Image: Paramount Pictures via Polygon
Surprisingly, the movie about a talking blue hedgehog is aimed at children
Digital subscribers to Game Informer are now able to learn all about Outriders! Following this week's cover reveal, our digital issue is now live to subscribers on web browsers, iPad/iPhone and Android devices. Individual issues will be available for purchase later today. You can download the apps to view the issue by following this link. All of these digital options are included in a standard subscription.
The issue launches later this week on our third-party subscription apps including Kindle and Nook.
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Everything I've ever loved is gone.
Family. Friends. Home. It’s all back on a planet that can no longer sustain human life, a planet that we lost contact with 15 years ago. Earth is a distant memory, but there is hope: Our ship orbits Enoch, a planet that could give the 500 thousand souls on the S.S. Flores a chance at redemption. Perhaps this time we won’t fail.
The probes have given us cause for celebration: Enoch is a rare breed of “Goldilocks” planets, which is neither too hot nor too cold to sustain human life, with a breathable atmosphere and gravitational pull that won’t instantly crush us. Before we can colonize this rich new home, there’s one final formality: The Outriders have to make a quick landfall and ensure that it is, indeed, the paradise scientists have promised us all. What could possibly go wrong?
Image: People Can Fly/Square Enix
Hands-on with People Can Fly’s next-gen debut, Outriders
Twelve years after the launch of Half-Life 2: Episode 2, the near-unimaginable has happened; the next instalment in Valve's legendary series - VR-only shooter Half-Life: Alyx - finally has an actual, proper release date, and will be coming to Steam on 23rd March.
Half-Life: Alyx takes place between the original Half-Life and Half-Life 2, casting players as the latter's Alyx Vance as she mounts a secret resistance against the invading alien Combine.
It'll blend exploration, puzzles, combat, and story in the vein of the classic games, with each element designed to play to the strengths of VR. So far we've only seen snatches of the reportedly 15-hour experience in official and off-screen footage, but the combination of natural motion-based interactions - such as aiming, reloading, grenade-tossing, and door-opening - and wonderfully atmospheric environments certainly looks promising.
Image: Rockstar Games
Jessica Hoffmann Davis, educator and champion of arts in education, is the 75-year-old mother of Dutch van der Linde’s actor
It's been a bit of a wait, but CD Projekt's free-to-play Witcher-themed card-battler, Gwent, is finally heading to Android devices next month.
Gwent, if you're unfamiliar and merely clicked this story on a daredevil whim, began life as a tavern-based distraction within CD Projekt's masterful The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
Two years later, it emerged as a standalone free-to-play game, radically reworked to introduce more tactical nuance and depth. Since then, it's received something of a reboot, and even an acclaimed story-driven solo spin-off known as Thronebreaker.
Click here to watch embedded media With the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's newest season comes a bounty of new maps, guns, and more fun for fans looking to extend their time with Infinity Ward's multiplayer suite. Join me as I test out all the new additions to Season 2 and attempt to balance killstreaks with talking with the chat.
We went live earlier today, but fear not, for you can still watch the archive of the show 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!
Click here to watch embedded media Crystal Dynamics' Avengers game was recently on the receiving end of a delay from May to September, but those excited to suit up as Earth's Mightiest Heroes can now pre-order a few different versions and set themselves up to receive various bonuses. While both the PS4 and Xbox One versions have different editions to choose from that come with several bonuses, PS4 players get a few extra things, including first access to a beta test.
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If you're so enthusiastically eager to play Crystal Dynamics' upcoming Marvel Avengers game that you're struggling to resist the urge to to dash to the shops and slap down some cash, you might be interested to know that Square Enix has a dizzying array of pre-order bonuses planned, including access to its pre-launch beta.
Players that pre-order any version of the game (provided they're purchased through participating retailers, notes Square), can get involved in the planned, although still undated, Avengers beta. They'll also receive an exclusive nameplate and the Marvel Legacy Outfit Pack - featuring classic comic book looks for Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hulk, Iron Man, and Ms. Marvel, inspired by "moments from the comics that defined who each Super Hero was as they first embraced their powers to become the icons they are today."
That's not quite the end of Square's big pre-order push, however; the standard physical edition of Marvel's Avengers will also include either a limited-edition pin set, patch set, steelbook, or digital comic book, depending where pre-orders are made, and there are additional bonuses exclusive to the PlayStation Store.
Last year, Disney's share of the US film market managed to reach a record 35 per cent (thanks to its merger with Fox) - so I guess it's just as well the company's open to having game developers reimagine its franchises. That is a lot of IP.
Speaking at this year's 2020 DICE summit, Disney exec Sean Shoptaw said the company wants to empower game developers to do "really unique things" with its catalogue (via The Hollywood Reporter).
"We want to tap into the power of creatives across the industry."
Upcoming Games of 2020 Draft | Final Checkpoint Ep 23. Read More »
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Final Fantasy 7 Remake includes a new quest system where you kill rats and find lost cats in exchange for rewards.
New screenshots from the game released today by publisher Square Enix and published by the PlayStation blog have shown off how it all looks.
Mercenary Quests can be picked up from people across Midgar and tracked via a new Quests menu. These will task you with helping merchants or townspeople with their problems, and can reward gil. Another type of mission, Battle Report quests, can be acquired from Shinra researcher Chadley. These will ask you to assess enemies and defeat them in differing ways in return for Materia.
Fancy owning a slice of video game history? The infamous and ultra-rare PlayStation SNES prototype console dug up in 2015 has finally been put up for auction.
You'll need a decent chunk of change to make a bid, however. After a few hours on sale, the console is at $31k (£23k), and is likely to go much higher before the sale concludes on 27th February.
Nintendo and Sony's brief dalliance during the SNES-era is reasonably well documented - a romance between the two was on the cards with the intent of producing a disc-based console together - before the liason broke down and Sony struck out solo.
After a cheeky announcement on Twitter back on Tuesday, the Nintendo Switch eShop Blockbuster sale is now live with discounts of up to 75 per cent available on a number of the console's biggest games.
Perhaps not the ones you want, though.
Starting with Nintendo's first-party releases, these are all at that very familiar £33.29 price point we've come to expect from a Switch eShop sale. Only four are included: Super Mario Maker 2, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Super Mario Odyssey and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. A decent if not spectacular discount, then.
Looks like some Pokémon Sword and Shield players using Surprise Trade are getting more than they bargained for, as hacked Pokémon have been crashing games - and even disabling online features.
First made public by Pokémon modder Kurt on Twitter, the bug occurs when a "maliciously-crafted" Pokémon is sent via the game's Surprise Trade feature (basically Pokémon roulette). While receiving one of the malicious Pokémon doesn't corrupt save data, it crashes the game when the player attempts to access online features: effectively disabling online functionality in that particular Sword and Shield save.
According to player accounts, the bug can also occur when a hacked Pokémon is sent during a normal link trade - but this only happens once, and the offending Pokémon can simply be released afterwards.
A trio of brand new promotions is underway over at Green Man Gaming, featuring some all-new low prices on the likes of Borderlands 3, The Outer Worlds, Temtem and more.
Kicking things off is the retailer's new 'FEB22' voucher code, which will take 22 per cent off the price of almost all full-price games. Whether you're looking at something new, old or not even released yet the coupon can be applied - as long as any already existing discount on the game isn't higher.
To give you some examples, then, you can use it to get Temtem for £21.83. The Pokémon-a-like has (perhaps unsurprisingly) proven to be incredibly popular already even though it's only still in Early Access. If you're unsure whether on not to get involved with the monster hunting just yet, our Temtem Early Access guide will tell you everything you need to know.
Microsoft's test of its Project xCloud service for iPhone went live today - and immediately hit its initial limited capacity for sign-ups.
Project xCloud is Microsoft's technology to allow the streaming of games from the cloud to phones and tablets. It means you can be playing Sea of Thieves on your smartphone on the bus while others play elsewhere on PC/Xbox One. All you need is a compatible device and Bluetooth Xbox controller.
xCloud has been available on Android for some time, though this is the first public trial for iOS devices.
Nintendo will attend E3 2020, E3 event organiser the Electronic Software Association (ESA) has confirmed.
The announcement was made last night in a statement detailing plans for this year's show, released following a bruising day for the ESA in general.
Yesterday afternoon, a draft of the event's website popped up online early - and an incomplete list of publisher attendees which omitted Nintendo sparked gossip the platform holder would be the latest to drop out, following Sony ditching the show in PlayStation 5's launch year.
Update: Amazon stock of this deal has run dry now, so we recommend buying from Very instead. Original article continues below:
The excellent Microsoft Xbox One controller normally retails for around £45, but today it's been reduced to just £35 at two online retailers. You'll also get a free Xbox Wireless Adapter for Windows bundled with the gamepad, which normally costs £20 by itself and unlocks a convenient long-distance, low-latency wireless connection for PC users.
This is a great chance to pick up our top-rated PC gamepad on the cheap with everything you need to get started, or simply get a good price on a second gamepad for your console.
I've been playing the new Watcher character in Slay the Spire and it's a delight. New characters are a real moment in Slay the Spire because it doesn't get them very often. The Defect, the one before this, came out a year ago. There are only four characters in the game.
The Watcher ups the complexity and getting to grips with it is like learning a new game. You know the rudiments but it doesn't work in the same way. The Watcher relies on stances and moving in and out of them to trigger effects. Wrath stance doubles your damage, which is amazing, but it doubles the damage you take, too, which is not so amazing. Calm stance, meanwhile, gives you two valuable blobs of energy when you exit it. There's also Divinity, a third stance, but it's a special occasion ability. It grants three energy and triple damage, but you need 10 Mantra to use it and it only lasts one turn.
The Watcher hasn't been released on console yet but we know it's in the works. I asked MegaCrit about it after I published this piece and co-founder Anthony Giovannetti told me:
The funny thing about video game movies is that the unlicensed ones seem to understand their source material better than the official tie-ins do. Look at 1982's Tron, or 2012's Wreck-it Ralph (with all due props to Disney, which produced both): the appeal of these two pictures hinges on an invitation to step through the screen and inhabit the weird and wonderful world of video games. The visuals are surreal and spectacular, while the friction between a conventional movie narrative and the bizarre, harsh and arbitrary rule-making of video games furnishes ample gags and tension. (Turns out dissonance can be fun when experienced from the other side of the great ludo-narrative divide.)
It's a good formula, especially if you're trying to make a movie about a retro game that has no story. But the producers of the new Sonic the Hedgehog movie have got it all back to front. Instead of inviting us into Sonic's world, they've brought Sonic into ours - with charmless results.
Almost a decade after its last appearance on home consoles, Ubisoft's much-loved Prince of Persia series is being revived. You'll probably want to keep your expectations in check, however; it's returning in the form of a virtual reality room escape game.
Those familiar with Ubisoft's activities away from consoles will likely already be familiar with the concept. The publisher has released two other room-scale VR room escape games to date - designed to be played by teams of participants at dedicated, specially equipped venues - both themed around the Assassin's Creed series.
Ubisoft's first Prince of Persia VR room escape offering, subtitled The Dagger of Time, tasks players with reaching the Hourglass Chamber of the mysterious Fortress of Time (last seen in 2004's Warrior Within) at the behest of Kaileena, the Empress of Time. There's an evil Magi to be stopped, and an army of sand monsters to thwart along the way.
Back in January, Magic: The Gathering publisher Wizards of the Coast unveiled Archetype Entertainment, a new video game development studio particularly notable for the fact that it's being helmed by two ex-BioWare veterans - and now Mass Effect 1 and 2 lead writer Drew Karpyshyn has confirmed that he's joined the team too.
Archetype's studio head is former BioWare creative director and lead designer James Ohlen - who previously worked on the likes of Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age: Origins, Neverwinter Nights, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - while another BioWare alumni, Chad Robertson, will be vice president and general manager. Karpyshyn, who left BioWare for the second time in March 2018, joins the Austin, Texas studio as lead writer.
Fans of BioWare's classic output were already intrigued when Archetype Entertainment revealed it's first title would be a new story-driven sci-fi RPG; couple that with the news its lead writer will be the man behind Mass Effect 1 and 2 - and who also has an enviable resume featuring the likes of Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age - and that excitement is likely to raise a few notches higher.
Developer Brave At Night's long-in-the-works pixel art kingdom management sim Yes, Your Grace is finally making its way to Steam on 6th March.
Those entering its world of regal manipulations will don the crown of King Eryk, put-upon ruler of the medieval kingdom of Davern, and set about juggling their royal responsibilities and tumultuous family life, ultimately influencing the fate of their three bickering daughters.
Predominantly, those duties involve listening to the plight of visiting petitioners - be they penniless peasants or royalty from neighbouring regions. Players will decide who's most deserving of the kingdom's gold and resources; they'll hire generals, hunters, and witches to aid in their efforts; they'll even forge alliances to garner support in the event of battle.
This isn't the new Prince of Persia game you were hoping for, but at least Ubisoft is still dreaming up new adventures in this popular universe. Prince of Persia: The Dagger of Time is a virtual reality escape room designed for teams of up to four players. Developer Ubisoft Düsseldorf hopes to have this Sands of Time-based experience out in the wild this spring.
Your goal as a team is to escape the Fortress of Time wielding the magical dagger of note to solve puzzles, some requiring you to rewind time, others pushing you to speed it up, and you may event need to stop it completely. You'll also need to keep an eye on Kaileena, the Empress of Time, and her army of sand monsters. Using room-scale VR, you'll need your team to move around the room to explore and solve puzzles.
Developer Ubisoft Düsseldorf is no stranger to VR escape rooms, having already made two others: Assassin's Creed: Medusa's Gate and Assassin's Creed: Escape the Lost Pyramid.
It's been a little over three months since Nintendo last added a fresh batch of NES and SNES titles to its Switch Online retro games catalogue, but its sporadic updates will finally resume next Wednesday, 19th February, with the arrival of four new games.
There are two new additions on the NES front, the first being the rather self-explanatory Eliminator Boat Duel, which originally launched in Europe back in 1993. It's a predominantly top-down powerboat racing affair, pitting challengers against a variety of successive AI opponent across 24 courses in single-player mode, or against a fellow human if you prefer.
NES game number two, meanwhile, is developer Natsume's side-scrolling action-platformer Shadow of the Ninja, which originally came to Europe in 1991. Here, two ninjas (its playable solo or with a friend) time-travel their way to the New York City of the future in a bid to assassinate a megalomaniac ruler and destroy his empire.
Since the beginning of the franchise, Game Freak has expressed a desire for the ability to bring your Pokémon forward into future games. While that process has not been without its hiccups and headaches, apps like the Poké Transporter and the Pokémon Bank for 3DS were designed with that function in mind. Now, Switch users finally have a way to bring creatures forward into Sword & Shield, as well as future mainline Pokémon RPGs through Pokémon Home, which is now available.
Pokémon Home links to Pokémon Bank to allow you to carry forward stored creatures into current games. While a free version exists, players who are serious about bringing their Pocket Monsters forward are probably going to want to look at the $15.99/year (or $2.99/month if you just want to do this once) Premium plan, which bumps your storage capacity up from 30 Pokémon to 6,000, as well as higher capacity in Wonder Box and GTS.
Just when you thought you might be making a dint in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne's increasingly teetering mound of creature-bothering delights, Capcom is back with word of two new - and extremely angry - subspecies heading to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 soon as part of the expansion's free March update.
First on the list is a beefed up and stressed out version of everybody's favourite slime-spreading ground-rattler Brachydios. Based on Capcom's reveal trailer below, this smouldering new variant's biggest distinction would appear to be slime attacks that super-heat and explode much faster than usual, leaving considerably less time to get the hell out of the way.
And it sounds like the Brachydios' already adrenaline-exploding fight theme is getting an appropriately dramatic remix for the arrival of Iceborne's Raging Brachydios subspecies.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has not been having a great week for leaks, and things have only been getting worse, as further details of the game's battle royale mode have been splashed across the internet.
Most importantly, we now have a likely name the battle royale: Warzone.
The Warzone title stems from leaked promo art that reportedly first appeared on Reddit, and has since been backed up by Call of Duty leaker TheGamingRevolution on Twitter. According to his sources, the battle royale will be free-to-play and available as a direct download even for those who haven't bought Modern Warfare.
In their latest bargain collection, the bulk games dealer ventures into another world entirely with the Humble VR Bundle.
A maximum of seven games are up for grabs for cheap, all of which are compatible with Windows Mixed Reality headsets, the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
To start with, you can hand over a measly £1 and you'll get both Cosmic Trip and Smashbox Arena. The former is an experimental real-time strategy game that places you right in the thick of the action, while the former is a team-based action game chock-full of wild physics-based weaponry.
Nvidia's GeForce Now streaming service exited beta last week with hundreds of games, but users will find some of the titles they may have been playing have suddenly been removed. Activision Blizzard abruptly removed all of its games (like Overwatch and World of Warcraft) from the service yesterday with no real explanation.
The news comes from a Nvidia representative in GeForce Now's official forum. The representative said wrote, "Per their request, please be advised Activision Blizzard games will be removed from the service. While unfortunate, we hope to work together with Activision Blizzard to reenable these games and more in the future."
In the same post, Nvidia says that over 1,500 games are being on-boarded and will be added to the service in the future. If you purchased the Activision Blizzard games, you can still play them, just not through GeForce Now.
This shift away from GeForce Now comes on the heels of Activision Blizzard inking a deal with Google to exclusively stream esports matches for Overwatch League and Call of Duty League. We've reached out to Activision Blizzard for a statement on GeForce Now.
The immensely popular farming game Stardew Valley will be revisited in the future through two new games, but neither are what you would expect. The news comes from Stardew Valley's creator Eric Barone while answering a Twitter question about the future of the game's universe.
When asked if new games would be on the way, Barone replied "I'm actually working on a couple of new projects. One takes place in the world of Stardew Valley, but is not a farming game. The other, I'm not 100 percent sure about the world yet, but it will tie into Stardew Valley in some way."
When the news began to spread across social media and into news stories like the one you are reading now, Barone added "all I ask is please don't get too hyped at this stage. I want to avoid too much hype or speculation. I'd like to just make whatever game comes naturally to me without too much pressure or expectation."
The big takeaway from Barone's response is that Stardew Valley will live on, but will expand beyond the farm. We can't wait to see what's in the pipeline, but until these projects are revealed, we have fields to tend to.
A draft version of this year's E3 event website has been discovered online - and quickly made private.
This early version (discovered by ResetEra) was hosted at new2020-e3-expo.pantheonsite.io and appeared to contain the full new site due to go live at e3expo.com tomorrow.
Load up the site now and you're greeted with a "Site Locked" message and a request for a username and password. But, prior to this, Eurogamer was able to view the site in its entirety.
The Need for Speed franchise is doing a U-turn: and by that I mean EA is moving development back from Sweden to UK studio Criterion.
That's because the current franchise developer, Ghost Games, is set to become EA Gothenburg once more as it becomes an engineering hub to assist with EA's wider portfolio. This is partly due to issues finding the right talent to continue developing Need for Speed in Gothenburg.
EA is hoping to transfer many of its staff from Ghost Games to Guildford-based Criterion, although the publisher told GamesIndustry.biz that 30 roles remain at risk. "Outside of the engineers and those that we plan to transfer to other positions, there would be 30 additional staff in Gothenburg, and we would hope to place as many of them as possible into other roles in the company", EA explained.
This is not a review. I want to spend more with Dreams as a whole before I think about that. These are impressions of the story campaign.
There's a message at the beginning of Dreams' story campaign that made my heart sink. I'd been waiting for this campaign. I hoped it would prove what Dreams as a package would be. I knew there was a powerful editor because people have been playing with it in early access for months. But what about the other bit? What about what Media Molecule can do with the tools? What about the game?
Finally, yesterday, it - Art's Dream - arrived. Time to see what Dreams was really capable of. Then, though, that message: "This story was made entirely in Dreams to give just a glimpse of what's possible with our tools." Just a glimpse? It's been how many years and that's all we get? A couple of hours and that's it? Sadly, yes.
Rockstar Games