Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Take one fun-loving Final Fantasy party in lively outfits, add an angry protagonist in murderdad casualwear with a tendency to growl about CHAOS, and you have yourself one weird spin-off. Square Enix today announced Stranger Of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin, a "mature" stabby RPG made by Team Ninja, the studio behind the Nioh and Ninja Gaiden games. Huh. Check out the announcement trailer below.

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Normally, when I watch shows or play games with superheroes in, I always end up thinking about how cool it'd be to have their powers, but I don't get that with Life Is Strange. In the latest trailer for Life Is Strange: True Colours, we see new character Alex Chen putting her empathy abilities to the test. She can feel other people's emotions, which must be so mentally taxing! Albeit, useful in Life Is Strange's angsty teen stories.

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Babylon's Fall was first revealed back in 2018 and has been MIA ever since. It was re-revealed tonight at E3 2021, and looks more or less as I remember it. It's a live service hack-and-slasher from Platinum Games, and developers during Square Enix's E3 showcase basically pitched it as a Nier Automata that never ends.

Find the trailer below.

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Today at Square Enix's E3 2021 stream we got a first look at the upcoming Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy game. It's a third person action game where you play as Peter "Star-Lord" Quill. There's rootin', shootin' and jet bootin', and friends? I am stoked for the surprisingly close October 26th release date.

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Everything about Slime Rancher is so colorful and squishy and adorable, and I am so ready to see more of its excellent creatures when Slime Rancher 2 comes out next year. Announced during the Microsoft and Bethesda E3 showcase, Slime Rancher 2 takes players to a new island with all new slimes to meet - bunny slimes, butterfly slimes, and importantly, bat slimes! I've never needed a plushie of a delightful round beastie so much as I do now.

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Microsoft had said Halo Infinite would finally launch this year, and they're cutting it close. They announced today that Hinfinite will arrive this holiday season (November, that usually means) with the first season of its free-to-play multiplayer and its not-free story campaign. The campaign continues the adventures of Torode-117, the Master Chef, with the fight against a spacegorilla who cuts a mean WWE promo. Oh, and he has a new tamagotchi.

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If you don't want to play a Halloween-y game at Halloween, now you can play a new Age Of Empires game instead. Age Of Empires 4 is set to release on October 28th, and during Microsoft and Bethesda's E3 stream we saw some new footage of some mighty battles. Joan of Arc is there, as are many horses, sieges and a handful of elephants.

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E3 2021 is the first E3 since Xbox acquired Bethesda and shuffled the studio into its deck of game assets. Accordingly, tonight's Xbox E3 livestream was in fact an Xbox and Bethesda Showcase. Twice the game content! Here's a round up of everything that happened during this year's show (that is pertinent to PC players).

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Arkane Austin, the studio behind 2017's Prey, revealed their next game as part of tonight's Microsoft E3 conference. It's called Redfall, and it's an open world game about a gang of magic-users co-operatively slaying vampires in a Massachusetts town shut off from the world around it.

It looks rad as heck and the reveal trailer is below.

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Playground Games have announced Forza Horizon 5, the next instalment of their series of open-world racing games. Moving away from FH4's sunny British streets, FH5 will take players to actually-sunny Mexico. It's coming on November 9th, and you can catch the trailer from Microsoft and Bethesda's E3 showcase below. As always with these games, I'm a huge fan of the environments - it looks like they drive up to a volcano at the end!

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The next game from the co-creator of Inside and Limbo is coming next year, Microsoft announced today during their Xbox and Bethesda Games E3 Showcase. Somerville was first announced three years ago with a very small teaser trailer, but today's melancholic gameplay montage finally gives us a glimpse of what we can expect when it arrives in 2022. And from the looks of things, it's got big Inside vibes.

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Microsoft today announced The Outer Worlds 2 and I for one will be delighted to probe the many mysteries of another solar system stuck in a time loo- oh god damn it, not again. Right, right, not Outer Wilds, it's Outer Worlds, the Obsidian Entertainment RPG that's kinda like a space version of Fallout: New Vegas. Another one of those. Here, watch the trailer.

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Oh hey, that time loop puzzle game about the husband, wife and policeman finally has a release date. During the Microsoft and Bethesda E3 showcase, they revealed that Twelve Minutes will come out on August 19th. It's about a husband (voiced by James McAvoy) and a wife (Daisy Ridley) who experience a home invasion over and over again. Only the husband knows it's repeating, though.

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Sci-fi shooter Atomic Heart got a new 're-announcement' trailer this evening courtesy of Microsoft's Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase presentation. The supernatural post-apocalyptic shooter first burst onto the scene back in 2018 around the time Nvidia first revealed their ray tracing capable RTX 20 cards, and they kinda haven't stopped talking about it since. Despite the hype, though, Atomic Heart still isn't out yet, and sadly we aren't any the wiser this evening, either. Still, it sure looks pretty. Let's have a looksie at its 'new' trailer, shall we?

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Reader dear, you have three months to put your life in order and prepare to revert to a larval state of Nightmare Baal runs. Blizzard today confirmed that Diablo II Resurrected, the remaster of their fantastic action-RPG from the year 2000, will launch on September 23rd. I'll see YOU on the Blood Moor.

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Avalanche Studios, the makers of Just Cause, have announced their next game is about smuggling in the 1970s. Contraband is an open world co-op game that invites players to a "smuggler's paradise". I hope there are heists. Catch the trailer below, it features a delightful bit of music by Steely Dan, as a camera sweeps across what appears to be a smuggler's hideout.

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Microsoft have confirmed the release date for Double Fine's upcoming brain-hopping adventure, Psychonauts 2 - and it's coming much sooner than I was expecting. August 25th, in fact. That's like, two months away! And to celebrate, why not have a gander at its rad new gameplay trailer?

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Microsoft showed off a lovely big chunk of Stalker 2: Heart Of Chernobyl gameplay during their Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase this evening, showing us the game's 4K ray tracing chops in action as well as confirming its release date. The gameplay trailer saw protagonist Skif recounting his adventures to his comrades around a fire, and there were gun battles aplenty, plus a lovely little balletic interlude, too. We'll have to wait a while before we can play it for ourselves, though, as it won't be arriving on PC until April 28th 2022.

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Bethesda Studios, the developers behind The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, have announced that their upcoming space epic Starfield will grace our screens next year, on November 11th. During tonight's Microsoft and Bethesda E3 stream, they revealed a brand new trailer featuring an astronaut, a robot and a rather dusty planet. Man, I am very ready for a big new space RPG.

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Somehow, I hadn't seen any of Devolver Digital's E3 presentations until last night. I'd heard them described as "wacky", which usually means "complete mind poison" in the world of PR, and so never bothered to find out what all the fuss was about. Reader, I was a damned fool.

Last night's Devolver show delighted me more than every trailer so far this week put together, quite frankly. It was a brilliant bit of cinema, and an unexpectedly sharp note of satire, too. If you haven't seen it already, then please take this as my stern recommendation to go and watch it immediately. In this year's ever-escalating narrative about the chilling figure of Nina Struthers, Devolver took on NFTs - and not in the way you might expect.

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Today's the second official day of E3, and Microsoft will take the stage with their large corporate son, Bethesda, at 6pm UK time (10am Pacific). What to expect? Well, games we know Microsoft are working on include Hellblade 2, Halo Infinite, Psychonauts 2, a Perfect Dark reboot, a new Forza, and State Of Decay 3. Plus presumably some games we don't know about? As for Bethesda, we know they're making an Indiana Jones game, Ghostwire Toyko, and Deathloop, and maybe they'll finally reveal their mysterious sci-fi game Starfield or even invent a new system expressly to release Skyrim on it.

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I thought that the 2009 film Avatar, of big blue cat people fame, was a bit underwhelming. Speaking as a massive speculative exobiology nerd (which is to say I think theoretical aliens are well cool), I found it baffling that with a budget of 237 million big ones and a brief of "create a convincing alien planet", they couldn't have let their brains rip just a little bit harder. The beasts were all very spectacular and that, but every design basically boiled down to "a normal animal, but it's bigger and more brightly coloured, plus we've stuck a bit from another animal on it". Same goes for the floating mountains and, if we're honest, the entire story.

Unsurprisingly, then, when Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora was announced at Ubisoft Forward last night, I shrugged. Weird flex, etc. But in the course of watching the trailer, I changed my mind. It told us nothing about what the actual game will be like, but it made me realise there's at least a lot more potential here than I might have thought. Here's why.

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Sundays are for coming back from holiday and crash-landing into E3 week. Before you click on yet another reveal stream, let's read this week's best writing about games.

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The looter-slasher action-RPG Godfall is getting its first paid expansion later this year, adding a fiery new realm, new story missions and - yeah, you get it, all the usual DLC things. Much more importantly, it's also adding a bunch of shiny new fashion. From the looks of things we're getting some stylish animal helmets that we'll be able to strut around in amongst the flames. The DLC, aptly named Fire & Darkness, is coming out on August 10th.

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If Devolver have a type, it's definitely the topdown shooter. You know, the Nuclear Thronelike. At tonight's Devolver E3 showcase, there were two such games: Death's Door, which got a release date, and the reveal of Wizard With A Gun.

Its name is descriptive, but there are other words to add. You can watch the reveal trailer for Wizard With A Gun And A Co-Op Pal And Ammo Crafting below.

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As well as brash shoot-o-stabber Shadow Warrior 3, developers Flying World Hog are apparently also making a far more sedate swordy game. Publisher Devolver Digital today announced Trek To Yomi, a black-and-white tale of a young samurai's quest to avenge his master, being made by the hogsquad in collaboration with filmmaker and game developer Leonard Menchiari. Check out the announcement trailer below.

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Nothing is dying and so the creatures of the world need to be reaped - of course the crows are the ones who do it. During Devolver Digital's E3 stream, they announced the dark fantasy action-RPG Death's Door is coming out on July 20th. Developed by Acid Nerve, the folks behind Titan Souls, Death's Door puts players into the shoes (talons?) of a small crow who is also the grim reaper. It looks gloomy yet charming, and you can catch the new trailer below.

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How do I love you reader? Let me count the ways. 1) I have rounded up all the new trailers from the Guerrilla Collective stream tonight, The second official night of E3 2021. 2) I refer you to point 1; that should, quite frankly, be enough for you. This doesn't cover everything shown on the stream, but it is everything that had a new trailer with bits we hadn't seen before. There are also some surprises in there, like a release date for Sable - finally! - and reveals for new weirderies like Firegirl, Demon Mirror and Arietta Of Spirits.

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Devolver's E3 showcase was broadcast earlier tonight, at which they announced a few new games but also, more importantly, continued the story of executive Nina Struthers. The indie publisher's strange and violent keynotes have been a highlight of the last three E3s, and so it was again. You can watch the full broadcast below.

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We saw a peak at some extended gameplay during Day Of The Devs earlier this week, but during Devolver Digital's Stream tonight Phantom Abyss bagged itself an early access release date. Arriving on June 22nd, this action-adventure game will have players racing through treacherous temples to nick artifacts, and trying to escape alive. If you die, you can never go there again, and only one player in the world can ever beat each temple.

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The more Trackmania games are released, the more I forget that Trackmania exists. I had even forgotten that the most recently was called, simply, Trackmania.

Perhaps my increasing apathy is what prompted the creation of Trackmania Royal mode, which adds spinning pads on plastic platforms which knock you into water, and which looks a lot like Fall Guys.

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E3 2021 continues apace, and tonight we saw Ubisoft's own stream, Ubisoft Forward, featuring the new Rainbow Six game, a deeper look at Far Cry 6, and a peek at Ubisoft's upcoming Avatar game, a thing that exists now. We've rounded it all up here so you don't have to go back and watch it all yourself when you wake up tomorrow.

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Hot off the heels of Eivor's Irish tour, Assassin's Creed Valhalla will be shuffling us off to Paris this summer. We got a new look at the upcoming DLC The Siege Of Paris at tonight's Ubisoft Forward event, and it seems Ubi have even more viking adventures planned for us over the next year too. From a Discovery Tour that'll let you see how the regular folks in viking times lived, to more DLCs next year (that might be taking us to Muspelheim).

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Ubisoft today revealed Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora, a video game based on the film which made a colossal splash for two months then was entirely forgotten by anyone who ever saw it. Due to arrive in 2022, Frontiers Of Pandora is a standalone story starring a new smurf who's also fighting against the villainous forces of an allegory for the invasion of Iraq. Check out the trailer below.

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Ubisoft really like their Far Cry villains. At this evening's Ubisoft Foward, we got another cutscene featuring the big bad of Far Cry 6, Castillo, played by Giancarlo Esposito. They then showed the game's post-launch plans, which includes new story missions in which you play as Far Cry 3's Vaas, Far Cry 4's Pagan Min and Far Cry 5's Joseph Seed.

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Ubisoft today detailed their plans for cross-platform multiplayer and shared progression in Rainbow Six Siege, and the news for PC players is probably not surprising. While we will get to share progression with all other platforms, we won't be able to play together with people on console. Though, uh, we will get to play with those on Stadia and Luna? Sure, okay.

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If you're one of the people who's picked up an instrument to learn over lockdown (like me), and haven't quite made the progress you'd have liked (hello), then you might be pleased to learn that Ubisoft just announced Rocksmith+. It's a new version of Rocksmith, Ubi's music-learning game, and it's arriving as a subscription service later this year.

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I've mentioned preview that Riders Republic was one of the game's I'm most looking forward to, and the "deep dive" trailer at tonight's Ubisoft Forward didn't change my mind. It's got hang-gliders with jets on them? And big mountains to fall down? What else are games even for.

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Videogames' most famous uncle returns in Watch Dogs: Legion's first major story expansion, Bloodline. Yes, it's Aiden Pearce from the original Watch_Dogs, who heads to London for a job (and perhaps to visit his nephew, who is namechecked in the new trailer below.

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Ubisoft today announced a release date of September 16th Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Extraction, the cooperative monster-mashing FPS formerly known as Rainbow Six Quarantine. It will pit familiar R6 Siege operators against a parasitic alien goop that's taking over cities - and people. Check out the first gameplay trailer below.

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