Eurogamer

Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat is using Counter-Strike to provide Russian players with accurate news on Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

The newspaper created a map in CS:GO to distribute "independent journalism", which launched yesterday on World Press Freedom Day.

The map (pictured), based on a war-torn Slavic city, includes a secret room that shows uncensored footage of the Ukraine invasion in Russian.

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The Xbox app for Windows PC has been updated with new collections on the Home screen with categories that list quick games to play.

A selection of the longest games on offer is also available, listed by average gameplay times.

Also included is the ability to filter the all games view by accessibility features, so games with said features can be more easily found. This brings the PC app in-line with the Xbox console.

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Former Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aimé has seen those Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom leaks and the people boasting about having acquired the game early, and he is not happy about it. In fact, the whole situation has made him embrace his inner Liam Neeson.

In response to one Twitter user sharing an image of their Switch home screen, which had Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom lined up and ready to play (presumably obtained by illegitimate means, but I can't say for sure), the Nintendo of America alum decided to flex his muscle by quoting from the Neeson-fronted action film Taken.

"I don't know what you want. What I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you," Fils-Aimé wrote.

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Shadows of the Empire does not appear on best Star Wars video game lists. It is not fondly remembered (or is it?). Parts of it are quite bad, in truth. But it will always be my favourite Star Wars game.

I was tremendously excited, a teenager bouncing off the walls of our temporary Tooting home in South London. My dad had promised he'd buy me an N64 and a couple of games for my 16th birthday in June 1997. Nintendo's new console had only released on these shores a few months prior, and I had patiently waited. Well, not so patiently.

My mum and three siblings had already left the UK to live in Dublin, leaving my father and I in London so I could finish my GCSEs. He was sick, then, from a cancer that would eventually consume him a year later. It was an extremely difficult time, not that I showed it. My N64 and Star Wars Shadows of the Empire would help me through that summer until we joined the rest of my family in Ireland.

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Discord has announced changes to usernames, after taking feedback on their format.

At present, usernames are case sensitive and have a four digit identifier, called a discriminator, appended to create a unique username.

The new changes will remove the need for the discriminator, meaning you don't have to remember the random number combination when trying to add friends.

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UPDATE 9pm UK: Developer Night Dive has told Eurogamer that the social media posts made on the official System Shock Twitter account were made by the game's publisher Prime Matter. "Nightdive Studios was not responsible," a spokesperson said.

We've updated our earlier story, below, to reflect this.

ORIGNAL STORY 11.45am UK: Prime Matter, the publisher behind the System Shock remake, recently boasted about using AI to create artwork of its game's own evil AI. And, well, things slightly backfired.

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Square Enix's forthcoming Final Fantasy 16 will not be on sale in Saudi Arabia.

The news comes from a tweet by the country's Public Authority for Media, which gives age classifications of video games.

According to the tweet, the game will not be released "due to the publisher's unwillingness to make the necessary modifications" (translated by Google).

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Former BioWare veteran David Gaider has criticised his former studio for its evolving approach to video game narrative, up until his departure from the studio in 2016, amidst the troubled development of multiplayer shooter Anthem.

In a string of posts on Twitter, Gaider said video game writing was "constantly undervalued" - even so at BioWare, which in Gaider's words "built its success on a reputation for good stories and characters".

"[It] slowly turned from a company that vocally valued its writers to one where we were... quietly resented, with a reliance on expensive narrative seen as the 'albatross' holding the company back," Gaider wrote.

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That Saxophone!

Guys, I've seen Trailer 3 so many times. I hear YouTubers boast they've watched it more than 10 times and laugh at their rookie numbers. It got to a point where I thought - unironically, straight-faced - that maybe I'd seen it more than anyone else in the world, but I took a break last Monday because it was getting silly. I've watched a film trilogy's worth. Several podcasts' worth (I know this because on the way to work I've been listening to a trailer music rip instead of vulnerable chats broken by mattress sponsorship). I've made at least two non-gaming cousins politely watch it in my car before being dropped off home, but one said it was 'phenomenal' so it's okay. I've pored over its many musical references, watched all the reaction compilations and quiet-cried at them crying. Maybe I'd even cry at videos of them crying at their own crying, like that Bo Burnham thing (make the video guys and let's see!).

Confession: I even downloaded and re-edited (!) the trailer in Premiere because I was Very Concerned that the visual cut to Link on the glider before that music eruption was too early and scuffed the drop. Turns out it's so badass it doesn't really matter. The chest filleth regardless.

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Blizzard will be sharing more details on Diablo 4's live-service trappings as part of a newly announced Developer Update Livestream airing next week.

As per Blizzard's announcement post, things gets underway next Wednesday, 10th May, at 7pm BST/11am PDT via Twitch and YouTube, with Diablo franchise general manager Rod Fergusson, associate game director Joseph Piepiora, product management director Kegan Clark, and associate director of community Adam Fletcher all confirmed to appear.

The conversation this time around will focus on Diablo 4's heavy heap of, somewhat contentious, live-service elements, including its seasons model, optional battle pass, and cosmetics.

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Bungie has secured another legal win against a Destiny 2 cheat-seller, with a court this time ordering the defendant to pay $12m USD in damages.

Bungie filed a lawsuit against Romanian cheat-seller Mihai Claudiu-Florentin - who it claimed was behind Destiny 2 cheating software VeteranCheats - last year, alleging (thanks TheGamePost) copyright infringement, violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), violations of the Washington Consumer Protection Act (CPA), and intentional interference with contractual relations.

Bungie had been seeking $11,696,000 in damages, a figure based on the $2,000 Claudiu-Florentin would make from each sale of VeteranCheats across a total of 5,848 downloads. The Washington Western District Court has now granted Bungie's request, deeming the studio to have sufficiently proven its claims of copyright infringement and breach of contract, but not of the CPA violation.

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Unity Software - the company behind the widely used Unity game engine - has announced its third round of layoffs in under 12 months, this time affecting 600 jobs, equating to approximately 8% of its total workforce.

Today's job losses were confirmed in a company filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, with Unity only saying the move would affect "specific teams" as it continues to "position itself for long-term and profitable growth".

According to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), this latest round of layoffs will leave Unity with approximately 7,000 employees, and comes ahead of the San Francisco-based company's plans to reduce its current global network of offices from 58 to fewer than 30.

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Pokémon TCG Live, the official free-to-play smartphone and desktop adaptation of the venerable trading card game, finally has a released day, and will be launching on 8th June.

The Pokémon Company announced Pokémon TCG Live all the way back in 2021, with the expectation it would get a soft launch in Canada that same year. Not long after, however, both the mobile soft launch and global open beta for desktop were formally delayed to 2022 to create a "more polished experience".

With TCG Live's current beta period now nearing its end, The Pokémon Company is finally ready to share an official launch date, and all versions - the iOS and Android app, as well as the desktop release for Mac and Windows - will arrive at 6pm BST/10am PDT on 8th June.

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Did you know there was a Eurogamer merch store? I bet you didn't! Well there is and we're giving away a bunch of T-shirts from it, for free.

For a limited time, anyone who signs up to become a yearly supporter of Eurogamer will be given a code to redeem a free T-shirt from said merch store, which you didn't know about, admit it, meaning you can take your pick and get whichever design you want.

We're also going to randomly select some existing yearly supporters to get a code for a free T-shirt as well, so we can include you too.

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UPDATE 5/5/2023: The previously announced standalone PS5 version of Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered is now available on the PlayStation Store.

As I reported earlier this week, those who already own any of the original PS4 versions of the game will be able to upgrade to the remastered PS5 version for $10. Meanwhile, if you are buying the game for the first time, it will set you back £49.99/$49.99.

As a reminder, those PlayStation Plus members who claimed any edition of Marvel's Spider-Man via their subscription are not eligible for the PS5 upgrade.

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Take one good look at Ravenlok and you’ll see Lewis Carroll’s fingerprints embed onto every voxel. Alice’s two literary adventures in Wonderland (plus several other adaptations) have clearly influenced developer Cococucumber, from the outsized teapots, off-brand Queen Of Hearts, and fish-out-of-water-into-a-fairytale-world setup. Ravenlok shares more than just surface-level nods to that classic book, though. Yes, it’s beautiful and dreamlike, but it’s also just as disorganised and nonsensical as Alice’s growing brain - for better and for worse.

Ravenlok is another gorgeous voxel adventure from Cococucumber, the delightfully named studio behind Echo Generation, only this time the turn-based combat is replaced by real-time slashing, and the retro-80s vibes get switched with a storybook world. The journey begins with your heroine chilling under a tree in the regular old world, before walking through a strange mirror and into the magical world of Dunia. A white rabbit quickly explains that she’s the nondescript chosen one, the titular Ravenlok, and you’re then swiftly sent to deal with the evil Queen plaguing the world.

There's a new Double Dragon game! It's called Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons, and it's out on PC and all the consoles this summer.

This new Double Dragon is developed by Secret Base, the studio behind well-received multiplayer horror beat'em up Streets of Red: Devil's Dare Deluxe. It stars Double Dragon's famous duo Billy and Jimmy Lee as well as new playable characters in what's described as a "modernised celebration" of the beat 'em-up genre.

There's co-op (couch co-op for launch, online co-op later this year), 13 playable characters, and pixel art visuals. The trailer is below:

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Starship Troopers: Extermination launches in early access form on 17th May priced £20.99.

The early access launch provides a small sample of the first-person shooter, developer Offworld Industries (Squad, Post Scriptum, Beyond the Wire) said.

You play a Trooper as part of 16-player co-op versus Starship Troopers' famous nasty alien bugs. You need to complete objectives, gather resources, build and defend your base then escape to the extraction point in squads of four.

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Chivalry 2 just launched for PS Plus members, and there's a big new update to go along with it.

The Raiding Party update, which is for all versions of Torn Banner Studios' medieval first-person slasher, adds a new map and a cross-party invite system.

The new team objective map, dubbed The Sacking of Bridgetown, arrives alongside the beta release of the cross-party feature, which lets players add friends and create parties across all platforms.

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Microsoft has chosen today to announce final details of its Xbox Game Showcase, which will also feature an in-depth look at the highly-anticipated Starfield.

You'll be able to tune in via YouTube, Twitch and Facebook on Sunday, 11th June at 6pm UK time for Microsoft's main showcase event, with Bethesda's Starfield featured in an extensive deep dive directly after.

Today's confirmation of the event's timing comes just a day after Microsoft released Redfall on PC and Xbox to lukewarm reviews. All eyes are now on the delayed Starfield, as Microsoft's biggest release of the year.

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Planet of Lana finally has a proper release date: 23rd May.

Releasing across both PC and Xbox consoles (as well as day one on Game Pass), it was previously listed as a spring release.

From publisher Thunderful and Swedish developer Wishfully, the game is a beautiful-looking cinematic puzzle platformer with a gorgeous, Ghibli-esque aesthetic. Check out some gameplay below.

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A pair of Pokémon anime episodes which never made it on-air have had their scripts translated and shared with fans, 12 years later.

Team Rocket vs Team Plasma (Part 1 & 2) were set to mark a significant moment in the long-running series' Black and White saga, where the two mobs faced off in a final showdown for control of the Unova region.

But despite being ready for broadcast, the episodes were never made public.

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Modding community The Garden of Eyes has revealed the first original boss it will add to Elden Ring in a forthcoming mod.

The Garden of Eyes Overhaul Mod is still in development, but will add unique weapons, armours, spells, and new mechanics in what is dubbed a "fan-made DLC".

The group's latest video is a showcase of new boss Oedon the Primeval Current, which combines the best of Elden Ring with Bloodborne.

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Five of the Best is a weekly series for supporters. It's a series about highlighting some of the features in games that are often overlooked. It's also a series about you having your say, so don't be shy, use the comments below and join in!

Oh and you can find our entire Five of the Best archive elsewhere on the site.

I know what you're thinking: Alpha Protocol. You loved the hacking mini-game and you don't think another game can top it. It's understandable - it's hard to match perfection!

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Those bundle building rascals at Humble are at it again. This month, the team is offering XCOM-style strategy game Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters and Windjammers 2 as part of May's Humble Choice bundle.

Humble Choice is Humble Bundle's take on PC gaming memberships. Every month, Humble Bundle's game scouts choose a selection of PC games for their members, all of which they can own forever.

In addition to the already mentioned games above, this month's Choice bundle also includes Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition, Bendy and the Dark Revival, Operation Tango, Builder Simulator, Behind the Frame and The Invisible Hand.

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Soviet fantasy Atomic Heart is set to receive its first piece of DLC this summer.

A new teaser trailer has been released, which hints at some of the undiscovered locations yet to be explored in Facility 3826.

It's only 20 seconds long, but begins underwater (how very Bioshock!) before revealing some squiggly pathways in the sky. You can check it out below.

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A little over a year since it made its debut on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, WolfEye Studios' cowboy-themed action-RPG Weird West will be coming to current gen consoles.

On 8th May - so, this Monday - the game's Definitive Edition will launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S (where it will also available on Game Pass). Along with these consoles, Weird West's definitive edition will also be available for PC.

While details on this upcoming edition are still rather scant, it does promise 4K resolution and 60fps.

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This week's Digital Foundry Direct Weekly delivers yet another content coverage 'war story' as we tried to do our best to cover Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, despite no PC code arriving until the day before release and no console review code at all until launch day. Attempts to source it earlier via retail stores helped, but from a creator point of view, I can't help but feel a touch disappointed that we didn't have more time with the console versions of the game. However, it's the second topic on the docket that I'm going to focus on in this blog - the CMA's blocking of the Microsoft/Activision deal owing to a perceived unfair advantage it would give Microsoft in the cloud space.

There's been plenty of analysis on whether the CMA's reservations are valid are not, but there was one piece of information contained in the documentation that intrigued me - that 'a rival' - likely Sony - contacted the CMA to tell them that the latency challenges facing cloud gaming have been overcome. The CMA was rather lacking in terms of detail here, only saying that 'more powerful graphical processing units (GPUs)' can solve the problem. The immediate reaction online was to dismiss the idea because you cannot overcome the laws of physics. Latency will always be a problem that cannot be conquered.

At GDC in late March this year, AI was everywhere. There's always a buzzword at GDC of course, with the previous years' pandemic-hit shows being dominated by the opportunist grift of talks and stalls dedicated to web3, blockchain, and the metaverse. But this time, amongst the still lingering whiff of crypto-bullshit, artificial intelligence was the talk of the town. And this time it feels different. Where the blockchain chatter was very much a product of new, external parties stepping in to fill the space left by real developers during a quieter year, all the talk of AI was very much coming from inside the house.

Typically it would be worth drawing some context around the recent news in AI at this point, but the reality is that's rather hard to do, precisely because of what AI is. If nothing else, AI as a topic is a rapidly moving target. What was once bleeding edge - remember Twitter's brief dalliance with Dall-E? - already feels old hat. GDC's context, though, was that of a week of developer talks around AI that took place within days of major announcements from AI's biggest players. Microsoft unveiled its GPT-led Office companion, Copilot, on 16th March. Google announced something that sounds rather similar on the 14th. On 15th March, Midjourney, one of several viral AI image creators, introduced Version 5 of its tool, which is able to overcome some AI image generation's earlier struggles, like celebrity faces and regular-looking hands.

It's been a bumpy old ride for the Saints Row reboot, but, now, after several months focused on bug fixes and improvements, developer Volition has confirmed the game's first bit of paid story DLC, The Heist and The Hazardous, will arrive next Tuesday, 9th May.

The Heist and The Hazardous, which was unveiled as part of Saints Row's updated roadmap back in March, is the first of three promised content drops for the open-world crime caper's paid Expansion Pass, bringing new story missions, events, cosmetics, and more.

Publisher Deep Silver still hasn't shared much in the way of specifics beyond that, but we do now know it'll see the Saints embarking on an adventure to exact "sweet revenge" after obnoxious movie star Chris Hardy double-crosses the Boss on a successful assassination hit.

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Convergence: A League of Legends Story - the time-manipulating parkour platformer (and, yes, League of Legends spin-off) from developer Double Stallion and Riot Games publishing arm Riot Forge - launches for Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, and PC on 23rd May.

Convergence (or CONV/RGENCE, if you really must) is the third entry in Riot Forge's genre-hopping, externally developed A League of Legends Story series, which takes familiar faces from Riot Games' wildly popular MOBA and deposits them in their own standalone adventures.

So far, the series has featured a turn-based RPG from developer Airship Syndicate, titled Ruined King: A League of Legends Story, as well as Choice Provisions' puzzler Hextech Mayhem, and last month's action-RPG The Mageseeker, created by Digital Sun. It's all change again for Convergence, which shines a spotlight on League of Legends' dimension-hopping, time-manipualiting Ekko, and brings yet another a new genre focus.

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Marvel's Midnight Suns' long-delayed PS4 and Xbox One versions will finally launch next Thursday, 11th May - but the previously announced Switch release is now officially cancelled.

Midnight Suns - which blends card-battling turn-based combat and Fire-Emblem-style relationship building into a superb superhero strategy whole - had a bit of a bumpy road to release, getting two delays before it finally launched for PC, Series X/S, and PS5 last December.

At the time of its second delay, 2K made the surprise announcement it was postponing Marvel's Midnight Suns for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Switch indefinitely, only saying those versions would launch at "a later date" - and we've had no further updates until today.

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Fall Guys is back with another season of stuff next Wednesday, 10th May, but there's a major new addition this time around in the form of the freshly unveiled build-it-yourself Creative mode, giving players the tools to construct and share their own levels.

Creative mode functions pretty much as you'd expect, offering what looks to be an intuitive, fully featured construction toolkit available directly in-game. Developer Mediatonic demoed the new mode in today's reveal livestream, explaining that, at launch, players can build Races levels using either Fall Guys' original or new digital themes - with additional themes, round types, obstacles, and music set to be added in future updates.

After budding stage makers have selected their round type and theme, Creative mode then whisks them into the new building view, where they can call up a list of placeable objects - all grouped by category - including obstacles, decorations, and more.

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Citizen Sleeper is being adapted into a tabletop RPG named Cycles of the Eye.

Like the video game, it's a solo game broken down into turns called cycles with your energy represented by dice. However, Cycles of the Eye is driven by a tarot deck of cards to represent challenges, resources, characters and more.

Citizen Sleeper was inspired by TTRPGs so this adaptation certainly makes sense.

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There was a time years ago when I played a lot of fighting games. The sort of sessions where you'd get together with a bunch of friends, huddle around a screen and take turns passing around controllers in unofficial mini-tournaments. If you weren't up, you'd be heckling the current players or just chatting amongst yourselves. No-one was an expert, there were no arcade sticks in sight, and - in the interest of full transparency - there was a fair bit of button bashing going on. It was so much fun, but no-one playing was going to win any actual ranked battles any time soon.

So that brings me to a question: can a lapsed and fairly casual fighting game fan find things to enjoy with Street Fighter 6? Well, after recently spending a couple of hours with the game, my answer would probably be yes, yes you can.

Street Fighter 6 isn't shy about letting you know it's keen to welcome new players with open and cartoonishly muscled arms. Let's be honest, buying into a fighting game if they aren't already very much your thing is a hard sell, and Street Fighter in particular isn't the kind of game many people play casually - the franchise has been very much focused on its hardcore community for some time now. But it's clear from this latest upcoming offering that Capcom has realised that it can't depend on the same community of fans forever without reaching out to potential new players. Thus, a lot of Street Fighter 6's new features are made with those curious about fighting games but too intimidated to try in mind.

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Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers can now refer a friend to PC Game Pass, and gift them 14 days of free subscription time.

Invited friends must be new to Game Pass to redeem the trial, and you're limited to doing this with five people. Also, to be clear, this is just for the PC portion of Game Pass.

Still, two weeks' of free game time is nothing to be sniffed at, and this membership of course includes access to new first-party Xbox games - such as Redfall - and the included access to EA Play and Riot Games libraries.

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Square Enix has shown our first look at gameplay from Forspoken DLC - In Tanta We Trust.

Releasing on 26th May across PlayStation 5 and PC, it's a prequel to the main game as protagonist Frey is launched back in time.

While gameplay is more of the same, Frey will be joined on her adventure by Tanta Cinta lending her abilities during combat and exploration. Check out the trailer below.

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Sony has released the debut trailer for the Gran Turismo movie.

The video, below, gives us a good idea of what to expect from the film, which is directed by District 9's Neill Blomkamp and stars the sad cop from Stranger Things and the elf who notices they're taking the hobbits to Isengard in Lord of the Rings.

The Gran Turismo movie is about a Gran Turismo fan who enters a competition to become a professional racer. It's based on a true story about Jann Mardenborough, who did just that in real-life.

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Microsoft has announced the next wave of Game Pass games.

Out today is of course Arkane's vampire first-person shooter Redfall. Check out Donlan's impressions, a third of the way in. Redfall is out on Game Pass across Xbox Series X and S, PC and cloud.

Next, on 4th May, Game Pass gets Cococucumber's fairy tale adventure Ravenlok across console, PC and cloud.

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Have you ever wondered what Zelda's Adventure would be like on Game Boy? Well, wonder no more, as one intrepid fan has taken one of the series' least well-received games and turned it into something that actually looks pretty great.

Admittedly, Zelda's Adventure is not exactly canon in the series' timeline. Developed by Viridis Corporation, it was published by Philips Interactive Media for the CD-i back in 1996.

Despite featuring a playable Zelda (in Zelda's Adventure, it is Link who has been whisked away by Ganon), the game was pretty poorly received by, well, everyone. Everything from its graphics to its acting came under fire, and even some of the most die hard Zelda fans have generally avoided it.

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