Pikmin Bloom, the new walking game from Pokémon Go maker Niantic and Nintendo, is available now in the UK for iPhone and Android.
As of today, access to the app has been unlocked in dozens more countries, including mainland Europe, Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere. Interested if you're country is now included? Niantic has a full country availability list.
Awesome Games Done Quick is back with more charity speed-running shenanigans in few short months - once again returning as an online-only event in response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic - and organisers have now revealed the sizeable list of runs scheduled for the show.
Awesome Games Done Quick 2022 takes place from 9th-16th January next year and will span more than 170 speedruns, all raising money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation and covering the usual mix of triple-A titles, smaller-scale indie offerings, retro classics, and oddities.
Earlier this year, developer Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone surprised fans with news that Stardew Valley was making the jump to the tabletop with an official board game adaptation. Unfortunately, the first batch went fast - but those that missed out on the initial run now have a second chance at acquiring the game, with orders re-opening this Wednesday.
Online orders will once again only be available for shipping within the US, but Barone says he's teamed up with a number of distributors in the UK, the EU, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand this time around, and that copies will be available directly from local stores in these regions. "It's not possible for us to keep track of which stores specifically," he adds, "so the best way is to contact your local store and ask if they are carrying copies.
As the calendar flips from October to November, and you pop that sexy calculator costume back in the cupboard for another year, Sony arrives with a fresh batch of PlayStation Now titles, which this month include Mafia: Definitive Edition, Celeste, and Final Fantasy 9.
Last year's Mafia: Definitive Edition is, of course, the fancied up version of Illusion Softworks' fondly remembered open-world mobster game from 2002. This new version certainly looks the part, reimagining the 1930s city of Lost Heaven for modern hardware, but Eurogamer's Chris Tapsell didn't feel the the tweaks to its ageing gameplay were quite so successful.
Another week, another DF Direct Weekly and our show kicks off with the re-reveal of Halo Infinite's campaign - the source of much controversy upon its initial showing last year. From my perspective, it's a solid showing with clear improvements in many areas of the visual presentation, plus a lot more thought put into the edit. However, questions persist: we're still only seeing just one environment when the initial engine reveal promised so much more. Also, it's not yet clear what Halo has to gain from its metamorphosis into a full open world beyond upgrade paths and resource management - but with just over a month before release, answers should be forthcoming in short order.
Beyond that, the team discuss last week's full-throated reveal of the Intel 12th Gen Core architecture, which is perhaps so radical, Intel might have perhaps considered dropping the Core brand altogether and coming up with something new to hammer home the scale of the achievement here. Running on a new fabrication node and combining more powerful performance processing cores with smaller efficiency cores, single thread performance looks state of the art, while multi-core capabilities seem to be up there with AMD's brilliant Ryzen 9 5950X - the CPU that I chose myself for my own workstation. Power efficiency? Well you can ramp up the processor to max power for best performance, but there are still remarkable perf per watt gains against prior Intel chips at lower power points.
Meghna Jayanth, the award-winning writer and narrative designer of games like 80 Days, Sunless Sea, Horizon: Zero Dawn and Sable, has confirmed she'll be working on the new game by Falcon Age developer Outer Loop.
She told me this during Episode 2 of The New Eurogamer podcast, which was made available to everyone today.
Mr. Driller Drill Land will launch for PlayStation and Xbox this Thursday, 4th November.
This is the same remake which Bandai Namco launched for Nintendo Switch and PC back in 2020, which in turn was a souped up version of the series' 2002 Japan-only entry for GameCube.
I don't know this virtual woman whose cartons I'm unpacking, not really - I never see her face or hear her voice, but I feel connected to her all the same, just through the act of unpacking her belongings. Unpacking is what it says on the tin, a short game about unpacking after a move, but developer Witch Beam somehow managed to fit a whole life inside, expressed through holiday souvenirs, shampoo brands and plush animals.
Unpacking follows a woman across 6 formative moves over a timespan of roughly twenty years, starting with her childhood bedroom. Each move starts with boxes, neatly stacked in a random room, inviting you to just pull things out and find a place for them. Where you place items is largely up to you - Unpacking has a few rules and is fairly strict about you just dumping things on the floor, but you're given plenty of freedom, and if you don't like that the magnetic whiteboard absolutely has to go on the fridge, you can even activate an accessibility setting that lets you put stuff wherever.
This year's Black Friday 2021 sale is almost upon us which means hefty discounts on a massive selection of gaming mice and keyboards. Whether you're seeking out a new pair of SteelSeries headphones or looking to cop a Corsair mouse at a discounted price, we've rounded up the best of what's out there.
While we've not officially arrived at the big sales day yet, gaming peripherals such as mice and keyboards get discounted throughout the year and there are some great deals available at the time of writing. As always, be sure to bookmark this page and keep checking back as we'll be updating it regularly once retailers announce their Black Friday deals for 2021.
Even when she was writing Harry Potter fanfiction as a child - something I'm sure she won't thank me for sharing - she was doing something she still does now: questioning the world around her and challenging the parts of she doesn't like. It's a mindset that would propel her to fame when collaborating on Inkle's celebrated narrative adventure 80 Days, as she unpicked the famous Jules Verne novel and the backwards colonial attitudes in it.
Since then, she's only gone from strength to strength, working on renowned projects such as Sunless Sea, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Boyfriend Dungeon and, more recently, open-world adventure Sable (when we talked, it had only been out a day). She is Meghna Jayanth, a leading voice in video game writing and narrative design, and this, in roughly an hour, is her life.
Stars of Blood, a long-lost space pirate game once in the works at Valve, has been glimpsed in newly-surfaced concept art.
The game's existance was acknowledged by Valve boss Gabe Newell during an interview in 2012, although the project had already been canned by that point.
Microsoft has announced the games coming to Xbox Game Pass and it's an exciting month ahead.
At the top of the billing is Forza Horizon 5, available day one from 9th November across PC, console and cloud. The latest in the series is set in Mexico and is looking stunning.
UPDATE 01/11/21: Resident Evil's Nemesis now also has a blight costume in Dead by Daylight.
That means not only do both Nemesis and Pyramid Head have Blighted Sets as part of the Hallowed Curse Collection, it also brings these two iconic horror franchises together. Both costumes are available now from the in-game store.
This year's Black Friday sale officially kicks off on Friday 26 November and we're expecting to see plenty of discounts on Logitech gaming peripherals. Last year saw some very impressive discounts on best-selling headsets, mice, keyboards and accessories and we can expect to see more deals getting announced as we draw closer to this year's sale.
While there's still a couple of weeks to wait until this year's Black Friday sale, Amazon is currently listing a decent selection of Logitech gaming peripherals at discounted prices. If you really can't wait until the end of a month to pick up a new mouse or keyboard at a discounted price, we've rounded up some of the best deals available right now.
Epic Games' Chinese version of Fortnite will shut down on 15th November after almost three years.
This standalone version of Fortnite's battle royale mode was operated in the country by Tencent, and featured numerous differences in order to comply with China's strict video game guidelines.
One thing the Eurogamer Podcast was really good at in the past was giving our writers a way to show themselves outside of the pieces they write for the site. I think this provided an opportunity for you to get to know us, beyond the words, as people, which we are, horns and tails and hooves aside. And I didn't want to lose that with the new incarnation of the Podcast, because it's nice to show you who we are, and there aren't many opportunities for it.
That's why I want to steadily pull in members of the Eurogamer team and talk to them the same way I would any of my guests, and have them share their lives and experiences and build a picture of who they are. My guinea pig for the first of these is someone who has been - and will continue to be - front and centre of Eurogamer for years: deputy editor Martin Robinson. He celebrated his 10th anniversary here earlier this year, and we love him for his reliably contrary views and unrelenting passion for racing games.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons' upcoming Happy Home Paradise expansion will be the game's "first and only paid DLC", Nintendo has now clarified.
The Mario maker previously said this week's huge 2.0 update for the game would be its last major free release, marking the end of regular new content for the game. But this still left the door open for future paid offerings.
New details have emerged on Haunted Chocolatier, the next game from Stardew Valley creator ConcernedApe.
The game was surprise announced last month. Now, in a new blog post, ConcernedApe has detailed its combat system.
Sega has announced plans to explore a "strategic alliance" with Xbox to produce "large-scale, global" games built using Microsoft's Azure cloud platform.
The Sonic maker said the agreement would form "a key part of Sega's mid to long-term strategy", which it has dubbed "Super Game". This initiative is designed to develop games "where the key focuses are 'global', 'online', 'community' and 'IP utilisation'", it said today.
Nintendo has revealed it's partnered with Lego to bring us three new Lego Nintendo-themed sets and this time, they're based upon everyone's favourite sidekick and his spooky adventures in Luigi's Mansion.
"Snap on your Poltergust and get ready for some fun!" teases the trailer's description. "Defeat ghostly enemies, solve puzzles, and discover new ways to play. Join the adventure with Lego Super Mario Luigi's Mansion Sets coming soon!"
ArtPlay has confirmed it is deviating from its "previously released roadmap" for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night to bring a new character "NOT from the world of Bloodstained" to the acclaimed 2019 Castlevania spiritual successor from Koji Igarashi.
After acknowledging that "some technical issues have slowed down [its] production timetable", Artplay apologised for "the long delay between updates" and detailed what's coming next for fans of the Metroidvania adventure.
Amazon's new MMO, New World, has reportedly lost more than half its playerbase just a month after its launch on PC.
Despite hitting an impressive all-time concurrent peak of just shy of a million players on 3rd October, Forbes spotted that the numbers on SteamCharts have taken something of a dip, with its concurrent rate falling around 135,000 players every week since launch.
Nintendo's Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack overview trailer is now the most disliked video on Nintendo's YouTube channel ever.
As spotted by our pals at VGC, with 104K downvotes (it was 103K when I started writing this) to just 17K likes, the Expansion Pack trailer took just a fortnight to eclipse that Metroid Prime: Federation Force trailer from E3 2015, which sports just 11K likes to an eyewatering 96K dislikes.
Nintendo has shuttered offices in California, USA, and Toronto, Canada.
A report by Kotaku states that Friday, 29th October 2021, was the last operating day for employees in Nintendo's Redwood City location, one of three main Nintendo offices for Nintendo of America. Around 100 employees are thought to be affected by the closure in California, although it's unclear how many staff at the Canadian office have been forced to relocate or lose their jobs.
id Software is currently advertising a dozen job openings at its Texas studio, sparking speculation that a new Quake instalment might be on the way.
Let's face it - a development studio advertising for developers isn't particularly newsworthy. In this instance, however, Zenimax stated several times that the new hires will be contributing to "the development of a long-running iconic action FPS", and makes mention of "sci-fi and fantasy environments" - and that's the bit that's got everyone a little excited.
Slender Man is making unexpected appearances in Phasmophobia.
The ghosthunting game's latest update, Nightmare, rolled out earlier this week, although developer Kinetic Games didn't give away much about the new adventure beyond the fact it involved camping in the wilderness with the new map, Maple Lodge campsite.
Mega Drive owners didn't often glance enviously at their Super Nintendo friends. After all, we had amazing platform games. We had fantastic shoot 'em ups. We had great arcade conversions. But there was one thing we didn't have: the sprawling RPGs of the Nintendo console, such as The Secret Of Mana, Final Fantasy and The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past. True, there were Mega Drive RPGs, but none with quite the epic feel and expanse of their Nintendo peers. Then, for a brief period in the early 90s, it didn't matter. Because we had Buck Rogers: Countdown To Doomsday, a sci-fi RPG the likes of which never again appeared on the Sega console.
Countdown To Doomsday began life in 1990 as a PC, Commodore 64 and Amiga game. Released as part of its Gold Box series by Strategic Simulations Inc. (better known as SSI), the game was based on TSR's Buck Rogers XXVC table-top role-playing game, itself a blending together of the famous sci-fi character with the Dungeons & Dragons second edition ruleset. As was common at the time, Countdown presents a first-person exploration view combined with an isometric display for combat. Yet while the original has its fans, it's the Mega Drive conversion, released a year later, that is the most loved.
A US national security panel is investigating Tencent's £919m takeover of Sumo Group.
Sumo, which is based in Sheffield but has studios in the US, told Reuters that Chinese megacorp Tencent had agreed to offer undertakings to gain approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which assesses deals to ensure they do not hurt national security.
Developer Eidos Montreal's take on Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy brings us one of the very best story-driven games of 2021 - and it's great to see Square-Enix pivot back firmly to a single-player action game. There's no multiplayer, no online, not even co-op - and refreshingly, there's not the slightest hint of the 'games as a service' concept that sat so uneasily with Marvel's Avengers. It's all about you, playing as Peter Quill aka Star-Lord, haphazardly adventuring through a well-scripted story, chapter by chapter. Based on the Dawn Engine, as used in Deus Ex Mankind Divided, Guardians of the Galaxy is a genuine treat, but how does it play out on the new wave of consoles?
First off, I really want to stress that Guardians of the Galaxy is a genuine surprise, an exceptional game and a visual tour-de-force. It often looks stunning - and that starts with the locations. The Quarantine Zone, a planet of derelict machinery fused with a pink crystalline gel, is a perfect backdrop for the Guardians' first mission. Materials come out beautifully in the midday sun. Light shafts seep from behind pillars of dense scrapyard tech, giving the world a rich, opulent look. Lighting also brings out the sharp, specular layer on the pink rubble, a lot of which is destructible. All round, there's a heavy art-driven approach to each area and every set-piece. Later planets have wildly different biomes, of course. The second mission puts us under rainy, scorched skies, for example, while wind physics affect foliage. It's a battle against the elements as we hop between moss-covered islands - where again, material work is stand-out.
Age of Empires 4 is off to a flyer on Steam.
At the time of this article's publication, Microsoft's real-time strategy game had 64,550 concurrent players on Steam - with the number growing slowly but steadily throughout the day. That's more concurrent players than Destiny 2, Warframe and Civilization 6.
While Sony would perhaps prefer we all forget about the PS Vita and PSP, the spirit of Sony's foray into handheld gaming will perhaps live on in Valve's Steam Deck.
Yesterday, Sony's Shuhei Yoshida tweeted a picture showing the PC version of Guerrilla's Horizon Zero Dawn running on Valve's upcoming handheld gaming machine - and lovely it looks indeed.
Toys "R" Us is reportedly coming back to the UK.
The famous toy shop chain, which sold video games, toppled into administration in March 2018, closing 100 stores in the UK and 800 stores in the US, and putting thousands of people out of a job.
The leaks continue for Warner Bros.' Smash Bros-style game Multiversus.
Multiversus, which Warner Bros. has yet to announce, has suffered a number of leaks in the last week, including details of playable characters and even a portion of the game's character select screen.
GoldenEye 007 is no longer banned in Germany.
As our friends at Eurogamer Germany report, Rare's N64 classic is no longer on Germany's list of media that cannot be advertised or sold to minors.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Anniversary Edition has new quests tapping into Morrowind and Oblivion, Bethesda has revealed.
Anniversary Edition, which is due out 11th November to tie in with Skyrim's 10th birthday, includes an all-new batch of creations, outlined in the video below.
Six years after its original Japanese release, I spent the summer savouring The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. There's an enormous amount to marvel at, from fantastic localisation to wonderfully expressive characters, to thrilling courtroom turnabouts and revelations I'll try to avoid spoiling here. But what struck me most was how, in charting accidental student lawyer Ryunosuke Naruhodo's journey from Meiji Japan to Victorian England, this is a rare game that captures the immigrant experience.
The premise of many games do, of course, involve journeying to new worlds. But even in the realms of fantasy or sci-fi, they can almost always be read from a Western, borderline colonialist, perspective. The term 'immigrant' itself comes loaded with connotations, especially considering Westerners who move abroad are referred to as expats instead.
Xbox Live Gold subscribers with a hankering for freebies will have a fresh selection of games to add to their libraries next week, including Kingdom Two Crowns and Moving Out.
Moving Out, for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, will be available to download as part of next month's Xbox Games With Gold offerings from 1st-30th November. Developed by SMG Studio and DevM Games, it's a raucous, physics-based moving simulator, in which friends team up for some knockabout furniture-shifting action across increasingly hazardous environs.
