Microsoft Flight Simulator's free Dune expansion is available now. It features the Royal Atreides Ornithopter from Denis Villeneuve's movies - with this entire DLC being a marketing tie-in with Dune: Part Two, which releases next month. It includes tutorials, time trials, and a "daring rescue mission".
Sons Of The Forest's 1.0 release date draws nearer. Players who prefer their cannibal islands as polished as possible can begin their visit on February 22nd, and there's now a release date trailer that shows exactly what kind of human monstrosities you can expect.
Magical first-person shooter Immortals Of Aveum launched last August and by the following month half its development team had been laid off due to poor sales.
In a new report by IGN on widespread industry layoffs, developers who worked on Aveum say it cost around $125 million to make and "no one bought it."
Nijisanji EN Vtuber Scarle Yonaguni seems to have missed two streams as of February 13, 2024. One was apparently a member’s stream, and the other was a public 8pm PT/11pm ET “Niji Pepe Adventures” stream on February 13, 2024. Update: The "Niji Pepe Adventures" stream was rescheduled for 10pm PT/1am ET on February 15, 2024.
Here is the embed for the public Scarle stream. It was supposed to begin over an hour and a half ago, as of time of writing. The chat is disabled for not only this stream, but also her upcoming February 17, 2024 Mobile Suit Gundam II: Soldiers of Sorrow watch along and Black Light Letter to Self August 23, 2024 one.
Don't expect new games in any of PlayStation's biggest existing franchises before the end of this financial year, Sony has said.
That means no new entry in the God of War or Marvel's Spider-Man franchises until at least April 2025, according to Sony president Hiroki Totoki.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, currently listed with a vague "2025" release date, will therefore launch later than March. Don't expect to see other big PlayStation properties such as Uncharted, The Last of Us, Ratchet & Clank or Horizon before then, either. It's also unclear where a potential Ghost of Tsushima sequel fits in.
Larian Studios has announced more fixes coming to Baldur's Gate 3 with Patch 6, as well as its beefy install size.
Due some point this week, Larian already let us know the patch will add new idle animations for party members in camp and improve smooches (just in time for Valentine's Day).
In a new thread on X, Larian revealed Patch 6 has "more than just romance" and will add bug fixes and some gameplay improvements which should help make party management much easier.
Sony had a record quarter for PlayStation sales and revenue, but expects console sales to decline in the next fiscal year.
According to its latest financial report, Sony sold a further 8.2m PlayStation 5 consoles, bringing its lifetime total to 54.7m. That's 16.4m consoles sold this financial year so far.
However, Sony has dropped its expected sales forecast across its gaming segment for the year by five percent, due to an expected decrease in hardware sales and increase in losses due to promotions.
Bloober Team's CEO has said he understands the critism around the recent Silent Hill 2 Remake trailer, which didn't "capture the spirit of the game".
The trailer in question was a combat-focused marketing beat by publisher Konami, and as Matt said at the time, combat is not exactly the first thing you think of when you think of Silent Hill 2. It probably isn't even the second or third. And yet, this was what Konami decided to hone in on during PlayStation's recent State of Play.
However, reactions afterwards weren't exactly enthusiastic. "The nurse vaulting over the wall like it's a tactical shooter is hilarious," one comment under the original trailer reads. Another remarked the game looks more like it's from 2014, than 2024. Others said it looked more like a fan-made remake.
Five of the Best is a weekly series for supporters of Eurogamer. It's a series that highlights some of the features in games that are often overlooked. It's also about having your say, so don't be shy, use the comments below and join in!
Oh and if you want to read more, you can - you can find our entire Five of the Best archive elsewhere on the site.
We might not visit them in person any more, but there's nothing stopping us visiting arcades in games. Well, assuming the game has arcades in, Bertie. But many of them do: GTA Online is stacked with them.
By now you'll probably have read quite a bit about our preview adventures in Inflexion Games' upcoming fantasy survival adventure Nightingale - including our slightly raucous attempts to interview CEO Aaryn Flynn while instant KO-ing tree monsters and abusing our supplies of ice bullets. But outside this guided co-op session, several members of the RPS Treehouse were playing it on their lonesome last week, too, getting to grips with Nightingale's particular flavour of sticks-and-stones crafting, cooking up meat and berry wraps to keep ourselves fed, and generally being cajoled and maybe even lightly seduced by our fae Shakespearean guide, Puck.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is a delicious piece of mad science: what if you spliced the ale-sodden DNA of Deep Rock Galactic’s dwarven miners with tissue samples from a Vampire Survivors-like autoshooter?
It shouldn’t work, surely. It would be easy to look at this spin-off and question why it takes the co-op out of one of the best co-op games on PC, or to shovel it aside as a cynical attempt at latching onto the popularity of autoshooters/Survivors-likes/bullet heavens (delete as preferred). But you’d be a smooth-handed leaf lover, my friend, as not only does DRG’s mix of horde shooting and rock smashing translate remarkably well to the format, even this early access version is heaps of subterranean fun.
Helldivers 2 might be a co-op shooter mixed with comedy genius, but its launch has been blighted by bugs and crashes. Over the past week the devs have deployed server hotfixes and matchmaking tweaks, although one server and rewards patch had to be rolled back to fix "significant" performance issues. Still, they're doing their utmost as the game becomes PlayStation's biggest PC release to date. And the latest patch brings with it a slew of crash fixes, reductions to disconnects, further tweaks to matchmaking, and preps things for future server improvements.
In the event that I walk in front of a particle accelerator, get converted into digital data and am promptly isekai-ed into a gameworld, I hope that gameworld is the opening port town from the original Grandia, released on PS1 way back in 1997 (and ported to PC in 2019). There's something about that game's isometricky vantage point and precise combination of 2D pixel characters and 3D environments. The last sentence describes many virtual worlds of the late 90s, but none have stuck in my mind like Port Parm: that hodgepodge of green and rusty roofs, the canals cutting through the cobblestones, the smoky chimneys and people filling the alleyways. Bliss. I can still hear the seagulls blowing around the screen.
Oh sorry, I rhetorically lost myself for a minute there! I'm supposed to be telling you about Terra Memoria, a new RPG featuring time travel, magic crystals and animal wizards. Here's a trailer.
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The Switch is safely into its Vegas residency era now. So safely, in fact, that with the greatest hits out of the way it's offering up some deep cuts and B-sides. I am all for this. Following on from the Super Mario RPG remake, here's Mario vs. Donkey Kong, a gentle reworking of an old Game Boy Advance charmer. It's lovely stuff.
And it's interesting, too. It makes one think. Not just because it's Mario at its most puzzley, with each mini-challenge playing out like the weird equivalent of a Mario Sudoku or some other newspaper brainteaser. It makes me think because it's another reminder of how Mario, of all game series, is sort of a language that players like me have spent the last few decades learning to speak.
As with language, I'm still learning to recognise how much of the grammar I didn't consciously know that I understand, as it were. What I get in a game like this, then, is a series of actions and reactions I am surprised to learn I can anticipate. Ice will cause me to slide, sure. But when precisely did I learn that a certain kind of block will cause me to teleport, while another will vanish if a switch is flipped? Elsewhere, from a truly ancient part of my brain I somehow retained the information that I will climb up faster if I'm holding two ropes, but descend faster if I'm only holding one. This kind of recall? From a man who regularly calls his dog "doghead", because her precise name cannot be grasped in the moment? (It's Cricket - I just checked.)
The Sims 4 has partnered with model Winnie Harlow and added a range of vitiligo skin details to the game as part of a free update.
Vitiligo is a long-term condition where pale white patches develop on the skin. This is caused by a lack of melanin, the pigment in skin. Sims 4 players will now be able to customise their Sims with vitiligo skin details, with patches for the face, upper torso, lower torso, arms, and legs now available in the Create-A-Sim menu.
These details are available for Sims of all ages, from infants to elders. Several vitiligo patterns will have "more than one variant", the Sims team said, calling skin details an "important area of focus for the dev team as we remain committed to expanding representation in The Sims 4". Other skin features already in the game include birthmarks, stretch marks, scars, and freckles.
After one year of exclusivity on the Epic Games Store, Dead Island 2 will release on Steam in April.
Publisher Deep Silver announced the release yesterday, as well as discounts on other games in the series on Steam.
This includes 85 percent off Dead Island Definitive Edition and 75 percent off Dead Island Retro Revenge. However, the publisher is also giving away Dead Island: Riptide - Definitive Edition for free.
Yoshitaka Murayama, creator of the Suikoden RPG series and scenario writer for Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, has passed away.
The news was shared by Rabbit & Bear Studios, which Murayama founded to produce the Eiyuden Chronicle games.
"It's with a heavy heart and deep sadness we must inform you that the scenario writer and head of Rabbit & Bear Studios, Yoshitaka Murayama, has passed away on February 6th due to complications with an ongoing illness," reads the statement.
Director Hideaki Itsuno confirmed through a post on his social media that Dragon’s Dogma 2 will support variable framerate at launch. Itsuno hasn’t specified which framerate modes the game will offer or how it will work on different platforms yet.
The post shared by Itsuno included an English and Japanese caption. While the English caption mentions “uncapped framerate,” the Japanese caption specifies that the game will support variable framerates.
At the time of writing, it is unknown how Dragon’s Dogma 2 will handle the variable framerate options. One possibility is that the game will include different modes that prioritize higher framerates and higher resolutions in PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles, similar to other recent RE Engine games like the Resident Evil 4 remake. Meanwhile, the PC version should be more flexible in how to customize the framerate options.
You can check out the original post by Director Hideaki Itsuno here:
Nintendo decided to remind people the Mario vs Donkey Kong games didn’t always focus on puzzles with the Minis with a Switch port, and that’s great! It’s was a solid game before and, now that it’s back on a modern console with a few quality of life changes and additions, it’s once again a perfectly fine and enjoyable puzzle platformer.
Think of Mario vs Donkey Kong as an origin story for the Minis we see in subsequent installments. DK saw a commercial for cute Mario toys. He went to go buy some. They were sold out. So, like any reasonable individual subject to the supply and demand nature of corporate greed designed to incentivize splurging, he heads to the factory and steals all of the Minis. Mario happens to be walking past when this happens and assists the Toads by going to various worlds to reclaim the stolen figures and face DK.
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A developer can take many different approaches when remaking a game, but its primary goal always remains the same: to create a new experience that honors the spirit of the original. With Mario vs Donkey Kong, a remake of the 2004 Game Boy Advance title of the same name, Nintendo succeeds in this goal. By combining new worlds and modern quality-of-life features with the game's classic, delightful puzzle design, Mario vs. Donkey Kong is a strong start to Nintendo's 2024.
In the game's opening, Donkey Kong raids a toy factory where they make Mini Marios, the hottest new product on the market. To get them back, Mario must chase him down through eight worlds, each with two distinct halves. In the first chunk, he has to carry a key to a locked door, and in the second, he has to reach the Mini Mario located somewhere in the level. On paper, it runs the risk of becoming repetitive, but in practice, there's so much variety from level to level that I was never bored. With only six standard levels in each world, there's a lot of room to play with mechanics and level design, and I was constantly impressed with how the game kept me engaged. It's nothing revolutionary – these are still puzzles from 20 years ago – but they hold up better than many games from the same year.
The Silent Hill 2 remake's State of Play trailer doesn't give a full and proper representation of the game, Bloober Team's president Piotr Babieno has observed in an apparent swipe at publisher Konami, who Babieno portrays as responsible for the upcoming horror game's marketing. If you missed it, the trailer in question focuses on the "modernised" combat. It shows alleged "everyman" protagonist James Sunderland getting all Gears of Warry with some maggoty marionettes and rancid demon nurses.
February's Steam Next Fest demo bonanza officially concluded on Monday, and Valve have now revealed the 50 most played games you all tucked into across the week-long event. Ordered by the number of unique players that spent time with them during Next Fest proper (meaning all those early demo plays from earlier in the month haven't been counted), the most popular game of the lot was one that was only formally announced right at the end of January. So congratulations Dungeonborne - your blend of PvPvE dungeon crawling and fantasy skelly monsters clearly struck a chord with this year's Next Festers.
In 2011, BioWare’s Dragon Age II portrayed its four main romantic conquests as bisexual, allowing them to be pursued by either the male or female version of main character Hawke. At the time, I was a young, mostly-but-not-completely out gay high school student, and I spent hours each week on the BioWare forums, hoping…
Arrowhead has released another patch for Helldivers 2 and it's good news for those incredibly popular players among us - the game will no longer crash if you have too many friends.
This patch - Patch 01.000.006 to give it its full name - also addresses those crashes that could occur during the extraction cutscene and when users disconnect during the joining cutscene.
Along with stability fixes, this patch also improves matchmaking experiences.
Ten minutes into a mission on the planet of Malevelon Creek, my squad and I emerge from a swampy treeline to finally catch sight of our target. This time it's a scientific base, and we're here to destroy it entirely. After clearing the area of enemies, I summon a hellbomb – one of the largest payloads in our arsenal – and manually arm the device.
We quickly move away, making space for the massive explosion that is to come. Yet as we scurry back towards the bushes, I spot a neighbouring facility that could be destroyed with a simple airstrike. The temptation of completing two objectives within twenty seconds proves difficult to resist, and I bring up my stratagem list to input the combination.
As I pull back my arm to throw the beacon, several things happen at once. The hellbomb behind us explodes, triggering a massive shockwave that rocks my screen. This diverts the aim of my throw ever-so-slightly to the left - instead of gracefully arcing through the air towards the robot facility, the beacon bounces off a large rock, drops to the floor, and lands at the feet of my squad. Before we know it, explosions are raining down around us, and we're all swiftly turned into jam by my airstrike.
The creator of the classic JRPG series Suikoden and Eiyuden Chronicle, Yoshitaka Murayama died. The announcemet comes via a statement by Rabbit and Bear Studio, which is currently developing Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes.
Murayama, who originally created Suikoden while working at Konami, passed away on February 6, 2024 due to complications from an illness. At the time, he was working as a scenario writer for Rabbit and Bear Studios to develop Suikoden spiritual successor Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. That is set to release in April 2024.
The statement was signed by fellow designers Junichi Murakami and Osamu Komuta, as well as Junko Kawano. Kawano worked with Murayama on the original Suikoden. His colleagues expressed regret that he would not get to see the fan reaction to Eiyuden Chronicle, but vowed to press on with development nonetheless.
Here is the full statement shared on the Rabbit and Bear website:
HoYoVerse posted its first batch of pictures for Valentine’s Day on the Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero social media accounts. This is the first year since the game launched and the other was announced that we’re seeing Valentine’s Day art for them.
This year, the Honkai: Star Rail characters that we receive gifts from are Sparkle, Kafka, and Ruan Mei. While the Genshin Impact Valentine’s Day posts read like the characters are directly talking to the player as they hand out their gifts, the Honkai: Star Rail ones are descriptions in third-person. Kafka gives an exquisitely-wrapped box of handmade chocolates. Meanwhile, Ruan Mei has made some experimental pastries and Sparkle has a bag of varied chocolates.
Here are the Valentine’s Day 2024 posts for Honkai: Star Rail:
NIS America announced that it and Nihon Falcom will release Ys X: Nordics on the Switch, PS4, PS5, and PC in English and French in Fall 2024. This comes after its September 2023 launch in Japan on consoles and Clouded Leopard announced it’d bring the Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese PC version to Steam on March 14, 2024.
Depending on the platform you pick, different text options will be available. Both consoles and PCs will have English and French, as well as English and Japanese voice acting. However, only Japanese text will be available as an option for the PC version. The PC version will also be available via three outlets at launch, as NISA confirmed Epic Games Store, GOG, and Steam will all offer it.
Once again, players will journey alongside Adol Christin. This time, there are more seafaring elements. This is partially because Adol and Karja, a pirate, are stuck together. (Don’t worry, as Dogi will be back as well.)
There are also a number of initial screenshots showing what people can expect from the upcoming release. Here is the first patch NIS America shared with us.
Ys X: Nordics, the latest entry in the long-running Ys series, is making its way to the West. Nordics stars a younger version of series hero Adol Christin embarking on an adventure in the Obelia Gulf, a collection of northern islands.
He finds himself thrown in the middle of a conflict between the islands’ residents and a seafaring tribe, as well as mysterious immortal monsters called the Griegers. Adol joins a Norman warrior named Karja to sail the seas aboard a ship, including exploring an open ocean and engaging in naval combat.
Ys X: Nordics was first released in Japan last September and will come stateside this fall. It will be available for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC.
Have you always been curious about the Ys series but don’t know whether to jump in? Former editor John Carson explains in this feature why RPG fans shouldn’t sleep on Ys. You can also check out our 40-year retrospective on developer Nihon Falcom.
After the welcome reception of the Super Mario RPG remake just three months ago, Nintendo is back with another remake in the form of Mario vs. Donkey Kong. The original 2004 title on the Game Boy Advance was a charming puzzle platformer that pits the two titular stars and age-old rivals against each other once again.…
If you were wondering what Sony’s up to after its latest State of Play presentation didn’t have much in the way of first-party games, it sounds like there was a reason for that. It looks like PlayStation 5’s 2024 will have a dearth of first-party games over the next year, as the company has confirmed it won’t be…
Granblue Fantasy: Relink is a JRPG that is ticking off many of the action RPG tropes. It would be in danger of becoming workmanlike, such are the number of things you can tick off on your fingers like a plumber ordering parts: boss fights against improbably huge glowing monsters, an evil god, catboys, numbers popping off enemies, women who appreciate the combat applications of a thigh-high split skirt, anachronistic sunglasses, horned giants carrying halberds of the same approximate size as a caravan.
In practice, though, you sort of can't be mad at Granblue Fantasy: Relink. It's built around a layered combat system that seems impenetrable if you don't take some time to understand it. But really, Granblue Fantasy: Relink is just a game so committed to the rule of cool that the entire setting is physically impossible, and every battle is a disorientating Panic! At The Firework Factory that flirts with being a photosensitivity nightmare. I'm not selling it as such, but it's actually charming.
When it comes to co-op shooters and most other multiplayer games, it's often the case that friendly fire is switched off by default or there are endless systems in place to make it a punishable offence. In Helldivers 2 it isn't actively encouraged, nor is it punished. Accidentally vaporising your teammate with an air strike is all a part of the campaign for democracy and freedom, a hilarious byproduct of human error. I gushed about it in my review, and cheery RPS fanzine PC Gamer wrote up a quick piece on the specific ways it eeks out silliness.
But comedy isn't just accidental in Helldivers 2, oh no. I think it encourages playground behaviour of the worst order: smacking your mates into things.
Toby Fox released a Valentine’s Day Deltarune and Undertale newsletter that offered an update on Chapter 3 of the new game. A brief update on Chapters 4 and 5 also appeared, and there is a new producer involved in development.
Apparently, the team is now working on the Japanese localization before finishing up the project. This is one of the final steps before that portion of the game is done.
As for Deltarune Chapter 4 and 5, the update mentioned progress on both as well. The fourth part is now the primary focus, and there is an unnamed internal deadline for that. This portion of the announcement also mentioned the new producer, though the member of the team wasn’t named.
Here’s the full update from the newsletter:
Happy 2024, everyone! The Deltarune team (and I) were taking a break for the holidays to visit our families, but now everyone's back and excited to get back to the game.
Re: Chapter 3, we are working on the Japanese localization. Then we will begin porting and bugtesting the Chapter, after which it will be... totally complete!
There’s another new Princess Peach: Showtime trailer, and this video introduces four different powers and roles for her, as the game will include dashing thief, figure skater, mermaid, and mighty forms of the character. Each one, as usual, has its own specialties.
Things begin with Figure Skater Peach. When playing as her, people will glide over icy platforms and rinks and attack enemies. The Dashing Thief Peach uses a grappling hook to maneuver. Meanwhile, Mermaid Peach sings to gather fish in that portion of the clip. Finally, Mighty Peach is a super hero. That segment shows her fighting enemies on foot as well as flying through the sky to tackle additional foes.
Here's the Princess Peach: Showtime trailer going over the figure skater, dashing thief, mermaid, and mighty roles.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Director Naoki Hamaguchi confirmed the FFVII remake demo update will add new content and a performance update. He shared the official announcement on social media, mentioning this is an issue that will be remedied in both the base game and trial.
Here’s Hamaguchi’s statement, which he made when sharing the announcement from Square Enix. The patch for the demo was confirmed both on the English and Japanese accounts.
HoYoVerse uploaded three pieces of artwork to its Genshin Impact social media account to celebrate Valentine's Day 2024, and this year Jeht, a notable NPC, appears among the characters.
This year’s characters are Navia, Lynette, and Jeht. With the exception of Jeht, both Navia and Lynette are newer characters who debuted in 2023. All of the posts have an accompanying blurb that’s written as if the character is talking to you. Navia gives you macarons, Lynette gives you a box of Cafe Lutece’s new stacks, and Jeht gives you a little wrapped trinket.
You can check out all of the Valentine’s Day 2024 for Genshin Impact below:
An update to the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo will improve the visual quality of Performance mode.
The update is due 21st February and will add a section of the Junon area specifically for the demo, as well as this visual improvement which will also apply to the full game.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth supports both Graphics and Performance modes, with the latter providing a smooth 60fps.
Nintendo has revealed some more of Peach's transformations in Princess Peach: Showtime!.
Following on from last month's reveal of Ninja Peach and Cowgirl Peach, Nintendo has shown off four more roles Peach can don in the upcoming Switch game.
Take a look at the second transformation trailer showing Figure Skater Peach, Dashing Thief Peach, Mermaid Peach, and Mighty Peach.
Puzzles are a tricky thing to perfect in video games. They're present in so many different genres - typically giving us some small goal to work towards between blasting enemies and searching for resources - but are also rarely as engaging as they could be, when not a game's main focus. For more creative solutions (and creative problems) we have to turn to the dedicated puzzle genre, of course. These days, indie games rule the space, but with so many out there in the wild west of digital storefronts what makes a puzzler stand out? Paper Trail answers this with one basic idea: folding paper.
Folding the piece of paper your character is standing on reveals the picture on the underside of that page, which can have keys, doors, and pathways to your destination. Or, the underside can fill in part of a pattern required to magically unlock other areas. You can fold pages from the top, bottom, sides, or four corners. Playing Paper Trail is as straight-forward as that, but simple controls do not equal a simple game.
I'd hazard a guess we've all had to push a heavy object onto a switch to get through a door at some point in our gaming histories, so it's no surprise Paper Trail includes this almost customary puzzle in its demo. However, I've never had to fold my way to the solution before. With this one addition, a mainstay puzzle suddenly requires a whole new way of thinking. What corner do I fold first? In what order? Where should the statue be when I start to fold? Where should I be standing? It doesn't have a wildly complicated solution, but it does feel satisfying when the lightbulb moment happens. This one new layer of thinking is easy enough to comprehend, but tough enough to impress.