Eurogamer

The Callisto Protocol's "final chapter", Final Transmission, will release later this month.

Final Transmission – the long-awaited "story DLC" initially promised in the game's season pass – will be available on 29th June, although players on Sony consoles will get a 48-hour exclusivity period and get access from 27th June.

"Prepare for Final Transmission, the heart-pounding final chapter of The Callisto Protocol," the team teased in a tweet. "Play 48 hours early on June 27, exclusively on PlayStation, followed by a wider release on June 29 for all other platforms."

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Team Deathmatch is on the way to Valorant.

Set to go live on 27th June, 2023, the new mode – which arrives with patch 7.0 – lets "you and your teammates go up against an enemy team in one of three new maps".

"Team Deathmatch is on its way, and Maxbot's pulling the strings," the team teases. "Prepare for three new maps, high-octane action, and plenty of ways to flex your plays. There are four timed stages and no econ. Respawn every 1.5 seconds. First to 100 kills wins."

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Halo developer 343 Industries has acknowledged that Halo Infinite "struggled" to provide a "consistent pipeline of new content for players", saying it needs to "start showing more noteworthy improvements" when it comes to the shooter's "technical and experiential quality".

In an interview with Xbox Wire, head of live Service Sean Baron reflected on the sci-fi shooter's first year, and confirmed that "the cadence of content" will continue to be "improved" going forward.

"Season 4 is very exciting for me because it'll mark the third straight on-time release for the Halo Infinite Live Service team,” says Baron. "You know the saying: 'Once is chance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a pattern'.

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I'd never normally start with a definition, but I gather "jusant" translates as "ebb", the movement of the tide out to sea. And this is where Jusant's Steam demo begins. What manner of post-apocalypse is this? It's a dry one. The water has gone, we walk over sun-baked earth whose smoothness suggests that it was once far below the ocean, and there's more to climb here because there's less liquid moving around to cover it all up.

This is an apocalypse that's doing double duty. It doesn't just give you an end-of-the-world you can understand, but it gives you a look too. When I first saw Jusant in the Xbox Summer Showcase, I thought it was channeling Gaudi a bit. Shards of pottery and bleached bone and all that jazz. Turns out that Gaudi's encrusted art style matches rather closely with the things the sea leaves behind. Arches of whale bone, rust, glinting coral. Metal things with corners rubbed smooth, paint long gone, shapes part eaten away, part broken.

This stuff is everywhere in the Jusant demo, which is, I will tell you now, a bit of a treat. You are a lone traveller faced with a huge tower to climb. A mountain, but also more than a mountain. It's had bits added on, bits drilled into it. It goes up but in a higgledy human way. You're ascending, but you're also exploring upwards, starting amongst old fish nets, coils of rope, planks of wood, moving on to broken metal rungs, stones poking out of the wasted aggregate. Upwards and upwards, weirder and weirder, outside and indoors. Even in the demo it's quite a journey.

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Viking survival game Valheim now has difficulty options, so you can make the experience a little easier - or more difficult, if you prefer.

Developer Iron Gate Studio has said it hopes these options will encourage potential players previously put off by Valheim's sometimes unforgiving nature to give the game a go.

As you'd expect, hard mode buffs enemy HP and damage output. Easy mode, as Iron Gate puts it, caters to those seeking "a lighter, more accomodating adventure ideal for the pacifists and builders".

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A demo for space hospital game Galacticare will be released next week as part of Steam Next Fest.

From indie developer Brightrock Games, Galacticare is a management game that tasks players with running a hospital in space teeming with alien life - and alien afflictions.

As announced a couple of months back, the game is set for release this year on PC (Steam and GOG), PlayStation 5 and Xbox consoles, plus it's coming to Xbox Game Pass.

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Diablo first hit PCs more than 25 years ago, and it has since become one of those rare franchises that just doesn't seem to get old. While there's a level of consistency across the various series entries, what really sets Diablo 4 apart is the fact that it was a multi-platform release on day one, and given how PC ports have fared lately, it would not be unreasonable to be wary of its quality. The happy news is that it's not difficult to run Diablo 4 across a range of PC hardware with excellent results - but there's a caveat to that: to achieve parity with PS5 in texture quality, a 16GB graphics card is required.

One of the first things to note before even purchasing Diablo 4 is that, like a number of other PC games today, it requires a launcher not called Steam - a battle.net account is required and even then, it requires an always-online connection, even if you're playing on your own. this is old news to franchise veterans, but newcomers deserve a heads up.

Upon starting the game, you're greeted with a slew of accessibility options, including everything from font size to text to speech, and more, which is great to see. Kudos to Blizzard. From there, first impressions remain rather positive as the menus thankfully have proper support for both keyboard and mouse, and controllers - which actually turns out to be a great way to play the game in general.

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Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn will now launch in 2024, Ashen developer A44 Games has said.

This means a delay of around a year from Flintlock's previously-expected "early 2023" arrival.

Set to release for PC, PlayStation and Xbox, this "magic meets gunpowder technology" fantasy action RPG made an impression when it was shown at the Xbox Games Showcase 2022. (Chalk this up as another title not to make that showcase's 'released in the next 12 months' promise).

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You can thank (or blame) Telltale Games for the mainstream rise of the choice-driven adventure game. That's not to say games like The Walking Dead brought some unseen revolution in video game storytelling. Story-driven games defined by user choice go back decades, the mechanics were present in many Western RPGs, and that's without starting a discussion on the history of visual novels. But it did cause a wider gaming population to embrace the idea, leading to a mainstream shift in storytelling to player agency that still continues to evolve today.

Players could now control their own destiny, with inevitable limitations. Understanding your role in these games as a puppet master, not storyteller, hovers above all these experiences, forcing you to come to terms with the reality of never truly defining a game's ending beyond the boundaries of the developer's intent. Harmony: The Fall of Reverie asks a simple question: why not face this reality head-on, choosing instead to lift the veil on player choice within the confines of its story to stunning, effortless effect.

If Lies of P wasn't already Bloodborne enough for you, then modding team Garden of Eyes has you covered.

Mod team member Isatris has now created a mod that adds Hunter weapons and armour from Bloodborne into the demo of the pinocchio Soulslike (thanks PCGamesN). The integration, visually at least, is a harmonious blend.

It's not quite Bloodborne on PC, though, as much as fans might be thirsting for it. The mod only changes outfits so Lies of P gameplay remains intact - don't expect any guns!

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One of my favourite paintings is Cucumber House, a watercolour - I think - by Eric Ravilious. It's an airy study in quiet. To me, it always feels like a day off school. We're inside some kind of greenhouse and various plants are growing. Glass slants overhead and there's a sense of careful order, of something lovingly tended, to the layout, the tables, the leaves and shoots. Cucumber House was painted in 1935, and I don't see the thirties as an enormously quiet decade. Ravilious himself would be killed in the war that was already starting to rumble. And yet: breathe in, breathe out. I really do love this painting.

And I love Botany Manor, which is our game of the week. Botany Manor is not actually out yet, but I glimpsed it briefly during this week's Wholesome Direct and there's a demo now on Steam that you can go and play. Botany Manor doesn't just give me Cucumber House vibes because it's all about plants, and because it has the style and poise to kick things off in a greenhouse. It's because it uses plants and greenhouses and the quiet business of making things grow as a means of slowing down the player, settling them into a kinder rhythm. It's like one of those TikToks where you're told to just breathe in and out until the rain has painted the sidewalk.

Xbox has no immediate plans to shutter Redfall developer Arkane, after the studio's latest launch failed to find much of a positive critical or commercial reception.

Speaking to Axios, Xbox Game Studios chief Matt Booty said Arkane would remain open. "That is the plan right now," he said.

"They are hard at work on updates and continued content for Redfall," Booty continued, saying he wanted to "support them to be able to keep working to deliver the game they had in mind".

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Twitch has introduced a new Partner Plus programme with a higher revenue split, but its qualification criteria means most streamers will miss out.

Partner Plus is a benefit for existing Partners, offering the 70 percent revenue split on subscriptions that many streamers have been requesting for a long time but Twitch itself has denied.

The response from streamers to this news, however, has been mostly negative.

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The film studio behind the Super Mario Bros. Movie has moved to shut down reports it is making a Legend of Zelda film next.

Earlier this month, it was reported that animation studio Illumination was on the cusp of finalising a "big deal" with Nintendo to adapt its Legend of Zelda series. However, Illumination's CEO has now spoken out to damp down fan expectation.

Speaking to The Wrap, Chris Meledandri - who founded Illumination back in 2007 - said he didn't know where this Legend of Zelda report came from.

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Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've found ourselves playing over the last few days. This time: looting, toasters, and ancient memories of spiders.

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.

It was thanks to the son of a family friend that I first played a number of games. He was a few years older than me and I distinctly remember playing the first GTA on PC with him and giggling that he named his character Gordon Bennett. I was 10.

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Nintendo Switch Online will gain Game Boy Advance tactical role-player Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade next week, on Friday 23rd June.

Often simply referred to as Fire Emblem, this was an important entry in Nintendo's long-running RPG series - the very first to be released in the West.

Originally launched in Japan back in April 2003, it finally reached European shores in July 2004, and began the franchise's journey to becoming a household name on these shores.

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Copies of Final Fantasy 16 are now out in the wild ahead of its release next week, so be aware of potential spoilers.

Already on reddit and Twitter, fans have been sharing pictures holding physical copies of the game.

So far, only spoilers from the start of the game have leaked - which you can experience already in the Final Fantasy 16 demo - but if you're looking to avoid further details, now is the time to use that mute button liberally.

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Moving Out, the knockabout co-op removals game from developer SMG Studio, is getting a sequel - complete with the likes of online cross-play multiplayer for the first time - and it'll be launching on 15th August for Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and PC.

The original Moving Out arrived back in 2020, reimagining the process of furniture removals in much the same chaotic way Overcooked reimagined culinary creation. And while the end result wasn't "quite as good" as its obvious inspiration, as Eurogamer's Christian Donlan suggested in his review at the time, it was "still very special".

A extremely solid foundation, then, for more to come, and Moving Out 2 builds on the original by whisking the Furniture Arrangement and Relocation Technicians (F.A.R.Ts) "beyond the realms of their dimension" and into a succession of "wildly different" universes.

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Rockstar Games co-founder and creative director Dan Houser, who parted ways with the Grand Theft Auto developer in 2020, has formally unveiled Absurd Ventures, a media company established to create new IP across "all platforms and formats".

Not much has been heard from Houser since his departure from Rockstar following an "extended break", but rumblings of a return emerged last year when it was discovered he'd registered companies Absurd Ventures and Absurd Ventures in Games in both the US and UK.

And now, Houser's new project has been officially revealed, with Absurd Ventures being described as a media company with a focus on "building narrative worlds, creating characters, and writing stories for a diverse variety of genres, without regard to medium".

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Two and a half years after the launch of its Xbox Series X/S consoles, Microsoft has officially said goodbye the previous generation, with Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty now confirming no internal development team is working on new titles for Xbox One.

Booty shared the news in conversation with Axios, revealing all 23 of Microsoft's internal Xbox studios - aside from those specifically working on support for ongoing games like Minecraft and Sea of Thieves - have now "moved on to Gen 9".

Despite that shift in focus, Booty says the company still plans to "maintain support" for Xbox One by making its Gen 9 titles - that is, games designed specifically for Xbox Series X/S - playable on the older platform via its cloud streaming technology.

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Fans of flamboyant fisticuffs are in for a bit of a treat over on the Epic Games Store this week; developer Drinkbox Studios' acclaimed Metroidvania-style action-twosome Guacamelee 1 & 2 are currently free to download and keep.

The first Guacamelee, if you're in need of an introduction, released in 2013, serving up a colourful mix of wrestling-inspired brawling and non-linear exploratory action, in which protagonist Juan Aguacate - suddenly infused with luchador powers - sets out across a world inspired by traditional Mexican culture and folklore to rescue El Presidente's daughter.

"Like the best luchadores in the business," Eurogamer's Christian Donlan wrote at the time of its release, "Guacamelee has real heart and a blazing desire to put on a good show."

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A logo seemingly pointing to an unannounced remaster of Square Enix's sci-fi action-RPG sequel Star Ocean: The Second Story has been discovered on the publisher's website.

The unassuming asset in question, found squirrelled away on Square Enix's support site (and which you can peruse at your leisure over on RPGSite), features a logo for a presumably unannounced title going by the name Star Ocean: The Second Story R.

While Square is yet to utter the name publicly, it's not hard to conclude it references an unannounced remaster, given it uses the same naming convention as Star Ocean: First Departure R. That game, which released for Switch and PlayStation in 2019, was a remaster of 1998 PlayStation Portable game Star Ocean: First Departure (itself a remaster of the 1996 Super Famicom original), introducing the likes of difficulty rebalancing and new character art.

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A demo for cosy puzzle game Wanderful has just been released on Steam and it's a relaxing little gem.

The game is from German indie developer Tiny Roar and will be published by Daedalic, with an Early Access release on PC sometime this year.

Wanderful is a builder-explorer game players take at their own pace, with a bright and squidgy art style. Check out the demo trailer below.

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The Nintendo Switch versions of both Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light and its sequel the Temple of Osiris be released as one package on 29th June.

These editions were previously announced for Nintendo's hybrid console back in October 2021 as part of the series' 25th anniversary, but were quietly delayed at the end of last year.

The two games now come together, as The Lara Croft Collection. Anyone interested in taking to the tombs with her ladyship can pre-order the game now via the Nintendo eShop. The collection will cost £20, $25 or €25, depending on where you are.

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Bethesda's 45-minute deep dive into Starfield was one of the most fascinating parts of the summer games conferences, offering a huge amount of insight into the technical underpinnings of one of the most ambitious upcoming games. After taking the time to investigate it more deeply, John Linneman and Alex Battaglia have reunited to discuss the Starfield Direct in detail - covering everything from the reasons behind the game's 30fps console target, what 4K on Series X actually means, the implications for Series S and the rendering tech on display.

First up: the frame-rate elephant in the room, which wasn't actually discussed in the show itself. Todd Howard later stated in an interview with IGN that the game would run at a locked 30fps for consistency, with a 4K output resolution on Series X and 1440p for Series S. It's not unusual to see Series X releases run at 4K 30fps, but it is slightly rarer to see no option for a lower resolution target and perhaps reduced settings to hit 60fps instead. So why doesn't Starfield offer this option?

The answer is more nuanced than you might expect. John puts forward the argument that a frame-rate target is a design decision - after all, even consoles in the 80s could hit 60fps, but clearly many developers have opted for a 30fps experience instead in the decades since. The question is what frame-rate allows you to hit your design goals for the game? In the case of Starfield, it's clear that this is an open-world or even "open universe" game, with item permanence, AI, simulations, and a lot of interlocking systems to create an immersive experience.

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While most of the bonanza of summer games events have felt a bit rushed, we were pleasantly surprised at the breathing room afforded to titles - and the classic E3 stage vibes - at Ubisoft Forward. This is a games conference we don't normally cover, but we felt compelled to, given the quality of the games on offer. Many of these also ran on Ubisoft's own adaptable Snowdrop engine, which was also nice to see on the heels of two major conferences without much of an alternative to the ubiquitous Unreal Engine.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was the first title to hit the stage, and it looked surprisingly... like Far Cry. The idea here of course is transplanting that classic Far Cry gameplay, with a big world to explore and bases to conquer, into the Avatar universe depicted in the past and (many) future Avatar movies.

The game looks incredible, and was even captured on a PlayStation 5 - a rarity in an era of "in-engine" and "in-game" trailers that don't actually name the platform used or necessarily reflect the final product. We reckon the game is running at a 1440p internal resolution, upscaled to 4K using FSR 2 and featuring RT global illumination and motion blur - which is fairly impressive given the world complexity and draw distances involved. It's hard to imagine this game running on a PS4, that's for sure.

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Blizzard has nerfed dungeons in Diablo 4 to prevent players from XP farming.

Its latest hotfix, from 12th June, makes "further adjustments to elite monster density in dungeons".

A developer note adds: "We are standardising the density of elite monsters that spawn in dungeons to ensure that no particular dungeon is clearly more efficient to run through than others."

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Ever since Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom released, players have been flexing their creative muscles by building a host of weird and wacky designs. This has included mechs, trucks, tanks and Korok torture devices. Someone even built a pilotable T-rex, because why not.

A month on, however, these in-game designs have evolved even further, and we are seeing Zonai-crafted orchestras and functioning calculators turn up in the game.

As a quick reminder, Link's new Ultrahand ability allows players to pick up, move, and rotate objects. These objects can then be fused to other objects to create something completely new and unique.

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You thought the summer conference season was over? Nope, it's still going - and early this morning included a presentation from No More Heroes developer Grasshopper Manufacturer.

Aired at 5am UK time, the 11-minute video offers little in the way of actual updates amongst its silliness. We get another trailer for the upcoming Shadows of the Damned Remastered and, right at the end, the sneakiest of peeks at what's next from renowned game maker Suda51.

Looking closely at the gameplay footage (which Suda51 pretends to block to stop us seeing more), there's a UI which shows health, blood and "emerald flowsion". One of the weapons equipped is named "Brynhildr".

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The New York Times is beta testing a game called Connections which has gained attention for its similarities to a round featured in BBC2 quiz show Only Connect.

In both games, players are shown 16 clues which must be categorised into four groups of four. Once a category is correctly identified, the clues are grouped together at the top of the board and asasigned a colour.

The only notable difference is that Connections refreshes each day and players can only make four mistakes (akin to Wordle), whilst in the Connecting Wall (as it's known on Only Connect) players must solve the wall in two and a half minutes. Connecting Wall players have unlimited guesses until they've found two categories, after which they are only given three incorrect attempts.

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Steam has now officially added a host of handy new features to its client, following earlier beta testing.

This update sees the arrival of a redesigned in-game overlay, complete with new features, a notes function, pinnable in-game windows and improvements to notifications.

The ability to pin windows from the overlay means they appear on top of a game while you are still playing. This feature, the company has said, is available for Notes, Guides, Discussions, Achievements, and the web browser, so is ideal for those "multi-tasking maniacs who love to have a movie on in the background while they game".

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Bandai Namco announced last week that its Closed Network Test for Tekken 8 is now open for registration.

It's used the terminology of Closed Network Test previously, with Elden Ring for instance, but for Tekken 8 it's created a logo with CNT on it.

It's certainly raised some eyebrows among fans.

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In a shed behind his house, Tomas Sala is building an ocean. Oceans are his thing, of course, and he's built them before. But the shed is new. Last time I saw Sala on a Zoom screen he was working on his debut game, The Falconeer, and working from an attic whose floors were strewn with toys discarded by Sala's newborn baby. Today, he's working on a follow-up, Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles. Bulwark is set in the same watery world as The Falconeer but instead of being an airborne action game it's something more city-builderish. Emphasis on the ish. Genre is a wonderful problem here. But anyway, that shed!

'I'm living the Roald Dahl lifestyle,' Sala tells me. 'Working from my garden. Which is just smashing.'

The game Sala's building isn't just a very different genre to The Falconeer. It's a very different way of putting a game out into the world. That's very much on purpose. Rather than aiming for a distant release date, Sala's already put Bulwark up on Steam in the form of what he calls an 'Evolving demo'. It's free to play. It changes over time. Sala adds and subtracts and can explore feedback.

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Five new cast members have been confirmed for Sega and Paramount's Sonic the Hedgehog TV spinoff Knuckles.

As reported by Deadline, Cary Elwes, Stockard Channing, Christopher Lloyd, Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel have now joined the project.

Which characters they're playing remains unknown.

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Sony is confident in its current PlayStation Plus strategy, and has no plans to change it right now.

Speaking with Eurogamer sister site GamesIndustry.biz, PlayStation's head of subscriptions Nick Maguire said putting games on to the service "a bit later in the life cycle" is working for Sony. Therefore, this will "continue to be [its] strategy moving forward."

"We're happy with our strategy," Maguire told the publication. "Putting games in a bit later in the life cycle has meant that we can reach more customers 12, 18, 24 months after they have released."

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Yakuza developer RGG Studio has released a statement to clear up confusion over the title of the next mainline game in the series.

When Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth was revealed at last week's Xbox Games Showcase, many (myself included) believed it was a completely new game being announced in the series, and not the sequel to 2020's Yakuza: Like a Dragon.

However, following subtle rewording of its marketing for the game, RGG Studio and publisher Sega explained that Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is actually the title for Like a Dragon 8, which was initially announced under that name in September last year.

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Having flung open the doors for sign-ups at the end of May, developer NetherRealm has now shared dates for Mortal Kombat 1's online stress test, confirming it'll be available to select registered players on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S starting Friday, 23rd June.

More specifically, Mortal Kombat 1's online stress test - which NetherRealm says is designed to "deliberately stress our online infrastructure and identify potential issues" ahead of launch - will run from Friday, 23rd June at 4pm BST/8am PDT through Monday, 26th June at the same time.

The test is open to Xbox Series X/S and PS5 players in North America, Latin America, Brazil, and Europe, but places are limited. Participants will be chosen at random from those who've registered on the Warner Bros. website, and registration is still open if you want to get involved.

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Well, here's a surprise! Just when it looked like it would be all hands on deck until the arrival of Sea of Thieves' hugely anticipated (by me, I am the huge anticipant) Monkey Island crossover, developer Rare has announced it'll be reviving the multiplayer pirate game's limited-time Adventure series next week after a three-month absence.

Sea of Thieves' Adventures were introduced early last year in an effort to create meatier, more interesting monthly content drops, with the idea being each would form a playable instalment in an ongoing narrative. It's been fun following along, even if their quality has varied wildly (and even if they resulted in the sacrifice of moustachioed seahunk Arthur Pendragon, which is a crime I will never forgive), but then Rare suddenly announced it would be temporarily "hitting the pause button" on Adventures back in March.

Whatever the reason for the pause (presumably the impending arrival of a certain G-brush), Rare is finally ready to resume monthly Adventures, starting with next week's A Dark Deception, which runs from Thursday, 22nd June to Thursday, 6th July.

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People Can Fly, the studio behind Bulletstorm and Outriders, has formally signed a work-for-hire agreement with Microsoft to develop a new project based on one of the Xbox maker's IP.

The announcement come via a statement posted to Polish financial site Interia Biznes, in which People Can Fly notes the game, which has been given the codename Project Maverick, will be fully funded by Microsoft with a budget of $30m-50m.

As to what the mystery project could be, the most obvious guess would be some form of new entry in the Gears of War series given the studio's previous connections with the franchise - it co-developed Gears of War: Judgment alongside its previous owner Epic Games in 2013, and was responsible for the Windows port of the original Gears of War prior to that.

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Dead Cells - the superb rogue-like action-platformer from Motion Twin and subsidiary Evil Empire - is being turned into an 10-episode animated series for release next year.

The series is the work of Paris-based animation studio Bobbypills - the team behind Dead Cells' animated trailers, as well as Ubisoft's upcoming Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon spinoff, Captain Laserhawk - and whisks viewers away to a cursed island ravaged by a strange plague.

"After the island's foolish king develops a remedy that ends up turning the population into monstrous creatures," the official announcement explains, "prophecies depicting a flame-headed hero begin to appear. As it so happens this beheaded hero is real, but saving a kingdom isn't on his schedule and he just wants to be left alone."

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