Eurogamer

Tonight was Annapurna Interactive's second annual showcase, revealing what's to come for the publisher over the next few months.

Fresh off the release of viral cat sensation Stray, the showcase featured a deeper look at some previously announced games, some brand new reveals, and insight into the indie devs the publisher is currently working with.

Here's everything shown at the Annapurna Showcase.

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Warhammer 40,000: Darktide - the promising co-op shooter/melee hybrid from Vermintide developer Fatshark - has been delayed again. It's now due for a PC release on 30th November, with the Xbox Series X/S version arriving "shortly after".

This will, of course, be the second delay for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, which was announced at the tail-end of 2020 for release the following year. Unfortunately, its development - as with many recent games - was impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, and Fatshark ultimately made the decision to push its launch into 2022 in order to "focus on the level of quality on release, as well as invest in more systems to support Darktide for years to come."

March finally brought the news fans had been waiting for, with Darktide receiving a 13th September release date on PC and Xbox Series X/S, but that's now shifted again.

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As is the monthly tradition, August brings a fresh batch of titles for Xbox Games with Gold members, with the service's next four offerings now confirmed to be Saints Row 2, Monaco: What's Mine is Yours, Calico, and ScourgeBringer.

Calico, for Xbox One and Series X/S, serves up some wholesome life sim action in which players are tasked with rebuilding the local town's cat cafe - choosing its decor, baking its food, and filling it with an assortment of not necessarily feline creatures to bring in the customers. It'll be available as part of Games with Gold from between 1st and 31st August.

ScourgeBringer, Games with Gold's second Xbox One and Series X/S title for the month, is a "fast-paced free-moving roguelite platformer" that sees players, in the role of deadly warrior Kyhra, slashing and shooting their way through a post-apocalyptic world in a bid to save humanity. This one can be downloaded from 16th August to 15th September.

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Sony has unveiled the new Backbone One PlayStation Edition, an officially licensed iPhone controller created with PS Remote Play in mind.

Backbone One PlayStation Edition is identical to the existing Backbone One controller, with one key difference: it eschews the original's black colour scheme in favour of pristine white hues inspired by Sony's DualSense wireless controller. However, other familiar DualSense design elements, including parallel thumbsticks, are not replicated.

Sony is promoting the Backbone One PlayStation Edition - which is powered by the connected device - as the perfect companion to its PS Remote Play service, enabling players to stream their games from their PS4 or PS5 consoles to their iPhones using the dedicated App Store app.

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The gorgeous cyberpunk world of kitty-simulator Stray may be full of hungry Zurks, but it seems there was still enough room left over for developer BlueTwelve Studio to include a huge amount of Easter eggs.

I've cataloged 25 such secrets and references in the video below, ranging from hidden developer messages and musical memes, through to nods to famous books, games and TV shows.

One word of warning though, this video does show footage from most areas in the game so do think about paws-ing it until you've completed the game; if you want to avoid spoilers.

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Seven months after launch, Halo Infinite continues to evolve with 343 Industries embarking on an extended beta testing period for campaign co-op. This is a crucial feature for a Halo title, desperately missed on the game's debut - and clearly a challenge for the developer. After all, Halo has transitioned from a linear shooter into an open world experience, with a vast degree of freedom for the player - and the notion that up to four players can travel the map doing whatever they please wouldn't really make sense. 343's solutions are constrictive - but they do work - and overall impressions are favourable.

First impressions suggest a co-op experience close in nature to those that have gone before - but only because of the nature of the opening brace of campaign chapters. These are entirely linear in nature and 343's strategy in keeping players together is simple: there are certain 'points of no return' - such as passing a door that permanently closes behind you, or kicking off a new cutscene, that reset the positioning for all players. With that in mind, I never felt that the game was artificially keeping us closer together, it felt like a classic Halo co-op experience.

Obviously, this changes in the open world simply because it has to, with 343 setting up what it calls an Area of Operation - or AOO. This is roughly defined as a maximum distance of 300 metres between players, with warnings starting to kick in at around the 250m metre mark. Once too far apart, the player furthest away from the next objective is auto-killed, spawning closer to his counterpart. The end result is that freedom is curtailed, but the fireteam is kept together, essentially forcing a focus on the next target.

Goat Simulator 3 - which, in a fine example of a joke gone wildly out of control, is actually the direct sequel to the original Goat Simulator - has been given a release date and will be launching for PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5 on 17th November.

The original Goat Simulator, developed by Coffee Stain Studios, launched back in 2014, delivering a daft blast of physics-based nonsense in which players took control of a goat, causing chaos, inflicting damage, and accruing points across an open-world map.

Its goat-themed mayhem struck a chord and the game went on to sell "millions" of copies, in turn convincing Coffee Stain that a sequel was required. Goat Simulator 3 (because sequential numbering be damned) was announced earlier this year, promising, among other things, a new sandbox world known as San Angora, full of quests, collectibles, and secrets.

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The Xenoblade Chronicles 3 team has assured us that there is still plenty of life left in the series.

Speaking as part of an official interview published by Nintendo, Xenoblade developer Genki Yokota was asked whether we would ever see more from Xenoblade Chronicles, given that he had previously called 3 "the culmination of the series".

In response, Yokota replied: "Yes it will still go on." In fact, he said he wanted to keep it going for "as long as possible".

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This week on the Eurogamer Newscast, we're discussing Rockstar, and how its internal improvements may also change its games and the wider games industry.

Yesterday's eye-catching report into Rockstar discussed positive changes for employees and suggested this new company outlook could also be reflected in Grand Theft Auto 6, whenever it finally arrives. How important are these changes, and could the industry as a whole benefit? Or should we be calling some of these things out as long overdue, and simply just a bare minimum?

Also this week, the Nier: Automata secret church/door - the apparent existence of which has been puzzling fans and the wider internet. Is it a brand new discovery? A very clever mod? Or an incredibly elaborate marketing ploy for a new Nier game by the tight-lipped Yoko Taro? Join Ed Nightingale, Ishraq Subhan, Liv Ngan and myself as we try to explain.

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Minecraft Java Edition's new update is here, and developer Mojang has responded to players who still aren't happy with its Player Reporting system.

The new changes were first introduced a month ago in a pre-release of version 1.19.1 and players were already voicing their concerns online.

JewelTK, who runs their own Minecraft server, posted a video on Minecraft's subreddit explaining why they were against the change.

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Two years since its launch in early access, Obsidian's garden survival adventure Grounded is finally getting a full release on 27th September.

The announcement was made by game director Adam Brennecke, along with news of a final early access update out today which includes a huge revision to the game's armour and upgrade systems.

There's also a secret feature called the Homestretch included in the update that will be turned on at a later date.

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Amazon has announced the free games available as part of its August Games with Prime lineup.

They are: StarCraft: Remastered, Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, Beasts of Maravilla Island, Recompile, ScourgeBringer and Family Mysteries: Poisonous Promises.

All six titles will be available from 1st August for Prime Gaming members.

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A year ago today, the "A Better Ubisoft" group penned an open letter in solidarity with Activision Blizzard workers which also called out Ubisoft's own management for its handling of misconduct scandals in the past.

This group has been campaigning for improved working conditions since the company was hit with allegations of a toxic work environment, including numerous accounts of sexual harassment and assault concerning multiple employees at the company.

However, the group says, its demands for change have not been met despite Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot vowing he would do "everything in [his] power to ensure that everyone... feels welcomed, respected, and safe".

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Life is Strange is getting its first tie-in prose novel, titled Steph's Story.

The book, which is set to launch on 21st March 2023, will chart the life of fan-favourite D&D lover Steph while on the road with her bandmate Izzie.

This sounds like the time period which directly precedes last year's True Colors and its Steph-focused DLC chapter Wavelengths, which I enjoyed. That DLC included a few voice clips from Izzie in the form of memories, and hinted at a sad end to Steph's time roadtripping while in a musical duo.

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Yesterday, EA had its big gameplay reveal for FIFA 23 which showed off all the fancy current-gen features in action.

But some eagle-eyed fans noticed that the polish for the trailer was not all there.

Skip to 3:06, and you'll notice a player doing a T-Pose as the narrator discusses how the improvements to the game make it feel more like "real world football."

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Publisher Asmodee Digital is pulling its Pandemic game from the Nintendo eShop, and is disabling online multiplayer in its Switch version of Catan.

For the former, an announcement on Twitter stated the game would be pulled from 31st July, although existing owners will not be impacted.

"The initial digital game was released 9 years ago, and we no longer feel the current quality and reliability are on par with what Pandemic deserves on digital platforms," reads the statement.

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Nintendo has detailed the second dollop of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC headed to your Nintendo Switch on 4th August - and there's some proper bangers in the roster.

N64 classic Kalimari Desert is included, as is DS masterpiece Waluigi Pinball. Mushroom Gorge from Mario Kart Wii, Snow Land from Mario Kart Advance, plus Mario Circuit 3 from the SNES are also in.

These are joined by New York Minute and Sydney Spring from smartphone spin-off Mario Kart Tour, plus the new Sky-High Sundae track - a future Mario Tour addition.

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Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2 is old, clunky and boring, but at the same time I am entranced by it. This is history I'm playing; the game is 18 years old. There's nothing you can do short of remaking it that's going to make it feel young and exciting again - and Wizards of the Coast tried that last year with Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance, and look how that turned out (clue: not well). So all those lumps and bumps I feel while playing it - all those things that have been smoothed by the many waves of action role-playing games since - I don't mind them. In fact, I love them, because they're what revisiting Dark Alliance 2 is all about.

Quick history lesson: Dark Alliance was an experiment, really, in bringing Dungeons & Dragons to console. Interplay didn't want a slower, wordy adventure like BioWare's Baldur's Gate but something more suited to a console audience - something faster, something more action-packed. So it enlisted Snowblind Studios (which would go on to make something of a spiritual successor in The Lord of the Rings: War in the North - remember that? We gave it 4/10) to make one. There was reticence but when BG Dark Alliance came out in 2001, it was surprisingly well received, so a sequel was greenlit.

Zombies have returned to Call of Duty Warzone in a limited-time mode called Rebirth of the Dead.

While we last saw zombies in the now blown-up Verdansk map, this time they will be invading Rebirth Island, which was first introduced with the release of Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War.

The new mode, developed by support studio Beenox, has had some significant changes from the previous mode to better fit into Rebirth Island's smaller map design.

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Many have hoped Rockstar will one day release a Bully remake or sequel, but currently these hopes seem unlikely to bear fruit.

Now, however, a fan has taken matters into their own hands, and remade a trailer for the game in Unreal Engine 5, bringing it into the modern age.

YouTube channel TeaserPlays, a "Graphics Designer studio", has released its vision of Bully today (thanks, Dexerto).

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Steam now supports Nintendo's classic controllers released for the Switch.

The patch notes from Valve state: "Added support for Nintendo Online classic controllers". That means you can use your NES, SNES, Mega Drive, or N64 wireless controllers with PC games.

If you're looking to grab a controller, though, they're available exclusively on Nintendo's store for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers.

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After three years, the Pokémon Centre pop-up store will be returning to London in August.

The last time a pop-up was held in the UK was from 19th October to 15th November back in 2019 at Westfield Shepherd's Bush location.

This year, the pop-up will be held alongside the Pokémon World Championships at ExCeL London from 17th to 21st August. The Pokémon World Championships is an invite-only esports event run by The Pokémon Company, but the store will be open for anyone to attend.

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My wife plays GTA Online a couple of times a week. It's not hard to see why she's stuck with it. Rockstar's endlessly unspooling criminal playground is weird and sometimes creaky, but it's still beautiful - no other company has captured the rosy opioid bloom of LA light like this - and it's still fun. More than anything, it's unpredictable: whenever you go into GTA Online, you always come out with some kind of story.

Last night Sarah was busy, so I fired it up alone. I wanted to check out the new GTA Online Criminal Enterprises update. But this is important for what follows: I don't regularly play the game myself. I watch it from the sofa a lot, but I almost never pick up the controller.

Criminal Enterprises brings quite a lot to GTA Online as far as I can tell. New weapons and new vehicles are just the start of it. There's also a suite of story missions, though, and this is what I was interested in.

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The death of a sim can be an emotional time. The Grim Reaper shows up with his scythe in hand, the family gathers around to send their loved one off, and a period of mourning descends upon the house. But, if a Sim has lived a good, long life, this can also be a chance for celebration in recognition of time well spent.

However, a new glitch was accidentally introduced in a recent update for The Sims 4, and it is fast tracking this whole process. This means that some elderly sims have been dropping dead well before their time. As well as this, children are rapidly becoming teens, teens becoming young adults and so on.

Players are reporting this all happening after a visit to create-a-sim (CAS), or during the loading screens. This is even when the game's "Long Lifespan" is enabled.

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I've been a bit too busy to do my usual VR Corner posts these past couple of weeks so I thought I'd take this moment of mid-week quiet to let you know about two recent flatscreen to VR updates that have been rocking my world.

First up there's a brand new mod for The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe Edition from legendary VR modder Raicuparta. I've already featured a couple of Rai's flatscreen to VR mods on our YouTube channel, including his excellent Firewatch VR mod and his stunning Outer Wilds VR mod.

On the offical side of things, Straight Back Games, the developer behind the terrifying team-based survival game Devour has just released an official VR update for the game.

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Blizzard and NetEase's Diablo Immortal has notched up $100m in player spending after two months, almost entirely without the game's Chinese market.

That's according to reliable app store analytics firm Sensor Tower, which compared Diablo Immortal's start to that of Pokémon Go (which took just two weeks to rake in $100m) and Fire Emblem Heroes (10 weeks).

Diablo Immortal revenues now seem set to accelerate, since the app arrived belatedly in China this week.

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New videos of the Nier secret church have been released that appear to reference Nier Replicant. The plot thickens!

As we've reported, reddit user sadfutago has been posting videos of a secret church area in Nier: Automata that has been previously unseen since it was released five years ago. Even Yoko Taro chimed in.

Now they've posted new, extended videos to reddit with more gameplay of the church area. They show a different character - 9S - battling a "black blocky guy" the poster is struggling to beat, as well as new written dialogue in Japanese.

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Sony is finally adding support for 1440p displays to the PlayStation 5, to the cheers of many players, particularly those on PC, with high refresh-rate QHD monitors.

This has been a long requested feature by PS5 owners, and a feature that the Xbox Series X/S has supported since launch.

The feature is currently only available for users signed up to the beta firmware channel, but it should be released to all users very soon.

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There I am, admiring a particularly luminescent blue tuber in my hydroponic garden, when an alarm begins to blare. Pirates, raiding from the skies! A minor inconvenience, sure, but one worth dealing with swiftly, so I hop on Blort - my trusty translucent pet sphere - and roll purposefully, if not exactly speedily, toward the throbbing heft of my organic ship, the whir of a friendly robot drone jabbering somewhere behind me.

And then it's up, up, up, we go, past my newly renovated capital ship and its armada of frigates (the latest addition, a pulsating tentacled mass, wiggles encouragingly), past a space station recently commandeered by pirates, and then, with a little more room to manoeuvre, it's time to do my worst. Within seconds the pirate threat is no more and peace, for now at least, is restored. Before I go home, though, I summon the imposing hulk of the inter-dimensional Space Anomaly and head in for a friendly rendezvous. Cake has been promised.

No Man's sky has, it's fair to say, come a long, long way since its undoubtedly controversial launch in 2016. What was once a game of low-key, curiosity-driven exploration across a beautiful, often haunting, procedurally generated universe has morphed into something far bigger, far bolder, and, I think, after countless revisions and refinements, quite brilliant indeed.

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Gran Turismo 7's July patch has squeaked in just before the month is up, bringing three new cars to the ever-expanding roster in the free update - and this update brings a little bit more besides.

The cars are a fine selection, led by another Skyline but a pretty special one at that - the Group 5 Skyline Super Silhouette, a brilliantly boxy racing beast that terrorised race tracks in the 80s. If you prefer your cars with a few more curves then there's a Maserati A6GCS/53 Spyder, an early example from the Italian manufacturer that established many of the styling cues that remain to this day. Finally there's a Porsche 918 Spyder, a hypercar that's been notable in its absence from recent Gran Turismo games.

That's all well and good, but the real star of the update is excused by the Tomica sponsorship carried on that Skyline Super Silhouette with an update to the Scapes photo mode allowing you to take your cars to toy towns and pose for snaps. It's not quite Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels, but it's a fun new feature nevertheless.

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Point-and-click specialist Wadjet Eye Games - the studio behind the acclaimed likes of Unavowed and the celebrated Blackwell series - is teaming up with indie studio Cloak and Dagger Games to publish its forthcoming folk horror adventure The Excavation of Hob's Barrow on PC, Mac, and Linux later this year.

While the name might not be familiar, Cloak and Dagger Games has been steadily making a name for itself in the point-and-click genre over the last half-decade with a series of idiosyncratic short-form adventures, primarily within the realm of horror. A few of them, including deliciously creepy early title A Date in the Park, with its expert ratcheting of unease, can be played for free.

The Excavation of Hob's Barrow is Cloak and Dagger's first new title since 2019's Lovecraft-inspired freebie The Terrible Old Man, and follows the Victorian-era adventure of antiquarian and author Thomasina Bateman as she arrives in the remote village of Bewlay after receiving a mysterious summons concerning its ancient barrows.

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Sony has announced its plans to bring eight Yakuza titles to its new look PlayStation Plus service this year.

These will be Yakuza 0, 3, 4, 5, 6, Kiwami, Kiwami 2 and Like a Dragon.

These games will all be available to Premium users, while Extra subscribers will be able to get thier hands on Yakuzas 0, 6, Kiwami and Kiwami 2 on their release. The first of these titles will be arriving next month.

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Successful Steam social platform VRChat is in a state of disarray following a disruptive update that banned all mods, leaving the game unplayable for many who rely on modded accessibility features.

The mod ban accompanies the integration of Easy Anti-Cheat in an attempt to combat "malicious modded clients".

The latest debacle began earlier this week, when VRChat announced the ban and the inclusion of Easy Anti-Cheat, as well as an open beta beginning immediately to test the update. On Discord, VRChat staff member Tupper revealed they expected the update to be rolled out to all players within 24 hours.

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EA has confirmed FIFA 23's current-gen exclusive gameplay features, and in doing so outlined the differences between the various versions of the game.

FIFA 23 has certain features on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, PC (finally!) and Google Stadia that are not present on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

(I'm leaving out the Nintendo Switch version here because, as we know, it's yet another "Legacy Edition".)

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If you can pry your eyes away from England's stunning 4-0 semi-final victory against Sweden in the Euros last night (I've had that Alessia Russo backheel nutmeg goal on repeat all afternoon), have a gander at FIFA 23's gameplay reveal.

The video, below, shows off FIFA 23's new gameplay features, some of which are exclusive to the current-gen versions of the game (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, PC and Google Stadia).

(Check out my roundup of everything FIFA 23 on current-gen has exclusively for more.)

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The Nintendo Switch Online app has a new update, which lets you send friend requests from your phone.

Adding friends on Nintendo Switch has always been slightly cumbersome, but Nintendo has made a step towards making the process a bit more streamlined on its app.

You can now send friend requests from within the app by typing in a friend code, nicely complementing the update from March we reported on that allowed users to easily copy their friend code. Alternatively, you can get your friend code as a URL or QR code, which can then be used by someone else to send you a friend request.

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Rockstar's long-awaited Grand Theft Auto 6 is still at least two years away but being made under improved conditions, an extensive new Bloomberg report has detailed.

The report centres on changes within Rockstar since the company's public reckoning with crunch in 2018, when founder Dan Houser said his team had worked "100-hour weeks" to finish Red Dead Redemption 2, and after various reports of the company's frat-house-style operation.

Subsequent changes to working styles and benefits are part of an attempt to "reinvent" the company as a more progressive workplace, the report states, which also extends to the content featured in its games.

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The peer-to-peer servers for Evolve: Stage 2 have been resurrected.

As noticed by NME, Evolve: Stage 2 players are now able to matchmake and join peer-to-peer multiplayer games online once more.

This change has come thanks to a fan-made Discord channel for the game, which reached out to publisher 2K in a bid to find out more about its decision to close the servers down (something that happened all the way back in 2018).

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A bug is plaguing Diablo Immortal which has seen players losing out on XP rewards for gaining levels. This is even though Blizzard has supposedly released a fix.

As noted by PCGamerN, players reported earlier this month that they were not receiving XP rewards as expected for progressing through the game's battle pass.

"I completed bounties and finished a battle pass rank," wrote one user on reddit. "The XP animation played but the XP bar did not increase at all."

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Microsoft is testing a new set of logos that will appear as "badges" over titles in your game library.

These badges are already used to denote titles available via Xbox Game Pass, or that have Xbox Series X/S-specific features.

New badges are being tested for other game conditions, so you can see at a glance what you have available to play. For example, a new logo will appear over games that are disc installs where that disc isn't currently inserted - perhaps it's around a friend's? Or down the back of the sofa?

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