Eurogamer

Destiny 2 may have seen its latest expansion, Lightfall, bring its "highest concurrent players in years", but developer Bungie has publicly acknowledged that it "missed the mark on some of [its] goals".

In a candid update on the official website, the studio said that whilst the expansion "surpassed [Bungie's] sale expectations", "it's clear the initial experience we delivered on day one didn't provide the full clarity we originally planned for when we set out creating Lightfall".

"We’ve taken a broad look at community feedback across the game since launch and have been working to address several areas in the coming weeks, while also forging ahead on content for our upcoming seasons," said game director, Joe Blackburn. "Let’s get into the things we’re building and improving in response to your input on Lightfall so far."

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A new patch for The Last of Us Part 1 is now available for PC.

Patch 1.0.2. dropped over the bank holiday weekend, hoping to address "some crashes, improve performance in some areas, and fix several gameplay and UI issues including some animation, texture, and lighting bugs".

Naughty Dog shared news of the new update via its social media channels, confirming that the patch "addresses performance, user experience, visuals, and more", as well as "platform and hardware-specific fixes".

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Capcom has added microtransactions to Resident Evil 4 Remake two weeks after the action horror was released.

The premium content - added alongside the much-anticipated, and free, Mercenaries DLC mode - has been introduced to give players "access to a weapon's exclusive upgrade at any time".

Although there's been no formal word from Capcom that the microtransactions were coming, 11 £2.49 "Exclusive Upgrade Tickets" popped up on digital storefronts just before the weekend.

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Last year was the 40th anniversary of John Carpenter's The Thing. Despite being released in 1982, this alien invasion movie of psychotic paranoia still holds up to this day, due to its unnerving story and near timeless practical effects.

Strangely, despite its success and cult-like status - and despite an intriguing prequel in 2011 - The Thing never received a proper sequel. Or did it? In 2002, Computer Artworks released a video game based on The Thing that continued the story where the film left off. It's not considered canon, but that doesn't stop it from being a fascinating artefact in its own right.

Computer Artworks' The Thing begins with the player at an abandoned Antarctic outpost, not long after MacReady shares that drink with Childs. In the game, you play as Captain Blake, who seems to be oddly unphased by the destruction of the Outpost, the missing crew and that gigantic flying saucer hidden beneath the snow.

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Women in Games CEO Marie-Claire Isaaman has released a statement asking if the games industry is "going backwards" following reports that "multiple folks" were assaulted or spiked at this year's GDC event.

In a public statement, Isaaman reflected on employment stats and revealed that whilst "both male and female gamers experienced similarly high levels of toxicity, showing that toxicity is an issue across the entire gaming community", "the experience that girls and women encounter are often much darker and threatening".

"Sexist stereotypes and being aggressively quizzed about their gaming skills often lead to more violent verbal abuse and threats of rape," Isaaman says. "Even more disturbingly, the abuse doesn’t always stop once players leave the game – some instances manifest into serious consequences outside of gaming, including stalking on other platforms and threats of this transferring into real life.

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"Wholesome narrative puzzle adventure" Tin Hearts is coming to Nintendo Switch.

Tin Hearts came to life as a VR game that Wes described as "part Lemmings, part Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol", but it's now coming to Switch on 20th April, with a release on PC and current- and last-gen consoles a month later on 16th May.

Winner of the 'Most Wanted Nintendo Switch Game' Accolade during Gamescom 2022, Tin Hearts is described as "an immersive, narrative-based, puzzle adventure wrapped up in a powerful tale of love and compromise".

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EA's upcoming magic FPS, Immortals of Aveum, will reportedly release in July.

Created by Ascendant Studios and released by EA Originals, the shooter is only officially slated to come to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S at some indeterminate time in 2023.

According to the-ever reliable dataminer billbil-kun, however, the specific release date is 20th July.

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Former Halo director, Joseph Staten, has left Microsoft.

Veteran of Halo development at both Bungie and 343 Industries, Staten left Microsoft's blockbuster space shooter franchise in January 2023, but it was reported at the time that he would remain at Microsoft.

Now, however, it seems Staten is leaving his position as creative director at Microsoft entirely.

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A playable demo is now available for Wild Hearts.

The free trial for Omega Force's take on Monster Hunter formula is downloadable now on current-gen console systems, PS5 and Xbox Series X.

You'll need an EA account to play but once you're all signed up, you'll get access to the "latest content" for free from today until 13th April, 2023, where you'll be free to explore the game "right up to the gates of Minato".

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Numskull's next Silent Hill statue is here, and it turns out the silhouette at the end of the Bubble Head nurse statue reveal did indeed tease the arrival of Silent Hill 3's protagonist, Heather.

You can't throw a stone on the internet without hitting a Silent Hill figurine, but it's a rare thing indeed to find one that isn't a nurse or a Pyramid Head. Enter Numskull's second Silent Hill collectible, Heather Morris*.

Standing at ten inches tall, the statue references several elements from Silent Hill 3, including Heather’s outfit, her flashlight and gun, as well as Silent Hill’s Lakeside Amusement Park and its mascot, Robbie the Rabbit. Like the Bubble Head Nurse, the statue has been officially sanctioned by publisher Konami.

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American McGee's attempt to develop a third instalment in his fan-favourite Alice series "is at an end".

In a public statement posted to McGee's Patreon, the developer said he had "exhausted every option for getting a new Alice game made" after IP holder Electronic Arts reportedly "decided to pass on the project based on an internal analysis of the IP, market conditions, and details of the production proposal".

Shortly after the completion of the Design Bible, I resumed talks with Electronic Arts regarding our efforts to get a new game made," McGee explains. "They were presented with the Design Bible and a Production Plan (produced in collaboration with Virtuos Games) outlining the schedule, budget, team, and design for the new game's production.

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Few seem to have noticed, but Netflix is quietly building a service that's home to the best in mobile games - and one that hints at something bigger on the horizon.

Yes, we've seen these Silicon Valley types trying to 'do games' before. Google tried and quickly failed with Stadia. Apple Arcade is...good, but fading fast. Amazon, meanwhile, seems to be all over the place with its MMO, steaming service Luna and handful of other projects.

Netflix is different, though. Its primary business is entertainment, not to sell ads (Google), phones (Apple) or offer free next-day delivery on slight variations of things you've already bought (Amazon). And you can see that rather more discerning eye in the first batch of Netflix games, which have all arrived in the last 18 months. There's now over 50 in total, and more added every week or so.

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Not an original thought, but one that bears repeating. In the same way that every novel is really a mystery novel, every game is really a puzzle, the central puzzle being, how is the game played? What are the rules? Yes. Sure. But also outwards, what is the pace of play, the rhythms and rituals? How do the thoughts and actions of the game spiral outwards in loops and bows and what is their intervals?

I'm thinking about this stuff today because I know - and slightly dread - that this afternoon I have a piece to write about Zelda, Breath of the Wild, obv, and to me it's a game that makes me feel that I have yet to find the true way of playing it. I muddle around in that world and endlessly come up against the world itself. No approach lasts for very long, and I find the threads of the game hard to follow and even harder to link together. All of which, I guess, is another way of saying that I love it.

But I'm also thinking about it because of our Game of the Week, which, for once, is a game that we actually reviewed this week, and which came out this week. That much is straightforward about Road 96: Mile 0. That much makes sense. Everything else? Trickier.

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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: ecology, birdsong, and gemstones.

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

I feel so seen by this game. Not only because I care, like I'm sure you all do, about the state the planet is in, but also on a more game-playing level in how I can't stand making a mess in city-builders. I almost can't bring myself to build on the pristine piece of land you inevitably begin with - which, in some regards, is as perfect as it will ever be - and then stamp horrible buildings all over it. However much I try, I can't quite clean up my human mess.

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If you're in need of some entertainment to accompany your eggs this weekend, there's a generous blob of undead slaughter to be found over on the Epic Games Store, where Dying Light's Enhanced Edition is currently free for a limited time.

Dying Light's blend of spirited parkour and zombie-slaying action soon started turning heads after its launch back in 2015, and it proved successful enough - it's now sold well over 20 million copies - that it enjoyed seven years of post-launch content before developer Techland was finally ready to bring things to a close.

Dying Light Enhanced Edition, which is free on the Epic Games Store for the next seven days, features the hugely popualar base game and a selection of its post-launch DLC, including its Season Pass content and The Following expansion - which attempted to spice up the core game by slinging a rideable dune buggy into the mix.

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Gran Turismo 7 is one of the most fully-featured racing games ever made, with hundreds of cars, dozens of tracks and RT reflections on PS5. However, 120Hz and explicit VRR support have been missing - until the recent release of patch 1.31. What compromises are needed to add 120Hz and VRR support, and is a full 120fps even possible? We've been testing the game to find out.

First of all, it's important to set expectations. When developers mention 120Hz support they don't necessarily mean that the game will run at the full 120fps. There are many titles that run 'up to' 120fps, but what you actually get is an unlocked frame-rate in the 120Hz mode tha often fails to hit the target. That's what I expected from Gran Turismo 7 too - but the patch is actually much more interesting than that.

To get down to the basics, patch 1.31 adds four new graphical modes. You're given the choice of resolution or frame-rate mode at 120Hz, for two options, but this multiplies to four as having VRR enabled or disabled in the system menu produces very different outcomes.

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E3 2023 is no more, but there's still a bunch of glitzy live game showcases to look forward to before the year is through. The biggies, of course, are largely being fronted by Geoff Keighley, and following confirmation Summer Games Fest returns on 8th June, Keighley has dated his next big event: Gamescom Opening Night Live, which airs on 22nd August.

Keighley confirmed the return of Opening Night Live on Twitter, but stopped short of sharing much in the way of specifics. We do know, though, that it'll once again be held at Cologne's Koelnmesse, kickstarting a week of Gamescom, which this year runs from 23rd-27th August.

"Excited to be back in Cologne with the fans and industry," Keighley wrote in his announcement tweet, "streaming video game news directly to you."

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Today brings our first look at branding for EA Sports FC, the new name for EA's best-selling FIFA series, before a more detailed look at the retitled franchise arrives in July.

In the meantime, you should expect to see EA Sports FC branding plastered across football in the coming days, EA warned. This will include advertising in matches across the Premier League and WSL, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1.

EA's press release today is filled with quotes designed to reinforce the support it has for its branding change, including the bosses of many of those leagues. In it, EA also describes Sports FC as a "platform to create, innovate and grow new football experiences, connecting hundreds of millions of fans through console, mobile, online and esports products".

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Two Point Campus is adding a new challenge mode level for Easter as part of its Spring Update.

Players will be tasked with - what else? - a campus-wide egg hunt as Wiggy Silverbottom has been burying priceless Fitzpocket eggs. The Egg & Silver Spoon Race will see players digging for egg treasure that can be sold or used to decorate their campus.

The Spring update also adds a cute Bunny Ears outfit and Spring-themed items like chocolate bunnies, decorative chicks, and a big ol' egg.

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Sony has issued a fresh response to the ongoing drama surrounding Microsoft's $68.7bn Activision Blizzard acquisition, and criticised the UK regulator currently probing the deal for recently softening its stance. Sony's statement also highlights the recent comments made by Redfall creative director Harvey Smith as fresh evidence of how Microsoft might mistreat Call of Duty on PlayStation if it were to own the first-person shooter series itself.

Last month, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority softened its stance on a key area of its concern over the deal passing, as it concluded that Microsoft owning Call of Duty would not "result in a substantial lessening of competition" in the console market. Sony's response to this decision, published publicly today, is unsurprisingly critical of this latest development, which it slams "surprising, unprecedented, and irrational".

The response also leaps upon last month's drama which erupted from comments made by creative director Harvey Smith, who revealed that Microsoft had canned plans for a PlayStation 5 version of Redfall after buying Bethesda. These comments, Sony has now said, were an indication of how Microsoft could also treat Call of Duty, if and when the deal goes through.

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Blumhouse Productions founder and CEO Peter Blum has revealed the release date for the Five Nights at Freddy's film adaptation.

The adaptation of the game was first announced in 2015, and has since faced several setbacks and delays. In October 2021, Blum revealed progress on the movie was being held back FNAF creator Scott Cawthorn, who reportedly refused multiple scripts.

Filmmaker Chris Columbus, whose directing credits include Home Alone and Mrs Doubtfire, had previously been on board as director, but his departure was from the project was also confirmed in 2021.

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Sony has registered a patent which describes the possibility of including temperature-controlled haptic feedback in a PlayStation controller.

The feature, which could emulate the sense of either hot or cold to the user, is part of several discussed in a patent for a controller made - at least in part - of a more gel-like material than the current plastic.

Sony's describes an "elastically deformable material" which is able to better aid in haptic feedback, and which can detect when said "elastic member" is touched, pressed, twisted, pinched, squashed, rubbed, or even "in the action of bringing a hand close to the elastic member".

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Bop it! Twist it! Pull it! Not phrases you'd generally associate with Elden Ring, but that's changed thanks to streamer Swoop Douglas who completed the game with a Bop-It toy.

The streamer completed the All Bosses run at the end of March, sharing a clip on Twitter.

A Bop-It Extreme 2 was used, allowing for just five inputs, which certainly adds to the challenge beyond the unique device.

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Road 96 was an ingenious game that could feel, at times, like a bit of a mess. Set in Petria, an Americana-tinged totalitarian state, it followed a range of teens who were making a break for the border and a better life. Even now, the thought of the whole thing dazzles me a little: one by one, you take these teens from deep inside the country as they make their hardscrabble way to potential freedom. Hitchhiking, hiding out in lorries, jammed in the back of a cop car, each attempt had a beginning and an end, and then you'd do it all over again with a new protagonist.

The hook - and it was a great hook - is that these separate attempts would overlap in terms of the personnel they involved. So you'd encounter the same truckers, cops, and bank robbers again and again at different points in their own stories. Over the course of the game a rich portrait emerged, even if, looking back, I'm not sure exactly what it was a portrait of. Petria itself? The human spirit? The lasting appeal of 90s road movies? Anyway, it was vivid and empathetic and ambitious and surprising, the perfect match for the game's sunburned, rough-textured art style.

Now here's Road 96: Mile 0. It's a prequel to the first game, and it feels, at times, like a bit of a mess. And actually, I think it is a mess - but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing. Why is it a mess, though? I wonder if it's the mileage. The same thrumming energy of Road 96 is here, but the endless scoring and underscoring of that journey to the border is missing. This is the moment before everyone started to flee, so the game's antic enthusiasm for strange encounters and oddball asides has to work within confines. It's a Catherine wheel stuck in starting position on a fence as it sparks and splutters. It's a cat trying to get itself out of a duvet.

Humble Bundle has announced which games are available to keep in its monthly Humble Choice subscription for April.

Each month, Humble Bundle selects PC games for its members to keep, in addition to access to the Humble Games Collection and Vault, and 20 percent off thousands of games in the Humble Store.

This month's Humble Choice includes Death Stranding: Director's Cut, Aliens: Fireteam Elite, Rollerdrome, Life Is Strange 2: Complete Season, The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante, Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp, Founders' Fortune, and Revita.

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Blizzard has detailed when Diablo 4 owners will be able to get playing early - if they have either of the game's Digital Deluxe or Ultimate editions.

Diablo 4 officially launches on Tuesday 6th June, but those who pay more can get playing ahead of time - and now we know exactly how early.

Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra has confirmed the early access launch window for Deluxe and Ultimate pre-orders will begin at midnight in the UK on the 2nd June, which is 4pm Pacific on the 1st June in the US. That's across PC, PlayStation and Xbox.

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It may have begun as an April Fool's Day joke, but The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog has already had 1m downloads.

The visual novel game was released for free on Steam on 1st April - a real game, not just a joke!

What's more, it's currently the 61st highest rated game on Steam of all time, according to Sonic social media manager Katie Chrzanowski.

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Warner Bros. has announced a new release date for its long-awaited Minecraft movie: 4th April 2025.

That's more than a decade after we first heard word of the film, and six years on from Warner Bros' original plan of May 2019.

Details on what the film may look like or actually be about remain thin on the ground, save for the continued attachment of charismatic Game of Thrones and Aquaman star Jason Momoa in an undisclosed role. (He's Steve, surely?!)

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EA has published the minimum and recommended PC specifications for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, which is set to release at the end of the month.

Expected performance for the setups hasn't been detailed, but you may want to start freeing up some space on your hard drive.

Here's what EA has said you'll need...

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The Final Fantasy pixel remasters series finally has a release date on Switch and PlayStation: 19th April.

The games were previously released individually on Steam and mobile (followed by a series collection), with Final Fantasy 6 arriving last February. The series was then announced for Switch and PlayStation in December, but without a firm release date.

This new release will bring more new features, most notably an additional font.

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Minecraft Legends is an interesting prospect. Like Minecraft Dungeons, it takes the familiar iconography and building blocks of one of gaming's most familiar and beloved worlds, and employs everything in a new way. For Dungeons, this meant transforming the game into a hack-and-slash action RPG. For Legends, it means something the developer's calling "action strategy", but might otherwise be called real-time strategy.

Ian and I had a chance to play the game in London a few weeks ago, dropping into the start of the single-player campaign and then trying a 3vs3 multiplayer match. (The final game will support 4vs4 and 2vs2 as well, I gather.) With the game out on the 18th, it's not too long before you'll get to see all this yourself, but here, at least, are the very basics.

I was surprised by what a traditional RTS Legends actually feels like, albeit one that's been smartly stripped back for an audience that is coming to this genre perhaps for the first time. Story-wise, Piglins are invading the worlds of Minecraft, and these funny, grotty, ravenous little horrors might be my favourite element of the entire game, spreading a charmingly silly kind of anarchy wherever they go. As a hero character you can attack them with your sword as you move around the procedurally created maps on your horse, but since this is a strategy game, the real key to success comes from harvesting resources and then building stuff with it.

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If you've polished off last year's God of War Ragnarök and have been waiting for an excuse to do it all over again, developer Sony Santa Monica might have just what you're looking for now it's sizeable New Game Plus update is live.

Sony Santa Monica announced a New Game Plus mode was on the way last December, but specifics were pretty scarce at the time. Now, though, in a post on the PlayStation Blog, the studio has detailed exactly what players can expect from their second go around.

As you'd expect, New Game Plus becomes available after clearing Ragnarök for the first time, giving players the option to carry their existing skills, equipment, and weapons (including the Draupnir Spear) over from their previous saves.

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Veteran Mario voice actor Charles Martinet was previously confirmed to voicing a couple of characters in the Super Mario Bros. Movie - and now the film has been released, fans think they've worked out who those characters are.

Having watched the film myself, it's fair to say Martinet's voice is indeed recognisable - though the movie's credits don't offer any concrete confirmation. Instead, Martinet's name is grouped alongside other secondary voice actors, without going into specifics on the exact characters he plays.

If you'd prefer not to know more ahead of watching the film, take this as your spoiler warning - and feel free to head over and read our spoiler-free Super Mario Bros. Movie review.

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Phil Harrison has departed Google, where he served as vice president and general manager of Stadia, following the beleaguered cloud gaming service's demise earlier this year.

Harrison joined Google in 2018 and shepherded Stadia through its high-profile - if increasingly problematic - launch in 2019, remaining onboard during the service's slow, steady decline. It was Harrison who announced the closure of Stadia's internal game development studios in 2021, and, ultimately, shared word of the cloud gaming service's impending demise last September, admitting it hadn't "gained the traction with users that we expected".

Ahead of Stadia's closure this January, Harrison said the underlying streaming tech would live on at Google, and would be made available "industry partners" - but Google later clarified its white label streaming offering had also been axed alongside the consumer-facing side.

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Just over 100 people have lost their jobs at Amazon's video games division as part of the massive job culls announced a couple of weeks ago.

Over 400 Twitch employees lost their jobs in late March, with Twitch CEO Dan Clancy blaming the "current macroeconomic environment" for the layoffs.

The further 100 employees who are being laid off are a part of Game Growth, Amazon Game's San Diego studio, and Prime Gaming, according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC. The memo was written by vice president of Amazon Games Christoph Hartmann.

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The 2022 revamp of The Witcher 3 set out to be the best version of game possible, tapping into the performance and features of the new consoles and modern PCs - except, this next-gen release also brought its own issues. Performance problems and crashes proved problematic and since then, CD Projekt RED has been intent on gradually ironing out the kinks and getting the game into shape. It hasn't been a smooth sailing, though: the last patch 4.01 actually worsened the frame-rate in the performance mode, while at the same time improving frame-rates in the RT quality mode. The good news is that the recently released 4.02 update now delivers the best experience we've seen yet. It's not quite the finished article, but it's much closer to the ideal.

Developer CDPR's patch notes are as exhaustive as usual. Right at the very top - for console - we have a note that performance mode frame-rates are improved, which we can confirm. Other highlights include the return of the HBAO option on PC, and improved CPU optimisation on DirectX 12. There's a motion blur intensity slider on all formats now, as well - which solves another problem at launch with the sheer intensity of the effect when enabled. Lastly, there's a subtle improvement to screen-space and ray-traced reflections on all formats, with the addition of refraction to reflections across water bodies.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is now out in cinemas, and if you're planning to go, you've likely already heard there's something extra at the end of its credits.

Having seen the movie for ourselves, Eurogamer can now go into detail on what these scenes are - so, take this as your spoiler warning if you are going to see the film and don't want to know what to expect.

There are actually two scenes to stay put for throughout the movie's credits - one after the first set of credits (which end with a pleasing nod to former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata) and then the other at the very end.

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The Pokémon Center is once again returning to London alongside the 2023 Pokémon European International Championships as a pop-up store.

The pop-up shop was last here in August for the 2022 Pokémon World Championships. Similar to last time, the store will be open for anyone to attend.

Timeslot reservations are now open for anyone interested in visiting. It's a good idea to book one if you're planning to go, as the Pokémon Center always proves to be extremely popular when it's around.

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After a bit of a VR-focused update back in February, Hello Games has once again turned its content nozzle on No Man's Sky, blasting out pilotable Sentinel ships, corrupted worlds, and more in the exploratory space sim's new Interceptor update.

Interceptor picks up where February's Fractal update left off, making the new Interceptor ship class (previously an expedition-exclusive reward) available to everyone. However, given these vessels' unique Sentinel-tech, players will need some special resources to make them tick.

As it happens, Sentinels factor heavily in No Man's Sky latest update, with players also able to acquire Sentinel Multi-Tools and Sentinel jetpacks. Additionally, it's now possible for well-armed Travellers to take on powerful Sentinel Capital ships, with victory against the new threats clearing a player's "wanted" status and earning new high-value rewards.

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The one that we've been waiting for is here. The $449 Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor promises to deliver similar gaming performance to AMD's flagship 7950X3D and Intel's Core i9 13900K, while consuming less power and costing significantly less than its rivals. To find out which of these three options is the fastest gaming CPU on the market, we've started a shootout - and tested each option fresh in nine of the most challenging CPU-limited scenarios, from modern games that soak all available threads to ray tracing showcases and esports titles.

Our expectations for the 7800X3D are high - after all, the CPU's design permits its full 120W TDP to be dedicated solely to an eight-core chiplet complete with performance-boosting 3D V-Cache. By comparison, the 7950X3D and 7900X3D released in February split that power budget across two chiplets, only one equipped with the extra L3 cache, so we could potentially see even greater performance than these CPUs. It's a similar story to the Intel Core i9 13900K, a fantastic gaming and content creation CPU - but one that relies on scheduling algorithms built into Windows to make full use of its asymmetric performance core and efficiency core design.

Even getting close to its rivals in terms of frame-rate could put the 7800X3D in the same hallowed tier as the legendary 5800X3D, a reasonably affordable mid-range CPU that punches well above its weight and even challenges Intel's equivalent-generation flagship parts.

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