May 2022

Nate returns, and with him the suspicious smell of eggs and salt water. But also highjinks! We discuss toilet meals, revenge, and content theft of "It's me, Blorko!" and other instances of stolen Twitter valour. If valour exists on Twitter. This is, of course, all prelude to us talking about some of our favourite dungeons in video games - there are a lot! Shout out to Zelda, which Nate hasn't played, but also Hades, Elden Ring and - of course - Dungeon Keeper. And many more!

Read more

You may not have heard of the open-world survival MMO The Day Before, but somehow it’s made it to the top of Steam’s most wishlisted games list, ahead of games such as Starfield and Hollow Knight: Silksong. Originally due for release on June 21st, developers Fntastic have now told IGN that the game will arrive on March 1st 2023 due to development shifting over to Unreal Engine 5.

Read more

Guerilla Games has released a new update for Horizon Forbidden West, Patch 1.13, that tackles multiple main and side quest progression blocks, as well as persistent issues related to a strange visual shimmering effect in-game, and more. 

Live today, Patch 1.13 brings with it a ton of fixes not just to quests, but to general things like the game’s UI and some of Aloy’s animations, as well as improvements to the game’s performance and stability. Perhaps the biggest issue is the aforementioned visual shimmering, which has been a player complaint since launch. 

For the uninitiated, the shimmering is an almost glitter-like effect that appears on the edging of objects, robots, and more in Horizon Forbidden West. It makes things in-game look shinier than intended and in most patches since the game’s release, Guerrilla Games has addressed it. Considering it’s still listed under Patch 1.13’s “known issues,” it sounds like the problem persists today. 

“We are currently looking into several issues reported by the community,” the patch notes read. “Please note that these issues are not yet fixed in this patch, but our teams are aware of them and they’re being investigated.” 

Here are those known issues: 

Neill Blomkamp is helping Gunzilla Games write the narrative for its next game, Off The Grid. 

Blomkamp, perhaps best known for directing movies such as District 9, Chappie, and Elysium, is helping Gunzilla shape the story of Off The Grid, which the studio is calling a cyberpunk battle royale 2.0 multiplayer shooter. Calling it “2.0” makes it sound like the studio is aiming to revolutionize the genre, but of course, that remains to be seen. However, you can get a glimpse of Off The Grid now thanks to a new teaser trailer released today. 

“Dive into the heat of a covert corporate war in Off The Grid, a cyberpunk Battle Royale 2.0 multiplayer shooter where you shape the story and the gameplay,” the teaser trailer’s description reads. “Unfolding on a dystopian tropical island, OTG sends you on a head-spinning assassination and sabotage missions to the greater glory and market share of your chosen faction. Tool up for 2023: it’s about to get bloody.” 

As you can see, Gunzilla is aiming to release the game in 2023. 

Off The Grid seems like a great match for Blomkamp, especially considering many of his movies have focused on the relationship between mega-corporations and consumers. 

While collecting controllers has always been a big hobby for video game enthusiasts, the Nintendo Switch might have the most unique market for it. Not only can you get a variety of cool and distinct colors, but they can also be swapped out and used together to make for some interesting combos. 

To celebrate this, we’ve put together a list of every Nintendo Switch Joy-Con Color released so far. Be sure to let us know what your favorite(s) is in the comment section below. 

Today, HBO Max revealed an official teaser trailer for its Game of Thrones prequel series, House of the Dragon. In the video, fans get their first look at what they can expect from the series, which looks to include plenty of fire and blood.

You can check out the trailer for yourself and an official description of the premise from George R. R. Martin’s website right down below.

Centuries before the events of A Game of Thrones, House Targaryen—the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria—took up residence on Dragonstone. Fire and Blood begins their tale with the legendary Aegon the Conqueror, creator of the Iron Throne, and goes on to recount the generations of Targaryens who fought to hold that iconic seat, all the way up to the civil war that nearly tore their dynasty apart.

What really happened during the Dance of the Dragons? Why did it become so deadly to visit Valyria after the Doom? What is the origin of Daenerys’s three dragon eggs? These are but a few of the questions answered in this essential chronicle, as related by a learned maester of the Citadel…

Today EA Sports and Codemasters released a new trailer and screenshots of the upcoming F1 racing simulator F1 22.

The assets focus on the brand new Miami International Autodrome that was already showcased in the previous trailer. This time around we get to watch a full hot lap on Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari.

You can enjoy everything below.

The new season is fast-approaching, so, as usual, Respawn is dropping trailers left and right. This one breaks down Newcastle’s abilities so that players can learn more about his abilities before Apex Legends Season 13: Saviors goes live on May 10.

Newcastle is the ultimate defensive Legend and his main goal is to keep your squad alive for as long as possible. His Passive gives him the ability to drag downed teammates to safety while using his Knockdown Shield to protect them. Meanwhile, his Tactical sends out a Mobile Shield for protection while advancing or retreating.

Finally, his Ultimate, Castle Wall, summons a large barrier after he jumps up and slams back down to the ground. The shield is electrified and will stun enemies who touch it. Additionally, the leap can target allies, allowing Newcastle to jump to their location and provide emergency cover when necessary.

You can check out the trailer for yourself below to get a good, detailed look at what to expect from this new Legend.

This season is bringing some big gameplay changes through significant character balancing, changes to Storm Point, and, of course, the addition of another new Legend. Before you start jumping into matches, here’s everything you need to know about what’s new in Apex Legends Season 13: Saviors.

A couple of weeks ago we learned a sequel to The Batman is coming, with Robert Pattinson returning to the cowl. The Batman is currently available to stream on HBO Max, so be sure to watch that and come back if you haven’t seen it, as this is certain to get spoiler-y.

Without further ado, here are the five things we want to see most in The Batman 2.

Today NIS America announced the release dates for NIS Classics Volume 3: La Pucelle: Ragnarok / Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure.

The package comes to Nintendo Switch on August 30, 2022, in North America, September 2, 2022, in Europe, and September 9, 2022, in Australia.

It’ll also release on PC via Steam, but the game will be sold separately.

You can watch the new trailer below, focusing on a Pucelle: Ragnarok.

If you’re unfamiliar with a La Pucelle: Ragnarok, here’s how NIS describes the game:

Experience a part of NIS history with this tactical RPG! Prier and her brother Culotte are novices with the demon-hunting organization, La Pucelle. They’ve just passed their final exams and are ready to do real work fighting demons and zombies, but quickly find themselves embroiled in a series of plots orchestrated by a rival church with dark intentions.

All sorts of strange things come out of Reddit.

A post on the r/gaming subreddit appeared to show a test-build copy of Star Wars: Battlefront 3 for PSP, which belongs to poster's fiancé.

"LucasArts was a client of a relative of my Fiancé back in the day, and he got to play test a lot of games, one of which was Star Wars: Battlefront 3, once it was cancelled, and all the assets were being gathered up to send back to Skywalker Ranch, one of the play test cartages for the PSP version got left behind. Him being young, he didn't think much of it and took it home, tested it out, AI battles, CTF, and Conquest all worked fine," the user wrote.

Read more

The Geoff Keighley-hosted Summer Game Fest will broadcast its live show on Thursday, 9th June at 7pm UK time (11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern).

Summer Game Fest is, of course, the Keighley-fronted rival (and now semi-successor) to the usual array of E3 press conferences which typically broadcast each summer. There's no actual E3 this year, as you'll recall.

Announcing the festivities, Keighley promised a "live cross-industry showcase" with game announcements, reveals, and the indie-focused Day of the Devs.

Read more

Pokémon Go maker Niantic has announced details of the game's big European summer meetup, which is set to take place this year in Berlin.

Tickets for Pokémon Go Fest: Berlin have also now gone on sale - including the usual Early Access option as well as some new and pricey extras which pop up as you complete your purchase.

For example, you can pay an extra €10 for the Raid Lover bolt-on, which gives you 12 in-person raid passes and some extra items and XP rewards. You can also pay an extra €10 for the Critical Hatch! bolt-on, which grants you 1/4 egg hatching distance, plus extra XP and other bonuses for hatching eggs.

Read more

Recover stolen Seven supplies at IO locations is one of the Season challenges you can complete in Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 2.

To complete this challenge, you need to locate three different sets of stolen supplies. There are, however, eight different sets of supplies you can choose to find hidden across the Fortnite map.

Completing this challenge will reward you with 20k XP, which will help you unlock skins from this season’s Battle Pass.

Read more

As many know already, the Monkey Island series took on a new look as well as a new creative team in its third outing, The Curse of Monkey Island. However, this new art style was not simply because of the change in management behind the game's development. Rather, it was because of the tools being used behind the scenes.

"A new art path had to be developed for Curse of Monkey Island," game designer Jonathan Ackley revealed on Twitter.

"2D games of the time scanned drawings straight to raster, causing heavy aliasing. We used US Animation. It vectorised the line art before compositing and colour/resolution reduction, creating smoother art," he explained.

Read more

Our top gaming monitor recommendation is on sale at Best Buy in the US today, where the Dell S2721DGF is retailing for $299 after a $150 discount. That's a great price for a 1440p 165Hz monitor of any description, but especially one that uses LG's advanced Fast IPS panels and is FreeSync/G-Sync Compatible.

We've been recommending Fast IPS panels for a little while, because they combine the motion handling of TN screens with the colours and viewing angles of IPS. It really is the best of both worlds, as you get a monitor that is as great for watching videos or browsing the web as it is for gaming in a wide range of genres.

1440p gaming is the current sweet spot on PC, requiring much less graphical horsepower than 4K gaming while also unlocking access to high frame-rate gaming. With a mid-range PC, you can play AAA games at full resolution to benefit from the increased detail of 1440p over 1080p, while esports titles will run in the hundreds of fps to really take advantage of this monitor's low input lag, fast pixel response times and high refresh rate. Of course, with a high-end PC, you'll be able to max out the monitor and get a better-looking and better-feeling experience than your standard 1080p 60Hz screen.

Read more

Humble Bundle has become a key place for the PC gaming community over the years thanks to it's large selection of games on sale, the great value bundles they offer, and their work with various charities.

If you've been looking for new games to play but are on a budget, then the latest Humble Bundle offers some amazing value and a variety of games with it.

For just £9.19 you can get 12 games which include We Happy Few, Super Meat Boy, and Pine, and you'll be supporting the charity JDRF who are the leading global organization funding type 1 diabetes (T1D) research. You have to pay £9.19 to get the games, and £3.21 of that will go to JDRF. You can offer to pay as much as you like and more will go to charity, if you pay £30 for example then £10.50 will go to JDRF.

Read more

Hitman 3's forthcoming Freelancer roguelike mode has been pushed back.

IO Interactive has published an update on its Hitman 3 - Year 2 content, following an announcement at the start of the year.

The Freelancer mode will see Agent 47 off on a series of roguelike missions from a customisable safehouse, but IO has stated it needs more time. The offering will now be released in the second half of 2022, instead of this spring.

Read more

Microsoft has finally caved into years of pressure and has resurrected Clippy from the grave... sort of.

With the arrival of Halo Infinite's Season 2, Clippy makes a return in the form of a legendary-tier weapon charm, although it's currently unclear how players can unlock it, as it's not available on the Battle Pass or earned in-game.

Xbox hardware senior project manager James Shields showed off Clippy and the associated nameplate the "Clipster" in a tweet.

Read more

Disable a tank by damaging the engine is one of the seasonal challenges in Fortnite Chapter 3 Season 2.

You can clear this challenge quickly by finding tank locations before an enemy player or IO Guard gets in one.

Completing this challenge will reward you with 20k XP, which will help you unlock skins from the new battle pass.

Read more

A studio best known for blockbuster games about shooting aliens now increasingly has a reputation for not taking shit from the people who play them. Creator of Halo and Destiny 2, Bungie, took fire from angry gamers this week for coming out in support of abortion rights. Instead of flinching like so many other gaming…

Read more...

The Stanley Parable was a cultural phenomenon. It was an overnight hit, turning its two primary developers, William Pugh and Davey Wreden, into indie millionaires, almost driving them apart, and feeling like an ending to the so-called Indiepocalypse of the preceding few years. But this was 2013, almost a decade ago.…

Read more...

As a dedicated reader of readme files, I am delighted to learn of a Morrowind modder who added the family cat to comfort their children, who were afraid of mudcrabs. Stripes the cat arrives in Bethesda's fantasy RPG as a fierce protector to help fight those horrible creatures, and assure everyone that everything is okay. What a lovely little tale, and a lovely little cat. I downloaded the mod and took Stripes along on my own adventure, have a look.

Read more

My friends and I have come full circle. We've gone from aggressively dunking on Fortnite to actively enjoying Fortnite. Why? Desperation. And its No Build mode. We sought a lighthearted battle royale having tried loads of others, and were suckered in by the prospect of a Fortnite that didn’t feature people erecting defensive fortresses in milliseconds.

Incredibly, the game has delivered. I'm having fun - albeit with a tinge of unease. Not only does the game act like a blaring reminder that I've lost touch with the Top 40, it's also a bizarre metaverse where nothing is sacred.

Read more

LudoNarraCon returns from today until Monday for its fourth year of showcasing games that focus on story, story, story. The whole thing is being hosted digitally on Steam, and features 12 live panels, along with ‘fireside chats’ with some of the devs behind the festival’s line-up. Some of those are games you might be familiar with, like Inkle’s Overboard, Anomaly Games’ The Fermi Paradox and Silverstring Media’s Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between. Panelists and fireside chatters include Sam Barlow of Telling Lies renown, 80 Days’ writer Meghna Jayanth, and Lucas "Return Of The Obra Dinn" Pope.

Read more

Epic Games is partnering with Microsoft to bring Fortnite back to Apple devices by making the battle royale available for free on the Xbox Cloud Gaming service. This way of playing Fortnite makes the game available, starting today, through a supported web browser on iOS and Android phones and tablets as well as PCs.

Moving to the cloud circumvents Apple's App Store, which Fortnite is currently not on due to actions leading to a lawsuit that began in 2020 and continued well into 2021. Epic Games had forgone iOS App Store policy by allowing Fortnite users to pay Epic directly for digital purchases such as microtransactions, side-stepping Apple's mandatory 30% cut on these transactions on its platform. The two companies fought in court over the legality of Apple's business practices, which led to an injunction calling for Apple to put an indefinite pause on preventing app developers from including links to external sites for alternative ways to pay than solely through the App Store. Fortnite was removed from the App Store in August 2020 and hasn't returned since, leaving iOS players with no option to play the game on the platform until now.

We’re sailing down a river laden with treasure and dangers today on Twitch at 2 p.m. Central as we explore two hours of Loot River!  

Loot River is a run-based action roguelite with a unique Tetris-esque form of navigation. You must carefully – and strategically – pilot geometric platforms to send your character down gloomy streams to battle monsters and collect loot. 

Join me, Marcus Stewart, along with Jill Grodt, who scored Loot River an 8.5 out of 10 in her review writing, “Loot River reimagines some of its inspirations' best elements, offering players a chance to sail cleverly through each environment, grow powerful enough to slice up once-impossible threats, and unravel a story that smartly weaves into its gameplay.” Be sure to tune in to the stream to see what the commotion is about.

Watch on Twitch!

If you enjoy our livestreams but haven’t subscribed to our Twitch channel, know that doing so not only gives you notifications and access to special emotes. You’ll also be granted entry to the official Game Informer Discord channel, where our welcoming community members, moderators, and staff gather to talk games, entertainment, food and organize hangouts!

Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest has got a date, and it's June 9. 

Keighley first announced the event’s return in March, almost immediately after word of E3 2022’s cancellation made the rounds. Summer Game Fest begins at 11 am Pacific/2 p.m. Eastern, including a live kick-off show. 

It's official: #SummerGameFest will have a big live showcase event on Thursday, June 9, streaming live everywhere at 11a PT / 2p ET / 6p GMT.@geoffkeighley hosts a cross-industry showcase with announcements, reveals and more! pic.twitter.com/iANNRxrgRj

— Summer Game Fest - Live June 9 (@summergamefest) May 5, 2022

In addition to streaming everywhere, Summer Game Fest can be watched live in IMAX theaters for the first time. Tickets go on sale sometime next week. The new partnership extends to Keighley’s other big event, The Game Awards, which will also be presented in IMAX this December. 

Microsoft has added another major element to its Xbox Cloud Gaming service, and it’s the ability to play Fortnite for free.

Starting today you’ll be able to play Epic Games’ super-successful battle royale game on all the platforms supported by Xbox Cloud Gaming (iOS, Android, or Windows PC) without even needing to pay for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

All you need is a Microsoft Account, and you can find the game to play here.

This isn’t the only free-to-play game that will appear on Xbox Cloud Gaming, as Microsoft promised “to bring more Free-to-Play games people love in the future.”

It’ll certainly be interesting to see which ones will be added and when, but Fornite could certainly be a big driver for the adoption of the service.

Microsoft also provided some information on the growth of the service as a whole, mentioning that 10 million players have enjoyed it as part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

Those players have played on over 6,000 types of devices, and discover and play on average twice as many games as Xbox Game Pass members who don’t use the cloud.

We also get the confirmation that Microsoft Flight Simulator was the most played cloud game on phones, tablets, PCs, and consoles for the month of March.

Below you can check a trailer celebrating the arrival of Fortnite on Xbox Cloud Gaming.

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to be live at the old E3 (before its self-immolation) watching gaming’s biggest announcement on the big screen around a live crowd, then does Geoff Keighly has good news for you today. Today he announced that his team and IMAX, purveyor of really big screens, are teaming up to bring The Game Awards and Summer Game Fest to IMAX theaters in select locations around the U.S., branded as IMAX Live.

Today Avex released a new trailer for the previously-announced MF Ghost anime series.

Since MF Ghost is a direct sequel to the ultra-popular racing manga and anime Initial D, no one will be surprised about the reveal included in this trailer, which is the fact that the soundtrack will feature Eurobeat songs.

We also get a glimpse of the protagonist, another look at sweet anime car porn, and the confirmation that the series will air in 2023.

You can check it out below.

If you’re unfamiliar with MF Ghost, it’s the sequel of the popular manga Initial D, which Shuichi Shigeno has written between 1995 and 2013 and has sold over 48 million copies. It also sparked a myriad of additional media adaptations including TV anime, OVA, movies, and even live-action films.

MF-Ghost started its serialization in Kodansha’s Weekly Young Magazine in 2017 and it’s still ongoing, having sold over 3.2 million copies. 

Below you can read a summary of the story:

“The year is 202X, in the future from “Initial D”. In Japan automated driving has become widespread, but a car race is held on public roads. The name of the race, which is popular all over the world, is MFG, and the fastest cars such as Porsche, Ferrari, and Lamborghini are competing for victory.

Destiny 2's Daily Focus playlist is a feature of the Guardian Games event.

Each day, Destiny 2 players will be rewarded for participating in one highlighted playlist.

This will cover a variety of playlists - meaning you'll be encouraged to experience a mix of matchmade activities.

Read more

Destiny 2's The Title is an event-specific weapon available for a limited time.

Introduced in Guardian Games 2022, The Title SMG is a possible drop and guaranteed quest reward.

If you're on the lookout for a new SMG in Destiny 2, with the right roll, The Title is well worth competing for.

Read more

Fortnite has today joined Xbox Cloud Gaming, making it the first free-to-play game to do so.

This means the ever-popular Epic battle royale will be available to stream via the service on iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, plus PCs - all via web browser.

As with any Xbox Cloud Gaming title, you'll need an Xbox account to log-in - but you won't need membership to any subscription, such as Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

Read more