May 2023

Update (22nd May): This is the final day to grab this excellent deal on an Ergotron-built monitor arm! Original article continues:

Ergotron make some of the best monitor arms around - reliable, capable and generally brilliant - but they're also pretty pricey. That's probably why Amazon hit up Ergotron to make its Amazon Basics monitor arms, which offer the same excellent quality in unbranded form for considerably less money.

Today though one of these arms is even better value than usual, as there's a ridiculous 40% off voucher available on Amazon's take on the Ergotron LX, dropping this high-end monitor arm from £81 to just £49. That's a brilliant price for an arm that can support monitors up to 11kg in weight with full tilt, swivel, rotation and height adjustability.

Read more

The Corsair MP600 Pro LPX is a high-end PCIe 4.0 SSD with TLC flash memory and a DRAM cache, and I'd rank it right behind the (more expensive) Samsung 990 Pro and WD SN850x as the best gaming SSD on the market. Unlike those drives though, the MP600 Pro LPX comes with a heatsink by default and is often priced more aggressively, making it a great value choice that doesn't sacrifice performance. Today this drive has dropped to £74.98 on Amazon UK, a historic low price that makes it easy to justify an SSD upgrade for your PC or PS5.

Read more

Free is free and spooky shooter Metro: Last Light is currently free to keep from Steam. It has been made available by developers 4A Games in order to celebrate its 10th anniversary. The catch, sort of, is that this is the Complete Edition, a version that does not normally even show up in Steam search results. The slightly-improved Metro: Last Light Redux will still cost you a few quid or bucks.

Read more

From now until May 25th, you can nab Death Stranding for free from the Epic Games Store and keep it forever. If you always meant to go for a hike across Hideo Kojima's strange, sci-fi package delivery sim, now's your chance.

Read more

Age of Wonders is a long-running PC strategy series that has been around since 1999. This latest entry takes the 4X genre—think Civilization—and transports it into a fantasy world where battles are resolved in tactical showdowns, there’s magic everywhere and your leaders are also RPG characters.

Read more...

While the Golden Age of video games making bank on Kickstarter is long gone, that isn’t to say there aren’t still success stories on the platform. And a big one this month is Elin, a roguelike RPG out of Japan that’s trying to deliver on dreams that fans have been harbouring for 15 years and counting.

Read more...

In this week's episode of The Game Informer Show, the crew reveals our next magazine cover story, featuring Final Fantasy XVI, which sent Wesley across the ocean to Square Enix Japan. Afterward, we dive into a 30-minute spoiler-free discussion about The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and share our thoughts on the game. Of course, Hyrule wasn't the only world we explored this week, as Lego 2K Drive and Humanity, created in part by Tetris Effect creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi, were released on May 16. 

Prefer to watch the video version of the podcast? Find it below: 

Follow us on social media: Alex Van Aken (@itsVanAken), Marcus Stewart (@MarcusStewart7), Kyle Hilliard (@KyleMHilliard), Wesley LeBlanc (@LeBlancWes)

Canadian YouTuber Linus Sebastian, best known to most as the guy behind the insanely popular Linus Tech Tips channel, has announced that he’s stepping down as CEO of the companies he helped create and has been running for the past ten years.

Read more...

Are you there, Nintendo? It's me, Edwin. Thanks very much for developing Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I've been having a blast. I have a confession, though, Nintendo. When I wrote in Eurogamer's review that the Great Sky Island was my favourite sky island, I was lying. It's really this one a little to the south of Great Sky Island, directly over Popla foothills. Some might call it a stepping stone to actual places, devoid of flora or fauna or hazards or secrets - a charmless particle of futility. Me, though, I call it home.

Or at least, I'm trying to. For those still catching up, Tears of the Kingdom has an ability called Ultrahand which lets you pick up and glue objects together with telekinesis - from planks and wheels to pieces of ancient Zonai technology. Ultrahand can be used to craft many things, but it's primarily a vehicle editor. Lately, though, I've been trying to build houses with it.

As in Breath of the Wild, there's a quest that lets you buy a house in Tears of the Kingdom. This time, you even get to assemble it yourself, clipping rooms together using Ultrahand on a building plot near Tarrey Town. Still, this feels a bit bland and comfortable, next to the more, ahem, freeform applications of Ultrahand, and the building location isn't exactly atmospheric by Tears of the Kingdom standards. Besides which, each bespoke house component costs an absolute kaboodle. You'll need to shoot a whole lot of ghost rabbits before you can afford that second floor infinity pool.

Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've found ourselves playing over the last few days. This time: Zelda, Spyro, and more Zelda.

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.

It was a slow start for me. I've always appreciated how each Zelda is unique and surprising, yet Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom felt too familiar to me in its opening hours, its tutorial area following the same formula as Breath of the Wild. Building just didn't gel with me either, thanks to fiddly controls and my own disinterest in being creative, and the vague plot lacked some dramatic impetus.

Read more

Co-op horror prequel The Outlast Trials is out now in early access. Playing under-the-bed peekaboo with brainwashed killers can be an overwhelming ordeal, so now you can drag along a friend and spread out the trauma. This time, those snotty shakycam Blair Witch-type chases are set in a Cold War-era facility where you’ll be put through some gruelling experiments. The early access launch trailer below lays out some of the titular trials you can expect.

Read more

Developer Strange Scaffold have announced another genre-blending adventure, Teenage Demon Slayer Society, this time mixing turn-based strategy combat with some character action flare. The game follows teen figurines, who are already struggling with the hellish world of high school crushes when an army of demons invades their world. Demonic invasions and teenage angst are - as we all know - a match made in heaven. Or hell. Either way it looks cool.

Read more

Developers behind Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores have addressed the DLC's ending decision, and the subequent review bombing the game suffered as a result.

Please note, there will be spoilers for Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores below.

During the events of Burning Shores, Aloy meets Seyka, an "ambitious marine of the Quen tribe who has stepped up to help her people survive". Ahead of the DLC's release, Seyka was touted as a character that would be Aloy's equal, with actress Ashly Burch even saying "Aloy may have met her match".

Read more

Legendary game developer John Carmack has defended his decision to attend a science fiction and fantasy convention for "non-leftist" writers, following social media criticism.

Carmack announced he would attend BasedCon this week via Twitter, prompting displeasure from followers upset at the event's description as an alternative to the "publishing industry's hostility to authors who are critical of progressive dogma".

The event's name stems from the internet slang "based", which BasedCon's own About page describes as "the opposite of social justice activism" and identified by "based beliefs" such as "discriminating against white people is racism", "men cannot give birth", and also "guns don't kill people, people kill people".

Read more

Blizzard has detailed the accessibility features that have been implemented in the forthcoming Diablo 4.

A new blog post lists the major features relating to dexterity assistance, text assistance, and vision assistance.

Said lead accessibility designer Drew McCrory: "The only limitation to adventuring in Sanctuary should be interest, not capability."

Read more

This week's Game of the Week is Humanity, a puzzle game that has had me absolutely transfixed. It's sort of like Lemmings - you direct a bunch of helpless people through each level, getting them from the start to the exit. But it has these weird existential concerns and seems to be very open to interpretation.

All of this is very cool, but what I want to talk about today is something a bit more practical about Humanity. Humanity is one of those games with a very simple premise: start, exit, get everyone to safety. But then it throws in dozens of new ideas, whether that's new commands for your people or new types of terrain, or new basic rules for certain sections, stopping you from placing new commands once the game's in motion, for example, or swapping out a stream of humans for a few clusters that must be collected as you go.

What I'm getting at, is that Humanity is restless. And restlessness may actually be the game's defining feature. It has a killer premise, but it's never willing to just sit there and do what's expected of it for very long. It wants to flip things, jumble things, invert itself and reimagine itself.

Read more

Nintendo has released the first patch to Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but the game's duplication glitches remain.

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's patch notes for version 1.1.1 are minimal, with notes that the update fixes "several issues" to "improve the gameplay experience", as well as an issue with the main quest 'The Closed Door' that prevented players from completing it (I am not that far, but if you know, you know).

More interesting is that the game's item duplication glitches remain intact.

Read more

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom shows Link and Zelda "in a relationship", according to Zelda's voice actress.

Nintendo has typically left Link and Zelda's relationship up to players' own interpretations, and gives the series' two main characters only a limited amount of screentime together.

Now, voice actress Patricia Summersett has discussed her take on the character, after voicing Zelda in Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom and spin-off Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity.

Read more

Nintendo has announced the next batch of Game Boy Advance titles for its Switch Online + Expansion Pack service.

On 26th May, Nintendo Switch Online subscribers will get their hands on Super Mario Advance, Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2, and Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3.

In Super Mario Advance, players are tasked with launching a load of vegetables and other items at their enemies, in order to reign victorious. This is the Game Boy Advance version of Super Mario Bros. 2 - the game that introduced the world to Nintendo's pink, bow wearing, anthropomorphic dinosaur, Birdo. Birdo is a bit of a favourite here at Eurogamer, and you can find out more about her in our article dedicated to the Nintendo icon here.

Read more

In roguelike dungeon-crawlers, we often need to worry about characters’ energy or stamina, with calorie consumption eventually eating away at their health and ending a run prematurely. Monster Menu: The Scavenger’s Cookbook takes a closer look at what warriors in a labyrinth might do to survive when starvation is on the line. When you’re trapped and attempting to get out, you need to make do with the resources in front of you. That means your absolutely adorable characters end up either noshing on a corpse that just fell in battle or used their parts to make some horrifying, yet shockingly nutritious food.

In Monster Menu, every adventure starts out with a single character. Your avatar, who you can completely customize, headed into the Sealed Lands dungeon. However, it proved more dangerous and intimidating than it seemed, and now you’re stuck. After resorting to eating the corpse of a days-old monster to stave off starvation, you wind up in a camp. You can then add between one and three custom allies to your group to increase or decrease the difficulty and attempt to escape.

[caption id="attachment_964036" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Screenshot by Siliconera[/caption]

Japanese gaming peripheral company Answer is set to release a Neon Genesis Evangelion fight stick soon. The company has partnered with esports brand EVANGELION e:PROJECT for the fight stick, which is styled after Evangelion Unit-01. It will be available to purchase at stores throughout Japan on June 1, 2023, for 32,780 yen (about $236). Pre-orders are available now on Answer’s website.

The fight stick, which is compatible with Windows 10/11 PCs as well as the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Switch, is colored black and purple. Its buttons and joystick are green, and the buttons have LEDs in them that can be turned on and off. Evangelion Unit-01 and the EVANGELION e:PROJECT logo are featured on the face plate, and it has a non-slip rubber mat on the bottom. It also has a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Check out some images of the fight stick below:

[gallery columns="4" ids="964045,964046,964047,964048" link="file"]

A button on the front of the Evangelion fight stick allows for easy access to the internals, where there are color-coded wires for easy button replacement. Replacement buttons, a button replacement guide, a wire for connecting the fight stick to PCs and consoles, and a Phillips-head screwdriver can also be found inside.

Lego 2K Drive on PS5

Despite the flexibility of the Lego brand, to date, it has really only been used for media adaptations. There are a few original game concepts in there, but it never feels enough. I played Lego Racers for the N64 in 1999, and I remember loving it as the bricky cars and the fun power-ups made racing enjoyable. I was excited about a new Lego racing game, and the open-world aspect was interesting. While any Lego game is certainly geared toward kids, there is something here for all ages.

Lego 2K Drive starts the player being trained by the great Clutch Racington to take on the fearsome Shadow Z in the Sky Cup Grand Prix. After the tutorial, progression is mostly through getting first place in races against unique rivals to earn checkered flags. However, there are stints in between when you have to raise your level to continue to the next class (C to B to A), where it feels like the game stalls.

Enough time has passed that fans had already started asking Ed Boon when they could expect the next game in the Mortal Kombat franchise, and it turns out we don’t have to wait all that long after all. Titled Mortal Kombat 1, the next game in the series is a proper series reboot that reintroduces us to fan-favorite characters while also putting an interesting spin on things.

You can check out the trailer for yourself down below:

From the get-go, it seems that Liu Kang will play a much more central role in the story this time around, as he’s introduced as a god ready to protect Earthrealm. We also get a glimpse of Shang Tsung, who gets promptly pummeled to death by Liu Kang, setting the tone for this new reboot. It’s entirely possible that the series could be positioning Liu Kang as the new big bad of the universe.

Aside from that, we also get glimpses of other characters including Mileena, whom fans have been clamoring for for the longest time during MK11‘s run, as well as other familiar faces like Kitana, Scorpion and Sub-Zero of course, and Kung Lao.

Mortal Kombat 1 is set to be released for PC and consoles on Sept. 19.

Sonic Prime is the latest iteration of Sonic the Hedgehog’s TV presence that streams exclusively on Netflix. Combining the powerhouse that is Sonic with one of the most well-known toy makers of the current century, and you’re sure to have quite the collaboration. Earlier today it was announced that Jakks Pacific will be releasing a handful of new figures and one new plush based on Sonic Prime in the coming year.

First up are the five-inch-tall figures with over 12 points of articulation to allow for posed display. On top of that, the fine details of the figurines are accurate to the characters as they appear in Sonic Prime. That means Sonic’s shoes have little painted-on straps and the figures will even include different textures to give them a premium feel.

The characters included in this series of figures are Sonic, Dr. Eggman, Thorn Rose, and Tails Nine. Expect to see these figures in stores starting this fall for a suggested retail price of $14.99 USD each.

Also coming this fall is a multipack of 2.5-inch-tall figures featuring Sonic, Tails Nine, Rusty Rose, and the Prism Shard. It’s not explicitly stated how many points of articulation these figures will have, but the press release mentions they’re still poseable. Just don’t expect them to have 12 points of articulation like the other figures. This four-piece multipack is set to retail for $19.99 USD.

Last but not least for these Jakks Pacific figures is a little 2.5-inch Knuckles the Dread. Oh and, he comes with an entire playset of his Angel’s Voyage Ship. The ship comes equipped with three launching cannons, a trap door, and wheels so it can roll around flat surfaces. It’ll be available later this fall at a suggested retail price of $39.99 USD.

The Tears of the Kingdom photo mode is one of the most dynamic mechanics of the game, allowing players to become nature photographers with the Hyrule Compendium. The tool also showcases a more modernistic side through its selfie mode, where fans can take pictures with their favorite characters of Hyrule.

Nonetheless, there is one small detail that you may not have noticed with this feature, and that is the fact that NPCs will actually look in the direction of the camera during this mode. So, players can now get the best selfie results with any of the characters, from the fan-favorite Purah to everyone’s husband Prince Sidon.

The first of what is sure to be many updates to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom dropped last night on May 18 and the first question on everyone’s mind was: Is the infinite item glitch safe? And yes, it is. Update version 1.1.1 fixes other bugs, but fortunately not that one.

Read more...

"Does that pommel horse have a grenade launcher?" is one of many bizarre questions I found myself asking while playing HROT. This Slavic shooter revels in the strange, straddling the line between hyper-bleak Soviet satire and goofy memetic joke factory. This isn't the best thing about HROT, we'll get to that in a couple of paragraphs. But the balancing of these two personality strands is what defines HROT's quality. At the outset, they exist in perfect symbiosis, but the relationship becomes less stable as the game goes on.

The year is 1986, and something is seriously wrong in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. What that might be isn't explicitly stated, but given the year, the ambient chatter of Geiger counters, and the soldiers vomiting through their gasmasks as they prowl the abandoned streets, a nuclear disaster at an infamous Ukrainian power plant isn't a vast stretch of the imagination. In any case, anyone who wasn't killed by the fallout is now being hunted by an army of (presumably Russian, but again, it isn't explicated) soldiers. Emerging from a bomb shelter beneath Prague's Kosmonautů Metro Station (now named Háje), you take it upon yourself to defend your glorious homeland from these invaders.

Read more

Take a deep breath! Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance Of The Slayer is releasing on June 1st with a simultaneous Game Pass drop. It’s an old-school shooter set in the same retro-futuristic universe as Hypnospace Outlaw, but this time the focus is on fan-favourite character Zane Lofton, who actually “made” Slayers X in the fiction of the game.

Read more

I’ve been playing a lot of The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom this week. It’s good. Really good. I know you’ve all been waiting for your favourite PC gaming-focused website to offer their take on it so there you go. It’s properly, properly good. The best open-world adventure since Elden Ring, except arguably better because it doesn’t pull your trousers down and point out the colour of your underwear every time you dare to explore a forest or watch a sunset.

As you’ve probably seen, the game’s biggest new draw is “Ultrahand”, which allows Link to pick up loose objects and glue them together. Three logs make a raft. A plank and four wheels make a car. Two stones and a log make a... Ahem. You get the idea. In addition to this are “Zonai Devices”, components that give life and movement to your doohickeys. A fan pushes your raft across the lake. A steering stick lets you manoeuvre your little car. It’s a marvellous construction system that leverages the pre-existing physics engine seen in the game’s predecessor, Breath Of The Wild, to startling results. Does this all sound familiar?

Read more

Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick has said the company hasn't seen a "pushback" on the recent widespread price increase for big budget games, which now regularly sell for $70.

Many publishers have adopted this $70 price point as standard, including the likes of Sony, Activision Blizzard, and Gearbox, on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Earlier this week, Sega also suggested it could adopt a similar approach for its future releases, and stated it was "keeping an eye on market conditions".

As for those who have already increased prices to this higher point, Zelnick claimed he hasn't seen any real resistance from players so far.

Read more

The Last of Us Part 1 on PC arrived towards the end of March in a pretty desperate state - a good experience only available to those with more powerful hardware, with profound issues facing gamers on more mainstream components. Progress has been made, however, across a series of patches and we thought it might be a good time to check in on the port to deliver an update on the game's current quality level. There's a lot of good news to impart here, but also some lingering issues - and we're concerned that they may never be addressed.

But let's address the good news first. At launch, there were profound issues with texture quality on 8GB graphics cards - which is highly problematic bearing in mind how many of them are in the market. Setting texture quality to high bust through the GPU's VRAM limit, resulting in tremendous stuttering issues. The alternative was to drop back to medium or even low quality textures, depending on your resolution - the problem being that the quality level looked more like 'ultra low'. In fact, textures from the PS3 original were more highly detailed.

I'd venture to suggest that this issue is now resolved. Medium textures now look absolutely fine, with only a minimal hit to quality compared to the high preset. Optimisations to memory management now mean that 8GB GPU owners can actually use the high texture preset instead if they wish, which gives a look very close indeed to the PlayStation 5 version. Naughty Dog deserves praise for delivering this. It demonstrates how PC scaling should work, and why we should not blindly assert that 8GB GPUs are now obsolete.

Read more

Ahead of her playable debut in Genshin Impact, HoYoVerse released a character trailer for Kirara, as well as more information about her kit. While we do know the basics of it thanks to the Version 3.7 Special Program, details about them are now available via HoYoLab. She will be a four-star Dendro Sword user hailing from Inazuma.

Her Elemental Skill Meow-teor Kick: Press can can create shield that scales off of her Max HP. It also deals AoE Dendro DMG. Holding it will transform her into an Urgent Neko Parcel, which is good for adventuring or exploring. It deals Dendro DMG when she runs into enemies. It also increases her movement and climbing speed, along with her jumping power. Her Elemental Burst, Secret Art: Surprise Dispatch, deals AoE Dendro DMG and then creates Dendro Cores (Cat Grass Cardamoms) that will explode upon contact or after a period of time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkUFz8n4rUU

Lore-wise, Kirara is a delivery girl for Komaniya Express. It is the fastest and most reliable delivery company in Inazuma. However, characters from other regions, such as Qiqi and Kaveh, make appearances in her trailer so it seems like Komaniya Express offers international shipping.

The Game Boy Advance library of Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack is getting a Mario-infused shot in the arm with the addition of three Super Mario Advance titles.

On May 26, Super Mario Advance, Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2, and Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3 hit the service. First released throughout the early 2000s, these games are enhanced portable remakes of Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario World, and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, respectively. 

Although the original versions of each game are already available in the NES/SNES libraries, the Advance series features several tweaks, such as Advance 2 giving Luigi his Super Mario Bros. 2 jump. These join Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3, which was in the initial batch of GBA titles, to complete the series. As a reminder, the GBA library is part of the Expansion Pack tier, the pricier upgraded version of Nintendo Switch Online. 

You can keep up with every game on Nintendo Switch Online by visiting our complete library database.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has been out for about a week, but yesterday marked the launch of its first post-release patch. Version 1.1.1 of the game fixes one very specific problem, but also ambiguously addresses issues to improve the gameplay experience. You find the patch notes below, as well as on Nintendo's website.

• Fixed issue where, sometimes, the player could not clear main quest “The Closed Door,” even if they fulfilled the conditions to advance the quest.
  • If you have already encountered this issue, you will be able to clear the quest by downloading this update data.
• Several issues have been addressed to improve the gameplay experience.

Despite both Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild being incredibly solid games out of the gate, even Zelda is not immune to patches, but Nintendo tends to keep the changes vague. Many of Breath of the Wild's patch notes simply pointed to the updates making the game a more pleasant experience. It seems the trajectory of Tears of the Kingdom's patch notes might receive the same ambiguous details if the second bullet point is an indication of what's to come.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom lets you build all kinds of wild contraptions thanks to Link’s new abilities like Ultrahand, Fuse, and Autobuild. While some folks are out here making weapons of mass destruction, Japanese players are flexing their creative muscles in other ways, and I’m so here for it.

Read more...