Fresh gameplay of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was shown at tonight's Summer Game Fest with a release window reveal of early 2024.
The game is so big, it will be on two discs and is a PlayStation 5 exclusive.
Square Enix has been teasing a reveal all week with developer comments of varying detail - today was day seven, resulting in the trailer below.
As part of Summer Game Fest, we were given a fresh look at the upcoming Twisted Metal TV series.
Will Arnett, who is voicing Sweet Tooth in this adaptation, introduced the new trailer, which sees Anthony Mackie squaring off with the series' clown-faced killer in an arcade. Actually, maybe those are slot machines.
It's all pretty awkward, if I am honest. Sweet Tooth pushes Mackie's John Doe up against a cabinet and makes him sing along with him as the two share back and forth quips. But, it is what it is, as you can see for yourself below.
UPDATE 9/6/23: Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 3: Wilds kicks off today, and Epic Games has now fully detailed the many new mechanics on offer in this jungle-themed update to its ever-popular battle royale.
You can run around on treetop canopies, you can slide into mud for speed and sneaky camouflage - and yes, as shown last night, the dinosaurs are now ridable.
New weapons include the Thermal DMR and Flapjack Rifle, as well as a Kinetic Boomerang to hit enemies twice. There's also a new Transformers-themed bazooka cannon.
Second Dinner's chief development officer Ben Brode's just taken the stage at Summer Game Fest to announce that Marvel Snap's getting its "biggest update ever" next week, and it will contain a new mode.
Brode described Conquest mode as "a great way to get a super competitive experience". The mode was announced recently, and seems to hinge on competing against the same opponent multiple times, draining their health with each win. It won't replace the standard game mode, but will provide another option.
Marvel Snap's a brilliant collectible card game for smartphones and PC. It's got some genuinely brilliant cards in it and loads of fascinating design ideas. Do check it out.
A glimpse of Alan Wake 2 was shown at the recent PlayStation Showcase, but at tonight's Summer Game Fest first gameplay footage was shown.
Ahead of the reveal, Remedy's Sam Lake shared some extra detail, including the game will feature two playable characters that players can swap between. The game is split evenly between both, with each narrative taking place in different worlds.
Lake also reiterated this is Remedy's first survival horror. The gameplay footage features new character Saga, who appears to be living a narrative that Wake has written.
Final Fantasy 7 Ever Crisis is now available for pre-registration on iOS and Android.
Ever Crisis is the remake of the original game for mobile platforms that was announced a few years back but is still yet to be released. Fans can sign up for a closed beta test on Android from 8th June - 29th June.
This isn't just a remake, though. Not only does it feature new character models and flashy battles, it reimagines the whole Final Fantasy 7 saga - including Crisis Core - with extra narrative.
Witchfire, the upcoming roguelite shooter from the developer of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, will be available in early access on 20th September via the Epic Games Store.
First announced all the way back in 2017, Witchfire is described as a dark fantasy first-person shooter. It comes from Polish studio The Astronauts, whose founders previously worked on both Painkiller and Bulletstorm.
In Witchfire, powerful witches and the Church are at war. This is where you, a witch hunter, come in. You will armed with an "ungodly array of guns" as well as forbidden magic to combat the world's dark terrors "on behalf of [your] shadowy benefactors". Ooh.
Summer Games Fest is underway and Bandai Namco has just revealed a new third-person action game from Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball. It's called Sand Land, and its based on Toriyama's manga from 2000.
Sand Land's set in a post-apocalyptic desert world where water is in short supply. When lawlessness breaks out over rising water costs, a sheriff approaches some local demons to strike a bargain.
What this means from the game's reveal is an action game set in what looks like a large open world. Players explore in everything from hoverbikes to tanks and even on the backs of dinosaurs. There's elaborate futuristic weaponry and fast third-person combat. It's enlivened by lovely comic visual design and an art style that recalls things like Borderlands, with visible pen lines on characters and the landscape.
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Genshin Impact developer HoYoverse has announced its RPG game Honkai: Star Rail will be pulling into the PlayStation station sometime during Q4 of this year. So, not too much longer for those of you who are keen to give this new game a spin, but are waiting for this console release.
Along with this news, we also got a new trailer for the game, which you can see below.
For those currently unfamiliar with Honkai: Star Rail, it is a space fantasy RPG that promises players a journey through "immense worlds of the unknown".
Sonic Superstars, a new 2D Sonic platformer, was announced at tonight's Summer Game Fest.
It's set for release this autumn across PlayStation and Xbox consoles, Switch, and PC (Steam and Epic).
Unlike last year's Sonic Frontiers, this is a return to classic sidescrolling Sonic but with a gorgeous art style akin to Sonic Generations and some fun new twists. Check out the trailer below.
The Pinocchio-starring Soulslike Lies of P has a release date of 19th September.
That's across PlayStation and Xbox consoles, plus PC (via Steam).
The announcement was made at the Summer Games Fest, along with news of a public demo available to try out now on all platforms.
If it's weird crossovers you want, how about Street Fighter obots smashing against killer dinos? Because that's what Capcom's offering in its newly announced Exoprimal collaboration.
Exoprimal is, of course, Capcom's new squad-based multiplayer shooter, in which teams of five, adorned in ridiculously over-the-top mech-style armour known as Exosuits, take on hordes of dinosaurs, from swarming raptors to marauding T. rexes.
And that's where Capcom's Street Fighter 6 collaboration comes in, with a bunch of familiar faces from the long-running franchise dropping into Exoprimal in the form of stylised Exosuits.
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Summer Game Fest has kicked off. Literally.
Along with the newly announced Prince of Persia game, we were swiftly treated to a look at Mortal Kombat 1. This included gameplay, so expect plenty of blood and gore. I am talking about decapitations, saws to the face, spinal cord removal. You know, kind of what you'd expect from the famously brutal fighter series.
Here is that trailer. Maybe put any food you were eating to one side before diving in.
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UPDATE 12/6/23: Gameplay of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was shown at tonight's Ubisoft Forward, revealing time powers are back.
ORIGINAL STORY 8/6/23: Surprise! Summer Games Fest 2023 has kicked off with the announcement of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, a new take on Ubisoft's classic series.
This latest entry has a modern side-scrolling feel, with puzzles and flashy boss fights.
It's coming to PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S and already has a release date: 18th January 2024.
Today's reveal trailer showed a redesigned Prince with more chunky, cartoony visuals, platforming in 2.5D environments, and at one point seemingly meeting a version of himself. Time travel? Quite possibly.
In a press release, Ubisoft said this game is inspired by Metroidvanias and stars Sargon, "a young, gifted warrior, and member of an elite group called The Immortals".
"As they are sent to rescue Prince Ghassan, they will explore Mount Qaf, a once wondrous place, now cursed and hostile," the game's description reads. "Sargon and his brothers-in-arms will soon discover that time itself will be a treacherous foe and that the world balance must be restored."
We'll see more of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown at Ubisoft's own reveal event, next Monday.
Gun Interactive has announced an end for Friday the 13th: The Game, confirming the asymmetrical multiplayer horror will be pulled from stores on 31st December this year, the same day its Friday the 13th licence officially expires.
Friday the 13th: The Game has been around since 2017, and, despite a rocky start, proved to be a solidly entertaining - and commercially successful - horror experience. Unfortunately, its development was forced to end prematurely in 2018 amid a lawsuit relating to the ownership of the Friday the 13th licence, and 2020 bought the news Gun would be decommissioning the game's dedicated servers, reverting to the peer-to-peer networking favoured at launch.
Since then, with no new content in development, Friday the 13th: The Game has largely remained out of the spotlight, but, now, Gun has confirmed - in a statement shared on Twitter - the game'll no longer be available to purchase, either digitally or physically, once its licence expires on 31st December 2023. There's some small solace for owners, however, in that the developer says the game will remain playable through "at least" 31st December 2024.
If Summer Game Fest has you yearning for a good gaming get-together, then today's as good a day as any to let you know that EGX is back on the horizon, and tickets are now available.
This year, EGX - run by Eurogamer's parent company Reedpop - will offer four days of playable AAA games, indie gems and retro favourites at ExCeL London from 12th to 15th October.
As well as playing games, you'll be able to settle down to watch game creators present their latest projects on the EGX Theatre stage, visit the EGX Arena to compete for prizes, and pass by the Community Hub - a home for diverse gaming fandoms.
2022 and now 2023 have been rough years for AAA game release quality, with many games releasing in an unfinished, broken state - particularly on PC. We recently reported on big improvements to The Last of Us Part 1 on PC, so we decided to go back, revisiting four of the most contentious releases we've reviewed recently. How long does it take to fix a PC game? Do they actually get fixed at all? Of course, the truth is that the situation is different on a game by game basis. Some games have only had minor tweaks, and of the four we tested, only one has addressed the foundational problems we highlighted in our initial review.
The results of our investigation are found in the video embedded below, but Dead Space, Returnal and Forspoken came under the microscope - and I began by taking a look at The Callisto Protocol. This launched with astonishingly bad shader compilation stutter, which was quickly addressed.
However, other problems remain as they were. The options menu remains confusingly hyper-nested, with menus within menus and options that cannot be changed in real-time, meaning you need to restart the game to see the difference. This essentially makes settings optimisation impossible unless you have a photographic memory, or a capture card.
It's the most wonderful time of the year. No, not the silly festive season but June, when all the big games companies come out to play and show us what they've got. And the centrepoint of it all will be today's Opening Showcase of Summer Game Fest.
It begins at 8pm UK time (9pm CEST / 3pm EDT / 12pm PDT) and you can watch the stream here while we report live on what we see. I'm sure you know the drill by now, but this is a chance for us to follow the announcements together and talk about whether we're impressed by them. Will we be?
What is on the cards for tonight, then - what should we expect? Well, Geoff Keighley, obviously, because it's his show. But in terms of head-turning games: Ed Boon will be there to show Mortal Kombat 1, the franchise reboot, and Remedy's Sam Lake will be there to show more of Alan Wake 2.
First-person puzzler Viewfinder now has a release date and a demo on PlayStation 5.
The game will release on 18th July and a demo is available to test right now. The news was shared on the PlayStation Blog by Sad Owl Studios director Gwen Foster, along with some new details on the game.
Viewfinder is also set for release on PC via Steam, but the release date is yet to be updated.
Yesterday, legendary actress Whoopi Goldberg took to Instagram to blast Blizzard for not releasing Diablo 4 for Apple.
In a minute-long video, Goldberg explained how excited she was to play Diablo 4, which she called her "favourite game" series, on her Apple computer, which she called her "favourite gaming system".
"I know there's a lot of terrible things happening in the world, but what I'm about to tell you is not on any scale like that," Goldberg said. Indeed, it's not quite as grim as seeing Diablo 4's billboard advert against the backdrop of wildfires, or Activision Blizzard CCO Lulu Cheng Meservey assuring us the company has "no affiliation or partnership" with said natural disaster. But you know what they say - an Apple a day keeps the demons away. Or something like that.
UPDATE: The release date of 9th November for Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name has been confirmed by publisher Sega at Summer Games Fest 2023. Take a look at the new trailer for the game below.
ORIGINAL STORY 5.09pm:A lengthy list of details for upcoming Yakuza spin-off Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name has leaked, presumably ahead of a formal announcement at one of this year's not-E3 livestreams, or developer RGG Studio's own showcase next week.
Gaiden was first announced in September last year, when it was described as a more compact return to the action gameplay of previous games in the series. Plot-wise, the game will follow series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu and explain what happened to him in the gap between Yakuza 6 and Like a Dragon 8.
Ubisoft's upcoming Assassin's Creed VR game Nexus is expected to feature the return of several franchise favourites.
That's according to cryptic teases laid out by Ubisoft itself which have now been cracked by the series' enterprising community.
Data strings written in binary programming language found on a promotional image for Nexus appear to correspond to the birth dates of three Assassin's Creed characters.
Dating sim-slash-murder mystery Mask of the Rose is an intriguing setup - but its experimental nature strains against its own structure. In the familiar-to-some setting of Fallen London, developer Failbetter's gothic world that's grown to house Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies - and the original browser game of the same name - Victorian London has only recently fallen. Its cast are all having to adjust to new ways to relate to their society, to their communities, to their belief systems, and potentially to love. Foundations are shattered - not least among them the meaning of life and death, when their new world’s first murder turns out to be an impermanent thing.
While the systems are intertwined, it's difficult not to think of the murder mystery and the dating sim as separate ideas within Mask of the Rose. The bookends of the game, the character creator and the epilogue, say 'dating sim', but it's London's mysteries that lead you through. There's far more not-romance to do than romancing - but complex relationship dynamics underpin everything. When the murder victim's sister refuses to discuss the grisly details, it isn't about our relationship, but that of the siblings. If he hasn't decided to trust me with those details yet, then she isn't going to divulge them behind his back.
Other than showing up in places to chat, the primary way you interact with Mask of the Rose is its storycrafting system, which you're introduced to as a way to unpeel the mysterious Masters of the Bazaar's incentives. It's spiritually a notecard-and-red-thread conspiracy board, where an unknown motive - or unknown reaction - populates the world with questions to ask until you have your answer.
Activision has released details of what players can expect in Season 4 of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0 ahead of its start next week.
Amongst the additions for Season 4 are new maps, new operators, and limited time launch modes.
Vondel, the recently-leaked new map, looks to be inspired by Amsterdam and its canal system. Players will be able to dive into the canals or drive across them to move around Vondel. In size, Vondel is somewhere between Al Mazrah and Ashika Island.
PlayStation and Kojima Productions have released a new trailer for their Hideo Kojima documentary, which is said to promise a "creative journey into the mind of a video games icon".
Known as Connecting Worlds, this documentary will provide us with a "rare insight" into Kojima's creative process, with the likes of Norman Reedus - currently working with Kojima on Death Stranding's sequel DS2 - and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro contributing to the upcoming production.
In a short trailer, which you can see below, Reedus likens working with Kojima to "stepping into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory with Willy Wonka". Meanwhile, on screen text proclaims Kojima as being "widely regarded as the first auteur of video games". From what I can tell, this documentary will cover Kojima's experience founding Kojima Productions as well as his creative process.
Toys For Bob has unveiled a new character coming to Crash Team Rumble: the non-binary, David Bowie-inspired Catbat.
Crash Team Rumble is a multiplayer game launching across PlayStation and Xbox later this month and is the first time the studio has added its own heroes into the series.
Catbat is a lover of rock 'n' roll and an escaped prisoner of main antagonist Dr. Neo Cortex, and has been introduced with a comic story. They will also be voiced by Erika Ishii, the genderfluid actor who voices Valkyrie in Apex Legends.
If the summer heat is getting to you, here is something that will cool you down a bit - Lake, the cosy postal game, is getting a wintery and festive DLC.
Appropriately titled Season's Greetings, this DLC will act as a prequel taking place nine months before the main story of Lake. This time, players will take on the role of Thomas Weiss, father of Lake's protagonist Meredith Weiss, as he goes about his days delivering mail to the residents of Providence Oaks, while readying himself for a visit from his daughter.
Lake developer Gamious promises more of the same cosy and relaxing gameplay in Season's Greetings, with the addition of new characters as well as some familiar faces. There will also be the chance to find answers to some of those lingering questions players still have from the main game - though the developer stopped short of spoiling any specifics. You can see a short trailer for Season's Greetings below.
Driftwood is a brand new game about being a sloth on a longboard and rolling down steep roads very quickly. It's a game about being fast but, equally, it's a game about being slow - a game about taking it easy and not getting too worked up about things. A game to relax with.
Driftwood hit Steam Early Access at the beginning of June, and here, Donlan and Bertie take a look.
Chris: Are you familiar with the fact that sloths are having a bit of a moment? Their latent start power has been acknowledged. My daughter's absolutely obsessed, and you can't go on TikTok without seeing a sloth yawning or squeaking or falling out of a tree. Are you a fan?
World of Horror, the Junji-Ito-inspired roguelike RPG from developer Paweł Koźmiński, leaves PC early access on 19th October and releases for PlayStation and Switch on the same day.
World of Horror initially launched into PC early access a little over three years ago, and its deliciously nasty tale of a seaside town beseiged by malevolent cosmic forces - which players must investigate over the course of five randomly selected mysteries each playthrough - has slowly expanded with new stories, events, and features since then.
If you've not yet hopped onboard World of Horror's early access, the whole thing plays out something like a 1-bit version of the board game Arkham Horror, albeit with Lovecraftian overtones traded for something closer to Junji Ito's distinct brand of the mundane run amok - so think high school terror, haunted bulletin board systems, and so on.
Dr. Fetus' Mean Meat Machine, a match-4 puzzler set in the world of Super Meat Boy, will be coming to Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam on 22nd June.
As its name suggests, Dr. Fetus' Mean Meat Machine turns the spotlight on Super Meat Boy villain Dr. Fetus who, this time around, is aiming to create the perfect clone of Meat Boy - a process requiring him to eliminate all the rubbish clones first.
And so enters the Mean Meat Machine, a terrifying contraption that sees malformed clones dropping in at the top and then falling en masse to the bottom, wending their way past an array of deadly devices - including chainsaws, missiles, and lasers - as they go.
Throughline Games, the studio behind the acclaimed Forgotton Anne, has unveiled Forgotlings, an equally gorgeous "spiritual sequel" that's just launched a Kickstarter campaign.
Forgotlings, like its predecessor, takes place in a "magical realm inhabited by things we have lost and forgotten", where sentient creatures - the Forgotlings - live in search of a purpose.
However, despite its shared universe, Forgotlings looks to be something of a new beginning in both story and gameplay terms. It casts players as Fig, a "gifted posing doll", thrust into a world caught in a conflict between five mighty tribes. Fig will need to unite each tribe to save the world from destruction at the hands of an "enigmatic Beast".
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, the wonderful retro brawler from Tribute Games, is readying to expand its roster with a certain samurai rabbit later this year, come the release of its newly announced Dimension Shellshock DLC.
Dimension Shellshock promises to bring fans an "all-new adventure" introducing the Ninja Turtles' occasional ally Miyamoto Usagi, who originally made the jump from his own Usagi Yojimbo comic series into the turtles' world back in 1987.
Alongside its new playable character (the announcement trailer teases new playable "characters" but doesn't elaborate further), Dimension Shellshock includes a mysterious new game mode, alternative colour palette options, plus new music composed by Tee Lopes.
The first major Counter-Strike 2 update has arrived since the game launched as a limited test in March, bringing with it a radical new loadout system, new buy mechanics and - finally! - a new map for testing purposes, Mirage.
The loadout system has the potential to be the most disruptive change, as you can now choose five each of pistols, rifles and "mid-tier" (SMG/shotgun) weapons to take into a match. Previously, weapons like the silenced and unsilenced M4 were assigned to the same category, so you would have to go without one of them - but here, you could sacrifice one of the less-used rifles to have both options available. This change has been requested by players for a long time, and would also make it easier for developers Valve to add new weapons in the future, so it's a big win in my book.
When Counter-Strike: Global Offensive first appeared more than a decade ago, it sported a radial buy menu designed to mesh nicely to gamepad controls - after all, the game was originally intended to buy a console-focused iteration of the franchise. That menu has been replaced in the new Counter-Strike 2 update, in favour of a simpler grid-based buy menu that shows your teammate's purchases. Crucially, it's now possible to refund unused weapons, armour and grenades before buy time expires at the start of each round, saving you from the ignoble fate of spending all your hard-earned cash on a weapon you bought accidentally - always a pain given the importance of Counter-Strike's round-to-round economy system.
Paradox Interactive is offering refunds to those who have pre-ordered Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, following multiple delays.
In an blog update today, the publisher acknowledged it had been a while since many pre-orders had been placed. Three years later, Bloodlines 2 still does not have a release date.
Paradox said it was still "dedicated to delivering" a great game, but that it was now updating its various editions and bonus content. "With the bonus content being updated, the prior physical edition offered items that are no longer representative of the game," it explained. As such, the publisher said it was offering refunds in order to "provide the best value".
Video games are wonderful. They allow us to live out our power fantasies and explore the identities and lives of other characters.
But never did I think I'd get the chance to play as a virus infecting an increasingly grotesque Winnie the Pooh.
Yet here we are. Winnie's Hole, as it's known, is an actual real video game you can wishlist on Steam.
Try as I might, Diablo 4's endgame always remains just out of reach. My first run through the main chunk of the game, with a doomed, soon to be self-detonated Necromancer, came to an end just as Diablo 4's story did, before I hit the enforced reset before launch. My second, a wild sprint to still-not-quite-the-finish with a new Barbarian, remains ongoing. As you might've already seen, we delayed our review in part because we hadn't seen enough of Diablo 4 - but also because we hadn't seen the shop, or how its servers might fare when millions descend on it at once.
We know it's worked out surprisingly well in terms of stability - some way better than Diablo 3 infamously did, although you'd hope for that - and we know the shop has remained true to developer Blizzard's word. You can only buy cosmetics there, nothing that impacts gameplay. They are very expensive cosmetics - 10 quid horse armour feels like a twisted reference to where it all began - but they are just cosmetics. The first of Diablo's seasons, and its first battle pass, remains over a month away though, and that's a little too long for us to get to.
To talk straight down the lens for a second then, here's the plan. We're aiming to follow up on Diablo 4's endgame in proper depth further down the line. For now, I'll focus on what I've seen already. Call this a campaign review if you like - the Diablo 4 that presents itself to you after however many dozens of hours is almost a game of its own, and so best we do that game justice on its own terms later on.
Two years after the launch of Monster Hunter Rise and a little under a year since the arrival of its mighty Sunbreak expansion, Capcom is ready to release its last-ever content update for Sunbreak players, bringing one final monster to Switch and Steam tomorrow, 8th June.
While elder dragon Amatsu was originally supposed to bring Sunbreak's story to a close in April's Ver. 15 update, Capcom says it decided to squeeze one last surprise in for players after it identified a few additional features it wanted to include.
As such, Sunbreak owners will face a final, formidable challenge when tomorrow's free Title Update 6 (AKA Ver. 16) arrives, bringing the expansion's story to a close with a battle against the Primordial Malzeno, revealing more on its relationship with the Kingdom. The fight - which features new moves compared to the original version of Malzeno - will be available to hunters at Master Rank 10 and above, and includes materials needed to craft new weapons and armour.
Fntastic, the developer behind upcoming zombie MMO The Day Before, has addressed the rather unusual trademark dispute that led to the game being delayed.
As a quick reminder, The Day Before was originally meant to release on PC back in March. However, in a bizarre series of events, it transpired that Fntastic had failed to trademark the game's name, which had since been contested by the company behind a calendar app. All traces of the game were subsequently removed from Steam.
Talking to WellPlayed, Fntastic has now provided a small update on this trademark debacle, stating it believes "power is in the truth".
Ever wanted to feel like a Sith Lord with a gun? Because thanks to Synapse, the upcoming PSVR2 action shooter from nDreams, you soon will! Or at least that's how I felt playing through a short demo of Synapse for this week's episode of VR Corner (above or on YouTube).
In that video, you'll be able to watch 12 minutes worth of Synapse gameplay as I use telekiniesis to crush enemies and explode red barrels with one hand and shoot them to smithereens with a gun held in the other. This delicious dual-wielding combo works really well and, if you've ever played nDreams' previous VR shooter, Fracked, you'll have a good idea of how fluid the shooting mechanics are here.
The smooth simplicity of Synapses' gunplay means that you're able to effortlessly utilise its other big gameplay mechanic, telekinesis. Thanks to the PSVR2's eye-tracking functionality, you merely need to look at an object that you want to hurl and then, with a squeeze of the trigger and a flick of your wrist, off it goes - into the sky or into an enemies face. It's up to you.
