Eurogamer

IO Interactive has launched a new Hitman 3 starter pack, giving curious players the chance to check out bits of the celebrated stealth series for free.

Hitman 3's Free Starter Pack does a bunch of different things, but permanently provides access to the game's opening ICA Facility tutorial missions, giving players the chance to refine their stealth skills, earning XP and unlocks that can be carried over into the full game.

Alongside those early missions, however, the Starter Pack will also periodically grant free access to other locations in the World of Assassination trilogy.

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Frictional Games' desert horror Amnesia: Rebirth has just received a free new Adventure Mode, stripping out the game's life-threatening monster encounters, jump scares, and darkness for those keen to experience its story without fear of fainting dead away.

Amnesia: Rebirth - the third game in the series, following on from Frictional's 2010 original and the Chinese-Room-developed A Machine for Pigs - launched last year, taking players on an unsettling adventure across the Algerian desert in the 1930s.

Its tale - focusing on protagonist Tasi Trianon as she traverses the hostile expanse, pulling together fragments of her past - earned much praise on release (Eurogamer reviewer Vikki Blake called it an "impressive horror subversion" and a story that "gripped me right up until the credits rolled"), and Rebirth's new Adventure Mode aims to make it more accessible to all.

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Cyberpunk 2077 maker CD Projekt Red will change how it operates to develop multiple AAA games and expansions in parallel, and only begin promoting its creations much closer to release.

The change in strategy - what CD Projekt calls its new "strategic development framework" - comes in response to the disappointing launch of Cyberpunk 2077 in December last year, and is detailed in a lengthy corporate update video released this afternoon.

"We want to improve the way we make games," company boss Adam Kiciński said. "We want to continuously improve the working environment for every team member. We want a sharper focus on how we work together to make great games." The word "crunch" is not mentioned within the video at any point, though there's mention of training for staff on matters of mental and physical health, and word of a group of employees from across the company which will liaise with CD Projekt's board.

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You can now grab Ubisoft's first-person-shooter XIII for free as part of GOG's Spring Sale. That's the good XIII, by the way, not the recently released XIII Remake, which is so full of bugs you're best off avoiding it at all costs.

Originally released on the Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2003, XIII is a quality (and sometimes frustratingly difficult) espionage game that's loosely based on the Belgian graphic novels of the same name.

It brings the visuals of the graphic novels to life, filling the screen with comic-book-style panels when you whizz a throwing knife into someone's face and phonetic visuals for sound effects, whether that's the TAT-TAT-TAT of chugging through machine gun clips or the approaching taps of enemy footsteps.

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UPDATE 30/3/21 As the Easter-like Ostara event continues in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, publisher Ubisoft has provided more detail on the Godly Reward gift being offered free to all players - and which includes the cosmetic items from Christmas' Yuletide event.

"The Godly Reward is a gift to all our players to thank them for their continuous support," a Ubisoft spokesperson told me. "We included the Yule cosmetics so even those who might have missed the event could benefit from some of its rewards - an additional treat if you like. That does not mean it will be our template moving forward - we're always listening to the feedback from our community and adapt our plans and content accordingly. We might very well have other cool gifts for our players in the coming months, but nothing we can confirm at this stage."

Fans think Valhalla will soon dole out the fashionable robes of its Assassin character Basim, though we're yet to hear how and when this might be.

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The PC rendition of Game Pass received a boost last week when it was reported that its revised ports of Platinum Games' Nier Automata and Tango Game Works' The Evil Within were actually improved over the Steam equivalents. It was seemingly good news for PC gamers: two critically acclaimed titles received sub-optimal PC versions, and while limiting improved versions to Game Pass only is problematic, at least it's a step in the right direction... or is it? In our tests, we noted some content improvements on The Evil Within - albeit with a huge caveat attached - while the underlying performance issues do not seem to be any different at all on the Game Pass builds. Nier Automata also new features, but performance issues unresolved since launch remain untouched.

Let's begin with Nier Automata, where the story is relatively simple. It's a game designed to be ran at 60 frames per second, but the original PC version has a broken frame-rate limiter, meaning that frame drops are commonplace throughout the entire experience and a locked 60fps is impossible out of the box. On top of that, anti-aliasing is actually controlled by the ambient occlusion setting, which actually features a bunch of post-processing effects, including (bizarrely) temporal anti-aliasing.

For a few days last week, the world felt a bit brighter thanks to the work of one boat. After getting caught up in high winds, the Evergreen Marine Corporation's Ever Given wedged itself rather firmly in the Suez Canal, disrupting an estimated 12 per cent of global trade in the process (via The Guardian). Not so funny for the captain or the hundreds of ships waiting in line to get through the canal, perhaps.

Still, it gave many of us a good chuckle, and the boat has at last been freed - opening up the canal and world trade once more. Yet the infamous boat now lives on in digital form, as Microsoft Flight Simulator modders have been hard at work adding it to the game.

Made by FlyBoyRez1 (and inspired by the work of Zepingouin35), the Suez Traffic Jam mod does exactly what it says on the tin... which is plonk a big old boat in the middle of the canal. Traffic will also appear around the boat from both sides, and you'll find some boats parked in the Suez Gulf. Several tug boats will try to free the ship (in vain), and you can also recreate that digger meme thanks to the inclusion of a pair of excavators.

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UPDATE #2 30/3/21 3pm UK: Activision has now acknowledged the issue faced by Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 players on Xbox Series X/S, and said it is working to solve the crashes.

"Activision is aware and is working to fix," a spokesperson for the publisher told Eurogamer this afternoon.

UPDATE #1 30/3/21 9.00am UK: Microsoft has now issued a statement on the ongoing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 issue causing the game to crash on Xbox Series X/S. Players have pointed to publisher Activision's paid upgrade system for the game being at fault - the cause of a similar issue last year for Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War.

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Marvel Cinematic Universe-inspired outfits coming to Marvel's Avengers will exclusively be sold in the game's marketplace, developer Crystal Dynamics has now confirmed.

An earlier Twitter post from the official Marvel's Avengers account was read by some fans as suggesting that they'd be given as free event rewards - something which the developer has now clarified.

"We'll be introducing the Red Room Takeover event this spring!" the account tweeted over the weekend. "Features rewards like animated nameplates, outfits inspired by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a deadly HARM Room hacked by Yelena Belova, and more secrets to decrypt."

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Sure, Brothers and A Way Out director Josef Fares has made some good games. But he'll also be forever known for that moment at The Game Awards 2017 where he let the world know his opinions on the Academy Awards.

Now, Fares fans have found he snuck an audio clip of the moment into his new game It Takes Two, as part of a bizarre Easter egg. Here's a video captured by The Games Awards host Geoff Keighley, who presumably signed off on the audio being included:

When scanning the airwaves for clues on where to go next in The Pillow Fort chapter, turning your radar all the way around and tuning into a certain point will unlock the above audio clip.

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What was rumour has now been confirmed, with Sony announcing it's to close the PS3 and PSP stores on July 2nd, with the Vita store to close soon after on August 27th, taking with them a whole bevvy of games that were only available via digital download. It's bitterly disappointing news, and while Sony confirmed you'll be able to re-download games in your library for an undisclosed time after - because who needs details? - for many there's now a limited window to pick up some true gems. What follows isn't meant as a comprehensive list of what's going to be lost - it'd be too depressing, for one - but rather a guide to what's worth picking up before it disappears.

What a beautiful, challenging thing this is: a game about moving an octopus between one wall and the next, collecting stuff, avoiding stuff, and marveling at the sheer variety on offer as the levels fly by. With simple controls and a fiendish design, this would work so beautifully on the Switch, but that's a hope for another day. For now, remember the many hours it spent bringing gorgeous frustration to Sony devices.

CD

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It's finally here - Intel's 11th-generation of desktop CPUs. Codenamed Rocket Lake S, these chips aim to re-take the gaming performance crown from AMD, whose recently released Ryzen 5000 processors showed incredible gen-on-gen gains. Intel is making similar claims, touting up to a 19 per cent improvement to single core speeds, but does 11th-gen deliver? To answer this, we've been testing the flagship Core i9 11900K (£559/$614) and mid-range Core i5 11600K (£269/$269) frantically for the past week, in a new suite of recent games that can trip up even flagship CPUs.

Can you believe Warframe came out a whopping eight years ago, in 2013? It was a follow-up to Digital Extremes' Dark Sector, a third person shooter with a knife frisbee gimmick that got a lukewarm reception (though I myself liked it a bunch). Dark Sector was itself a reimagining of a prototype the team had built for a game set not in a fictitious Eastern European setting but in space, and watching it now, you'll be amazed by how much of the DNA of Warframe was established years before the game ever came out.

The Tenno are there, Warframe's space ninjas and guardians of the solar system, in their strange organic armour. And for years, Warframe wasn't a lot more than that to me. A decent enough action title with a lot of grinding, unlocking new "warframes" to fight in. In my mind it's always sat alongside Destiny. Interesting space settings tethered to a treadmill of rote action. But while I've spent the last year or so giving both of these games another go, amused by certain additions (Destiny's bow is a joy to wield and Warframe's Octavia kills enemies with custom music...how could I not) only one of them has managed to grab me.

So if you're interested in playing Warframe, turn back now. I mean it, massive spoilers ahead. If you're remotely interested in playing it already then you'll be served better by experiencing its story for yourself.

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The new Pikmin game from Nintendo and Pokémon Go developer Niantic has begun a public test in Singapore, it was announced this morning.

Players in the region can download the app now via Google Play, and be the first in the world able to try it out.

Currently, the game is still titled "Pikmin App (Early Access)", and players have been discouraged from posting images and gameplay footage online.

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Fortnite's new primal season got its first update this morning, and dinosaurs now roam the game's island.

Like other wildlife, Raptors are tameable with a Hunter's Cloak item - if you feel brave enough. But there's no way to command them from a motorbike.

Fortnite fans have been expecting these dinos to appear since Chapter 2 Season 6 first kicked off two weeks ago. Suspicious-looking eggs around the island have been slowly cracking, with the sounds inside suggesting this wasn't something left by the Easter bunny.

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John Hanke, boss of Pokémon Go developer Niantic, has issued a tease showing a pair of Google Glass-style spectacles.

The glasses have been customised with the Niantic logo, while Hanke's Twitter post states that the specs are being made to interact with games on Niantic's AR platform.

For now, we can but speculate at the tech inside - though this isn't the first we've heard of Niantic testing its games on headset devices.

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Revita is a very hard blend of roguelite and twin-stick shooter, which I am terrible at but quite enjoying. Breaking down those two terms a little, it offers procedural scrambling of enemies in amidst persistent progress - you die and die but eventually you will get somewhere - and you aim with one stick and move with another.

But it's not top-down like a lot of twin-sticks. It's a side-on 2D platformer, and one with a control scheme that at first took me quite a lot of getting used to. Enemies come at you quick in the game's small arenas, so keeping your distant is crucial. Revita maps a jump and dash to the left bumper and trigger respectively, in the standard control method that it encourages you quite strongly to use. I am a slow learner with new things, and this has left me feeling a bit lop-sided. I switched to a more standard control layout briefly, but while that put jump and dash on face buttons it messed up aiming for me. So I am powering through with the standard layout as I was told to do.

There are two things I already love about this game. One is the art style, which uses chunky pixels to create a world that I am eager to explore. The main hub area so far is a train station, and the first boss I fought - I don't think I was able to win - hangs out in a clock tower. The only thing I love more than train stations and clock towers is elevators - I am weird - and that's how you move between levels. Revita, throw in a lighthouse and I am yours for life.

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Vostok Inc. developer Nosebleed Interactive is trading space-capitalism for retro-tinged arcade management in its newly unveiled Arcade Paradise, coming to PC and consoles later this year.

In Arcade Paradise, players are cast as Ashley, a teenager trying to transform the family's small-town laundromat into a bustling retro arcade, somewhere in the 1990s.

What follows is a game of two halves; on the one side, Ashley will need to complete dull chores - washing clothes, clearing out the rubbish, cleaning toilets (all given a suitably entertaining mini-game twist) - in order to raise the money needed to turn the King Wash laundromat into a booming arcade hangout, managing the business and investing profits along the way.

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The Falconeer, developer Tomas Sala's bird-based open-world air combat game, is getting a free new piracy themed DLC update today on PC and Xbox.

Atun's Folly, as the update is known, aims to enrich The Falconeer's entertaining core - which plops players atop giant falcons to explore and dogfight their way across a visually sumptuous map - by introducing expanded piracy options into the world.

Players can visit the titular Atun's Folly - a pirate settlement situated on the back of a turtle - to embark on missions that specifically boost their pirate infamy: taking down trading vessels, stealing loot, and attacking Imperial and Mancer forts.

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Following the quiet closure of an old web version of the PlayStation Store this weekend, Sony has confirmed it'll be permanently closing all PS3, Vita, and PSP digital stores this summer.

Writing on the PlayStation website, and corroborating an earlier report by TheGamer, Sony confirmed it would be closing the PS3 store on 2nd July, and that all remaining PSP purchase functionality will cease at the same time. The Vita store will close on 27th August.

Once the stores close, it will no longer be possible to purchase digital content for PS3, Vita, and PSP - including games, in-game purchases, and videos - and wallet fund vouchers will no longer be redeemable on the platforms. Wallet funds can still be used to purchase PS4 and PS5 products via the web, PlayStation App, and consoles, however.

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Call of Duty: Warzone gets a mid-season update this week that reduces the overall install footprint of the game - but it comes only after an enormous download.

Season Two Reloaded creates a lower, optimised file size across Warzone. If you own the full version of Modern Warfare and Warzone, or if you own the free-to-play Warzone on its own, you'll see the overall file size footprint reduced, Activision said.

This is particularly welcome given how much space the recent Call of Duty games take up. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone have a reputation for enormous update downloads and massive install footprints, which we've reported on in the past. It got so bad that in February, Activision warned a standard 500GB PlayStation 4 may no longer fit Call of Duty: Warzone, Black Ops Cold War and Modern Warfare.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Warzone Season Two Reloaded launches this week, Activision announced.

The mid-season update for both shooters adds several new maps, modes and features for Black Ops Cold War, as well as two new operators, and the new ZRG 20mm sniper rifle.

This all goes live following updates to Black Ops Cold War at 5am UK time tomorrow, 30th March, and to Warzone at 7am UK time on Wednesday 31st March.

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UPDATE 6.23pm: Cyberpunk 2077's sizeable 1.2 update is available to download now on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.

As detailed below (and in CD Projekt's accompanying patch notes), update 1.2 attempts to addresses a broad range of issues with Cyberpunk 2077, making adjustments to NPC behaviour, driving, game stability, and a heap more.

PC players can expect a download of around 30GB, and that goes up to 40-45GB on consoles.

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The latest Digital Foundry Direct Weekly has just been posted! This extended show is our chance to sit down and relax a little during the week, discuss the topics that have dominated the news and to share some behind the scenes details on the projects we're working on - while also tackling some Q+A with questions offered up by our fine Patreon supporters. This week, the big topics up for discussion include the extended trailer for the revamped Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade for PlayStation 5, plus - once again - reaction to the latest rumours about the so-called Nintendo Switch Pro.

Of particular interest to our DF Retro people is the rumoured closure of the PS3 and PlayStation Vita PSN stores, its impact on the PlayStation back catalogue and the fact that some games will simply vanish forever - or at least they would be gone, if both systems hadn't been hacked and the games in question 'preserved' via piracy. Should Sony be doing more to support its own legacy? Then there's bizarre removal of the Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection - has Nintendo really deleted a release that would otherwise be enjoyed by new Switch owners for years to come?

The start of 2021 has been a relatively dry period for next-gen releases, but there have been some amazing games popping up on Steam. Namely, there's Viking survival sandbox game, Valheim, and the never-ending Roguelike, Loop Hero - both of which are well worth your time.

If you're tempted to dive in and check them out and don't know where to start with a gaming mouse and keyboard, or you've been waiting for an opportunity to upgrade your setup, Amazon UK has reduced the price on some Logitech PC and gaming accessories by as much as 54 per cent.

Whether you're working to a budget or you've been waiting for an opportunity to wrap your fingers around a Logitech G502 Hero at an affordable price, all of the bases are pretty much covered here.

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Nintendo's Super Mario 3D All-Stars has done the company proud in its final full week on shop shelves, with physical sales up 276 per cent week-on-week.

It was the second biggest-selling boxed game in the UK last week, behind new release Monster Hunter Rise - which has also done well (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz).

Super Mario 3D All-Stars is Nintendo's classic collection of Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy. It is the only way to play these games on Nintendo Switch.

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A PlayStation 5 version of Wreckfest will launch on 1st June, publisher THQ Nordic has announced.

It'll be priced £34.99/$39.99/€39.99, or existing PS4 owners can upgrade for $10/€10/£TBA. Oddly there's no word on an Xbox Series X/S version with these same features (though there is a free patch available to bump up its frame-rate).

Multiplayer has been bumped up to 24 players, while the game runs "with a wonderful 4K resolution at a smooth 60 frames per second".

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Esports Boxing Club is an in-development boxing game that certainly looks the part.

It's in the works at Sheffield studio Steel City Interactive, and is due out in early access form on PC, and PlayStation and Xbox consoles.

The video below runs through the fight mechanics and some of the career mode details, but it's the visuals that are the highlight.

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"There is a thin line between courage and stupidity."

That's the line that intrigued me. It's one of the first things you see when you load Hundred Days up, even before the main menu. But why? This is a gentle game about making wine. A game about taking on an abandoned winery in Italy and returning it to prosperity. It's part card game, part management game, part puzzle game. What business does it have with philosophy? Unless - and this is what gnawed at me - unless there was a secret behind the game I couldn't see.

Yves Hohler lived in Switzerland until he was five years old, and his parents led an unconventional life. They would move around a lot, between Switzerland and France, carting him and three other siblings around as they found work picking herbs on farms. Have you ever eaten those nice Ricola sweets? They come in a bright yellow packet that looks like it should have cigarettes in. His parents would pick the herbs for them, as well as strawberries for yoghurts. They did it because they liked the lifestyle. "My parents are the last hippies on Earth," Hohler says, affectionately, I think. "And what they wanted," he tells me in a video call, "[was] that we grow up on land, not in a city."

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EA has announced a next-gen golf game called EA Sports PGA Tour.

The company said EA Sports PGA Tour, which is built using the Frostbite engine, will include many of the world's most famous courses, and lets you play against and as some of the biggest names in professional golf. But it didn't say which courses or golfers, and didn't say when the game will come out.

It did say it had signed a long-term deal with the PGA Tour, so this amounts to EA getting back into golf games at a time when rival publisher 2K signed a long-term deal of its own with Tiger Woods for PGA Tour 2K.

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Nintendo Switch exclusive Monster Hunter Rise has shipped 4m units since launch last Friday, publisher Capcom has said.

For comparison, Capcom announced it had shipped 5m copies of Monster Hunter World back in January 2018, though that was released for both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Capcom's "shipped" figures (rather than "sold") includes digital copies as well as physical copies sent out to retailers but not yet picked up by punters.

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Strixhaven, the brand new Harry Potter-ish card expansion for Magic: The Gathering, is nearly here, and we've been given a small collection of cards to reveal.

Strixhaven launches in Magic: The Gathering - Arena and Magic Online on 15th April, and then a week later in shops, in those nice shiny foil packets, from 23rd April.

It's Harry Potter-ish because Strixhaven is a school for mages, which is also broken into various inner-houses, or colleges in this case. Each is themed around the long-running colours of Magic.

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Koei Tecmo has insisted Ninja Gaiden Master Collection "is based on the PS3 version in quality", after fans noticed the Ninja Gaiden Sigma included in the package looks like the Vita version.

Users on ResetEra compared footage and screenshots of the Ninja Gaiden Master Collection's Ninja Gaiden Sigma to the PS3 and Vita version, and found the footage seemed to be a match for the downgraded Vita version.

However, doubt was cast on this claim because the reference footage and screenshots used came from the Nintendo Switch version of Ninja Gaiden Master Collection. Fans also wondered whether Koei Tecmo accidentally used Vita assets to promote Ninja Gaiden Master Collection for its announcement. Now, in a statement given to Eurogamer, the publisher has attempted to clear things up:

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UPDATE 29TH MARCH 2021: As predicted, SBMMWarzone.com has shut down. The website is now blank.

"We've met Activision's demand and have shut down our website," the team behind SBMMWarzone.com tweeted. "Your Warzone stats are no longer available. We still believe we can reach an agreement with Activision to provide you with the stats you love. Hey Activision, let's partner up."

ORIGINAL STORY 27TH MARCH 2021: Activision has ordered the creators of SBMMWarzone.com to shut the website down by Monday.

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Sony has pulled an old web version of the PlayStation Store that let people still buy old games.

In October, Sony launched a revamped web and mobile store that ditched PlayStation 3, PSP and Vita games, themes and avatars. Sony also discontinued the wishlist feature and signalled all items currently on your wishlist would be deleted.

However, after this closure, fans were able to access the old web version of the PlayStation Store - and their associated wishlists - via a region-specific URL that meant people were still able to make PS3, PSP and Vita game and DLC purchases. This URL stopped working over the weekend (thanks, ResetEra), and now redirects to Sony's new webstore that includes PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 games only.

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I keep finding myself describing games in terms of "texture" at the moment, and I keep worrying that nobody knows what that means - I'm not sure I know what it means, so I wouldn't blame them. But I know it's there, and I know a game's texture matters, but how to spell it out?

Maybe the best explanation is by example, which in this case is Adios. Adios is not a long game, and being of limited scope and budget it's not particularly grand, either. You'll probably finish it in one sitting, clocking in at less than two hours, and what you'll do in those two hours is simple: you walk, and talk, and just live a day in another life.

This is the magic of it though. Adios is just a story. There are little activities along the way - throwing horseshoes, catching fish, shooting clay pigeons - but little more, and they're of little consequence, success or failure of little relevance to why those activities are really there. There are no puzzles or action, or even mysteries to untangle, and so the joy of it has to come from elsewhere: from the rare source of relinquished control - agency that's sacrificed, as opposed to worshipped, allowing you to simply suspend belief and float.

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Capcom is ramping up the Resident Evil Village hype train by sending out life-size standees of its chief antagonist, Lady Dimitrescu.

Her 2.9 metre/9'6" frame has been spotted in retail outlets across Hong Kong, where the intimidating figure towers over everyone and everything else in the store, as proudly shared by Capcom Asia's Facebook account (thanks, The Gamer).

Here, take a look:

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New amateur photos taken on the set of The Witcher TV show suggests season two of the highly anticipated Netflix series will feature the Wild Hunt.

As reported by Redanian Intelligence, a website dedicated to all things The Witcher (thanks, Comic Book), new shots from Saunton Sands, Devon, UK, show heavily armoured warriors on horseback, fueling fan speculation that they're the villains from The Witcher 3.

After a couple of coronavirus-related wobbles last year, production on the second series of Netflix's The Witcher adaptation is now well underway - and new casting details have confirmed some of the stars set to bring a range of familiar characters to life as the season rolls on.

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Sega has topped the chart of review aggregate website Metacritic's game publisher of the year rankings.

The company had 38 products scored over the year, 95 per cent of which were judged "good" - including the notable Persona 5 Royale and Yakuza 0 - and zero per cent as "bad". This gives the publisher an average Metacritic score for its 2020 releases of 81.6 per cent.

"Now in its seventh decade, the Japanese gaming company had quite a good 2020, shooting up 17 places in our annual rankings to take the crown as our number one publisher of the year," the rankings said.

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Anthem director, Jonathan Warner, is leaving BioWare and "moving on to do new things" after ten years at the studio.

"So, today is my last day at BioWare, I'm moving on to do new things," Warner tweeted on Friday. "BioWare has been home to my grateful heart for nearly ten years and I want to wish them all the best.

"[Dragon Age], [Mass Effect], and [Star Wars: The Old Republic] are in good hands and I can't wait to play from this side of the screen. Thank you, BioWare".

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