Eurogamer

Titan, one of Destiny 2's original selection of locations, looks set to make a return to the game.

The ocean moon of Saturn was cruelly cut from Destiny 2 alongside several other destinations back in 2020, as developer Bungie sought to trim the amount of content it had to keep up to date. It was an unpopular decision, and one it has now ceased.

Some of that content has since been re-added, with Titan looking set to make a reappearance in the upcoming Season of the Deep. Here's a quick teaser:

Read more

It's here, everyone stay calm. One of the biggest events of the year. No, not Eurovision, silly! It's the release day of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom!

First of all, happy Zelda day to those who celebrate. Congratulations to those of you who've already managed to play it, commiserations to those of you who pre-ordered physical copies and are waiting for your delivery.

We're doubtless all playing TOTK (I'm definitely not sneakily making my way through the Great Sky Island as I write...) and now that everyone's experiencing the game and forming their own opinions on it, I think we can finally ask the big question. What do you want to see from the next Zelda game?

Read more

My copy of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is currently "out for delivery", and expected to arrive sometime this afternoon. It is now afternoon, and there's still no sign of it. To save myself from twiddling my thumbs while staring mindlessly at the wall, I decided to check out Flappy Souls.

Flappy Souls is a new, free release on Steam. It is marketed as being "a mix of Flappy Bird and Dark Souls", hence the name. The premise is remarkably simple - you have to fly around as a baseball cap-wearing bird while dodging obstacles. Smattered through these obstacles are souls that you have to collect, and as you progress you level up. And that's it. Easy, right? No, not right. This game is HARD!

Now, before I get too into it, let me ask - are you the kind of person who ducks a little when you go under a low bridge in a car? I am. For some reason, I have it hardwired into my brain that physically ducking will somehow ensure safer passage. Logically, of course, I know it makes absolutely no sense. If my car isn't going to fit, me ducking, or breathing in when I pass another vehicle on a slightly narrower stretch of road, isn't going to change that. And yet, I still do it.

Read more

Trackmania launches on console on Monday 15th May, Ubisoft has announced.

Specifically, it comes out on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S then, as well as on Luna, Amazon's game streaming platform. The console launch trailer is below.

Nadeo's free-to-download track creation racing game launched on PC in February. This console launch comes with crossplay and cross-progression with PC.

Read more

This week's Game of the Week is Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, of course.

Like a lot of people, I suspect, I was up early this morning and firing the new game up. And it made me realise that I was in for one of those rare every-five-years treats in games. Not just a Zelda, but the start of a new Zelda.

Spoiler warning: This piece discusses the opening of Tears of the Kingdom, so if you haven't started it yet you may want to skip this one!

Read more

The unannounced Mortal Kombat 1 will reportedly get Peacemaker and Homelander as DLC characters.

Windows Central reports the two characters are part of the Mortal Kombat 1 character pass.

Peacemaker is a DC comics anti-hero made mainstream by his appearance in James Gunn's 2021 Suicide Squad movie and HBO Peacemaker spin-off TV series. The character is played by pro wrestler and actor John Cena.

Read more

Hot off the heels of his turn as Bowser in the Super Mario Bros. Movie, Jack Black has given his likeness to a host of other video game characters, and the results are everything I could have wanted and more.

This eclectic menagerie of characters all come from Tenacious D's latest music video, for a song aptly named "Video Games". Animated versions of Black and Kyle Gass begin the promo in a fairly normal way. The duo are in a studio, with Black singing into his mic while Gass strums on his animated guitar. Soon, however, things become chaoticly brilliant.

It starts with Gass getting squashed by God of War's Dauði Kaupmaðr, and Black fleeing the scene only to find himself in the middle of Fallout 4 (as one does). The rest of the video then sees the duo becoming Sonic and Tails, Red Dead cowboys and more. As I have said, it is brilliant, as you can see for yourself below.

Read more

Welcome to the first proper episode of Inside Eurogamer, a new podcast series exclusively for supporters where we, the people who work for Eurogamer, talk about what we do here and the decisions we make.

If you're not a supporter and you're reading this: it's very easy to become one.

Today's is a bumper episode because, well, quite a lot has happened on Eurogamer recently. We appointed a new editor in chief, Tom Phillips, and we changed our review scores from the Essential/Recommended/Avoid badge system to a five-star system instead.

Read more

It may be Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom launch day, but Nintendo is already thinking about the future - and the possibility of a Legend of Zelda game where Zelda could finally be the star.

Fans have long called for Zelda to take on more of an active role in the series she gives her name to. And more recently, Zelda has indeed been playable in spin-offs such as Hyrule Warriors, Cadence of Hyrule and Age of Calamity.

But the main Zelda series has remained steadfast at always casting Link as the hero, and Zelda herself as someone kept largely off-screen. (And that's all we'll say here, where there shall be no Tears of the Kingdom spoilers.)

Read more

This year's Call of Duty is Modern Warfare 3 and is due out 10th November on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, according to a report by Insider Gaming.

The game is pitched as a "fully-fledged sequel" to last year's Modern Warfare 2, with development led by Vanguard maker Sledgehammer Games and support provided by Activision's many Call of Duty studios.

Apparently all the modes you'd expect from a full-blown Call of Duty game are included, such as campaign, multiplayer and zombies ("essentially an Outbreak 2.0" that may or may not be free-to-play). There's a new Warzone 2 map planned for later in the year based on the Las Almas map from the Modern Warfare 2 campaign.

Read more

The second season of HBO's The Last of Us is currently on hold due to the ongoing Writers Guild of America's strike for fair pay.

The showrunners were making casting preparations for The Last of Us' second season up until earlier this week, when it was put on hold, Variety reports.

According to sources familiar with the matter, up until this point the casting team had been asking actors to read sides taken "directly" from The Last of Us Part 2, PlayStation's 2020 release that the second season will be based on, during auditions, as there are currently no scripts for the show itself.

Read more

Don't expect Nintendo Switch to become cheaper this year.

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has said Switch will remain at its current price point despite entering its seventh year on sale, due to inflation and foreign exchange rates.

As for the potential of a price rise - as Sony did for PlayStation 5 last summer - Nintendo did not entirely rule it out.

Read more

Sleeping is a tricky thing that rarely comes easy for me. A good night usually sees me lying down for two hours before I drift away, even without looking at my phone. Insomnia: Theater in the Head understands these frustrations better than I anticipated. It understands that insomnia is a cruel thing that doesn't care for your plans. Tomorrow could bring a crucial job interview or a fun meetup with friends, and it wouldn't matter. Insomnia strikes indiscriminately.

Developed by Perfect Day Studio, my introduction couldn't be more fitting. One of the many demos available at W.A.S.D. 2023, I walked into that event with an hour's sleep and no chance of napping until late afternoon. (I should add: the game is out now.) When I saw the game tucked away in the Curios section, it felt like giant neon arrows were signalling me towards it. Theater in the Head isn't a wellbeing app or gamified sleep-tracker like Pokémon Sleep, but a puzzle game detailing a young woman's struggle for inner peace.

Across several short chapters, she faces another sleepless night with no one to comfort her. You briefly glimpse her daily routine but, after hitting the pillow, her subconscious loudly explains that 11pm is no time for rest -- a relatable feeling when I'm often still awake at 2am. Clearing your head is never straightforward, and Theater In The Head showcases that inability to "switch off" well. Your mind inevitably drifts onto other subjects and this accurately portrays mental chatter.

Read more

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: notes, D&D, and hatboxes.

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

I dunno, I guess Tunic was a pretty decent action-adventure at some point? But that feels like lifetimes ago. Now I have succumbed. Now, I am a slave to The Manual, lost in a whirl of inscrutable annotations and margin notes.

Read more

In anticipation of its June arrival on Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC, Bloober Team's Layers of Fear remake is getting a "short" playable demo on Steam next Monday, 15th May.

Bloober's updated version of Layers of Fear, which was initially announced under the name Layers of Fears, is being co-developed with Anshar Studios. It sees the original Layers of Fear, its Inheritance DLC, and Layers of Fear 2 all rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5 and reimagined as a single, generations-spanning "psychedelic horror chronicle".

Both previously released games - which respectively chart the gradual unravellings of a painter on the verge of completing his masterpiece and a legendary actor making one final movie on a labyrinthine ocean liner - get some striking new visuals in the reboot, alongside new gameplay and expanded plot lines. And there's a new framing device tying the whole lot together, focusing on a new lighthouse-bound character known as The Writer.

Read more

Following suggestions in March that CD Projekt's The Witcher spin-off Project Sirius had been rebooted from scratch, the studio has confirmed its development is back on track, with "work on defining a new framework" now complete.

Project Sirius - a part-solo, part-multiplayer experience being developed by The Flame and the Flood studio Molasses Flood - was announced last October as part of CD Projekt's ambitious studio roadmap, which included a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, a new IP, the next Witcher trilogy, and a remake of the first Witcher game.

However, March brought the news work on Project Sirius had stalled after CD Projekt had re-evaluated the "scope and commercial potential of the original concept". At the time, the company told investors it was in the process of "formulating a new framework" for the game that was better "aligned with [its] strategy".

Read more

We're less than a month away from the start of this year's Summer Game Fest "season" and host Geoff Keighley is starting to crank the hype handle, revealing this year's event will feature "updates from 40+ partners" including PlayStation and Xbox.

Summer Game Fest officially begins on 8th June with a live showcase promising a mix of premieres, gameplay demos, and announcements, but it'll continue on well after that, with various other industry events and showcases - including those previously announced by Xbox and Ubisoft - set to fall under the Summer Game Fest banner throughout the season.

That's about as much detail as we'd heard previously, but the official Summer Game Fest Twitter account has now revealed a sizeable list of game companies confirmed to be taking part in some capacity, including big names like PlayStation, Xbox, Capcom, Sega, CD Projekt, Bandai Namco, EA, Epic Games, Netflix, Activision, Square Enix, Ubisoft, and Warner Bros.

Read more

Asus has announced final details for the Asus ROG Ally, its Steam-Deck-style handheld gaming PC, confirming the device will launch on 13th June priced at £699/$699 USD.

We first caught a glimpse of the ROG Ally on 1st April this year, but Asus was quick to confirm the device was not, in fact, a weirdly elaborate April Fool's Day prank, but rather an actual real thing it was planning to release.

A few weeks later, Asus was ready to talk specs, confirming the ROG Ally would include an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor, a seven-inch 1080p 120Hz touch screen, a UHS-2 Micro SD card slot, plus Windows 11 support, and three months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. It also promised "up to" 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM in dual-channel mode and storage of "up to" 512GB PCIe 4.0 SSD, although it offered little word on other planned configurations.

Read more

Goodbye Volcano High, the "hybrid cinematic narrative/rhythm game/coming of age/interactive movie experience" from developer KO_OP has been delayed again, this time by two and a half months to 29th August.

Announced back in 2020, Goodbye Volcano High - which follows the adventures of a group of teen dinosaurs as they learn to live and love in a world teetering on the bring of destruction - was originally expected to launch in 2021, but a narrative reboot and the global pandemic saw KO_OP shift its release into 2023.

Earlier this year, it seemed an end was finally in sight when KO_OP slapped it with a 15th June release date, but the studio has now opted to push the game's launch back by another ten weeks "after assessing its production schedule".

Read more

Tim Cain, one of the creators of the Fallout series, has "set the record straight" on the true, original purpose of the series' famous vaults.

In a video posted to his YouTube channel, embedded below, Cain revealed the idea behind the vaults and their various dastardly experiments was to help scientists figure out how humans might survive interstellar travel - an idea he conveived after Fallout 1 came out in 1997.

Deciding there would be "no earth to come back to" in the event of a nuclear war, the head of the Enclave and the US government hatched a plan to build a starship that would take "our best and brightest" to a distant solar system in the hope of colonising a suitable planet.

Read more

Nintendo has sent out a teasing fan survey, detailing the long-awaited Pikmin 4.

In it, Nintendo asks respondees to rate their knowledge of the Pikmin series so far (fairly strong), their impressions of Pikmin 4's recent marketing (it's been OK), and what they'd be keen to hear more about as its 21st July release date nears.

This last part is most interesting to me, as it touches on a few features Nintendo has only hinted at so far. This includes "delving into puzzle-filled caves, and carefully managing your resources until you escape" plus "embarking on night-time missions that feature new and intense gameplay".

Read more

Stadia-exclusive Gylt launches on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and S, and Xbox One on 6th July.

In October - when Google confirmed plans to shutter its cloud gaming service Stadia - developer Tequila Works announced its Stadia-exclusive horror game would go multiplatform, as other Stadia-exclusive games have done this year.

"While playing it safe and a tad predictable, Tequila Works carefully layers on new gimmicks and mechanics as you progress through Gylt, allowing you to organically build on your knowledge and start experimenting," Vikki wrote in Eurogamer's Gylt review.

Read more

An image of an unannounced new map for Warzone 2 has popped up online.

The image emerged yesterday on the @BKTOOR4 Twitter account, apparently from a datamine. It didn't take long for Activision to haul the tweet offline, but of course the internet noticed.

According to Charlie Intel, this new Resurgence map is called Vondel and is set in The Netherlands, which should make for a welcome palette-cleanser following the sandy Al Mazrah map and the current Ashika Island Resurgence map.

Read more

Insomniac Games is yet to announce a firm release date for Marvel's Spider-Man 2, but if you are itching for more web-centric content in your life, you can at least now have a read of the game's prequel comic.

This comic was announced last week, along with the standalone PlayStation 5 version of Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered. After a brief time of being available in US comic book stores, the entire thing is now online for free.

I have had a read of the comic myself, and it is a nice, pretty condensed, standalone story that should help fill some of the void between now and Marvel's Spider-Man 2's eventual debut (don't worry, I am not going to spoil anything here). If you are interested in having a read of what Peter Parker and co. have been getting up to ahead of Marvel's Spider-Man 2's release, you can check out the online version of the comic here.

Read more

First-person shooter Mouse has gathered quite the excitement in the last 24 hours, thanks to its... distinct art style and protagonist.

The game will see you play as John Mouston, a private detective sniffing out corruption and rogue rodents. Inspired by rubber hose animation, John Mouston bears some resemblance to Walt Disney's beloved Mickey Mouse. Indeed, he has the long snout(is that correct terminology?) with a round nose, the big ears and the white gloves. But he also has a revolver and cigars, so he's definitely not Mickey Mouse.

The gameplay we've seen so far gives me Doom vibes, whilst the vending machines remind me a lot of BioShock. I'd be lying if I said it doesn't look fun to play.

Read more

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrives in a turbulent time for gaming. As new releases continue to debut with a range of technical hiccups, the excitement of diving into a brand-new game has become increasingly muted. Even Nintendo-published titles, such as the recent Pokémon games, have had unfortunate technical flaws. So, when the latest entry in the Zelda series promises to be bigger and better than ever before, scepticism is warranted, at least when it comes to technical performance. Worry not - despite some troubling preview footage with clear performance problems, the day one experience for Tears of the Kingdom is excellent overall - and it's not 'too big for Switch'.

Going into this one, I was also interested to see what kind of Zelda game this would be, bearing in mind its surface-level similarities compared to Breath of the Wild. The Legend of Zelda series is known for constantly reinventing itself - finding new, interesting ideas to push the medium forward. The task of making a sequel to one of these games is an unenviable one - the weight of expectation and historical importance cannot be understated, and as a result, direct sequels in the series have remained rare.

There are exceptions, however, and they are generally well regarded - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds both follow in the footsteps of their highly successful predecessors, while also offering fresh new ideas that have captivated fans of the series everywhere.

Read more

You've probably seen and read a lot about Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's heights, so let's start by plumbing its depths. The most accessible of these are water wells - around 50 in total, typically located near villages and stables, though a few lurk in the bellies of forgotten ruins. Drop in, and sometimes, all you'll find below are puddles and moss, a few lizards you can toss into a potion, and the trace of a story. One well I visited had a hydroponics garden beneath it, with melons swelling in the glare of bioluminescent shrubs. Another harboured a fellow well-enthusiast, one of the many charmingly written vagrant nerds you'll meet in Tears of the Kingdom's vertically expanded Hyrule, who promptly handed me a sidequest to discover - you guessed it - all the other wells.

Wells are fleeting distractions, a nice way to cool off after a giddy descent from a floating island, or warm yourself up for the next major dungeon after a night at the inn. But sometimes, you spy a cracked wall you can shatter with a rock hammer you've improvised by fusing a boulder to a rusty sword. You stroll through the gap expecting a treasure chest or similar, and find yourself in a labyrinth. There could be anything down here - a skeleton ogre encased in brittle magma; a dusty palanquin housing a piece of antique armour; a multiple-storey cavern full of flammable brambles, screaming wall-crawlers, and outcrops of precious ore.

Publisher Humble Games, which released last year's Signalis and our 2021 game of the year Unpacking, has announced a showcase set for next week.

Upcoming games Humble is set to publish include the highly-anticipated musical RPG Stray Gods and the adorable-looking adventure game Mineko's Night Market.

While details of the showcase have not been revealed, its announcement perhaps contains some hints as to what we can expect.

Read more

Bella Ramsey, perhaps best known on this site for playing Ellie in HBO's The Last of Us adaptation, has briefly hung up her shivs and bricks to take Gran Turismo 7 for a test drive.

Ramsey, who has previously spoken about her repeated attempts to get a driving licence, is now promoting Sony's racing sim on the PSVR2. "I am about to take my fifth driving test," the actor begins, before admitting she is a bit nervous about the whole ordeal. It should all be ok, right? Because, after all, Ramsey has a nice PSVR2 set and Gran Turismo 7, so she'll get plenty of practice.

Cut to Ramsey tearing her way round Gran Turismo 7's race tracks in her new VR wheels, with an appropriate amount of whooping and mock road rage. But alas, these new found tactics and moves do not work in the real world, and Ramsey does not pass her driving test. "You were doing 80 in a 30," her driving instructor explains. It's a really fun advert, so do check it out for yourself below.

Read more

Blizzard has revealed its plan for Diablo 4 post-launch, detailing its approach to seasons, battle passes and the shop.

In a post on Blizzard.com, the developer said Diablo 4 will get a new season each quarter, and each will add questlines, battle passes, new legendary items, class balance changes and other tweaks.

Season 1 begins in mid to late July (Diablo 4 launches early June). To access it you have to complete the campaign.

Read more

UPDATE 11/5/23: Mortal Kombat 1 is the name for the series' upcoming reboot, according to reliable console store spy Billbil-kun. The title fits with previous hints the game will be a re-imagining of the franchise so far.

Store listings for the game suggest it will be released for PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S - so, no PS4 or Xbox One.

We're expecting an official reveal of the game in the coming days.

Read more

Dordogne, developer Un Je Ne Sais Quoi's gorgeously presented narrative adventure about long-forgotten childhood summers, finally has a release date and is coming to PC, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, and PS5 on 13th June.

First revealed back in 2020, Dordogne casts players as 32-year-old Mimi who, at the start of the game, returns to the home of her recently deceased grandmother in the titular French province, where she begins to reflect on the summers of her youth.

From there, the adventure splits across two timelines; in one, present-day Mimi explores her grandmother's home, rifling through souvenirs and solving puzzles, while ten-year-old Mimi faces her own challenges, from forest walks and climbing to kayaking and cave explorations.

Read more

UPDATE 12TH MAY 2023: It seems Sony is having a tough time working out exactly which games it will add to PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium next week.

After pulling Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town from the list, the farming game is back on the menu - without explanation.

Bizarre! But that's not all. Sony has tweaked the list further to clarify Soundfall is part of the game catalog in Japan and Asia regions only, which means UK subscribers won't get it.

Read more

Ubisoft has today announced job cuts to its customer services team, with up to 60 positions expected to be lost across the UK and US.

Here in the UK, Ubisoft operates a Customer Relation Centre (CRC) in Newscastle. In the US, it runs a similar team based in Cary, North Carolina.

One developer writing on Twitter said they had been "laid off today with no notice" and were now desperately seeking work.

Read more

Good, great, so if you clicked on this article, I'm going to assume you're not fussed about spoilers and that we can now continue unimpeded, no longer having to wiggle around the issue at hand. Dungeons! Mitherflipping dungeons are returning in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom!

More specifically - according to Nintendo's Hidemaro Fujibayashi, speaking in a new Ask the Developer interview - "huge", "traditional" dungeons are making their return to the Legend of Zelda series in Tears of the Kingdom after their conspicuous absence in Breath of the Wild.

Tears of the Kingdom's predecessor saw Nintendo shake up the traditional Zelda formula in a big way, not just in its sprawling open-world, but by replacing lengthy, elaborate dungeons - which have been part of the Zelda series since its inception in 1986 - with micro-dungeon-like Shrines and more expansive, although largely forgettable, Divine Beasts.

Read more

I apologise in advance if you, dear reader, know this already: Warhammer 40,000 Boltgun is a sequel to 2011's Space Marine.

I didn't know this (I'm on the Inquisition's blacklist, apprently). I just realised this afternoon while watching the latest gameplay trailer for Auroch Digital's upcoming boomer shooter - aka old-school Doom in a Warhammer 40,000 skin.

Near the end of the video, below, we hear the player character, an Ultramarine Sternguard Veteran hell bent on ripping the forces of Chaos to shreds, declare through his vox: "I will finish the work Captain Titus started."

Read more

Years ago there was a huge videogame exhibition at the Barbican in London. It was filled with magical stuff: old consoles, weird experiments, art works, design documents, all manner of stuff. But the most memorable thing, I think, may have been a quote from a child who had played Zelda and had their world transformed by it. "When I go out playing now, the stick I carry with me becomes a sword."

Zelda games are the kinds of games you set your watch by - they're a big deal and they elicit big emotions. They seep from their world and into ours. With Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom almost upon us, we thought it might be nice to sit down as a team and talk about some of what we love about this most storied of gaming series. What does Zelda mean to us? What are the best items? What are the memories that have lingered the most? Oh yes, and why was knocking a book off a shelf once so very thrilling?

Ocarina of Time wasn't the first Zelda game I played - that honour goes to the dreamily black and white Link's Awakening - but it was certainly my gateway into modern gaming. Where the Game Boy game hinted at an epic world I expanded on in my imagination, Ocarina of Time presented it right to me, in full colour and 3D. My tiny mind was blown.

Read more

The European Commission - the EU's antitrust regulator - is reportedly set to approve Microsoft's proposed Activision Blizzard deal.

According to Reuters, the regulator is set to approve the deal sometime next week. Sources familiar with the matter said 15th May (next Monday) is the likeliest date for this, however the EC's own deadline for its decision on Microsoft's proposed deal is still set for 22nd May.

The regulator had previously announced a provisional deadline of 25th April for its decision on the potential takeover, but that date shifted to May after Microsoft submitted remedies in its efforts to gain approval from regulatory bodies.

Read more

Hey again, Tom here. I'm really excited to announce today that Eurogamer reviews are changing. Here's a bit about how, and the thinking behind why.

In short, Eurogamer is moving to a five-star review rating system, beginning this week.

For years now, I've felt our existing review badges weren't working hard enough for us, or for you. We ended up recommending a lot of games, or not giving a badge at all to many others - which meant readers not acquainted with our odd four-point scale had nothing to go on. We rarely used Avoid, because it always felt a bit mean.

Read more

A Plague Tale: Requiem's performance mode is now live, which means the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions have a 60fps mode.

The 60fps option scales the resolution down - you can pick the default resolution mode if you want to enjoy the visuals at their best.

Asobo Studio's well-received rat-infested sequel also now has enhanced graphics for PC, with a Nintendo Switch cloud version due out next week. Meanwhile, all platforms get several bug fixes.

Read more