Eurogamer

Valve has released a new update for its Steam Client Beta.

This update adds a swathe of pretty nifty features and improvements, including the ability to pin windows from the overlay, so they appear on top of the game while in-game. This means that, in Valve's words, "yes, you can watch movies while you play games if you really want to" (although, I think it really meant this feature to be more for things like guides and notes).

As for those notes, this update adds a Notes app. The app does pretty much everything you would expect it to. It lets you take down notes about your game, and comes with "rich text formatting, the ability to have multiple notes per game, and can even be used in offline mode". Your notes will be saved per game, and are then synced to other PCs that you are logged into.

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SUPER-DOUBLE UPDATE: There's been a remarkable - and remarkably selfless - twist! Rogueywon has insisted I pass the PS5 Jedi: Survivor code onto someone else, because they already have a copy on PC. Isn't that nice? That means Bel Siebert, you are now the proud owner of the game!

UPDATE 3RD MAY: After much deliberation, a winner has been decided upon, and it's Rogueywon! You could say Rogueywon the prize.

Their experience of the old TIE Fighter game was something I'd never heard before, or considered, and it reinforces the unique power games have to put us inside perspectives we haven't considered before, and open our eyes to them. So thank you again for the thought-provoking memory.

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Emma's Adventures is a new monthly column for Eurogamer supporters written by Emma Kent - someone with an uncanny knack for finding strange adventures in games.

In the wild, abandoned wastes of the Consecrated Snowfield, a warrior stands on the precipice of a frozen ledge, his broad frame silhouetted against a soulless sky. His ragged cloak lifts in the wind, catching slightly on his armour. The crunch of snow behind him betrays the footsteps of something living, and he turns to face his opponent. Another challenger is approaching. Foolish.

The warrior unsheathes his sword, dull edges twisted and curled from the brutal force of previous collisions. Dark red lines have dried into the hilt. He mutters an incantation under his breath, bracing his body for the bone-shuddering impact of battle. The two figures circle each other, pausing just outside of striking range. For a moment, even the cruel wind stills, lessening her fury to watch the duel below. Then the veteran lets out a cry, raising his terrible blade to land the first blow. But to his horror, his opponent has already moved. An unfamiliar stab of fear runs through the warrior. He looks to the ground.

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The forthcoming Forza Motorsport will introduce Blind Driving Assists as part of its suite of accessibility features.

"The most accessible Forza Motorsport ever," reads a tweet shared by Xbox, including a video of accessibility consultant Brandon Cole using the new assists.

"This is bringing the AAA racing genre to the blind community to the fullest," said Cole in the video.

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Honkai: Star Rail, the latest game from Genshin Impact developer HoYoverse, has already been downloaded more than 20m times.

Needless to say, this is an enormously impressive figure considering the game only came out two days ago, even if it is free to download.

The game has broken records by reaching the number one spot on the iOS game download chart in more countries than any game that has come before, as noted by industry analyst Daniel Ahmad.

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Sony's PlayStation VR2 headset will soon be available through local retailers.

Until now, the hardware has only been available through Sony's PlayStation Direct store but that's set to change on 12th May.

UK retailer GAME is offering pre-registration for purchasers, with others sure to follow.

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Sony has now sold over 38m PlayStation 5 consoles, after selling a huge 6.3m units in the past quarter.

That's a record high for this specific quarter for sales of any console in history. The equivalent sales of the console last year were 2m units. By further comparison, the PS4's biggest Q4 sales were 3m units.

Added to last quarter's 7.1m units and it's clear that PlayStation 5 sales are very much on an upward trajectory following stock shortages since launch.

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The UK government has called out Microsoft's president Brad Smith for his comments on the now-blocked Activision Blizzard acquisition.

Earlier this week, the UK stopped Microsoft's $68.7bn effort to buy Activision in its tracks, prompting a furious response from Smith, who branded the move as "bad for Britain".

"Those sorts of claims are not borne out by the facts," a spokesperson for UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said last night (via Reuters).

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There's a lovely moment in, of all things, the movie Dreamcatcher, where, if memory serves, the main characters are trekking through the woods and all of these deer and rabbits and forest animals come charging through the trees, spooked by something. It's magical, almost fairy-tale like in all these bounding woodland critters. But it's also terrifying, because why are they running? What horror are they fleeing?

In Dreamcatcher's case I cannot remember - the woodland tumbling is all I have left of that film, which I may have watched on a plane or something. But when I look at this week and see how busy it is, I think of Dreamcatcher's woods. Lots of games out this week, large and small, and at least some of them have been spooked by Nintendo's huge beast crashing, unseen for now, through the distant undergrowth.

Maybe I'm wrong, actually. I look down the list and I don't think Dungeon Drafters had to get out of the way of Zelda. This is a beautiful game, a turn-based tactics game in which cards are magic and your placement on the board is deeply important. Each screen is a new room in the dungeon, a puzzle you have to fight your way through, and when one of the tilesets on offer is a glacial library, you've pretty much sold me already. Dungeon Drafters is on PC at the moment, and well worth grabbing, but it's going to absolutely sing on Switch when it arrives later in the year. Cor.

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In its ongoing bid to acquire Activision Blizzard - something that saw a major set back earlier this week, after UK regulators dramatically blocked the deal - Microsoft has announced yet another 10-year commitment.

This latest deal is with cloud gaming platform Nware. Sharing the news on Twitter, Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith wrote: "Microsoft and European cloud gaming platform Nware have signed a 10-year agreement to stream PC games built by Xbox on its platform, as well as Activision Blizzard titles after the acquisition closes.

"While it's still early for the emerging cloud segment in gaming, this new partnership combined with our other recent commitments will make more popular games available on more cloud game streaming services than they are today."

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Have you ever had a song that didn't click for you until you heard a remix? For me it's the Glitch Mob remix of Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes. I like the original well enough, but something about that version just hits right. Feel free to blast my terrible taste in music in the comments! It's not just the slightly hammy music analogy that makes me think about Cassette Beasts as a remix. Its similarities to Pokémon are far too blatant to just slot it into a broad monster battler genre, yet there's still enough that's new and fresh and different to make it more than a mere cover or tribute. And while I like Pokémon, I love Cassette Beasts.

The game starts with you deposited unceremoniously on New Wirral, a mysterious Arthurian isle unshackled from both time and any particular version of our reality. New Wirral's human inhabitants arrived from different times and versions of Earth, with the first reaching its shores a little over a century before the game's present. They swiftly discovered that they were not the only living creatures on the island, with dozens of different monsters roaming its environs. Some time before your arrival, it was discovered that these monsters could be recorded onto regular old cassette tapes which would allow the bearer to transform into them. Pretty good setup for some monster battling, eh?

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: coffee, nostalgia, and nostalgic horror.

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

As ever, it's tipping it down in Seattle. It's late but the place is still quite empty. Officer Jorji is fretting about how to get home in a hurry when a new customer comes in. Tall, blonde, rams horns sprouting neatly from both sides of their head.

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Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition is readying to reach even further into the series' past with the announcement of its Return of Rome DLC, a "new form" of the original Age of Empires' Rise of Rome expansion that's coming to PC and consoles on 16th May.

There's quite a lot going on in Rise of Rome - which purchasers will need to switch to from the main screen in order to access its new stuff - but the most notable addition for series fans is arguably the return of all 16 civilisations from the original Age of Empires and Rise of Rome.

That means the Assyrians, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Choson, Egyptians, Greeks, Hittites, Macedonians, Minoans, Palmyrans, Persians, Phoenicians, Romans, Shang, Sumerians, and Yamato will all be playable in Rise of Rome, with the Romans being unique in that they'll also be available to play in Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition's base game.

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Arkane's co-op vampire shooter Redfall is just a week away now, and as the clock ticks down to release, Microsoft has shared a bunch of new info, including a new trailer, details on its accessibility options, and its PC system requirements - the latter being particularly intriguing in light of the recently announced 30fps limit on consoles.

Starting with Redfall's accessibility options, these have now been shared as part of a full "settings" breakdown over on Arkane's blog. Accessbility options, specifically, include the likes of text-to-speech and speech-to-text support, screen narration, subtitles and closed captioning, font scaling, a colour blindness filter, notification duration settings, and an optional "accessibility reticule" for anyone that would benefit from a permanent fixation point on-screen.

Arkane has also provided an extensive list of more general settings, highlighting things like toggleable head bob and camera shake, optional object highlights, and four difficulty settings - three of which are available when first starting the game. It's well worth checking out the full article for the considerably more expanded breakdown.

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Warner Bros' co-op action-adventure Gotham Knights has just received another update, this one bringing fixes, accessibility improvements, and a surprise new 15-floor Heroic Assault raid.

Gotham Knights, of course, recieved a lukewarm reception when it launched last October, with particularly stern words being saved for its myriad technical issues. Since then, developer Warner Bros Montreal has been tinkering under the hood to improve the experience - with notable success, as Digital Foundry noted recently - making today's update the latest in a long line of patches.

With most of the game's glaring technical issues seemingly now resolved, its latest update - which notably features accessibility improvements such as controller remapping, improved screen-reader support, and button press toggles, as detailed in the accompanying patch notes - is less about fixes and more about new content.

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A little over two years after first details emerged, the Twisted Metal live-action TV series has a US air date, with its premiere now set for 27th July.

This 10 half-hour-long episode adaptation of the primarily PlayStation-exclusive vehicular combat series - which, slightly alarmingly, is now approaching its 30th anniversary - tells the story of a motor-mouthed outsider (played by Anthony Mackie) who's offered a chance at a better life, as long as he can deliver a mysterious package across a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Sony first touted turning Twisted Metal into a television show back in 2019, but it wasn't until 2021 that the wheels officially got in motion. Since then, US subscription service Peacock has placed an order for the action comedy, while Cobra Kai's Michael Jonathan Smith has signed up as showrunner and to pen the scripts - which are based on a concept by Zombieland and Deadpool writing duo Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

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Point and click puzzle game The Case of the Golden Idol will receive a new expansion next month.

On 4th May, players will be able to head into the game's The Spider of Lanka expansion, in a bid to puzzle out just what exactly is going on across three new scenarios. This expansion will be in a completely new setting. In fact, so new, it is all taking place "thousands of miles from the rainy hills of Blackfield."

The Spider of Lanka kicks off a year before The Case of the Golden Idol's first scenario, and follows the story of Albert Cloudsley and Oberon Geller as they make their maiden voyage to the Kingdom of Lanka. Here, they will visit... actually, I can't tell you that. In the true spirit of The Case of the Golden Idol, that information has been redacted. I can share this trailer with you though, so please do sit back and enjoy.

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Horizon Forbidden West is one of the best-looking games of this generation - in fact, it won 'best graphics' in our awards last year. With abundant foliage, beautiful lighting, and stunning environmental detail, Guerilla Games' open world sequel was seriously impressive - but the Burning Shores DLC looks poised to be even more spectacular. A reworked cloud rendering system alongside PS5 exclusivity promises graphical enhancements above and beyond the base game experience. So how does Burning Shores raise the visual bar? And does the increased fidelity come at a performance cost?

It's important to know that Burning Shores takes place after the main story in Horizon Forbidden West, so you need an endgame save with a high-level character to complete it. Right after booting the game with the expansion installed, you'll be invited to the new area - which is about a third of the size of the main game. It's big and breathtaking, from the moment you arrive to the climactic end of the story hours later; the new content is a visual treat throughout.

Before we get into why Burning Shores looks so special, let's cover off the essentials. As with Forbidden West, Burning Shores is offered in 'favour resolution', 'balanced' and 'favour performance' modes. The resolution mode runs at 30fps but with a native 4K image, balanced mode runs at 40fps (ideal for 120Hz displays) at a checkerboarded 4K; performance mode runs at 60fps with a checkerboarded 1800p.

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Nine more games have been added to GeForce Now's cloud gaming library, including one of my personal favourites, Resident Evil 7 Biohazard.

Fellow Resident Evil titles Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 (including Resident Evil Resistance), both in remake form, have also made their way into Nvidia's library this week.

"Survive against hordes of flesh-eating zombies and other bio-organic creatures created by the sinister Umbrella Corporation in these celebrated - and terrifying - Resident Evil games," the press release on the games' GeForce Now debut reads.

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FromSoftware president and Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki loves a poison swamp.

They're everywhere in the Soulsborne games: loved by Miyazaki and hated by players. We even rated them all.

But I'm afraid to tell you, swamp fans, that the studio's forthcoming mech battle game Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon will not have a poison swamp - or equivalent - area.

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Forget the number in the title. Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon may be a return to FromSoftware's mech combat series, but it's also a new beginning, on a new planet, with a new story.

Yet the studio's legacy is impossible to ignore. There's not only the past Armored Core games, which went on hiatus after 2013's Armored Core 5, there's the more recent success of the Soulsborne games - Elden Ring in particular. How to bring back a cult series with a fervent following, but make it relevant to fans of more recent games and brand new players?

It's a delicate balance, but one Armored Core 6 is poised to attempt when it releases in August.

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FromSoftware has revealed the release date for its forthcoming mech action game Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon, alongside a new gameplay trailer.

The game will release on 25th August this year across PlayStation and Xbox consoles, plus PC.

You can check out the explosive gameplay trailer below.

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Amazon Prime has announced the next set of games which will be available to Prime Gaming members.

As well as free games to claim, members will also be able to claim in-game loot for titles including Destiny 2, FIFA 23 and Genshin Impact.

The first titles, which include space combat simulator Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3D, will be available from 4th May - that's Star Wars Day!

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Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes gets a surprise Definitive Edition on PC via Steam and Ubisoft stores, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch this summer. Inexplicably, there is no Xbox version.

The puzzle RPG classic - much loved here at Eurogamer - is revived by Dotemu, the studio behind the excellent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge.

The announcement trailer, below, shows a first look at gameplay in the campaign and multiplayer.

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Tactical deck builder Ash of Gods: The Way is out today across PC and Nintendo Switch.

From developer AurumDust, this is the second game in the Ash of Gods universe following Redemption. The Way isn't a direct sequel, instead it follows a different story and has distinct game mechanics.

Check out the launch trailer below to see its strategic battles in action.

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Microsoft has announced May's Xbox Games with Gold lineup.

The draw here is Star Wars Episode I Racer, available 1st to 31st May. This is Aspyr Media's remaster of the popular 1999 PC and N64 original. It takes Phantom Menace's podracing sequence and turns it into a rock-solid arcade racer, featuring familiar characters and tracks set across the likes of Tatooine and Baroonda.

Meanwhile, Hoa is available 16th May to 15th June. This is a 2021 puzzle-platformer that features hand-painted art, lovely music and a peaceful, relaxing atmosphere.

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The Competition and Markets Authority has refuted Microsoft's claim the Nintendo Switch is capable of running a Call of Duty game similar to those seen on Xbox and PlayStation.

In its 415-page final report detailing its shock decision to block Microsoft's proposed $68.7bn Activision Blizzard takeover, the UK regulator addressed Microsoft's insistence it could get Call of Duty in its current form up and running on Nintendo consoles should the deal be approved.

"COD is currently available on two gaming consoles - Xbox and PlayStation," reads the CMA's report.

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Sega of America is currently "investigating and considering the options available" to the company, following the news earlier this week that a "supermajority" of its employees were planning to unionise.

As Matt reported on Monday, this union - which calls itself the Allied Employees Guild Improving Sega, or AEGIS-CWA for short - aims to secure higher base pay, improved benefits, and a number of other goals.

In response, Sega of America's president and COO Ian Curran wrote a letter to all employees, addressing the formation of AEGIS.

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Hideo Kojima does like to share all of his goings on, over on Twitter. How else would we really know what Léa Seydoux is up to?

However, one of his more recent posts has caused quite a stir from his followers. Earlier today, the Metal Gear creator shared a picture of himself standing beside Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud (there was also a Kojima Productions mascot there).

For a bit of background, Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud is president of the Saudi Arabian Federation for Electronic and Intellectual Sports (SAFEIS) and the Arab eSports Federation. He is also vice president of the Global Esports Federation.

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With every new edition, tactical strategy fusion series Age of Wonders has changed up exactly how it works - and Age of Wonders 4 showed its priorities as soon as it let me make a faction of mystical, arctic-dwelling wolf-riding dwarves.

After choosing a campaign, the first choice you make is whether to use a pre-made faction or customise your own. Where in Age of Wonders 3 you could alter your leader's appearance, your empire was functionally a combination of race and class - Orcish Theocrats, or Dwarven Dreadnoughts. Here, I find myself picking my way through a menu that feels a lot more like RPG character creation: choosing a body type (with swappable perks), culture, society, and early specialisations by way of that first Tome of Magic - and, of course, appearance customisation.

Culture, and your first Tome of Magic, determine the pool of units you get. A dwarven knight in a feudal society is the same as a human knight in a feudal society - but I can upgrade them very differently. But taking enchantments through the Tomes of Magic - whether its unit enchantments that apply to just support roles, or racial enchantments that apply to all dwarves in my empire - can take base armies down a very different route, especially with the ability to mix tomes of different affinities. Mixing Order and Nature tomes within a feudal culture feels distinctly different to mixing Chaos and Nature tomes within a barbarian culture. Even with a nature tree in common, it's druidic paladins versus primal hordes.

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The number of people playing Activision Blizzard games each month has dropped back down to levels previously seen last summer, before a brief boost bestowed by big releases such as Overwatch 2 and Call of Duty in the back half of last year.

Monthly active users for Activision games - primarily its Call of Duty series - fell to 98 million as of the 31st March, down from 111 million at the end of December 2022.

It's a figure roughly equal to that seen at the end of September last year, before the arrival of Modern Warfare 2 and the big 2.0 relaunch of live service Warzone in November.

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Microsoft has hit out at the Competition and Markets Authority's shock decision to block Microsoft's $68.7bn Activision Blizzard takeover, declaring it "bad for Britain".

In an interview with the BBC, Microsoft president Brad Smith said yesterday was "probably the darkest day in our four decades in Britain".

"It does more than shake our confidence in the future of the opportunity to grow a technology business in Britain than we've ever confronted before."

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Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is releasing tomorrow across PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Along with a now customary day one patch, the team at EA has additionally stated it will be releasing several more patches for the game in the "weeks ahead", begging the question - is Star Wars Jedi: Survivor actually ready for launch?

In a brief update, EA said players can expect patches that will fix bugs, improve the game's performance and add more accessibility features in the weeks following Star Wars Jedi: Survivor's launch.

The language used by EA and early reports from some reviewers have left some fans wondering whether the game needed longer before launch, rather than arriving with issues that need to be subsequently ironed out.

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The final expansion for Cities: Skylines has been officially unveiled by publisher Paradox Interactive.

Hotels and Retreats, which was previously teased under the title Vacation With Us, will allow players to build hotels and tourist attractions to help boost their city's economy.

Developer Colossal Order announced this expansion would be the last for Cities: Skylines, after eight years of post-launch content, as it continues to work on a sequel set for release later this year.

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Sony has announced a Final Fantasy 16 themed PlayStation 5 bundle, but it's only available in Japan.

The limited edition bundle includes the console with special face plates - themed with the game's logo of Eikons Phoenix and Ifrit in battle - as well as a specially designed controller. Of course, it comes with a code for the game too.

However, outside of Japan there's simply a bundle with the game, minus the fancy themed hardware.

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I am all thumbs, so I'm pretty sure it's my fault that I found Dungeon Drafters a bit fiddly at first. I had trouble selecting things and unselecting things and I made a lot of moves when I thought I was just exploring the UI. Anyway, I stuck with it because the game is so beautiful, with such a lovely pastel colour scheme for its pixelly doll's house landscapes. I'm glad I did. A few hours in, I'm finding it much less fiddly, and I'm also pretty much hooked.

Dungeon Drafters is a dungeon crawler and a card game. It takes place in a world in which magic is real, and real magic is card-based. So I have three action points per turn as I explore this lovely pixel-art fantasy land. I can spend those points on cards, which will conjure various spells for me, but I can also spend them on moving around each room's snug grid, and by physically attacking any enemies I am close to.

Complexity and depth tumbles away in which ever direction you look, from the classes on offer, each of which comes with their own combination of spell decks to wield, to the way that the game handles status effects, which turn up in your hand as a card you then have to play - possibly even to your advantage. All of this is great, but to tell you about Dungeon Drafters I really just want to talk about the dungeon I just crawled, as it were. It was a glacier, and it was also a library.

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NetEase has announced the creation of new studio Anchor Point, which will be lead by Control lead designer Paul Ehreth with a focus on building "action-adventure experiences that take risks and journey deep into uncharted territory".

Ehreth - who also served as campaign designer on Halo 4 and 5 - will be joined by head of operations Pere Torrents, as well as "colleagues with decades of combined experience in the industry" and credits on Halo, Ghost of Tsushima, Red Dead Redemption 2, and The Division.

Anchor Point, which will have offices in Barcelona and Seattle, is currently hiring "up to 100 people across Europe and North America" - with roles including developers, technical artists, and designers - to work either on-site, remotely, or in a hybrid capacity.

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Naughty Dog has released a fourth update for its widely lambasted PC port of The Last of Us Part 1, promising "framerate optimisation" and more among its various bug fixes and tweaks.

As you may recall, The Last of Us Part 1 finally launched for PC at the end of March after a 25-day delay designed to ensure it would debut "in the best shape possible." Unfortunately, the reality of the release didn't live up to that promise, and PC purchasers on Steam quickly began reporting a host of technical issues, including inconsistent frame rates, regular crashes, stuttering, long load times, and poor optimisation - earning the port a Mostly Negative rating.

Since then, Naughty Dog has released three patches aimed at addressing the PC port's various problems, and those fixes have slowly helped nudge The Last of Us Part 1's Steam rating up to a marginally less disastrous Mixed. And today's 1.0.4 update aims to improve matters further, bringing an extensive list of changes focused around "framerate optimisation, graphical and texture fidelity, crash fixes, and more".

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There's a bunch of activity going on around developer Amplitude's sprawling historical 4X strategy game Humankind right now, and as part of all that, its newly released Para Bellum Wonder Pack DLC is currently free to claim and keep, but only for a limited time.

The Para Bellum Wonder Pack adds a total of six new cultural wonders, one for each of the game's successive eras. The Stables of Pi-Ramesses are available first in Era 1 and are followed by the Colosseum, the Citadel of Alamut, the Hôtel des Invalides, Whilelmshaven Werft, and, as we step into the modern era, the Pentagon.

As you might imagine, each Wonder brings various benefits to the empires that build them, ranging from increased land movement speed and reduced cavalry/land vehicle upkeep for the Stables of Pi-Ramesses through to increased district fortication and bombardment benefits via the Pentagon. A full breakdown of these bonuses can be found in Amplitude's announcement.

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Pokémon Go will hold its first-ever Go Fest event in the UK this summer, with a three-day bonanza centred in London's Brockwell Park.

Go Fest 2023 in London will run from Friday 4th to Sunday 6th August, with early bird tickets on sale now (for £27). As with last year's Seattle Go Fest, each day will be split with a half-day in the park, and the rest of the day spent exploring the local area - this time, with bonuses available throughout Greater London.

A version based in Osaka, Japan will run over the same dates, while New York has been chosen to host the event's USA leg on 18th to 20th August.

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