Eurogamer

It has been, long-suffering fans will not need reminding, some years since Metroid's last proper outing. How long exactly depends who you ask; four years have passed since Mercury Steam's solid remake of series curio Metroid 2, eleven since Team Ninja's action-oriented and highly divisive Other M that some would rather forget, and it's been just shy of two decades since Metroid Fusion, the last original 2D adventure and the game to which Metroid Dread acts as a direct sequel.

For all that, though, it's not as if Metroid's ever really been away. Indeed, in many ways Yoshio Sakamoto's series has been inescapable in recent years, the Metroidvania genre cast partly in its likeness reaching near ubiquity thanks to the likes of the sumptuous Ori, the melancholic, hard-edged Hollow Knight or the perfectly pitched pixel charm of Axiom Verge. How exactly can Nintendo and Mercury Steam make up for that prolonged absence, whilst making sure Metroid remains relevant to an audience that's gorged on its imitators?

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When Nintendo finally unveiled the Switch OLED Model, impressions were mixed - it wasn't a more powerful system, it was not the mythical 'Switch Pro'. Instead, we were looking at a more incremental upgrade: the existing model improved via a larger, OLED panel along with quality of life improvements including a more robust kickstand. On the face of it then, perhaps not a big deal. However, the truth is that the Switch OLED Model will live or die according to the quality of its screen - and as an OLED enthusiast, I was really looking forward to checking it out. And the truth is, it's a big, big upgrade to the handheld gaming experience.

The first thing you'll notice when you take the Switch OLED out of the package is the quality of the new materials. The screen is now glossy, as is the bezel around it. The rail system that holds the Joycons in place feels more solid with less wobble and the whole device simply feels like a more premium design. Along the top, numerous changes are made to core elements: the power and volume buttons are different in shape and feel while the game card slot now uses a slimmer cover, which is slightly trickier to open than the original Switch.

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EA Sports has released FIFA 22's first big patch, and it makes some key changes to gameplay.

Chief among them is a nerf to the goalkeepers, which are particularly powerful in this year's game (check out Eurogamer's FIFA 22 review for more).

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For many fans, Far Cry 3 was the pinnacle of the Far Cry experience. It cast likeable jock douche Jason Brody as a fish out of water, learning to survive in the jungles and beaches of the Rook Islands. Underskilled, outnumbered and stranded on a strange lump of rock and moss with the psychotic Vaas hot on your heels, it always felt like you were one tiny step away from tragedy and an untimely death.

More recent Far Cry's have progressively steered away from 3's set-up, making each protagonist more and more of a one-person war machine - it's less about survival of the individual and more about the survival of a revolution. With Far Cry 6, we see the culmination of that ideology - Ubisoft boasts that on Yara, you'll be made to feel like a single Guerilla fighter taking up the space of an entire army. Dani Rojas is ex-military, instantly proficient in all weapons and vehicles, and a natural, but reluctant leader. They were made for this.

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Video-sharing platforms such as Twitch will have to take further measures to protect users from harmful content, according to Ofcom.

New regulations are intended to protect users from content relating to terrorism, child sex abuse and racism, with VSPs such as Twitch, TikTok, Snapchat and Vimeo expected to take "appropriate measures".

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Achievement images for the upcoming (but still officially unannounced) remasters of GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas have spilled online, in the latest leak pointing to the buffed up trilogy's imminent reveal.

The new achievement art, posted to Twitter by GTANet, come from an update to Rockstar's own game launcher made available this week. Game icons for the three remasters were also found.

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Universal Studios Japan - home to Super Nintendo World - has signed a "long-term partnership" with Pokémon.

A short statement issued today confirmed plans for the theme park to work with The Pokémon Company and begin integrating the hugely-popular pocket monster franchise from as soon as 2022.

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Do you, like me, find yourself firing up No Man's Sky with giddy enthusiasm with every new update, eager to sample Hello Games' latest delights, only to become immediately overwhelmed, prod a few things hesitantly, then turn it off half an hour later clouded in an air of bewilderment? Then allow me to introduce you to No Man's Sky's latest Expedition: Cartographers.

Expeditions, in case you're out of the loop (or, equally likely, at the other end of the loop, still trying to figure out everything that got released in-between), are effectively No Man's Sky's stab at live-service-style seasonal content. They're limited-time, curated experiences that condense and reshuffle the game's sprawling tangle of systems into a series of progression-based milestone challenges that plop everyone on the same starting planet and reward fun cosmetic doo-hickeys to those that get to the end.

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Ubisoft has announced Ghost Recon Frontline, a new free-to-play class-based installment in its long-running tactical military shooter series.

Frontline will offer a variety of modes, but its "flagship" offering available at launch will be Expedition, a 102-person large-scale mode where teams of three players complete objectives before calling for extraction.

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The main Kingdom Hearts trilogy is coming to Nintendo Switch - but via cloud streaming.

Nintendo made the announcement during today's final Super Smash Bros. Ultimate character confirmation - which was Sora, the main star of the Kingdom Hearts franchise.

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EA has simplified its various offerings of Battlefield 2042 when it launches on November 19th, with standard digital versions of the game on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S and X now offering 'dual entitlement' which opens up versions for both generations of hardware.

It seems a fairer way of doing things than the original proposition, which locked cross-gen behind more expensive editions of Battlefield 2042 - though given the wording of EA's announcement, it does seem you'll still have to pay the £10 premium associated with next-gen versions if you want 'dual entitlement'.

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Xbox has announced the latest additions to Game Pass, led by Back 4 Blood.

The zombie co-op shooter will rise fresh from its recent beta on 12th October, available on Game Pass from day one on console, PC and cloud.

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Where do you stand on separating the art from the artist? Maybe you've mulled this over when considering whether to watch a Roman Polanski film or listen to a Michael Jackson album - and Lord knows, the history of art would be impoverished indeed if we stripped it of all its monsters. There's never an easy answer. In the wake of the appalling recent revelations about the studio's "frat boy" culture, this is now a question we have to ask ourselves about Blizzard games, too.

In some respects, this beautifully produced remaster of Diablo 2 is unlucky to be Blizzard's first release since the state of California filed suit against the studio. Much of the work on it was done by Vicarious Visions, a blameless outfit only integrated with Blizzard earlier this year. (Indeed, its former studio head Jen Oneal was recently named co-leader of Blizzard, a new broom presumably intended to lead reform there.) What's more, the original 2000 game was made by Blizzard North, an autonomous studio quite distinct from the SoCal mothership. Diablo 2 is an adopted child of the Blizzard culture at best. But Diablo helped set the Blizzard tone, too, with its none-more-metal aesthetic, kitchen-sink lore, cutting-edge online multiplayer and endgame of abyssal depth and complication.

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Is this truly "4 real" as the tagline says? Last week, a video of motorbiking sim Ride 4 went viral - with many millions of Twitter and YouTube views on an upload by YouTuber Joy of Gaming. On the face of it, it's easy to see why, when you consider the beautiful, dynamic, near photo-realistic footage playing out in first-person 'helmet' view. Based on Unreal Engine 4, the combination of the camera, physics, motion blur, lighting and materials all impress - but to what extent does it push back the boundaries or rendering technology. Does the game live up to the hype, or have we seen it all before with DriveClub Bikes?

There are a couple of key points with Ride 4 worth stressing. First of all, it's not a new game - it came out last year and its next-gen patch arrived a little after launch. It's just that the viral video has done a remarkable job in bringing the game to the attention of the audience some time after the fact. Secondly, in terms of the presentation itself, what we're seeing here is a combination of factors that combine to create something magical - and a key aspect of that isn't actually the technology at all, but rather the gaming ability of the player. The truth is that Ride 4 is a brutally hard, unforgiving and occasionally unfair game. Part of that is because of the simulation angle - motorcycles are less forgiving when travelling at speed over uneven ground and this translates to the game. Beyond that, rival bikes can crash into you from behind with the AI occasionally getting a bit overzealous at the starting grid. Some races simply open out with the player being clattered at the green light.

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The final character for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is Sora from Kingdom Hearts, who joins the game on 19th October.

Smash Bros. series boss Masahiro Sakurai revealed today that Sora actually won the fan poll for Nintendo to explore future character DLC options back in the Wii U/3DS era - though the results have been kept secret until now.

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First there was Calculator. Now another non-game app has arrived on the Nintendo eShop: a clock.

AAA Clock from RedDeer.games will be available from 8th October priced initially at $1.99 / €1.99 before jumping to $9.99 / €9.99 (thanks, Nintendo Life).

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Far Cry 6 is still several days from release, but already some of its secrets are spilling out all over the internet. In particular, a pair of in-game QR codes have surfaced which tease other, related Ubisoft projects.

The details come from YouTuber JorRaptor, who has a reliable history detailing Assassin's Creed leaks.

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Here's something. One word stories. One-word stories? One Word Stories! Anyway, Jacob has been walking through the darkness for quite a while and it's starting to get to him. The mood starts to get to him, the atmosphere, oppressive and enclosing. So he suggests to his friend Riley: let's play one-word stories? Each of us says a word in turn, and then the words make the story.

They play for one round - a silly kind of sentence emerges - and it makes him feel better. And this gets at the heart of Oxenfree 2 for me, I think. On one hand, there's that dizzying complexity going on behind the scenes, because as Jacob's friend Riley, you get to choose which word to say, which in turn must impact which word Jacob then chooses as a response. I close my eyes at that and see the decision tree branching out, its bright leaves filling the space above my head. What a thing! A marvel.

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The Panzer Dragoon Voyage Record Twitter account falsely shared that the developer's CEO had died.

As shared by VGC, the now-deleted tweet stated that the game had been cancelled due to the death of producer Haruto Watanabe, though hours later friends reported he was still alive.

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Nintendo will reveal Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's last DLC character this afternoon at 3pm UK time, and you can watch it all live via the stream below.

The presentation will be hosted by Smash Bros. boss Masahiro Sakurai, and is due to last 40 minutes.

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A new Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon project will be announced tonight, Ubisoft has said, as part of a livestream celebrating 20 years of the franchise.

The long-running brand has encompassed more than a dozen games over the years, with various different focuses. The popular Wildlands, released in 2017, took the series open world. 2019 follow-up Breakpoint was less favourably received.

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I have a lot of nostalgia for Bungie's classic Halo games, they're great. I loved the epic music, the funny alien grunts, and playing co-op campaign was pretty much the only time seven-year-old-me wouldn't argue with my siblings. Despite all of this, it was always the series' multiplayer that was so enduring. A lot has been said about the brilliance of Bungie's Halo multiplayer: the incredible level design, the unique suite of vehicles, the perfectly balanced weapons. But, for me, it was just a good laugh. Halo's physics-driven sandbox led to some irreplicable moments that still make this nerd smile inside, a decade after playing. So, when I saw fans proclaiming that Halo Infinite's multiplayer is a return to form for the series, my first question was, "Is it funny?"

The first thing 343 had to get right was the sandbox - were Halo's iconic guns, grenades, abilities, maps and vehicles fun, and more importantly did they all interact with each other? A physics-driven sandbox in the past led to moments where a grenade you threw would accidentally hit a teammate and bounce right back into your face... oops. Or it would allow you to do things like fire a rocket into a gravity lift, have it fly all the way to the top and kill whoever was unfortunate enough to be waiting up there. Even using the gravity hammer to send vehicles flying off the map was enough to elicit a chuckle. Moments like these were so fun because they were unexpected. These weren't features that were advertised, and most of the weird physics tricks you could pull off were only useful in certain situations. This meant every time something goofy happened it was a shock and a discovery.

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Sony has announced the latest games to be added to subscription service PlayStation Now.

Seven games are being added from 5th October, including The Last of Us Part 2, Final Fantasy 8 Remastered and Fallout 76, as announced on the PlayStation Blog.

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Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has apologised for last night's lengthy downtime which hit the social network and all its connected services.

Oculus games and apps were left unavailable to access, while games which use Facebook as a login method (such as Pokémon Go) were also hit.

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One of my favourite paintings in the world isn't very good. It's not actively bad, and it's far better than anything I could do, it's just not very good. It's a long way from great, comfortably non-brilliant. The gallery that owns it doesn't even have it on display most of the time. For most of its life on Earth I suspect it will be filed somewhere in the quiet dark.

I saw it when it was briefly on display, however. And I loved it immediately. Around the turn of the century - I love that I have lived through a period of time where I can just drop that phrase in - Tate Britain held an exhibition on Turner's paintings of Venice. I took my mum, for some reason. She absolutely hates Turner. Sadly, the exhibition didn't give me much ammunition to change her mind. Turner's paintings of Venice at their very best are merely odd: he occasionally captures something weird in the mixture of a radioactive sunset, distant buildings rising from the water covered with glittering lights, and people moving around on delicate boats, and for a second in these instants, you get to see the human race from the outside, as it were. In these moments we look elegant, dimly alien, serene and fantastical. I don't know if that was his intention. Most of his other paintings of Venice - and I say this as a big fan of Turner - are a bit dull.

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Epic Games will bring a new achievements system to its PC storefront next week, which awards dollops of XP for completing four tiers of challenges.

Six games will initially support Epic Achievements, including the new Alan Wake Remastered, Zombie Army 4, Kena, Pillars of Eternity, Hades and Rocket League.

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Hi everyone! Please join me in welcoming Ed Nightingale as Eurogamer's brand new news reporter.

I say brand new, but Ed has been around in the industry for some time now - both as a freelancer in places like The Guardian and Kotaku UK, then more recently on staff at PinkNews.

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Piranha Games, developer of MechWarrior Online, has apologised for forcing players to re-name a competitive team titled "Trans Fights" and "Trans Rights", after previously saying it was simply enforcing the game's Terms of Service and Code of Conduct.

Piranha boss Russ Bullock initially sparked ire on Twitter when explaining the studio's reasoning behind the move - as well as its decision to ban a user who continually posted the message "Trans rights".

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Twitch has begun testing a new paid boost feature on the streaming platform.

Boost has been available as a test since last December and allows viewers to pool free channel points to boost a streamer to a front page slot for extra promotion.

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So what exactly is the beef between Nintendo of Japan and Bloomberg? Last week, the trusted news outlet released a report stating that 11 development studios - including Zynga - had released development kits for a 4K Switch console, bringing about an outright denial from Nintendo - so what's really going on? That's the lead story in this week's DF Direct Weekly, where myself, John Linneman and Alex Battaglia discuss the news. It's a difficult story to assess because it does seem that prior Bloomberg articles seem to have grouped together the Switch OLED (a product confirmed to be in development since at least April 2020, according to the Atmosphere system software reverse engineering team) and the next-gen Nintendo machine. But at the same time, it's not just Bloomberg that's heard that development kits for a new console hybrid have made their way to game makers - we've heard about it too.

Over a decade since release, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is still a game worth pondering for how it avoids being a game at all. One of the first breakout iPad titles, it exploits the platform's multimedia cachet to wander playfully and abrasively across boundaries between artforms, genres and technologies. On some level it is Zelda, the tale of a wanderer's accidental rousing of a skull-headed spectre that must be purged by collecting the pieces of a cosmic triangle. But it is also Twitter, with inner monologues filling a scrolling feed, and writing that walks a line between decadently self-important and goofing off about lore. It's a pixelart realm of winding paths and chiselled shadows, but also a self-mythologising prog rock album - there's an alternate dimension you access by flipping the phonograph disc on the title screen. It's a rhythm game, too, with puzzles that evoke Garage Band and boss fights that recall the UFO DJ dialogues of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It's many different, ill-matched things, but it always feels complete, thanks not least to Jim Guthrie's chirpy yet fathomless electronic score.

RFM is a roguelike real-time tactics game set in a groovy retro-future. The art zings! It's nifty! Your home base apartment comes with a spin on a Grover door and a lovely corner sofa. There's probably a conversation pit buried in there somewhere. Meanwhile, the music starts all Pink Floyd and then gets very EVA. Those thick, radioactive and distinctly French guitar sounds.

I'm in love a bit. The game plays out on a series of procedural battlefields. There's a grid and countdown timers, but enemies don't wait for you to take a turn to take one themselves. Everything is forewarned, but it can still give you that panicky sense that real-time tactics game deliver so beautifully. I fret endlessly as I move around the grid, switching between dash and handgun and a sort of magic explosion, juggling my own timers and trying to stay alive.

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Early plans for Metroid Prime 3 featured a more open world and less-linear story, a former staff member at Retro Studios has revealed.

Bryan Walker, senior producer on Metroid Prime 2 and 3, said one concept would have seen Samus traverse environments in her ship in a "much more ambitious" way than we saw in the final game.

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I had a blast playing Halo Infinite's Big Team Battle mode over the weekend.

343 opened the floodgates to Halo Infinite's multiplayer, and 12v12 Big Team Battle was the star.

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Bringing back Steph Gingrich for Life is Strange: True Colors may seem an obvious decision for Deck Nine Games, the studio behind her first appearance in Life is Strange prequel Before the Storm. Steph was an original creation of the team which now steers the franchise's future, and was beloved by fans back in her first appearance. She begged for more screen time, and fans asked for it too. Finally, and perhaps most crucially, being absent in the original Life is Strange meant she was narratively able to return, unaffected by the apocalyptic events at the end of that original game.

But in bringing Steph back, True Colors by necessity had to keep her slightly at arm's length. The main game is not her story, and it is clearly pitched as a fresh entry point for newcomers who never visited Arcadia Bay. It has a weighty, emotional tale of its own to tell, and as I wrote in Eurogamer's Life is Strange True Colors review, the game stays laser focused on exploring that, and particularly its core brother-sister relationship. So much so, that its two sidekicks/love interests, one of whom is Steph, both end up feeling a little under-served.

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A 512GB expansion SSD for Xbox Series X/S has popped up online, prior to an official announcement.

The Seagate-made storage expansion card is roughly half the storage size of the existing 1TB card, and has now appeared on both French and US retailers (thanks, Windows Central).

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UPDATE 4/10/21: Smash Bros. boss Masahiro Sakurai will reveal the final character for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tomorrow at 3pm UK time, in a presentation lasting 40 minutes.

Nintendo has also said we'll find out exactly when this last character will arrive, and invited fans to speculate on who it may be. The consensus seems to be expecting Sora from Kingdom Hearts. But we're still rooting for Birdo.

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What is that thing sitting at the table opposite me? All I can see are its orange eyes swirling in the darkness like the snake from The Jungle Book. And I tell you what it makes me feel: menaced. I know this thing doesn't like me and I feel like it wants to hurt me, but I can do nothing about it. I have to play its games, and it feels like it's my fate at stake.

I catch a glimpse of the thing every so often. I see a large, knobbly hand, green and weathered, and I hear its cheesegrater voice, scraping out words. Sometimes I see a face, or the outline of a face, but it's gone as soon as I realise it, engulfed again by shadow or obscured by a mask. And if it is a mask, it becomes a caricature for me, playing the role of a yee-haw gold prospector for a special boss encounter.

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Square Enix will release an offline version of MMO Dragon Quest 10 in February - although it's Japan-only for now.

Dragon Quest X: Rise of the Five Tribes Offline launches on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam on 26th February 2022 in Japan, Square Enix announced. If you bought the PS4 version, you can upgrade to the PS5 version for free.

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Stefanie Joosten, who played Quiet in Metal Gear Solid 5, is creative director of a new mech combat title called Vengeance is Mine.

Joosten unveiled the game, which is due out on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S at some point in 2023, in the video below, alongside a snapshot of a character.

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