Ubisoft stopped releasing their games via Steam back in 2019, starting with The Division 2. The Tom Clancy shoot-to-looter was instead released via Ubisoft's own digital storefront and via the Epic Games Store. It'll finally arrive on Steam next month on January 12th, as part of Ubisoft's broader shift back to Valve's storefront.
Have you considered that the real pleasure of PC gaming lies in buying games, installing them, and then playing them for one hour or not at all? If so, then good news! The Steam winter sale has begun, offering discounts on thousands of games you can add to your backlog.
Chained Echoes is a retro Japanese-inspired RPG set in a world of dragons and mech suits. It seemingly already has the scope of the 16-bit games that inspired it, but that doesn't mean there aren't post-release updates to come. Its developer is now working on a New Game Plus mode.
A lot of games about ships seem dour to me, because the wind is a fickle method of propulsion and because slowly revolving around enemies during slow cannon-fire combat is dull. By contrast, Sail Forth looks more my speed, with its enormous sea creatures, secretive faction of frogs in submarines, and a wind system itd developers claim is "deeply accessible". It's out now and there's a launch trailer below.
Nope, you don't need to get your eyes tested. Alt254 is a minimalist action adventure game that plays out on a small (albeit greatly enlarged) map that measures just 21x26 pixels. In this tiny space, you, a black dot, must venture forth, solving puzzles, deciphering the strange, colourful world around you and piecing together your broken memory along the way. It's a very enigmatic little game, but one that's instantly charming in its old-school vibes and artfully constructed world. Its soundtrack is a bit of a corker, too.
Yesterday, I used my amazing arithmetical reasoning abilities to surmise that there were only eight free games left to come from the Epic Games Store’s Winter Sale giveaway. I was wrong. Don’t look shocked, it happens. Today sees three of the earliest Fallout games being offered up for nothing. They’re Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Role-Playing Game, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood Of Steel. I already own all three elsewhere, as you might well too, but if you don’t then it’s a good way of picking up three classics of 90s PC gaming.
I expect the life of the average person in ninth-century England was a lot tougher than the fantastical future full of video games we inhabit more than a millennium later. Well, Ubisoft and Capcom have teamed up to make the lives of digital peasants even harder, by shoving some Monster Hunter World themed gubbins into Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Have a watch of the trailer below to see just how bizarre this crossover is.
Tradition is a transformative power. Often unintentionally, something happens during an event and, if people want, it becomes more than an occurrence, it becomes part of the event. They repeat it, and they share it with other people in their lives and hearts, and the tradition grows. Often the original food/game/gesture/saying/joke/whatever had nothing to do with the event's core, and that doesn't matter. Sometimes it simply brings joy and feels right. For example, the use of 1956 pop song Green Door in free festive indie game Dracula Cha Cha feels so right that to me, it is a Christmas song. Green Door has run through my head for weeks, and it is once again time for the annual go on Dracula Cha Cha.
CD Projekt RED have pushed out another hotfix for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s ever-so-slightly borked next-gen update that was released last week. You can expect some extra stability compared to the previous version of the update, something that’ll always be welcome on my PC. Along with Roach’s early Christmas present of some stabilisers, the hotfix also tackles the annoying bug that caused toxicity to be stuck at max level, along with some minor tweaks to photo mode, and unexplained improvements for The Witcher 3’s performance on Steam Deck.
Nvidia's marketing team this week announced an Nvidia-branded shower gel and deodorant as a PR stunt for social media giveaways. As far as I can tell, their Sphynx Ampere toiletries do not smell like new graphics cards, so who cares? However! This does make me wonder: which PC gaming smells would you like as a shower gel, perfume, deodorant, aftershave, air freshener, or such? What are the good smells of PC gaming? Which would you eagerly accept as a boxed toiletry set from your aunt this Christmas? I'll go first.
Not content with chucking a whole bunch of dragons and dragon-adjacent stuff at players, World Of Warcraft: Dragonflight is planning six more updates in 2023. Blizzard have released a roadmap for the next year’s worth of shenanigans for the expansion, with new zones, raids, a megadungeon, and profession changes planned. Two major updates, one each scheduled for the first and second halves of the year, will kick off new seasons for Dragonflight.
As we enter the end of year and awards season, it would be remiss not to revisit FMV match-cutting three-movies-in-one detective game Immortality, one of the most innovative and thought-provoking games I played this year. But given the game's subject centres on the depiction of women on film, and their exploitation in the film industry by male creators, it felt appropriate to examine it from the extremely talented femme members of the team. That means not just the star Marissa Marcel herself, played by the award-winning Manon Gage, but other women and non-binary creatives who played different roles in bringing this game to life.
For day 22 of our RPS Advent Calendar, we're going to make a break for it. Let's escape our enforced drudgery and make a new life for ourselves, out on the outer reaches of space in a lawless space station where we can be anything we want!
Creepy stealth fest Gloomwood snuck into early access a few months ago and made fans of immersive sims look out from under their hoods - but sadly the work-in-progress won't let you slip past its city gates. With Gloomwood’s final update for this year, though, you can at least nip in the local tavern now. Only, it seems there’s something pretty nasty dwelling inside its presumably one-star walls. Have a watch of the trailer below, and get us a Guinness and a packet of Golden Wonder from the bar. Ready salted, please.
While our RPS Advent Calendar has been counting down to the reveal of our favourite game of the year, another advent calendar has brought far spookier treats. The low-fi indie developers of the Haunted PS1 community have another Madvent Calendar this year, offering another 24 small horror games and oddities released daily. So far, these have ranged from an extreme snowboarding murder game to a pleasant little online social network where you leave messages for other people by decorating plants and plaques in a sunny courtyard. A lovely thing, and free!
How was your year for PC hardware, reader? Pick up anything nice, or got any old favourite gear still going strong? I’m still very happy with the 4K gaming monitor I got for a pittance, and have spent the past twelve months becoming increasingly convinced that tenkeyless keyboards are, in fact, the best keyboards.
That’s just me, though. On an everyone’s-invited macro level, 2022 ended up being the most transformative year for PC gaming kit in recent memory. We’ve had it all: long overdue launches, bitter disappointments, and genuinely impactful performance innovations. Also, Valve made a handheld PC. That was cool.
The Witcher 3's next-gen update was borked on PC, but a fresh hotfix from developers CD Projeckt Red might have just unborked it. They say the update to the update "should improve the overall stability and performance", which will hopefully be especially good news for anyone trying to de-neck nekkers on an ageing graphics card.
The Knight Witch deserves more attention than it's getting. It's a Metroidvania shmup in which you fly about, blast enemies with guns, and cast spells from a deck of cards. For all the bang and zip of the combat, it's also deeply cosy, with lush 2D art and sweet character relationships in an underground post-apocalyptic world that's still somehow filled with plants, rustic cabins and cute market stalls. There's a free demo to play now.
We all know that Hideo Kojima’s a big fan of the film industry, and that many of his games feature big Hollywood talent and have verged on movie-length cutscenes at times. I can’t say it’s a surprise, then, that Death Stranding, which just had its sequel confirmed at The Game Awards last week, is being adapted for film. Kojima Productions are working with production company Hammerstone Studios to bring the BB Boys' post-apocalyptic hiking trip to life.
Remember the Steam controller? It was kind of like the Neanderthal to the Steam Deck’s Homo sapiens, existing for a brief few years before being discontinued back in 2019. Steam Controllers were an unusual evolutionary offshoot of the by-then fairly standardised controller layout, with funky clickable trackpads taking the place of thumbsticks. Well, Valve’s designers seem to be up for reviving the concept in some form. At least, that’s what they’ve told The Verge in an interview about the Steam Deck’s first nine months.
Day 16 of the RPS Advent Calendar and you can hear the roar of the oil refineries at night as you sleep. You walk the streets of your home town and consider how much and how little has changed. Should you have even come back?
Blizzard have revealed that former Warcraft lore maestro Chris Metzen is returning as creative advisor for the series. Metzen had retired back in 2016 after decades of working on Warcraft and Blizzard’s other games. The return was shared by Warcraft general manager Jon Hight in a statement posted to Twitter, which confirmed that Metzen will initially return to the company to work on the long-running World Of Warcraft. It’s expected that Metzen will follow that up by moving onto other connected projects.
He who is more rat than man and more jackal than rat, Xûr, is now live in Destiny 2 for the weekend until next week's reset. If you're looking to get your some shiny new Exotic armor or weapons for your Guardian, look no further.
Each week, Xûr has a random assortment of Exotic armor, one for each Guardian class, as well as a random Exotic Weapon and an Exotic Engram available for purchase. In addition to his Exotic wares, he's got a random collection of Legendary weapons and armor to deck out your Guardians.
We've rounded up all the info on Xûr for the week including where to find Xûr, which Exotic weapons and armor are available, as well as which Legendary weapons you should pick up, either for PvE or PvP.
Xûr's location today can be found at Watcher's Grave on Nessus on December 23 through December 27. To reach him, travel to the landing point at Watcher's Grave. When you arrive, make for the red moss-covered tree straight ahead. Climb up the roots and you'll find Xûr waiting at the top to sell you exotic items and legendary weapons.
There are some pretty incredible deals on PS5-compatible 2TB SSD storage upgrades right now. Some of these prices are significantly lower than what we saw on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. At this point you can easily triple the storage space in your PS5 without spending as much as the PS5 console itself! Keep in mind that you can't use any old SSD and expect it to perform well on the PS5 console. You'll want to pick up an PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 solid state drive with a rated 5,500MB/s read speed to match the PS5's internal drive.
Crucial's newest M.2 SSD meets all the requirements for your PS5 SSD upgrade. It supports transfer speeds of up to 6,660MB/s which is well above the 5,500MB/s minimum threshold. Yes there are faster SSDs out there, but if your intention is to put this in your PS5, then that extra speed is worthless because you're bottlenecked by the original PS5 SSD. If you're worried about opening up your PS5 case, don't worry it's very easy. Crucial has an official YouTube PS5 SSD install guide to see you through the process.
There may be other SSD deals out there, but these are the PS5 SSDs we've tried ourselves and highly recommend. They also double up as outstanding boot drives for your gaming PC, in case you don't need additional storage for your PS5 console.
Microsoft’s fourth-generation Xbox consoles, the Xbox Series X and Series S, are now entering Year 3. And though Year 1 started with a soft launch in the exclusive games department, the second half of this generation’s first year delivered the flood that parched Xbox fans have waited years for. From Forza Horizon 5 to Halo Infinite to Psychonauts 2 to Microsoft Flight Simulator, it sure seemed like the Xbox’s exclusive games drought was finally over [Editor’s note: Whoops!]. Of course, by now you know the story because you lived through it. The whole of 2022 was like a mirage in the desert: you thought you could see water up ahead, but was it really there? As such, 2023 simply must deliver for Xbox gamers who’ve invested so much in the platform. Microsoft is a trillion-dollar company who has seemingly exhausted the patience of its player base. Fortunately, though, there’s reason to be optimistic.
You’ve probably familiar with video game development jobs like programmer, artist, or designer. But one of the most influential roles at Ubisoft is one that doesn’t always immediately parse for most people: the role of its editorial team.
This advisory group’s job is, on a large scale, to determine the creative direction for Ubisoft and its games, and it’s been in a state of upheaval lately. The editorial team had previously gotten an overhaul in early 2020, only to need another later that year after a wave of abuse allegations levied at multiple senior Ubisoft employees, including editorial leads.
In the pre-2020 structure, reports suggested that many of Ubisoft’s games ended up very same-y due to just one or two people dictating the creative direction of the company as a whole. And while the initial team shake-up may have been well-intentioned enough, it left at least two individuals with allegations against them dictating the company’s creative pillars. So it had to change again.
Dale, Alex and Emma are here with the only game awards that matter. The alternative list of stuff they've made up as an excuse to talk about what they've enjoyed playing in 2022, and other things that have driven them crazy.
Got a game for us to play or some feedback you'd like read out on the show? Why not email us: ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.
The PlayStation 5 DualSense controller has dropped back down to the same price we saw on Black Friday. You can get several different colors for only $49 each, a hefty price drop from its $70-$75 MSRP. Note that none of these controllers are likely to arrive before Christmas. Most of the colors have a ship date that's been extended out to early January.
The new PS5 DualSense is one of the most advanced controllers on the market. Once you've held and tested out this controller, you'll begin to see why it commands such a premium price (although it's still competitive with the price of official Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch controllers). The DualSense features haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, a built-in microphone and speaker, integrated touchpad, internal gyroscope and accelerometer for motion sensing, USB Type-C charging, and native compatibility with Windows (with either the cable or wirelessly over Bluetooth). This is inarguably the best controller for the PS5 at this price.
Sony Santa Monica announced that a New Game Plus mode will come to God of War Ragnarok in Spring 2023.
“We know many of you have been asking, so we’re happy to confirm that New Game Plus will be coming to #GodofWarRagnarok in Spring 2023,” Sony Santa Monica’s official Twitter account revealed. “We’ll share more details once we get closer to the release!”
We know many of you have been asking, so we’re happy to confirm that New Game Plus will be coming to #GodofWarRagnarok in Spring 2023!
— Santa Monica Studio – God of War Ragnarök (@SonySantaMonica) December 22, 2022
We’ll share more details once we get closer to the release! 🐻 🐺 pic.twitter.com/vmv5X2USuW
God of War (2018) added a New Game Plus mode a few months after its release. There, players were able to carry over earned equipment and abilities. Players were also able to create new armor sets for Kratos and Atreus, as well as the ability to convert talismans into enchantments. New Game Plus mode also changed the attack patterns for Valkyries and introduced Timed Realm Tears.
When I say Rhythm Heaven, which minigame pops into your head instantly? Is it the karate guy punching plant pots? The choir kid trio singing? Plucking hairs off of vegetables? For me, it’s the wrestler interview in Ringside.
Whichever one it is, there’s no denying there’s something deeply memorable and satisfying about those rhythmic minigames, which is why I was instantly drawn into Melatonin. It’s a new indie release from developer Half Asleep that successfully (if ironically, given the sleepy theme) replicates those serotonin hits from landing perfects in a Rhythm Heaven minigame. Set within the mind of a very sleepy person, Melatonin’s rhythm games are all loosely themed around their fantastic dreams of mundane activities: food, shopping, exercise, work, gaming, and so forth. It’s a soothing, pastel backdrop for the pleasant audio and visual call-and-response gameplay I desperately miss from the Nintendo DS days.
And, like many of the games I’ve covered in this series, it’s mostly the brainchild of one person: David Huynh, the founder and only member of Half Asleep. Melatonin is his first game, a huge first milestone on a career path he only recently began to envision for himself.
Huynh’s educational background is in general design – graphic, audio, UI, architecture, the works. While he was always a gamer, he explicitly didn’t want to get into game design at first.
PlayStation had a fantastic mix of critical success, big sellers, and indie darlings to celebrate in 2022, thanks to the releases of God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, and Stray. That pattern is set to continue over the next 12 months as Sony looks to add to its growing library of great games. With many to get excited about on the horizon, as well as an imminent next step into virtual reality, PlayStation looks set for a busy 2023.
Horizon Forbidden West was one of PlayStation’s biggest hits of 2022 and it’s back for more in 2023. The Burning Shores DLC arrives on April 19 and takes Aloy to the flooded, volcanic ruins of Los Angeles. If Zero Dawn’s expansion, The Frozen Wilds, is anything to go by, we’re in for a sizeable and action-packed addition to the Horizon story.
PS5 console exclusive Forspoken launches January 24th and Square Enix’s action RPG is a modern take on the classic Alice in Wonderland tale, as New Yorker Frey finds herself in a fantastical world full of magic, dragons, and demons.
Almost six years after the last mainline game, Final Fantasy XVI launches exclusively on PS5 on June 22nd. It’s a return to the series’ high fantasy roots but that doesn’t mean the return of turn-based combat, because fast-paced action takes centre stage with Devil May Cry 5 and Dragon’s Dogma’s Ryota Suzuki holding the reins as Combat Director.
Kojima Productions, the studio headed by director Hideo Kojima, celebrated its seventh anniversary on December 16, 2022. It used this opportunity to move its office to a larger floor in the same building, marking a new beginning. In a previous interview with IGN Japan, Kojima compared his previous office to Star Trek's USS Enterprise, and that concept has been carried over to this new location as well. The studio boasts an even bigger white room to house a new 1:1 scale Ludens statue, and you can sense Kojima's desire to set off into new creative waters in its spacious studio, photogrammetry room, and kitchen-lounge area that allows for large-scale socializing.
The studio is only gaining more momentum, releasing a teaser video for Death Stranding 2 [DS2] to the world at The Game Awards 2022 [TGA], the first one held in person in three years, and announcing a film adaptation of Death Stranding. Kojima Productions has been using its connections as it tirelessly runs forward, but where is it heading next? IGN Japan spoke to Kojima about the path taken by Kojima Productions so far and where it will be going from here.
A new trailer for Goat Simulator 3 has seemingly been hit with take-down notices by Take-Two after it incorporated leaked Grand Theft Auto 6 footage.
As reported by Eurogamer, Coffe Stain North released a new trailer for Goat Simulator 3, though you’ll have a hard time finding it now after it was hit with DMCA takedowns. The reason? The trailer used leaked footage from GTA 6 as part of the video.
In Eurogamer’s report, the trailer begins with an NPC named Shaun who was being fake interviewed for his role as a ragdoll NPC in Goat Simulator 3. According to Shaun, he attended the “most prestigious rag-dolling school in the world.”
However, when asked about his other work, Shaun says that he has “other stuff in the pipeline, other, big game worlds. You can actually see me in some footage that was leaked a couple months ago.”
Shaun then points to clips of the GTA 6 leaks with himself edited in. And this is the footage that led to Take-Two issuing takedowns of the trailer.
NEWS: Take-Two issued a takedown notice against the Goat Simulator video, amid to a cool marketing video which showed a edited snippet of the next GTA title from the leaks back in September. pic.twitter.com/ZcLP0uXIwk
In a line-up of survival horror characters, Isaac Clarke stands out. Rather than a regular Joe attempting to outrun zombies, Dead Space’s protagonist is a space engineer ready to weather the harshest conditions. That’s clear to see in his now-iconic space suit, which has received a grimy upgrade for the upcoming Dead Space remake.
The original suit was designed by Chi-Wai Lao, a concept artist who worked at EA alongside Dead Space creator Glen Schofield back in the early 2000s. “[To begin with] my suit designs were all over the place,” says Lao, “ranging from very slim-fitted to very bulky, some very robotic looking, a couple even [carried] a giant sword. They were drastically different from the Dead Space suits we recognize today.”
As Lao refined his concept, he turned to pop culture to inspire the details, specifically a beloved Japanese mecha anime. “One unusual candidate that was the most influential to me at the very beginning stage of designing the suit was the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, particularly the spine and the Entry Plug design of the Eva,” he reveals. "It was a prominent functional and visible element of the Eva design, and got me to implement a similar emphasis of a very prominent spine and a life support system of sorts on the back of the suit at its early stage. It was mostly for visual and fictional purposes at that point. However, the idea of having the HUD on Isaac's back came soon after from the team, and the spine then went through dramatic changes to implement that HUD afterwards.”
2022 has given us plenty of phenomenal games, movies, TV, and tech to enjoy. So many, in fact, that IGN gave out a whopping 15 10-out-of-10 review scores. Here’s everything we deemed worthy of being called a masterpiece this year.
FromSoftware has a long list of beloved action RPGs under its belt but Elden Ring is the first IGN has given a 10. It’s a challenging open world full of horrors and delight and an evolution of what made the likes of Dark Souls and Bloodborne so well-loved on a grand scale rarely seen before in a game. It begs to be endlessly explored as you hunt for its many secrets and the next expertly designed boss. Our review said it “can easily be held amongst the best open-world games we’ve ever played. Like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild before it, Elden Ring is one that we’ll be looking back on as a game that moved a genre forward.”
Since its debut in 2003, Call of Duty has become the best-selling first-person shooter series ever. Not a bad effort for a WWII FPS that first emerged as Activision’s ambitious answer to Medal of Honor, a franchise which has since faded from relevance but was a genre juggernaut for EA at that time.
Of course, there are two pillars of Call of Duty: there’s the multiplayer, and there are the single-player campaigns. And, hey, for those of us a little unwilling to huck ourselves into the online hellhole and compete in the Call of Duty combat cauldron, the quality of those campaigns is very important!
So which Call of Duty games have the greatest campaigns? IGN’s keenest and crustiest Call of Duty fans combined to carve out a list of our favourite single-player stories, plucked from all throughout the series’ two-decade history.
Here are our top 10 Call of Duty campaigns.
You know what’s wild? This whole year! I’ll spare you the whole spiel about the ups and downs, but here are a couple big milestones for me this year:
From the bottom of my heart I want to thank y’all, the community. Whether or not you’re premium, whether you only watch older videos, whether you’ve been here from the start or for a little bit, or whether or not you occasionally check in from time to time; thank you. You all are the reason we can keep doing this. We’ll always make sure that you have a little home at the little corner of the internet.
Also wanted to give an additional shout out to the following homies: Jean-Luc, Matt Shipman, Evil Uno, Broadway Alex, Justin Vachon, Mike Minotti, Jesse Vitelli, Kam and Nate, all of the GB staff, Abby, Ben, Michael Higham, my partner, and last but not least Dave Bautista.
Now for the list:
Wow, it’s my first ever Game of the Year list on Giant Bomb dot com! I’m equal parts honored and intimidated* to write one of these, partly because I don’t really like to be perceived and partly because 2022 has been an absolutely cracking year for games, and it was very hard to choose a top ten.
This year has been a whirlwind, simultaneously going by in the blink of an eye (it feels like yesterday Tam, Jan, and I were shooting Summer Game Fest vlogs on the mean streets of LA) and dragging its feet (I’m specifically calling out the slug days between December 19 and 22). Time may not have any meaning any more, but if there’s one thing I’m proud of this year, it’s that I can finally call myself a member of Giant Bomb (instead of a brandmate), and I can’t wait for all the fun and weirdness that 2023 will undoubtedly bring.
Here’s my list!
I have a cat. I spend a lot of time talking to my cat, taking cute pictures of my cat, and taking my cat to the vet (it’s not her fault, she has hot girl tummy problems). So yes, the cat game has squeaked onto my top ten. I thought it was adorable, and also gave me this very funny video of Peanut.
The Peanut review of Stray is in, @A_i pic.twitter.com/DXHQmDn3df
As I sat down to write this, I realized that this marks a decade of putting together my yearly top ten list for Giant Bomb. That includes a few years before I started working here, a few years after I left, and now—hey, I’m back! And as usual, my list is a mix of bigass AAA games and fun indie stuff. I guess the throughline for all of them is that they’re games where you do a bunch of shit instead of listen to or read a bunch of shit. Anyway, here’s my ten!
Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we ease into the Christmas weekend. Despite the site rounding off its GOTY content last week, we have plenty of community-made goodies for you to enjoy. For one thing, we have a slate of GOTY blogs and lists from your fellow community members that are all worth a read while you wait for the staff to come back from break. Speaking of which, we have a handful of news items that are incredibly important, so, let's get into it now!
In case you missed it last week, here's a link to the VODs for Giant Bomb's video coverage of GOTY:
Community 2022 GOTY voting has begun as well. If you experience any issues with community voting, feel free to drop a comment in the bug reporting thread. Likewise, we now have a thread where you can post and embed any of your 2022 GOTY lists! Feel free to post and discuss what you have on the site if it is any way shape or form connected to GOTY.