May 2022

Destiny developer Bungie has spoken out in response to the Republican-backed US Supreme Court's plans to overthrow Roe v Wade, a key judgement which legalised abortion rights across the country.

"Standing up for reproductive choice and liberty is not a difficult decision to make, and Bungie remains dedicated to upholding these values," the developer tweeted earlier today.

Then, in its official statement, Bungie called the leaked draft decision by the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade a "direct attack on human rights".

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Shareholders in Activision Blizzard have been advised by the company not to approve a proposal from New York state to investigate and report on how allegations of sexual harrassment and misconduct within the company are being addressed. The recommendation by Activision Blizzard’s board of directors was made unanimously ahead of their annual meeting on June 21st, picked up on by Axios.

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A new update coming to Xbox's mobile app will introduce a shiny new stories mode.

"This month's update will bring you the activity feed on the Xbox app for iOS and Android in the form of stories. You will be able to create, share and view stories with your friends in the Xbox app and add priority tags for your console gaming experiences with Quality of Service (QoS) Tagging," Xbox wrote in a blog post yesterday.

"Stories lets you showcase your skills and keep up to date with your friends. You can share your favourite gaming moments including game clips, screenshots and achievements with your friends and the Xbox community."

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Canadian voice actor Deven Mack will play Sonic the Hedgehog in Sonic Prime and has received the blessing of Sonic's game voice actor.

Sonic Prime is a new Netflix animation revealed yesterday. Mack joins Roger Craig Smith as Sonic's game voice and Ben Schwartz as the film voice.

Mack shared a thank you video on Twitter following the response to his casting and noted that the other actors will maintain their roles.

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We're making some tweaks to our supporter program here at Eurogamer - more of which you can read about here - and as part of that we've got 250 Castlevania Anniversary Collection keys for our premium members with annual subscriptions.

The Castlevania Anniversary Collection brings together eight stone-cold classics from the early days of Konami's beloved series, from the original NES outing through to the muscular Mega Drive offshoot Castlevania: Bloodlines with room for proper curios like Kid Dracula along the way.

The collection bears the marks of an M2 production, with crisp emulation and some very welcome extras, including an in-depth look at some of the original design documents. I was quite keen on it all when it first launched back in 2019. Konami followed it all up with the equally excellent Castlevania Advance Collection, which compiles the series' GBA run as well as the much-loved Castlevania: Dracula X.

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Last September Eurogamer introduced its supporter program, allowing readers to pay to read the site ad-free with a few extra perks besides. It's been heartening to see so many of you back what we do, and we're thankful for the support we've had so far. I really appreciate some of the things it's enabled, such as the return of the Eurogamer Podcast which has delivered a compassionate look at the more human side of game development, and the Off Topic column which always offers up some fascinating tangents. Before we go any further, I just want to say a huge thanks for the support so far.

Just over six months in, it feels like a good time to look at our offering and see what tweaks can be made - to bring you a little closer to us here at Eurogamer, to see what else it might help us achieve but also to ensure you're getting the best bang for your buck. I'm pretty happy with where we've ended up, and I hope you will be too. Let me just quickly run you through what's changed.

Firstly, there's a new weekly newsletter for all supporters - replacing the previously monthly letter from the editor. Called Eurogamer Essentials and hitting your inbox each and every Friday, it's a look at the highlights from the site across the week and a little bit more besides, with some insight into what's been happening and the return of Game of the Week. If you're a long-standing reader you might remember the semi-regular column which looked across the current releases with a little added perspective. I hope to do justice to what was one of my favourite series on the site.

We all love Mario Kart; it is a classic that has evolved and grown up with us and will surely continue to dominate various sales charts for many years to come. However, what if someone took this tried and tested formula, but then added in some of the classic 20th Television characters in place of Mario and co.? Well, we now have the answer. You would get Warped Kart Racers, Apple Arcade's upcoming karting game.

In Warped Kart Racers, players will be able to control one of 20 characters, including Hank from King of the Hill, Stan from American Dad! and Stewie from Family Guy to name but a few. In addition to these familiar faces, players will also recognise some familiar locales, as the maps that we could all soon be charging round are inspired by locations from "fan-favourite episodes".

Keen karters will be able to take to the tracks in either Warped Kart Racers' single player campaign or take part in a chaotic 8-player multiplayer mode. In addition to this, you will also be able to take on daily challenges to unlock new characters, skins, karts and other customisation options. You can check out the trailer for Warped Kart Racers below.

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Nintendo Switch Sports released last week and already the game is being flooded with inappropriate user names.

Nintendo has added a filter to prevent obvious rude words, but many players are finding creative ways to circumvent the filter.

Players on Reddit want Nintendo to amend the naming filter, or add a method of reporting inappropriate content.

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I've never been one for playing aggressively in turn-based tactics games. I will hug and skulk between half and full height walls like nobody's business, creeping up the map inch by inch lest one of my precious party members accidentally sets off an entire warren of alien nasties by blundering too far ahead or, heaven forbid, one of them gets nicked by a stray bit of shrapnel. To say I'm overprotective is an understatement.

Thankfully, the Grey Knights in Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters are made of sterner stuff. I mean, just look at these brutes. They're enormous. Even the Gears Of War lads would be jealous of the kind of muscle these big robo boys are packing, I'm telling you now. They're by no means invincible, of course, but they can hold their own out of cover, and pick themselves back up again when your best laid plans inevitably start going down the drain. It may not be my most natural style of tactical manoeuvring, but man alive is it liberating.

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Remember there was a Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time Remake that was meant to be coming out in January last year? No? Well, the game’s development team have taken to Twitter to announce that Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time Remake will be delayed indefinitely, which seems oddly fitting considering the game is about messing with time. It was meant to launch this year, but the game’s already been delayed indefinitely once before.

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It’s hard to believe that Nintendo’s GameCube is already 20 years old. It was Nintendo’s fourth home console, originally released in Japan and North America in 2001, and then a bit later on in Europe and Australia in 2002.

Hundreds of games, both first-party and third-party titles, were launched for the system until it was discontinued about six years later. The legacy of many of these games lives on even today.

Many of the games that were released on the GameCube eventually turned into series that are alive and well today, such as Luigi’s Mansion, Super Mario Strikers, Metroid Prime, and more. Some games even became remastered in HD at a later time, such as The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

Whether the GameCube was your very first console that you grew up with or if you played it for the first time as a teenager or adult, there’s no denying the impact that the system had on the lives of so many people and on gaming as a whole. If the GameCube was your favorite console, you should have no problem recognizing many of the games that helped define this era.

Do you consider yourself to be an expert in identifying GameCube games? In this quiz, we will show you a single screenshot from a GameCube game, and all you have to do is select the correct title. Let’s see how many of these iconic games you can identify out of the 16 screenshots we show you. Good luck!

(Images Source: Nintendo)

When it comes to action-RPGs, a genre that was popularized by the likes of Diablo, there have been many different takes over the years. You’ve got your looter shooters like Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, the hybrid APRG MMO Lost Ark, and more, each sporting a recognizable source of inspiration. However, for Ghostlore, an Steam Early Access title made by the duo of Andrew and Adam Teo, the hallmarks of the genre are presented under an unfamiliar guise, that of a Southeast Asian flavor.

Former Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aimé has revealed his misgivings on the launch of Game Boy Micro - a project he said his company was "forced" to launch despite its concept being a "nonstarter".

Writing in his newly-published Disrupting the Game memoir, Fils-Aimé said he was surprised to hear of plans for Game Boy Micro relatively late in its development, and despite Nintendo having moved on to focus on Game Boy Advance's successor, Nintendo DS.

In a section of the book posted online by VGC, Fils-Aimé also said he disliked the Micro's form factor. Overall, it was a "distraction", he concluded - something which he later moved to ensure became a "teachable moment" and not repeated.

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In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only satisfying turn-based squad battling let down just a touch by a sluggish resource-gathering midgame. It feels blasphemous to call a Warhammer 40k adaptation slick, let alone subtle. This is the universe of endless grot, rancid liturgy and heavy-duty cybernetics, its warriors held together by rivets and fanaticism, its starships ancient Gothic ironclads recovered from asteroid fields.

You don't expect a delicate handling of inspirations or considerate presentation from such a setting: you expect clashing cogs and excessive crenelations and hint windows that read like catechisms. You expect things to wallow like a Dreadnought knee-deep in Plaguebearer offal. But save for that slight (and to be fair, genre-typical) over-reliance on grinding to help the plot over the next hilltop, Daemonhunters positively glides. At a glance the interface looks like a Borg sneezed all over a cathedral, but in practice this is both a fine balance of ideas from XCOM and Gears Tactics, and a crisp boiling-down of a gargantuan fiction that somehow renders everything digestible, even snappy, without sacrificing the source material's morbid intricacy.

You must find a Stormtrooper Checkpoint in Fortnite to complete multiple May the 4th challenges to earn XP in Fortnite.

To complete these challenges, you need to land at a Stormtrooper Checkpoint then place top 25, then complete a bounty from a Stromtrooper, and also drive a vehicle to a Stormtrooper Checkpoint.

Completing each of these three Star Wars Day celebration challenges will reward 30k Fortnite XP, which will help you unlock skins from the new Battle Pass. Completing five of the six challenges available will also unlock the Empire Banner.

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Logitech's mice are equally popular in a work or gaming environment, and none more so than the G502 Hero. It combines a wide, comfy shape with 11 programmable buttons, an 'infinite scroll' wheel for zipping through documents or websites and a high-end optical sensor for gaming. The silver-accented Special Edition model is on sale today for a ludicrous £30 on Amazon, down from a UK RRP of £80 - that's a historic low price.

We've also noticed that the G502 Lightspeed wireless version has also been reduced, from £130 all the way to £58. It's the same mouse, but with Logitech's industry-leading wireless and without the faff of a wire. It rarely gets reduced this low too!

The G502 family is the most popular gaming mouse in the world, but if you prefer something a little smaller than the G305 is just the ticket. It's a great wireless mouse to have on hand for laptops or if you just like a smaller, lighter design. It also sees a reduction today, with the G305 Lightspeed going for £24 instead of its regular price of £52.

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If you're a Star Wars fan you probably have today, the 4th of May, highlighted in your calendar because today is Star Wars day!

Since the release of A New Hope all the way back in 1977, Star Wars has become one of the biggest franchises in the world. Now, thanks to the simple joke of "May the fourth be with you", there's lots of discounts on Star Wars games, action figures, Lego sets, and more today. I've used my Jedi powers to find and list them for you down below.

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Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé has said fans shouldn't hold their breath for a revival of the cult classic Mother/Earthbound series, including a long-awaited western release of Mother 3.

Speaking on the Kinda Funny podcast as part of a press tour for his new memoir Disrupting the Game, Fils-Aimé was asked about Nintendo franchises he was looking forward to - before Mother 3 was inevitably brought up in conversation.

"How long did it take until Earthbound and the Mother franchise came up? Don't hold your breath," Fils-Aimé - who departed Nintendo three years ago - said. "Again, I'm not there, I don't know what's going on."

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Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Disney Plus series hitting the service on May 27, follows the titular character following the events of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. A new trailer provides another look at the trials Obi-Wan will face, including confronting his former apprentice. 

Kenobi is on the run, looking to find, protect, and train Luke Skywalker, son of his former apprentice Anakin Skywalker. He must also find refuge away from the Inquisitors, an Imperial group of elite soldiers looking to find him and kill the remaining Jedi. It looks like it’s going to be a great time, both as a new story in the Star Wars universe and as a return to beloved characters like Ewan McGregor’s Kenobi and Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker turned Darth Vader. 

We get a glimpse at both Vader and the Inquisitors, as well as new looks at Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, his uncle, and more in a new trailer released by Disney today to celebrate Star Wars Day. You can check it out below: 

Epic Games has announced the next person to join its Fortnite Icon Series, which already includes community creators like Ninja and Loserfruit, and it’s Maria “Chica” Lopez. 

Revealed today, Lopez will hit the game this Saturday, May 7, at 8 p.m. E.T. and like previous Icon Series participants, the creator will bring new in-game items purchasable in the Fortnite Item Shop to the battle royale. All of Lopez’s items will hit the Item Shop at 8 p.m. E.T. on Saturday. 

“I take a lot of pride in being not only a content creator, but also in my identity as a Puerto Rican woman in the LGBTQIA+ community,” she writes in a press release. “I wanted my Set in Fortnite to be true to who I am. I’ve been able to build such an awesome community within the Fortnite family, and I can’t wait to share my Set with everyone. I’m thrilled to be the first Latina to join the Icon Series.” 

As for what to expect from her Icon Series, Epic Games has shared the following:

Today is May 4, which means it’s Star Wars day, and to celebrate the occasion, TT Games is releasing two new character packs for its latest game, Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. 

More specifically, characters from The Mandalorian and Star Wars: The Bad Batch will hit the game today. In total, these two character packs bring 10 new playable Lego-fied characters to The Skywalker Saga.

For the uninitiated, The Bad Batch is a spin-off of The Clone Wars and The Mandalorian is a sci-fi western that centers on a very Boba Fett-like Mandalorian whose job is to protect a young member of Yoda's race (AKA "Baby Yoda"). If you haven’t yet watched Season 2 of The Mandalorian, you should try to avoid today’s DLC because the characters from the new Mandalorian pack are based on Season 2 of the Disney Plus series. 

“Warner Bros. Games celebrates Star Wars Day with the launch of two new DLC packs for Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga – The Mandalorian Season 2 and Star Wars: The Bad Batch,” a press release reads. “The Mandalorian Season 2 pack will include Ahsoka Tano, Boba Fett, Bo Katan, Fennec Shand, and Moff Gideon. Star Wars: The Bad Batch character pack will linclude Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, Crosshair, and Echo.”

Bungie are bringing Destiny 2’s Guardian Games back for their third annual outing, pitting Warlocks, Titans and Hunters against each other in a futuristic shooty Olympics. The free, time-limited event is still all about hoovering up medallions for your chosen class, but there are two new elements called Strike Scoring and Strike Medals to consider this time around. Strike Scoring is based on your time spent in Guardian Games playlists and where you rank, while Strike Medals are won by “pulling off some pretty impressive feats, like taking out a ton of enemies with a fancy little combat jig like Shatter,” so Bungie say.

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New data shows that the free-to-play Breath of the Wild-like Genshin Impact has surpassed $3bn in player spending worldwide for its mobile versions. Not a bad sum for a game that only released in September 2020. This basically means that Genshin Impact makes roughly $1bn every six months.

These impressive figures come from Sensor Tower, with the company saying: "Following its worldwide release, the title took 171 days to generate its first $1bn on mobile, not including spending through third-party Android stores.

"It then took an extra 195 days to accumulate a further $1bn - resulting in the title picking up $2bn in its first year alone. Genshin Impact crossed the $3bn milestone 185 days later, meaning the game has averaged revenue of $1bn every six months, making it one of the most successful mobile games of all time."

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Chernobylite is a game with a lot of things I love - an eerie atmosphere, incredible art direction and a whole suite of ray tracing effects. It's this last one I want to focus on today, to check out how RT is used on the PC release and the trade-offs made to bring RT to consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X. There's the potential for Chernobylite to become another RT showcase, like Control or Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, but does it deliver?

Before we discuss the RT implementation, let us talk about the baseline that Chernobylite provides. The developers at The Farm 51 have a real knack for faithfully representing the Chernobyl area, in terms of geography, signage, shapes and atmosphere. The game uses high quality textures sourced from the real Exclusion Zone, giving the game a photorealistic appearance; there's even a virtual tourism mode that lets you wander around without the stress of the game's survival horror elements.

Resident Evil 4's brilliant inventory Tetris mechanic has been turned into a full puzzle game, named Save Room - Organisation Puzzle.

Available via Steam for less than £2, it adapts familiar Resi weaponary and health items and tasks you with healing up and restocking a hero over various levels.

Think of it as a window into Resi 4's safe rooms, translated into 40 puzzle scenarios of escalating difficulty, where Leon might pause for a few minutes to snort some herbs and shuffle around his guns to squeeze in a few more shotgun shells.

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In honour of Star Wars day, and also the desire to stuff Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga full of every character possible, the game has received another two dollops of DLC this afternoon.

Characters from The Mandalorian's second season and The Bad Batch are now available via two additional packs which are also included as part of the game's Character Collection Pack season pass and Deluxe Edition.

From The Mandalorian, you'll get Ahsoka Tano, Boba Fett, Bo Katan, Fennec Shand and Moff Gideon. Next, from The Bad Batch, you'll get Clone Troopers Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, Crosshair, and Echo.

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It has been a week for the "last of its kind" stories. Sony unveiled its last set of games for PlayStation Now subscribers, but developer Techland has additionally revealed its last ever update for Dying Light's Hellraid.

This free update for the game's dark fantasy inspired DLC will go live on 5th May and brings with it a variety of bug fixes and quality of life improvements. These all sound very nice, with balancing tweaks and economy changes across the board, but let's talk about the true star of the show - Hellraid's new (and only) firearm. Or, to give it its proper name, the Deathbringer shotgun.

A far cry from its fellow axes and swords of old, this shotgun is obtained by completing the Loaded for the Undead bounty (thanks, RPS) and certainly packs a powerful punch. Those pesky skeletons do not stand a chance, and will soon crumble into a bony pile of, well, bones thanks to the Deathbringer. I won't lie, it all looks very satisfying indeed - see for yourself below.

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If you’ve ever wanted to race in a kart racer game by way of propane, Apple Arcade will soon have you covered. 

That’s because Warped Kart Racers is a new kart racer coming to the premium iOS service that will let you race as Hank Hill, lover of all things propane, from King Of The Hill. He’ll be joined by other cartoon characters such as Peter Griffin from Family Guy, as well as Stewie, Stan from American Dad, and more, as first reported by Eurogamer. In fact, Warped Kart Racers will feature five characters from Family Guy, five from American Dad, five from King Of The Hill, and five from Solar Opposites. 

You can check out the Apple Arcade trailer below:

As you can see, it features multiple characters from the TV series mentioned above, and you’ll be able to race around 16 maps as them. It also includes “tons of customizations,” such as different outfits for each character, wheel types, glider types, and more. Plus, you can play with up to eight friends in online multiplayer. 

Warped Kart Racers does not yet have a release date, but the trailer says the game is coming to Apple Arcade this month, so it sounds like you won’t have to wait long to play. 

Crytek announced back in January that Crysis 4 was real and in the “early stages” of development. Since then, the company has stayed quiet on the sequel but this week, the studio revealed that the game now has a new director. 

Revealed on Twitter yesterday, Hitman 3 game director at IO Interactive, Mattias Engström, will direct Crysis 4. He’s wasting no time, too, because Crytek says he begins work on the new first-person shooter this week. 

We are happy to announce that Mattias Engström, known for his work as Game Director for Hitman 3 at IO Interactive, joins the Crysis family as Game Director for the 4th installment in the Crysis franchise, starting this week. pic.twitter.com/hHkOrXIAt6

In light of recent reports by Kotaku and others about worker complaints at Nintendo of America, former president and gaming icon Reggie Fils-Aimé was asked about how the company treats its employees. “I know I was able to achieve [a healthy culture], and certainly what’s being described does not seem like a healthy…

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The latest update to Final Fantasy XIV might include a homage to one of the most popular sci-fi RPG series in gaming, Mass Effect.

The update came with a lot of new goodies for PvP fans, including a new gameplay mode and plenty of prizes to enjoy with the new tiered systems.

Among those is a gunblade for Gunbreakers called Tropaios Bayonet, and it feels definitely familiar.

While it’s not a straight copy (which is understandable, since this is likely to be a homage and not an official collaboration), it appears to include several elements of the design language from some of the most iconic Mass Effect weapons.

We see the typical curved top of assault rifles like the M-7 Lancer and the M-8 Avenger, or sniper rifles like the Javelin, which also has a similar stock. The color scheme is also very familiar to weapons like the M-29 Incisor.

When wielded, the gunblade glows of a familiar orange color that certainly reminds of Mass Effect’s Omni-tool, but perhaps the most striking feature is the logo/glyph in the middle, which certainly feels like it imitates the iconic “N7” (or M7 perhaps).

You can see what I mean for yourself below.

Disney has released the official trailer for the highly-anticipated Disney+ series, Kenobi, which sees the return of fan-favorite Ewan McGregor as the titular Kenobi.

The trailer builds on the debut trailer about two months ago and shows off more of the Inquisitor and his Sith lackeys chasing down Kenobi around the galaxy to put down one of the last remaining Jedi masters.

In a scene that will hit prequel fans right in the feels, there is a scene where Uncle Owen doubts Kenobi’s great idea to train Luke. See for yourself below.

Also teased is the return of Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader. While many are stoked to see Christensen take on the role again, what does have some Star Wars purists a bit concerned is the possibility that Vader and Kenobi would meet in this series and taking away from the iconic moment Kenobi and Vader meet in the original Star Wars film, A New Hope.

We’ll have to wait and see for sure but for now, personally, I’m just happy to see the best part of the prequels – the tragic relationship between McGregor’s Kenobi and Christensen’s Vader – continue to be explored.

Kenobi releases on Disney+ on May 27.