Announced earlier today, Blumhouse—the Hollywood production company behind hit horror films like Megan and Get Out—is launching its own video game studio led by some game dev vets. The new studio, like its parent company, will focus on scary games with smaller budgets.
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If you’re taking a moral stand and not playing Hogwarts Legacy but still have a bit of FOMO for not being able to fly around the Scottish highlands on broom-back, cast deadly spells at 11-year-olds, and uphold a status quo rooted in centuries-old anti-Semitism, don’t fret. There’s an Elden Ring mod that will scratch…
A brief appearance of a girl curiously watching Ellie eat during this week’s episode of The Last of Us had fans of the games excited. And fans of just the show were likely left a little confused as to what all the fuss is about. If you’re here wondering who the hell this “Dina” the internet is yelling about is and…
The Pokémon Company not-so-surprisingly announced its latest Pokémon Presents livestream, scheduled for the series’ anniversary, Pokémon Day, or February 27, just like it was last year (and the year before that).
It was almost a year ago that Square Enix released Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, a “remastered” version of the 1999 classic on the PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Switch that, as good as the original game was, was also a very bad port.
The Civilization series has been with us so long that it can sometimes feel like part of the furniture. A game comes out, is played for years, another follows, repeat until the heat death of the universe. But it has actually been a very long time since the last game!
Steam sales are now so frequent that there are concerns they’ll soon start crashing into each other, causing vast sale pile-ups that could clog great sections of the internet. However, in amongst the incessant discounts on The Witcher 3 appears something rather more interesting that most: Mystery Fest. It’s running…
The award-winning Clarkesworld Magazine has helped launch the careers of science fiction writers for almost 20 years, regularly featuring work from Hugo Award nominees and winners like Elizabeth Bear, Peter Watts and Catherynne M. Valente. But right now, in quite the ironic situation, it finds itself battling against…
Nothing confirms the existence of something like the copyright holder doing everything it can to hide it. So it is that Lego is issuing takedown notices on YouTube videos with the temerity to repeat the leak of a forthcoming Zelda-based The Great Deku Tree set.
Yet-to-collapse cryptocurrency, EMAX, has just gotten another celebrity in hot water. Short for EthereumMax, the bullshit scheme was promoted on Twitter by former NBA player Paul Pierce, except he rather forgot to say he was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing so. As reported by The Verge, he U.S.…
Last week’s episode of The Last of Us was perhaps the show at its most bleak and devastating. Thankfully, episode six, entitled “Kin,” offers us a bit of a tonal reprieve, with enough scenes of hope and possibility for life in the post-cordyceps world to remind us that it is still possible to carve out lives worth…
New gameplay from the upcoming Star Wars Jedi: Survivor seems to reveal that, unlike in the first game, the sequel will finally let Jedi Cal Kestis slice up stormtroopers and other human enemies. And that’s a good thing, as this much-wanted change makes lightsabers feel powerful and deadly again.
After seeing Honkai: Star Rail for a few minutes during a live media preview, I mostly liked what I saw. HoYoverse’s “space fantasy” RPG doesn’t reinvent turn-based combat, but the performance was smooth. The fighting animations were among some of the best I’ve seen out of anime games in recent years. The combat’s…
Anime and manga publisher Viz Media just made a handful of really big anime series freely available to watch on YouTube. If you’re looking for a good entry point into some really prolific shows, this is an excellent opportunity to dive into some stone-cold classics.
The newest Dead by Daylight killer isn’t just making a killing in the tech industry, she’s also murdering the series’ track record for having its original female characters expose their toes.
Taylor Neubert did what so many GameStop employees have only dreamed about: quit on the spot. Fed up with working 10-hour days all by herself between piles of video games and stacks of Pokémon merchandize for less than $15 an hour, she closed her store in the middle of her shift, put a sign on the door saying GameStop…
Bruce Wayne, aka Batman (don’t tell anybody that secret, okay), is a person just like the rest of us. This means, just like you, he has a birthday, and in honor of his upcoming b-day, WB Games is advertising a big sale on…Gotham Knights. You know, the game where Batman dies in the first 20 minutes and you don’t…
Intro: Hello everyone, and welcome to another exciting week here on Giant Bomb.
Last time I wrote I said we were close to re-launching the store and…we are still pretty close to doing so! I apologize for the delays here. The ownership of the store has been transferred to my account and all of our merch from Social Imprints is being shipped to our new store partner. Untangling all of the merch and getting it rung into inventory will take a bit, but we are still planning to launch with the seven shirts from last summer - hopefully less busted this time, but the samples are great! As well as those, hopefully we can unpack some of the merch from our inventory shipment When we do launch I’m going to have to ask for your patience in getting up to speed - I’ll be handing all your store code and 10% off discounts manually, I assume, so please as always drop me a line at the support email address and we’ll try to get you sorted.
Welcome to the latest edition of the Giant Bomb Community Spotlight! I, @zombiepie, am once again honored to be your host as we look back at the best community-created works from the previous week.
Well, I guess an explanation is in store from me on why things on the forums are the way they are this week. As many of you probably noticed, a spammer bumped about 200+ threads and articles. The spammer has been banned and nuked, but you as you can see, my articles continue to clog up the forums. The issue is being investigated, but it appears anything posted by staff members might have some kind of immunity against reverting threads to their normal spots. This is not intentional, and the engineers are working on identifying why this is happening.
For more context on why The Spotlight in particular seems popular with spambots, this has been an issue for years. For example, search "Giant Bomb Community Spotlight" on Twitter and be amazed at how many bots retweet these articles. As things stand, we are banning and nuking bots when they appear as soon as possible.
In terms of something you all can do to help the site get back to "normal," I have an idea. As you view this edition of the Spotlight, when you see a blog or thread you find exciting, please, drop a comment in support of that blogger or drop a relevant on-topic reply in the thread. If we can get even a handful of people to do this, the amazing things everyone posted and created will finally return center stage, which is what they deserve in the first place.
Finally, Tamoor ended up guesting on an episode of Nextlander's movie podcast to talk about Demolition Man. To give this podcast a listen, consider joining Nextlander for $10 a month! With that out of the way, let's jump into the Community Spotlight!
State of Play is back! Sony has announced its State of Play broadcast is happening this Thursday, February 23rd and that it will be showing off upcoming PlayStation 5 and PlayStation VR2 games. This guide will provide you with everything you need to know to watch the show, including when it starts, a list of places you can stream State of Play live, and the biggest PlayStation announcements from last year.
The State of Play stream will take place Feb 23 at 1pm PT / 4pm ET / 9pm UK (and 7am AEST on February 24) and will run for approximately 15 minutes.
If you’re interested in watching the State of Play broadcast yourself, we host the stream here and across our many channels like YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Here’s the full list of places you can watch the February PlayStation State of Play tomorrow:
Hogwarts Legacy and the Stain on Harry Potter’s Legacy Read More »
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Disturbing accusations of “grooming” and sexual abuse have recently rocked the world of professional chess. Grandmaster Alejandro Ramírez is reportedly currently under investigation by two major chess organizations, as detailed in reports from fellow chess grandmaster and advocate for women’s participation in the…
Ubisoft has placed sanctions on nearly 19,000 accounts for using an unspecified exploit, the Rainbow Six Siege developer revealed rather cryptically on Twitter earlier today.
Microsoft’s president and vice chairman Brad Smith announced today that the company signed a 10-year contract to bring Xbox games to Nintendo consoles.
Given its history of experimental hardware, its infamously vague responses when asked about what games its working on, its failure to produce much-desired sequels to beloved games, and the smashing success of its recent surprise handheld, the Steam Deck, Valve’s moves are tough to predict.
My love for the original Company of Heroes knows no bounds. Indeed I’ve gone so far as to call it the perfect RTS, a blend of tactics, cover and terrain so meticulously-honed that for 17 years it has remained, undefeated, as the finest example of the genre.
On January 20, the latest expansion of the Pokémon Trading Card Game released in Japan in the form of twin sets Scarlet EX and Violet EX. They’re due for an English release in March, or you can pre-order the Japanese versions from importers right now. But there’s a catch.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom isn’t due out until May 12, which means fans heavily invested in the lore and secrets of the game have three months of avoiding (what they will probably think are) spoilers ahead of them.
Much of the science fiction genre would have you believe that artificial intelligence would bring about humanity’s downfall by rising up and slaughtering its creators, but the recent boom in AI tech has instead amounted to labor crimes like journalistic malpractice and robbing artists of their commissions. So while AI…
Hey everyone! These are the results of the community GOTY - the results of which (resultingly) have been resulted below. This year, 712 of you submitted a top ten list, for a total of 5854 votes (not everyone always puts in ten games, which is fine!) on 500 different games. Wow! Amazing!
After only 24 hours in Early Access, Sons of the Forest has already sold over two million copies.
Sons of the Forest developer Endnight Games shared the news on Twitter alongside promising some exciting things to come in the near future.
"Thanks to those who have joined us in our Early Access journey into Sons of the Forest," Endnight Games wrote. "We have sold over 2 million copies in the first 24 hours, and are very excited for what we have in store for players in the coming weeks."
Sons of the Forest, which is an open-world survival horror game that sends players to a remote island filled with cannibals and other dangers to find a missing billionaire, also rose up the concurrent player charts on Steam, with over 350,100 users playing the game at once.
As of this writing, Sons of the Forest is at 255,134 concurrent players and sits only behind Dota 2's 271,407 players and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's 563,954 players on Steam. For comparison, the original game - The Forest - had an all-time peak of 76,226.
Wyrmwood, maker of tabletop gaming accessories that have long been beloved by the likes of Dungeons & Dragons players, is under fire for their response to a flurry of sexual assaunt allegations that came to light this week.
After a tweet gained momentum which accused the company of protecting an employee who was accussed of sexual assault, one of the terminated employees responded with strong words against the company.
I'm a former employee of @WyrmwoodGaming
— Andy Morocco (@Andy_Morocco) February 19, 2023
and want to put my story on record. I'm who the tweet was talking about. Remember firing me, Doug?
(I'm glancing away through the video because it wrote this all out for clarity and brevity.)#WyrmsArentFriends pic.twitter.com/FiVDKyg6iM
In the video, former employee Andy Morocco, alleges that he was fired in retaliation for reporting the sexual assault of a coworker that took place on company premises.
"I was taken behind the shop by the CEO Douglas Costello. I assumed he wanted more information directly from the source, but instead he fired me in retaliation for, in his words, 'creating shop drama,'" Morocco claims in the video.
Many traditional sports games release a new edition every year, with mixed results on whether or not they feel different enough to justify themselves beyond a roster update. So I'm surprised at Blood Bowl 3, the latest digital adaptation of Games Workshop's ultraviolent board game parody of American football set in a wacky alternate version of the Warhammer Fantasy universe. It presents shockingly little reason for its own existence compared to the previous version, which came out almost eight years ago. I like the intense and hilarious premise and mechanics of Blood Bowl on their own, but what we have here is basically Blood Bowl 2, again, but worse.
If you've never played Blood Bowl before, you might be able to coast for a while just on the absurd novelty of the concept. Elves, dwarves, orcs, and minotaurs line up on a grid iron and try to bash, pass, and juke their way to a touchdown, with often brutal results. Because this is Warhammer, players can be seriously injured and even killed depending on how the virtual dice fall, which has the potential to create bitter and satisfying rivalries in long-running leagues.
We're in an age of remasters and remakes. In the first few months of 2023 alone, we're seeing relreases of high-profile games like Dead Space, Metroid Prime, and Resident Evil 4. With 2000s nostalgia at an all-time high right now, video game writer David Gaider is calling for a remaster of 2009's Dragon Age: Origins.
Gaider was the lead writer and setting creator for BioWare's Dragon Age: Origins, and would go on to work on both Dragon Age II and Dragon Age: Inquisition. On Twitter, Gaider wrote, "If we're on a kick re-mastering games from the aughts, what about Dragon Age Origins? Its graphics were behind the curve even at the time of release... can you imagine it with brand new PS5-era bells and whistles?"
If we're on a kick re-mastering games from the aughts, what about Dragon Age Origins? Its graphics were behind the curve even at the time of release... can you imagine it with brand new PS5-era bells and whistles? 🥳
— David Gaider (@davidgaider) February 23, 2023
Replying to some other Twitter users, Gaider played down the likelihood of a Dragon Age remaster happening, saying "I suspect EA would only do it if they thought it would sell like *gold-plated* hotcakes. They've... never really gotten DA, or understood why it sold better than Mass Effect, was my impression."
In recent years, video game companies like Nintendo and PlayStation have set expectations for any pre-recorded shows by announcing beforehand what kind of stream viewers should expect — whether focused on indie games, third-party titles, or about a specific game. This has been a welcome change as it sets appropriate expectations for an upcoming Nintendo Direct or State of Play showcase. After all, nobody will expect to see a new Zelda trailer during a Splatoon 3 Direct.
Sony did this too for its most recent State of Play earlier this week, announcing that the show will primarily focus on PSVR 2, Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad, and some indie and third-party games. But if the recent State of Play showcases have demonstrated anything, it’s that there’s a difference between setting the right expectations, and making it so that viewers should have no expectations at all.
Let’s start with PlayStation VR 2, which was just released to critical acclaim. Having spent a few hours with it myself, I can tell you that the tech underlying Sony’s newest VR headset is definitely something to write home about. Still, much has been made about the launch lineup of games which consists of one new first-party release (Horizon: Call of the Mountain) and several releases that are readily available on rival headsets.
Editor's Note: The war in Ukraine is an ongoing, painful and emotive topic. IGN urges community members to be respectful when engaging in conversation around this subject and does not endorse harassment of any kind.
Atomic Heart's launch week has been surrounded by controversy, as developer Mundfish is facing backlash for its Russian ties in relation to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, and a racist cartoon present within the game.
Earlier this week, PC Gamer published a story about online criticism surrounding the presence of a racist caricature within Atomic Heart. The caricature in question was found in the game's Resident Evil-style save rooms, where players can take a breather from the action and watch old episodes of Nu, Pogodi!, or, Well, Just You Wait!, a Soviet-era cartoon that started in 1969.
The show can be summarized as a Soviet version of Tom and Jerry, starring a wolf who tries time and time again to get his hands on a hare. The issue is present in episode 12, titled Museum, which first aired in 1978. A statue is shown in the episode that's a racist depiction of an African tribesman. Folks on Resetera criticized Atomic Heart for including the cartoon at all, let alone without any warning or context.
The Valiant Hearts series is a novel take on the familiar setting of World War I. Instead of focusing on armed skirmishes and large-scale battles, it hones in on the lives of those on the frontlines, the lingering trauma that war casts upon them, and the unexpected bonds found in dark times. Despite the smaller-scale storytelling, its more emotional take on living through war is a welcome change of pace.Released in January as a Netflix Games exclusive, Valiant Hearts: Coming Home is the long overdue sequel to Ubisoft’s war-time narrative-adventure game from 2014. Along with the return of protagonists Anna and Freddie, the sequel also includes a new character whose story focuses on the African American service members in the famed 369th regiment, the Harlem Hellfighters.
We interviewed Ubisoft manager of inclusive games & content Maya Loreal, and product director Guillaume Cerda, about the making of Valiant Hearts: Coming Home and the potential video games have with bringing stories and underrepresented figures into the spotlight.
“It's in our game’s DNA to tell the story of these ordinary people becoming unsung heroes,” said Cerda about Valiant Hearts; Coming Home. “And what better example than the Harlem Hellfighters, especially with the feats and efforts they are recognized with, even after a century following the end of World War I. Their stories fit in well with Valiant Hearts. We’re always saying that it's not a war game, but it's a game about war, being caught up in the turmoil of it.”
