Image: House House
House House beat out Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding, Remedy’s Control, and more at DICE
Click here to watch embedded media At one time not long ago, Fable was synonymous with video game excellence and was a staple of Microsoft's first-party lineup. While I pray those days return soon, Fable fans such as myself still have the old games to look back on for a shot of quirky British humor, simple and fun combat, and the amazing fantasy world of Albion. Join Andrew Reiner, Joe Juba, Ben Reeves and me as we return to Fable and rediscover what made this fantasy world so enticing.
We went live earlier today, but be sure to check out the archive of the stream above. If you can't get enough Replay and our other shows, remember to subscribe on YouTube, Twitch, Mixer, Twitter, or Facebook to get notified when we go live each week! Thanks and enjoy the show!
Click to watch embedded media With the tagline "From Russia with love," Netflix's teaser for Stranger Things' upcoming fourth season gives fans a reveal that will warm their hearts. We don't know exactly where this season is going yet, but part of it will be set outside of Hawkins, Indiana. We expect to return to Hawkins to catch up with the kids, but it looks like we'll be spending some time in Russia as well. There's also that pesky Upside Down that will probably become a factor again. The teaser sadly doesn't give us the one thing we want most: a start date.
Photo: Christopher Moss/Columbia Pictures
It isn’t particularly scary, but Blumhouse is more about hooks than real horror
Image: Quantic Dream/Sony Interactive Entertainment
Now David Cage can bring his strange games directly to players
Marvel's Avengers is still over six months away, but you can take a peek at its leaked achievement list right now.
Trophy snooping site Exophase has scooped up the details - which include a few story spoilers. There's also lots of achievements for collecting lots of things.
Marvel's Avengers was, of course, originally due to launch much sooner - until it was slapped with a sizeable delay last month. It's now set to arrive on 4th September for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (and then, presumably, on PS5 and Xbox Series X down the line).
Love is in the air, maybe. | Photo: Bettina Strauss/Netflix
The sequel is sweet, but a little thin
Click here to watch embedded media After the success of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, many wondered what Ninja Theory had up its collective sleeves next. Most of us wouldn't have said a team-based multiplayer game in the same vein as Overwatch, but that's what makes life fun, right? Join Andrew Reiner and me as we dive headfirst into the Bleeding Edge beta and finally get our hands on this colorful character brawler.
We went live earlier, but if you missed it you can watch the replay of the show in the archive above. Enjoying the streams? You can subscribe over on YouTube, Twitch, Mixer, Twitter, or Facebook to get notified when we go live in the future! Thanks for watching!
With Half-Life: Alyx's release date now officially confirmed by Valve as 23rd March, it's a good time to be getting hold of a VR headset.
While that's potentially a huge investment for just one game, it's also an opportunity to get hold of the many other VR experiences already available. Just as well that there's currently a VR sale over on The Humble Store.
Being the most supportive of the technology, Bethesda arguably has the biggest showing here, with 50 per cent discounts on the following:
Image: Remedy Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment
Death Stranding and Sayonara Wild Hearts also among the winners
Click to watch embedded media Square Enix today released the opening cinematic for Final Fantasy VII Remake. This gorgeous sequence takes you on a tour of Midgar and also gives you an idea of how the narrative is going to kick off. Final Fantasy VII Remake is right around the corner with an April 10 release date exclusively for PlayStation 4.
Square Enix is expanding greatly on the content from the original 1997 PlayStation game, and is turning Final Fantasy VII into a series of games. This first game is mostly contained within Midgar, and while the main story beats will likely be the same, Square is expanding on them and will give fans a deeper look at this world. We don't know how many games Square is planning or what the release schedule will be like, but there's a chance we'll be playing Final Fantasy VII for years to come.
Are you excited for this remake? Let us know in the comments section below.
Something that's always bothered me about the Pokémon games is that, despite their immense power and status, legendary Pokémon have always felt quite small. Sure, they're listed as being fairly large in the Pokédex - and the game's name literally means pocket monsters - but I've often wondered what they would look like as vast mythical creatures.
Thankfully, an artist has managed to make my dreams come true: and the paintings she's produced are simply stunning.
Created by 23-year-old independent artist Devin Elle Kurtz (also known as TamberElla), the digital paintings of Rayquaza, Giratina, Lugia, Palkia, Dialga, Kyogre and Groudon have been gaining a fair bit of attention on the internet over the past few days - and rightly so. The Pokémon are presented as massive creatures emerging from clouds, overshadowing entire cities, or troubling ships in a storm.
Photo: James Bareham/Polygon
Bloomberg says the system currently costs $450 to make
Finally, some seven years after it first broke cover at 2013's PlayStation Meeting as it accompanied the unveiling of the PlayStation 4, Media Molecule's Dreams is here, its long and winding road concluding towards the tail-end of that particular console's life. Except it's not the end of Dreams, of course - it's the beginning of a project that will transform over time according to the community's needs and wants.
Talking about Dreams can be confusing like that, probably because we keep making the mistake of treating it like a regular video game. The more time you spend with it, though, the more you realise it isn't that at all - it's a whole new platform, a place to create and share and a dazzling toolkit that's already been put to fantastic use.
I'm still not entirely sure what it is, but I do know that the more time I spend with it the more I love it. I got the chance to sit down with Media Molecule's Alex Evans and Mark Healey as they celebrated the launch to talk about what's taken them so long, what's changed along the way and where they think Dreams might be heading.
Over the last ten years, 4A Games has built a reputation for pushing technology to new heights - from the original, remarkable Metro 2033 to last year's Metro Exodus - an open world showcase with beautiful ray traced global illumination. However, the firm also enjoyed success with their current-gen Metro Redux remasters, and now those titles are available for Nintendo Switch. Yes, it's another Switch port we're tackling but this time, the original developer has taken point on bringing the games across and as it's 4A you know you're in for something special.
For those unfamiliar, the first two Metro games are first-person shooters set deep within the radiation ravaged Metro system beneath Moscow. With limited supplies, players make their way through the underground (occasionally venturing to the blasted surface) while dealing with a wide range of foes. Stealth, combat and storytelling are all part of the experience, with both games offering a unique atmosphere quite unlike anything else on the market. It's also the first time a Metro game has appeared on a Nintendo platform and it's also the debut for the franchise on what is essentially mobile hardware. On top of that, the port hasn't been handed off to a separate developer as is often the case - 4A rolled up its sleeves and dug in for this one, producing a fascinating piece of work.
The Sonic the Hedgehog movie is out in cinemas today, and to celebrate, there's a whole bunch of Super Sonic sales going on.
Leading the pack is the Sonic the Hedgehog Ultimate Sale on Steam. For £45.15, the Ultimate Bundle gives you all 19 items on sale, spanning much of the blue blur's history.
On the other hand, you might not want all of them - let's face it, there are a few stinkers in there too - so you can also pick and choose at the following prices:
Five of the Best is a weekly series about the bits of games we overlook, those poor old things. I'm talking about crowds, potions, mountains, hands - things we barely notice at the time but can recall years later because they're so important to the overall memory of the game.
Now is the time to celebrate them - you and me both! I will share my memories but I'm just as eager to hear yours, so please share them in the comments below. We've had some great discussions in our other Five of the Best pieces.
Today: films about games! Or films heavily influenced by games and gaming. And note: the games themselves don't have to actually exist. That opens the remit up a bit, doesn't it? But the films have to exist otherwise this would be a very strange article indeed. Happy Friday!
We may be having to wait a little longer for the Final Fantasy 7 Remake than expected, but Square Enix has released something to help tide us over, as the game's opening cinematic has arrived. It looks pretty snazzy, and you can check it out below:
Previous sneak peeks have given us a look inside the Honey Bee Inn, while Square Enix recently released details on the quest system. At this rate all that remains to be seen is the game - now due to arrive on 10th April following a short delay to add "final polish".
After the release of a running-themed DLC back in January, the second expansion pack for Shenmue 3 is about to arrive, and this one's adding a bunch of quests.
Arriving on 18th February, Story Quest Pack promises "new quests full of mystery, intrigue and action", and will see Ryo "cross paths with a familiar face from the past, Shuqin Zhang, and quickly become embroiled in a new escapade where nothing is as it seems". That's about as vague as it can get, but at least there are a few screenshots.
If you want to pick up the DLC pack, it'll set you back £4.99 through either the Sony Store or Epic Games Store. Those who've already bought the Complete DLC Collection should see the new pack become available automatically on release day.
High prices for PlayStation 5 parts have pushed up Sony's manufacturing costs for the console, a new Bloomberg report claims.
Each PS5 will cost around $450 (£345) to make, Bloomberg's sources said - which will affect the price it's then sold at to consumers.
Sony declined to comment on Bloomberg's article.
When the 3DS died - and despite an impressive few years clinging on, I think it's now safe to say the beautifully eccentric handheld's time is finally up - alongside it died a certain type of game. Not exactly double-A so much as mid-budget and high concept, the 3DS was home to so many offbeat treats: things like Attack of the Friday Monsters, Crimson Shroud or Fantasy Life - all with lashings of charm and just as often spotty in execution, and all which came, one way or another, via Level-5.
Snack World is Level-5's latest, a multimedia assault akin to its hugely successful Yo-Kai Watch series that's also a manga, an anime and now this, a sizable action RPG that's finally made it westwards with The Dungeon Crawl - Gold. It places you in a sugar-sweet high fantasy world where you're joined by Chup, Mayonna, Béarnaise and several others in a series of bite-sized adventures as you level up and unearth new gear to equip and new togs to wear.
It's a world that's dizzyingly dense, the hub town of Tutti Frutti full of quest-givers and shops to peruse, the list of activities beyond the town's borders soon growing staggeringly long. You certainly can't fault Snack World when it comes to serving up content, nor can you find fault with the level of energy it puts into it all; this has all the noise, pizazz and high-pitched histrionics of the most upbeat anime, with an accompanying storm of weak jokes and puns that never quite land. Endearing? Maybe, though that depends entirely on your mindset and age. Snack World more often than not left me feeling like I was suffering through a hangover even though I'd not touched a drop the night before.
UPDATE 14/2/20: Pokémon Go developer Niantic has now detailed what you'll get raid-wise within the Safari Zone's City Explorer Pass, following Eurogamer's request for more information.
The 10 raids will be included in the price of the Pass - which helps justify its £8 cost. Every raid will be fixed for the weekend and offer one of: Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, Lanturn (evolution of Liverpool's featured Pokémon Chinchou), the current Legendary Pokémon at the time of the event, the current EX Raid Pokémon, and four others yet to be announced of varying raid difficulties.
ORIGINAL STORY 12/2/20: Last month, Pokémon Go announced its first-ever UK Safari Zone event - to be held in Liverpool over a weekend in April.
The Double-A Team is a feature series honouring the unpretentious, mid-budget, gimmicky commercial action games that no-one seems to make any more.
You can catch up with all of our Double-A Team pieces in our handy, spangly archive.
During Square-Enix's E3 2015 press conference, its US CEO Phil Rogers said he considered Just Cause a major franchise that can stand "side by side" with other "iconic" Square-Enix franchises.
Earlier this week Bulletstorm developer People Can Fly unveiled a brand-new trailer for its co-operative sci-fi looter-shooter Outriders, and now, as promised, it's shared a choice selection of gameplay details and videos as part of a half-hour long livestream reveal.
On a fundamental level, it perhaps wasn't the most revelatory of unveilings for Outriders, with little shown to truly distinguish it from its peers; it's a "dark" third-person cover-based shooter set in a "brutal nightmarish world" that ticks all the usual lite-RPG boxes are far as classes, skill trees, customisation, and rarity based loot acquisition goes. That doesn't mean it's a bust though; it looks to have an interesting premise, a striking, surprisingly diverse planet to explore, and, of course, People Can Fly's undeniable expertise when it comes to gunplay.
Breaking all that down, Outriders tells the story of a group of mercenaries tasked with exploring Enoch, a lush, untouched planet chosen to be the site of a new human colonisation effort. Shortly after landing, however, the group encounters a mysterious signal, and, in attempting to trace its source, runs into a devastating storm known as the Anomaly. To escape its effects, the Outriders retreat into cryo-sleep, awakening 30 years later to an almost unrecognisable world.
During the Honor Games, the game map will feature fireworks, musicians, and other festive themes. | Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft
Fan favorite mode returns for two weeks
Click here to watch embedded media Welcome to the newest episode of The Game Informer Show aka the Leocast! This week, Leo Vader takes the reins and is joined by Jeff Cork, Joe Juba, and I to chat about why the new third-person shooter Outriders had them buzzing after visiting People Can Fly's studio in Poland.
After dissecting Outrider's gaming goodness, we examine the latest Anthem news out of Bioware and discuss if it can become the game we were all hoping it would with the studio going dark to create a clearer vision of the sci-fi shooter.
Wrapping up the show, we rope Dan Tack into the madness and tackle a huge community email section that had us in stitches and questioning our sanity all the way through.
Thanks for listening! Please make sure to leave feedback below, share the episode if you enjoyed it, and follow @therealandymc, @leovader, or me at @Studnik76 to let us know what you think.
Half-Life: Alyx, Valve's VR title set between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, is set to come out on March 23.
Although Valve has its own Valve Index VR headset, the game is compatible with all PC VR headsets such as the Vive and Oculus Rift.
As the name states, players control Alyx Vance in order to fight alongside her father Eli against the alien Combine.
Half-Life: Alyx, available March 23, 2020 https://t.co/NCOLWqSp3e pic.twitter.com/Q04EZwNfBt
— Valve (@valvesoftware) February 13, 2020
[Source: Valve]
Image: The Pokémon Company
Image: Square Enix
Image: Netflix
Image: The Pokémon Company 
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures via 
Image: People Can Fly/Square Enix
Image: The Pokemon Company