Eurogamer

Slay the Spire looms large over the Roguelike deckbuilding genre. Arguably, it created it, so it's hard to find a game here that doesn't copy it. Beneath Oresa copies it. You can feel it in the way you fight, the way you build your deck, the way you progress. Take all the Slay the Spire parts away and you don't really have a game. But that's OK, I think, because we've come to a point where Slay the Spire serves as a foundation for games to build on. And I find that exciting. And Beneath Oresa is why.

The first thing is that Beneath Oresa is big, in terms of file size. It's 4GB, a relative whopper. And I know you probably have flash-drives bigger than that - you probably had flash-drives bigger than that 10 years ago - but in the world of deckbuilding Roguelikes, that's big, like, dinosaur big. They're usually measured in megabytes.

What this means is that Beneath Oresa has graphics (no offence, Slay the Spire). It has proper 3D characters and environments, and swishy animations, and a cinematic eye (and camera) for using them. There's a moment of slow-down after you charge up to enemies and whack them, for example, as if the game's going, "Go on, do it again," so it can string together a fancy fight scene. And if you heed the call, the game can feel genuinely action-packed, which is an odd feeling for something like this, but I like it.

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Where on earth is that delayed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake? It's a question Ubisoft seemingly gets quite a bit, as it has now published an official FAQ page to explain what exactly is going on.

For those closely following news around the announcement of the remake and its subsequent delays, there's not a lot new here. The game is still very much alive, Ubisoft promises, albeit no longer at its original development studio.

Still, the page is a handy place for fans to go for a bit of reassurance. Ubisoft has a habit of delaying games for years - looking at you Skull and Bones, and you Beyond Good & Evil 2, and you Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora - without providing much proof they still exist.

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Heads up for anyone who bought the digital deluxe edition of Sonic Frontiers - you should install the DLC before starting a new game.

Sega posted the announcement yesterday, ahead of Sonic Frontiers' release today, to inform players how to access the DLC.

"DLC content will not be valid if installed after the tutorial area," Sega tweeted.

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Harvestella is the latest take on the marriage of the farming simulator and fantasy RPG genres. Developed by Live Wire and published by Square Enix, it's set in a world afflicted by the Season of Death, which, coincidentally, is what I called the beginning of 2022 when every week hailed the launch of a guides-worthy game. It challenges you to manage uncovering the world’s secrets alongside the hardest task of all - keeping a plant alive.

You begin Harvestella as an amnesiac who’s found near Lethe Village after being outside during the Season of Death and, somehow, surviving. Unsure at what to do with you and most likely wanting to keep the medical miracle close to hand, the Mayor and local doctor give you a nearby farm. Peace, however, is short lived as you’re soon cohabiting with the time travelling Aria and start investigating the Sealights - crystal-like structures which affect the seasons.

While I've currently only reached Chapter Four, Harvestella’s plot has already pulled me in with its sense of growing unease. Aria being an intelligent protagonist, whose status as a time traveller gives her a legitimate reason to hold back information, helps build this ominous tone. She’s keenly aware there’s something fundamentally wrong with this world and unafraid to voice this opinion, which ensures the characters are driving the plot rather than the opposite.

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Nintendo has reported a slowdown in Nintendo Switch console sales, and a slight reduction in its annual sales forecast.

Overall, Nintendo Switch has now sold 114.3m consoles worldwide, with another 6.68m sold over the last two quarters. 2.23m of these were of the original 2017 Switch, while Switch OLED sold 3.53m and Switch Lite sold 920k.

However, Nintendo admitted it had sold 19.2 percent fewer consoles year-on-year over the financial year so far - in part, it said, due to the ongoing semiconductor shortage. In response, Nintendo has cut its Switch sales forecast for the year from 21m to 19m consoles.

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The latest edition of the Games Accessibility Conference took place in Redmond, Washington over the 24th and 25th October. In-person and remote viewing options (hosted primarily on Zoom and YouTube) were available for the conference devoted entirely to accessibility in video games. These also included live captioning and ASL interpreters throughout.

As is tradition with GAconf, this iteration kicked off with an update on accessibility news from the last six months by accessibility specialist, Ian Hamilton. First he focused on spotlighting new accessible hardware and how rapidly it's becoming affordable where, in the past, there had been a disconnect between accessible solutions and the means of much of its target market.

There was more praise for Xbox's continuing commitment to disabled gamers, plus a note on how remakes have shaped the benchmark of accessibility in 2022. There was special mention for The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe Edition and The Last of Us Part I. These are remakes which demonstrate, Hamilton said, that "while it is never too early to consider accessibility, it is also never too late to begin."

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Activision has detailed more of its plans for Call of Duty in 2023, saying next year will bring the series' "next full premium release" - a statement initially appearing to contradict previous reports there'd be no brand-new Call of Duty title in 2023.

According to Activision's newly revealed third quarter financial results, 2023 will bring "the most robust Call of Duty live operations to date, the next full premium release in the blockbuster annual series, and even more engaging free-to-play experiences across platforms".

It's the talk of the "next full premium release" that's caught people's attention, particularly in light of claims made by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier in February that Call of Duty wouldn't be getting a new mainline series entry in 2023 - marking the first time in just under two decades it had skipped an annual release. Schreier then expanded on those assertions last month, saying Activision would instead be "selling new stuff" for Modern Warfare 2 - "an expansion or something like that" including "campaign stuff".

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Over a decade and a half after a live-action Gears of War movie was first touted, Netflix has announced it's adapting The Coalition's cover shooter series for the small screen.

A Gear of War movie was first trumpeted back in 2007, when New Line Cinema purchased the rights for a live-action adaptation. However, its originally planned 2009 release date came and went, and the project has bounced around in development hell ever since - last resurfacing in 2019 when it was reported it would no longer even be set in the same universe as the games.

Whatever happened to that version of the adaptation, we may never know, as Netflix - on this, the 16th anniversary of the original Gears of War's release - has now announced a new partnership with current franchise stewards The Coalition.

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Dead Cells, the acclaimed rogue-like action-platformer from developers Motion Twin and subsidiary Evil Empire, has thrown open its doors to welcome another batch of familiar gaming faces - from indie favourites including Hotline Miami, Shovel Knight, Terraria, and Slay the Spire - in its new Everyone is Here Vol. 2 update on PC.

A follow-up to last year's first Everyone is Here update - which featured crossovers with Hollow Knight, Hyper Light Drifter, Blasphemous, Guacamelee, Curse of the Dead Gods, and Skul: The Hero Slayer - Vol. 2 features guest appearances from another six titles.

Up first is Yacht Club Games' beloved retro platformer Shovel Knight - no stranger to crossovers and cameos - whose Dead Cells appearance takes the form of a new outfit and an accompanying Brutality weapon known as the King Scepter. THis lets players mimic King Knight, dashing around and bouncing on enemies' heads.

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Indie hit Stray has been given a Game Boy-inspired makeover by some retro-loving animators.

Youtube channel 64 Bits has released a demake video showing what Stray would look like if it had been released on a Game Boy. This includes textures and sounds, and to be honest, it looks great!

The video itself offers a 'highlight reel' of Stray's opening chapters. It shows the titular stray cat's sudden separation from their clowder, and their descent into the chasm leading to an unpopulated underground city.

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Fan-favourite character Liara T'soni - already confirmed as returning in this sequel - can be heard conversing with a geth, whose machine-like noises are instantly recognisable.

Liara's speech - portrayed as ever by Ali Hillis - was decoded by Soundcloud user Mosaic Horse. BioWare has since provided its own cleaned-up version:

"I can see it... How did we miss this?" Liara can be heard saying. "Exactly, the Council will be furious... although they should know by now not to underestimate human defiance."

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Last week, AMD finally revealed its hand in terms of its next generation graphics line-up. Based on the new RDNA 3 architecture and featuring highly innovative designs, two products were unveiled: a flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX priced at $999 and a cut-down RX 7900 XT - yours on December 13th for $899 (UK prices for both products remain unknown at this time). The RDNA 3 reveal was AMD's most promising opportunity in years to disrupt a discrete graphics market that sees Nvidia command an 80 percent share - and hopes were high that AMD could reshape the competitive landscape. So how did it fare?

What's clear is that the reality of AMD's products did not live up to the pre-launch hype delivered by leakers who clearly were not in possession of much in the way of actual facts. Talk of 2x performance boosts and 'almost 4GHz GPUs' clearly let down some fans and rather unfairly, took the sheen away from AMD's actual achievements, which are highly impressive in many ways. For example, an additional 50 to 70 percent of performance is, by and large, exactly what Nvidia achieved with RTX 4090. And we're seeing the first realisation of AMD's chiplet design in the graphics space, where a 5nm compute processor sits on an interposer with six memory cache dies at 6nm - saving money. This does seem to have come at the expense of clock speeds and thus raw performance - a 2.3GHz core clock is only a small bump faster than RDNA 2 when other 5nm products have proven prodigiously faster. But the point is, AMD is breaking new ground here with rewards that can only scale positively in future products.

Xbox is surveying Insiders on new energy consumption features.

A questionnaire on the Xbox Insider app, spotted by Windows Central, is gauging the potential popularity of new energy efficiency features on PC and console.

That includes the possibility of in-game features that can optimise settings (resolution, frame rate, etc) to save energy, and games automatically lowering frame rate or resolution when left idle or inactive.

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A Modern Warfare 2 developer left an amusing and easily missed Easter egg tucked away in the game's Al Bagra Fortress map.

The Easter egg in question is written in very, very, small text, and can be found on the side of one of the map's exhibits.

While at first glance it may simply look like standard and somewhat generic writing informing in-game tourists about this and that, it is actually a note from one of the game's texture artists masquerading as part of the exhibition.

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It looks like Final Fantasy 16 will be exclusive to PS5 for six months, Sony has now publicly confirmed.

PlayStation's latest promotional trailer for the console includes a snippet of Final Fantasy 16 gameplay.

The small print underneath states: "Final Fantasy 16 anticipated Summer 2023. PS5 exclusive for six months."

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The next Nintendo Indie World presentation will be broadcast this week, on Wednesday 9th November at 5pm UK time. You should expect around 25 minutes of trailers and updates on Switch indie games, Nintendo has said.

These official Nintendo shows typically feature a range of smaller Nintendo Switch games - so don't go in expecting to see Zelda or F-Zero.

High up on many fans' wishlists will likely be Hollow Knight: Silksong, which currently sits with a vague release window of... sometime in the next eight months. Will we see it this week? There's only one way to find out.

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Ark: Survival Evolved will receive new content expanding the game's story, featuring a couple of famous faces.

The content will focus on the characters Sir Edmund Rockwell and Helena Walker.

In part two of the game's Genesis expansion, Rockwell is voiced by David Tennant (everyone's favourite Doctor in Doctor Who) and Walker is voiced by Madeleine Madden (known for playing Egwene al'Vere in The Wheel of Time). Both actors will reprise their roles for the new content.

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This weekend's brilliant Gimmighoul reveal in Pokémon Go showcased the app's continuing ability to bring together fans in a moment of shared surprise.

Why are PokéStops now golden? What is this little goblin doing following me? Oh wow, this professor is from the new Scarlet and Violet games? Are all questions I had.

Now, Pokémon Go maker Niantic has laid down the details of how Gimmighoul will actually be caught - even as questions continue about its mysterious golden coins.

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Gaze upon this new frontier and it's clear this is no Sonic of the Wild, or Elden Hedgehog. Nonetheless, like those two allusions that fans have been making ever since it was announced, Sonic Frontiers is a necessary new direction for the Blue Blur to modernise with his peers - one that attempts to finally pull his speedy form into a genuine 3D game.

More than Dr. Eggman's nefarious schemes, 3D has been Sonic's long-running nemesis since his 3D debut with Sonic Adventure more than 20 years ago (although it arguably began with the cancelled Saturn game Sonic X-treme). Too fast for his own good, or for the camera to keep up, Sonic Team has opted to keep its mascot firmly within linear routes like a rollercoaster ride, hoping dazzling visuals would distract you from realising you were doing little more than holding up.

Frontiers then is the team finally having the confidence to let Sonic roam freely in vast open environments at the speed you expect him to achieve. It seems a no-brainer since, for me, traversal has always been one of the greatest pleasures in any open world game - my fondest memory of the sorely underappreciated Xenoblade Chronicles X is having an avatar who could bound across the world at a superhuman default running speed. For those concerned whether they can keep up, you can also customise Sonic's speed settings, from acceleration to turning, though I was actually fine with turning it to max.

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There's an official Stranger Things VR game on the way from developer Tender Claws.

Made in collaboration with Netlflix and the series' writers, this upcoming release will put players into the shoes of season four's main antagonist Vecna as he "explores unknown realities, forms the hive mind, and enacts his plan for revenge against Eleven and Hawkins".

All of this revenge planning and hive mind forming will see Vecna invading the memories and dreams of other characters from the show. This in turn will provide the ability for players to "harness telekinetic powers to battle humans and creatures alike". You can see a teaser for this upcoming release below.

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Blockchain technology is seemingly key to Square Enix's growth strategy.

The company has released its latest financials, with once again a drop in overall sales propped up by the success of MMORPG Final Fantasy 14.

Yet the prominence of blockchain technology is particularly eye-opening.

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Pokémon Scarlet and Violet has leaked ahead of the game's release on 18th.

Photos of the game are circulating online after a player posted them to Twitter.

The person leaking the game seems to have received their physical copy of the game early, as evidenced by them uploading a picture of the box.

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Last week, it was announced Liam Hemsworth would be taking over the role of Geralt from Superman actor Henry Cavill for the fourth season of Netflix's The Witcher adaptation.

But it turns out he was almost cast as Geralt of Rivia in 2018 when the role was first being cast.

According to a report by redanianintelligence, Hemsworth was actually a frontrunner for the part before the role ultimately went to Cavill.

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Microsoft has commented on the ongoing issues affecting Halo Infinite after its arrival late last year - after which, it says, the game "fell short" by not being able to satisfy players.

Speaking to the Friends Per Second Podcast, Microsoft's Head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty praised the team which launched Halo Infinite after working through the pandemic to get the game done - but also admitted Microsoft had fallen short with its support for the game after its arrival.

"In December I think we had a peak of around 20 million players playing the game, and just kudos to the team for building and shipping a game during some pretty challenging times, right?" Booty said. "Last year - still in the midst of the pandemic, still everybody trying to figure out how to adapt to remote work and hybird work. I think if there's a worse-case condition for trying to get games done, it is the big multi-hundred person team trying to final a game. It went smack into that. So, kudos to shipping it.

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Riot has admitted to censoring League of Legends characters in certain countries, in the wake of releasing its first gay Black hero.

K'Sante is the latest champion to be added to the game, which had its Worlds 2022 tournament this weekend featuring a performance from rapper Lil Nas X.

Yet the game's executive producer has admitted the developer would replace certain words such as "lover" and "partner" in countries with poor LGBT+ rights.

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Battlefield 1 became the most popular Battlefield game on Steam over the past week, thanks to a hefty discount.

The sale, which began on 1st November, takes a whopping 88 percent off the game's usual price and it's clearly led to a resurgence of players.

The six-year old game is now well ahead of last year's beleagured Battlefield 2042 and 2018's Battlefield 5 as the most popular game from the series on Steam.

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Gimmighoul will soon be "ambushing" a Pokémon game near you.

The new Ghost type Pokémon - which recently popped up, albeit in an uncatchable form, in Pokémon Go earlier this week - is now making its debut in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. You'll be able to find them in the Paldea region.

Here's a brief video showing them in action (click to watch on YouTube if the embed isn't working!):

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It looks like a big budget game adaptation of the John Wick movie franchise is on the way.

As spotted by Indiewire, Lionsgate's CEO recently addressed investors and confirmed that the team was "fielding proposals" about a "AAA" John Wick game to expand the multimillion dollar series beyond Hollywood movies.

Although no concrete details were shared, Jon Feltheimer said that Lionsgate "believe there is a big AAA game to be made out of John Wick" but didn't "want to say anything more" right now.

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Rumour has it, Blizzard may be set to release Diablo 4 in April 2023.

That's according to the XboxEra podcast and Windows Central, both of which believe Diablo 4's tentative "2023" release window can be narrowed down to April, with early access reportedly launching in February, and pre-orders going live as early as next month.

It's thought more news will come during December's The Game Awards, which certainly sounds plausible enough. Thankfully, we won't have long to wait to test if the rumours are true; the Awards are set for 8th December which is just a few short weeks away now.

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This week Sony announced the release date and the hefty price tag of its new virtual reality headset, the PlayStation VR2.

As a dedicated helmet-head, I figured that Sony would be aiming for a price point somewhere around that of a PS5 so the figures it quoted as pre-order prices didn't shock me too much. I've gone hands-on with the PSVR 2 in the past, so I know that it's a high quality piece of kit and, with the addition of the Sense controllers in the package, that lofty price seemed about right to me.

What didn't sit too well with me however, was the fact that the base PSVR 2 bundle seems to come with literally no games. At the time of writing this, Sony hasn't mentioned anything about a PlayStation VR Worlds style demo disc or download code being included in the packaging for the base bundle like it was for the original PSVR. With the understandable but disappointing lack of backwards compatibility for the original PSVR library, this can only be seen as a negative to any potential new adopters of the tech.

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Xbox boss Phil Spencer says "what could happen" with older Activision Blizzard franchises like StarCraft is "pretty exciting".

Asked what could be on the horizon should Microsoft's acquisition go ahead, Spencer added that he was "excited about getting to sit down with the teams at Activision and Blizzard and King to talk about back catalogue and opportunities that we might have".

"The first thing I would say is, I'm not allowed to make any decisions about what happens at Blizzard or Activision or King," Spencer told Wired (via NME). "So this is all just kind of talking and thinking about what the opportunity is.

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Riot Games has teamed with GGTEch and NUEL to launch Rising Stars, a new women's League of Legends standalone tournament.

In a bid to "promote inclusion and opportunities in esports", Riot says each competing team is "required to be entirely composed of women" aged at least 16 years old.

An online tournament for teams from across Europe - albeit one "primarily geared toward participants from the UK, Ireland, and the Nordics" - is scheduled to take place on 26th and 27th November, and played on the EUWest server. Participants require a League of Legends account "in good standing" and will battle for their share of a £3000 prize pool. Registration closes on 22nd November.

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A Modern Warfare 2 promotional campaign that gives a double XP code to US players in exchange for buying Jack Link's Pork Strips has caused a bit of a kerfuffle after purchasers realised that many have unwittingly bought packs after the codes were stolen.

As spotted by PC Gamer, rather than hide the code inside the packaging, Jack Link's Spicy Dill Pickle Pork Strips chose to add the code in a tiny little pamphlets glued onto the front. However, it looks like douchbags like this dude are going around and stealing them.

"On the ground reporting from Walmart on the Jack Links beef jerky double XP codes for Modern Warfare 2 being stolen from every store I can find," reported COD content creator, Modern Warzone.

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Overwatch 2's latest hero, Ramattra, will go live on 6th December, 2022.

Launching alongside Season 2, the new hero - a tank from the same brotherhood of monks as Zenyatta - is reportedly designed to hold off other tanks in a bid to improve the free-to-play shooter's combat balance.

Ramattra has two forms; the defensive Omnic form, and Nemesis, which is just as aggressive as it sounds.

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UPDATE 7/11/22: Amazon MMO New World has seen its player count reinvigorated, thanks to the game's recent Fresh Start update, a Steam sale, and a Twitch promotion.

Player numbers have been given a significant boost - up from a peak of around 48,000 people logging on each day to more than 130,000 - and still rising.

The leap in player activity comes alongside a Twitch drop promotion and a half price sale on Steam. Player numbers began spiking on the 2nd November - some time after the game's recent Brimstone Sands update went live on 18th October.

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Luminous Productions has released the second of its three-part behind-the-scenes (BTS) series for its upcoming action-PRG, Forspoken.

Whilst last week we got a peek at protagonist Frey's "magic-enhanced parkour" and traversal skills, this week we can "dive into the fundamentals of Frey's magical combat skills" and find out more about the types of magic, attacks, and upgrades we'll be able to unlock.

You can check it out below (click to watch it directly on YouTube if the age-gate is in the way!):

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Bayonetta 3 was reportedly "scoped as a semi open-world game".

That's according to games journalist Imran Khan, who offered an insider peek at the sequel's lengthy delay on his Patreon, reflecting on why those open world rumours seemingly didn't amount to anything in the end.

"At one point in development, Bayonetta 3 was scoped as a semi-open world game," Khan wrote on a public Patreon post. "The design was going to draw more off Astral Chain than Nier Automata, but the idea was that a large hub world would send Bayonetta (or whoever else) to different worlds which would themselves be fairly open. Maybe Super Mario 64 would be a good reference point for this.

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Wales Interactive has released a new DLC teaser and development roadmap for its "round-based co-op survival FPS" Maid of Sker spin-off, Sker Ritual.

"Here is our updated Roadmap for Early Access!" exclaims Wales Interactive. "It does not list everything we are working on (we have to keep some things a surprise!) and is only a response to the majority of features requested in the Steam Forum, Steam Reviews and on the Discord."

The studio adds that the list "doesn't include many of the on-going development such as new episodes (and the base content released for each episode), optimisation, network improvements, balancing, UI and QOL etc" and confirms that the ping system, re-roll miracles, POV increase, enemy-auto-respawn times reduction and XP levels have already been addressed.

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UK games trade body Ukie has teamed up with the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) to launch Access November, a new campaign launched under its RaiseTheGame initiative to "create meaningful cultural and behavioural change in UK game businesses".

From Monday 14th November to Friday 25th November, the campaign will offer virtual networking sessions, workshops and presentations, as well as online resources and "some in-person satellite events" to "inspire games industry professionals and companies to make their games more accessible".

You can also expect a series of game-related workshops, talks, and fireside chats at the upcoming accessibility and inclusive design conference, TechShare Pro, which include best practice resources and a workshop on "the importance of considering sight accessibility in games and workplaces".

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Persona 5 is one of the most celebrated JRPGs of modern times, packing a compelling, character-driven story, a satisfying turn-based combat system and a confident sense of style. Technically speaking, it's a very curious game: essentially, it's a PS3 title at its core with assets and rendering tech built around Sony's 2006 system, but ultimately released in 2016 on PS3 and PS4. An expanded re-release dubbed Persona 5 Royal came out a few years later on PS4, loaded with new content, gameplay improvements, and visual tweaks. After a three-year wait, that version of the game is finally out on non-PlayStation platforms, including current-gen console releases and a much-requested Switch port. So how does this PS3-derived game scale up to PS5 and Series X and is the Switch release everything it should be?

Persona 5 had a bit of an odd gestation. It was developed solely with PS3 hardware in mind, but after missing a few release dates it ended up shipping on PS3 and PS4 in the fall of 2016, as one of the last major titles to hit Sony's seventh-gen system. Models are stylised but low-poly, environments are boxy and use basic baked lighting, and texture resolution is poor. The PS4 version of the game benefitted from a 1080p rendering resolution and UI but left everything else unchanged - a very barebones conversion of the PS3 code.