniment, yet still manages to squeeze in some deliciously ironic character beats and at least one mantis-based tragedy. We’ll be discussing it in the liveblog below from 4pm BST, and we want to know your thoughts too. Liked it? Loathed it? Have design feedback for the toilet turrets? We wanna hear ‘em, so join us by posting in the liveblog widget’s comments bit. See you in an hour, ish.

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Lord Of The Rings: Return To Moria is a survival game that certainly shares something in common with both Valheim and Deep Rock Galactic: you and a few buds sink pits and set out on expeditions to mine ore, batter monsters, and push further into the darkness. Having watched its game director Jon-Paul Dumont steer me through a 30-minute demo, I’ve come away with the impression it’s far more than just a cheap LOTR pretender. The game strikes me as a real competitor, with well thought out story beats and crafting treats to make Moria’s restoration a hearty adventure… or, if you'd prefer, the equivalent of a Powerwash Simulator.

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Expectations are enormous for Bethesda's latest title, Starfield. It promises a galaxy-spanning adventure with a wealth of content and hundreds of planets to explore. Few games come anywhere near this kind of scope - and fewer still come with the high level of content quality and gameplay flexibility that Bethesda typically offers. But that's not to say there haven't been concerns. Top of mind are technical worries, with prospective players perturbed by the potential for bugs and frame-rate hiccups. Bethesda's prior console efforts haven't always arrived in stable form, and those games were orders of magnitude smaller than Starfield. The key question for many is this: is Starfield good to go at launch, or should you wait for performance issues and bugs to be resolved?

There are other key concerns too. For example, what's the story with Xbox Series S? Microsoft's junior machine has been a centre of controversy for some time, with some titles struggling to accommodate the system's reductions in memory, bandwidth and GPU performance. To the best of our knowledge, no footage of the game has been seen pre-launch on Series S, though BGS's Todd Howard has been known to have spent a lot of time playing the Series S rendition of the game.

This week on the Eurogamer Newscast, we're back from Gamescom and scurrying around trying to let you know everything we saw. We chatted to Phil Spencer, we saw Starfield, we played Sonic and much more. But what else caught our eye?

We sat down this week to chat about what we saw and ended up honing in on some of our personal favourites - games which may not have caught the headlines as much as that big new RPG everyone's going on about. Games which appealed specifically to us - because they felt authentically British - like the wonderfully Yorkshire Thank Goodness You're Here and the North Sea oil rig horror Still Wakes the Deep.

I adored The Plucky Squire. Ed loved Black Myth: Wukong. Together with Victoria Kennedy, who held the news fort brilliantly back home in Blighty, we chat about the best of what we saw last week in Cologne.

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Fellow puzzlers, there is good news. Not only has the second expansion for The Case of the Golden Idol been announced, but it is actually available now.

Known as The Lemurian Vampire, this expansion connects the game's previous expansion Spider of Lanka directly to the main game. "The only thing that stands in your way, is the mysterious Tower Dweller and its powerful Golden artefact," developer Color Gray Games teased.

The Lemurian Vampire consists of three new scenarios to mull over, as you "follow the perilous journey of the Lemurian delegation to Monkey Paw Island". These delegates are on the search for the fountain of youth (aren't we all?), and of course any riches that may be hidden along the way.

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Nintendo has revealed its latest Switch OLED model - the Mario Red edition.

This new console edition is, as you can see in the header image above, very red. It features a little Mario silhouette tucked away on the back corner of the base, as well as some hidden coins inside its back panel.

This new Switch OLED will be available to scoop up from 6th October. While Nintendo hasn't shared specifics yet, it has said to keep an eye out for more information on pre-orders, and presumably a price, "soon".

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The ESRB seems to have revealed that Ubisoft is planning a Beyond Good & Evil 20th Anniversary Edition. News on the BG&E front has been a little quiet as of late, so fans of the classic adventure title might be in for a nice revisit. That notoriously truant sequ—err, prequel, however? Well, who knows?

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After briefly teasing the character during EVO 2023, Capcom has finally unveiled the poisonous fangs of Street Fighter 6's newest combatant, A.K.I., who will slither her way into the popular fighting game on September 27.

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An August 31 Nintendo Direct gave us a lengthy look at the upcoming Super Mario Bros. Wonder game, with an added surprise at the end of the presentation: A brand-new, limited edition Nintendo Switch OLED. The console will release on October 6, two full weeks before Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s October 20 release date.…

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Shortly before the public opening of this 2023’s annual board game convention, Gen Con, around $300,000 worth of Magic: The Gathering cards were reported stolen. Caught on security camera at the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis, two suspects were seen carting out a large pallet of cardboard boxes…

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During today’s Super Mario Bros. Wonder-centric Nintendo Direct, we got to see a new and far more detailed look at the upcoming side-scrolling platformer, including its amazing approach to online play, and how you can now play as a Yoshi carrying an elephant.

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Opting for option three means you will be walking right into an invisible wall with the top right corner of the screen saying, "You Cannot Go That Way" (seen in the screenshot below). Choosing the second option transports you to another part of the map.

As you can see in the image above, the inventory management in Starfield has one end of the screen showing your or the storage bin, NPC, or barter's inventory, which you can toggle with the press of the button. In contrast, the other end of the screen is empty or displays an enlarged image of whatever item your cursor is highlighted for.

"The third ever-present annoyance is, fortunately, one that stands out as something that can be fixed without a major overhaul. Like Bethesda's previous RPGs, Starfield is a game that is roughly 30% inventory management… and yet it is shockingly bad at that task," my colleague Dan Stapleton said in his review of Starfield.

A wine bottle and wine glass that feature Tales of Symphonia characters is available to pre-order from eeo Store. This is in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of Tales of Symphonia. Pre-orders are open until September 19, 2023, and they will ship out in late November 2023. Ordering either the bottle or the wine will net you a special postcard. [Thanks, Dengeki Online!]

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The bottle of wine costs 12,650 JPY ($86.65) and the glass costs 12,100 JPY ($82.90). Both the bottle and the glass have the designs engraved into them via sandblasting. It uses the key visual that is on the cover of the game, with the words “20th Anniversary” underneath the title. Since it only uses the box art, both of them only depict Lloyd, Colette, Raine, and Genis. While the bottle does come with wine, the website does not go into any details about it. The point is likely the bottle itself and not what’s inside.

Tales of Symphonia originally came out in 2003 on the Nintendo GameCube. It was one of the most popular and successful Tales games, with its characters appearing in several other spin-offs and on merchandise over the years. Furyu Hobby also recently opened up pre-orders of plushes based on Symphonia characters as part of the 20th anniversary.

Once again, Amazon revealed the Honkai: Star Rail Prime Gaming rewards to accompany a major character launch. Subscribers can now get a bundle of items that includes Stellar Jades in honor of Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae's debut. It will be available to claim until September 19, 2023, which is the day before the Fu Xuan banner begins.

Here are the Honkai: Star Rail rewards for subscribers this time:

• 5 Disposable Kinetic Cannons
• 8 Traveler’s Guides
• 60 Stellar Jades

This is the exact same bundle that was offered when Blade was added to Honkai: Star Rail. They tend to consist of the same sorts of beneficial items each time. The only constant is that the pack will always include 60 Stellar Jades.

When September 2023 starts, so will the NIKKE NieR: Automata event that brings 2B, A2, and Pascal to the game as playable characters. We already knew Pascal is the unit we can earn and the other two heroines are ones in the gacha. Now Level Infinite shared videos and additional details showing all of the characters. There's even a peek at the 2B YoRHa Uniform 1 kimono costume.

First, here’s the NIKKE NieR: Automata 2B video. It shows her using the AR: Virtuous Rifle in this game. She is a Fire Code Defender with a Burst Skill III. She has Survival and Cluster Bomb passive skills. Her Series of Attacks Burst Skill deals AOE damage.

【NIKKE Motion Demonstration】

YoRHa No. 2 Type B Android!

2B uses AR: Virtuous Rifle.

Whenever her Burst skill is used, 2B's Max HP increases. Her attack power can be increased based on her final Max HP.#NIKKExNieR#NIKKE#2B pic.twitter.com/Vs208wpWlk

In a statement made by FromSoftware on August 30, 2023, there are reports that some Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon players may be experiencing save data issues when playing on PC. When saving under certain conditions, the save data for the game will not be saved properly. FromSoftware is currently investigating the cause for this issue.

While FromSoftware did not elaborate on what conditions trigger the save data issues for players, the developer recommends that PC owners of Armored Core 6 close out the game before putting their PC to sleep to avoid any further issues with the game. It only has one save file on PC, so save data issues may cause players to permanently lose progress in the game.

The game underwent emergency maintenance when it began rolling out across different regions on August 24, 2023. This prevented players from accessing a number of online features within the game, but did not affect any single player functions. The game has also received two patches so far to fix a variety of glitches, improve performance and stability, and fix an assortment of graphical and text errors.

Eleven pieces of jewelry based on JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders are now open for pre-order. These items are part of a collaboration with Jam Home Made, which is an accessory shop in Japan. You can purchase the accessories via Premium Bandai. However, Premium Bandai does not ship outside of Japan. [Thanks, Famitsu!]

The jewelry pieces that are part of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders and Jam Home Made collaboration, as well as their prices, are as follows:

• DIO The World ring (16500 JPY)
• Hermit Purple necklace (15400 JPY)
• Hierophant Green earrings (9900 JPY)
• Iggy ring (16500 JPY)
• Last Fight necklace (16500 JPY)
• Last Fight ring (14300 JPY)
• Magician’s Red necklace (13200 JPY)
• Silver Chariot bead bracelet (13200 JPY)
• Star Platinum ring (16500 JPY)
• The Fool feather single earring (7700 JPY)
• To Be Continued ear cuff (7700 JPY)

All of the items will be available for pre-order until September 17, 2023. They’ll ship out in November 2023. Once again, they are only available in Japan unless you employ the use of a proxy service. As a note, the Last Fight ring and necklace Jotaro’s ORA ORA and DIO’s MUDA MUDA to form the design.

Back at Evo 2023, Capcom teased the Street Fighter 6 AKI release date by reminding people she'd show up in Autumn 2023. Now we know exactly when she'll appear. Her launch date is September 27, 2023. There's also more insight into how she'll work and look. There's also a new AKI Street Fighter 6 gameplay trailer. A Fighting Pass will appear ahead of her debut in-game on September 1, 2023.

First, here's the AKI footage. We get to see more personality-driven moments with her. Following that, she fights JP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_871izU8Fpg&ab_channel=StreetFighter

Here's the AKI Street Fighter 6 gameplay trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_871izU8Fpg&ab_channel=StreetFighter

This is the second AKI Street Fighter 6 trailer, though the first didn't show gameplay. The initial one was more of an introduction to her personality. It took place during the story mode and showed her meeting the player's avatar.

Platform: Switch
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo
Release: October 20, 2023

The announcement of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, which acted as the grand finale of June's Nintendo Direct, caught many off guard. Not only is Nintendo moving away from the well-worn tread of the New Super Mario Bros. franchise for the 2D side of the series, but it is taking Mario in new directions with a larger roster of playable characters, unprecedented gameplay conventions, and all-new power-ups. The result provided us with a trailer that not only garnered a massive reaction online when our favorite Italian plumber turned into an elephant, but also had us watching the footage on repeat in an attempt to ascertain as many details as we could from the limited gameplay we were shown.

Update, 9/1/23:

Yesterday, Volition Games, the studio behind the Saints Row and Red Faction franchises, announced it was shutting down, effective immediately. Today, it released a new statement discussing its 30-year history, and thanking the talent that has come through its doors across three decades and its community of fans. 

You can read the statement in full below:

I don't remember this at the time, but there were complaints about Skyrim's map when it came out, because it was just an extreme zoom out on the world. It wasn't dense with information; the map markers were often kind of an "it's in this area" guideline that were even less helpful if what you needed was in a barrow or otherwise underground. Starfield raises the bar by taking the bold step of having a map that is almost not a map.

I'm referring here to the planet surface map. The starmap is, like a couple of things I've experienced since being hustled through quite an accelerated inciting incident (Starfield's equivalent of Patrick Stewart dying in a sewer after he's charged you with saving the world), reminiscent of Mass Effect. You can select different galaxies, which have one or two solar systems in them, and then can zoom down and select specific planets or moons or whatever to warp to. Once you're wombling about on the surface being a naughty little space captain - or whatever, I don't judge what you're up to - well baby, I hope you like blue voids with a bit of topography.

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Brought to you by the teeming brains behind Snake Cave and Eat Shit With Divine, Starfield is an experience of almost bewildering scale that defies easy summary, but I will do my best. In this much-anticipated sci-fi action epic, you step into the spaceboots of Prince Starfield, a fully customisable, unvoiced protagonist who must battle a cosmic menace in the course of a familiar, but thrillingly woven narrative with unabashed political dimensions.

Not to be confused with NickTitle’s rather more contemplative game of the same name, to say nothing of Kenneth Nietfeld’s swashbuckling romance Rick Starfield: Hero of Space and Time, or indeed Starfield from Graek Tarmikos, an avant garde reinterpretation of Breakout, joeAmerica Gayms’ Starfield is a straightforward but engrossing blend of action and customisation elements. It’s the same heady brew of role-playing possibilities we’ve come to expect from the resourceful creator of Abandoned Bog.

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Woah! Last week Gamescom 2023 happened, the biggest consumer event for video games in the woooooooorld! The Electronic Wireless Show podcast gives you our definitive take on what was hot and what was not from Geoffcom's Opening Night Live, and points you towards some of the previews and interviews our crack team has from the show floor. This week there's plenty to talk about re. What We've Been Playing as well, because James has been cramming in a bunch of small games. Fun!

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It's been 11 years since the last proper Mario side-scroller, a fact that surprises Nintendo's veteran exec Takashi Tezuka when I point it out. Tezuka has worked on dozens of projects since the launch of 2012's New Super Mario Bros. U - including Super Mario Maker, Nintendo's create-your-own-Mario sandbox. Still, such a wait for more handcrafted Mario levels seems notable.

Why so long? Speaking with Nintendo, it sounds like the company's desire to keep its classic side-scrolling formula fresh has remained paramount. There have been so many 2D Mario games now - including a whole string of releases that sought to emphasise their freshness by sticking "New Super Mario" in their title. After those - and after letting players go wild with the company's own Mario toolkit - what could Nintendo do next? Something that feels truly new again, I'm happy to report.

In Super Mario Bros. Wonder I can be a Mario who shoots bubbles, capturing enemies and errant koopa shells in upwards floating soap suds, then suddenly transform into some form of sentient goomba - though I'm still Mario with his iconic hat, of course. Waddling across platforms and dodging enemies via stealth mechanics, I pass a talking flower who loudly wonders how I'll taste. Sure, why not.

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Volition Games, the studio best known for its work on the Saints Row series, has been closed down "effective immediately" as part of parent company Embracer Group's previously announced "restructuring" programme.

Volition, which celebrated its 30th anniversary earlier this year, announced the closure in a statement shared on social media, writing, "This past June, Embracer Group announced a restructuring programme to strengthen and maintain its position as a leader in the video game industry. As part of that programme, they evaluated strategic and operational goals and made the difficult decision to close Volition effective immediately."

The statement adds that Embracer is "working to provide job assistance and help smooth the transition for our Volition family members". The move is likely to effect around 340 people based on the studio's most recently shared employment figures.

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Starfield is nearly out on PC and Xbox consoles for those who have early access to the space-faring RPG, and reviews are officially popping up online. The game’s currently garnering favorable marks among critics, with most shook by how (mostly) bug-free Bethesda’s game surprisingly is.

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Volition, the studio behind Red Faction, Saints Row, and countless other games, is closing its doors after 30 years. The decision was made by parent company Embracer after the sprawling conglomerate announced cuts earlier this year following the loss of $2 billion in funding that was reportedly supposed to come from…

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and 100 Thieves announced the two companies will release a Dragon Ball Z collection featuring apparel, keyboards, and mousepads with artwork of characters like Goku, Vegeta, Buu, Trunks, and Cell. Currently, a number of keyboards and mousepads have already sold out from this lineup, including the Performance Base 65 keyboards, Super Saiyan mousepad, and the Saiyan Saga mousepad.

The Dragon Ball Z x Higround Summit 65 keyboards come in two styles, with Goku doing a Kamehameha Wave or Vegeta in his Saiyan armor. They feature dye-sub PBT keycaps, a full CNC aluminum case, gasket-mounted designs, and graphic switches. The Dragon Ball Z x Higround Performance Base 65 ones come in four styles, including the Goku and Vegeta designs and ones with Trunks and Vegeta in their Super Saiyan forms and the dragon Shenron. It has magnetic switches, an aluminum plate, and silicone dampening foam. The Higround Base 65 keyboards in this collection come in four styles as well and have hot-swappable switches.

Square Enix shared new Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII SOLDIER trivia. It explains the various perks 1st Class SOLDIER characters receive. As a reminder, these are the folks like Sephiroth, Angeal, and eventually Zack.

1st Class SOLDIERs an elite group in SOLDIER who are typically sent out onto missions that are extremely difficult or require a specialized skillset. They are the highest level of SOLDIERs at the Shinra Electric Power Company which is why they are afforded so many privileges and perks.

1st Class SOLDIERs are granted the right to refuse a mission. Typically, 3rd Class and 2nd Class SOLDIERs must work any mission assigned to them, but 1st Class SOLDIERs are afforded the perk to refuse a mission due to their unique talents and strength. 1st Class SOLDIERs are also allowed the right to carry special equipment, use items that are not supplied by Shinra, and wear their own clothes.

There are some 1st Class SOLDIERs like Angeal Hewley who prefer to stick to tradition and wear the standard black 1st Class SOLDIER outfit in Final Fantasy VII. This is due to Angeal's commitment to duty and his serious attitude. Others like Sephiroth and Genesis Rhapsodos have modified or completely swapped out standard uniform for more elaborate, distinctive outfits.