Final Fantasy 6 is so popular within Square Enix that staff keep asking FF brand manager Yoshinori Kitase for a remake. Although the game has been re-released as part of the Pixel Remaster bundle, fans within the company have been asking for a full blown remake.
Stop me if you've heard this one before: the RTX 4060 Ti just came out but you should probably buy the RTX 3060 Ti instead. It's around 85 to 90 percent of the performance at less than 70 percent of the cost - although you do give up better power efficiency and DLSS 3 on the newer model.
We've highlighted a few UK RTX 3060 Ti deals before, but here's one for the US market courtesy of Best Buy - on a PNY unit with a simple dual-fan design, plenty of cooling potential and a price that makes a lot of sense: $275, down from a previous price of $320 and considerably less than the $399 Nvidia is asking for their 4060 Ti FE.
Good news, everyone! AMD's fastest graphics card is now available for less money, in what deals scientists are calling a "sale" or "limited time promotion". According to the latest research, this phenomena can be observed on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, specifically the UK and the US, with discounts applied on both sides. This makes it a better time to buy this particular item than times when it is more expensive, generally speaking.
The specifics are as follows: the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7900 XTX has been discounted from $1000 to $900 in the US (tick the $100 code on the product page), while Sapphire's AMD reference design has dropped from £1099 to £949 in the UK (no ticking required).
Dota 2 is moving away from releasing new content via a pattle pass in favour of more varied and regular updates. Valve explained the change on the Dota 2 blog, saying that the heavy focus on the Compendium - the Battle Pass released alongside Dota 2's yearly esports event, The International - was leaving "the rest of the year feeling barren by comparison."
Immortals Of Aveum is a magic-fisted first-person shooter with a name that reminds me, every time, of another EA-published fantasy game, Kingdoms Of Amalur. I can't tell if that's a good thing or not.
I can tell that Immortals Of Aveum has been delayed. Aveum had been aiming for a July 20th release, but has now been pushed back a month until August 22nd.
Another day, another batch of Game Pass additions, with this selection being spread out across the end of June and beginning of July. The Xbox Wire blog shared this half of the month's Game Pass additions earlier today, and there seems to be a little something for everyone. First up is Need for Speed Unbound via EA Play, the most recent and incredibly stylish entry in the racing game series, which you'll be able to play on PC from June 22 - you'll be able to stream it through the cloud too.
I’ve been meaning to round up the best Steam Deck accessories for a while now – ambushing Liam with homemade Etsy gadgets is one thing but now that there are literally millions of Decks in owners’ hands, quite literally, it’s time to put a serious face on and consider which accessories genuinely are the best buys.
This guide is keeping separate from the best Steam Deck microSD card list, mainly because a good microSD card is less of an accessory and more of a core essential (especially if you’ve gone for the 64GB Steam Deck model). Still, this guide will cover an array of addons, from alternative cases to thumbstick covers and USB-C docking stations.
El Paso, Elsewhere, the Max Payne inspired shooter where you fight werewolves and vampires in a reality-shifting motel, has a demo now, and it's looking pretty promising so far. It's the next title on the docket for developer Strange Scaffold, a team whose projects just constantly have strong hooks (how good is An Airport For Aliens Currently Run By Dogs as a title though). El Paso, Elsewhere is no different, and you can even try it out now as part of this season's Steam Next Fest in a new demo. And yeah, the vibes are about as tight as you'd expect.
My Dad likes to tell this story from when I was a teenager. I had grumpily asked if he could pick me and a friend up from a local park one afternoon, and he remembers us bundling into the back of his car all smelly and sweaty and terrible as teenagers so often are. But as he pulled away, he caught a snippet of our conversation that was so unusual it's the reason this seemingly normal car ride has cemented itself as a core memory. We were talking about the price of eggs. And tomatoes. And the order in which we were planting crops to ensure the greatest yield.
My poor father interrupted us, turning in his seat to ask what the hell we were talking about. “It’s a game we’re both playing called Harvest Moon” I scoffed in his direction. “You wouldn’t understand”.
The Callisto Protocol will be getting its first and only bit of story DLC next week, which Striking Distance are describing as the game's "heart-pounding final chapter". Entitled Final Transmission, a short teaser trailer has been released giving us a look at what protagonist Jacob Lee will be getting up to, but it doesn't really show us all that much. There seems to be some kind of fleshy robot monster that says he'll "never escape," but that's all we've got to go off right now.
The upcoming expansion pack for Sonic Origins (aptly named Sonic Origins Plus) appears to be out in the wild early ahead of its launch on June 23rd, but fans don't seem to be particularly happy with the game's sound quality. The Plus expansion will bring remastered visuals, bonus characters, new modes and challenges to the original Sonic Origins compilation, but it's the audio quality of the 12 new Sonic Game Gear additions that fans seem to have taken issue with. As spotted by TheGamer, fans who have got their hands on copies of the game early, such as YouTuber belmont gr, are reporting that the Game Gear games sound off, like there's some kind of echo effect.
Ahead of the game's release in August, Baldur's Gate 3 has received a prequel murder mystery game that lets you vote on how things unfold. Playable for free in your browser, it's titled Blood in Baldur's Gate, and is set 15 years before the events of Baldur's Gate 3. Developer Larian Studios revealed the project yesterday. In it, you play as a detective tasked with solving a murder, and by you, I quite literally mean all of you, as this one will take a bit of collaboration.
I really like escape rooms IRL, and have a tremendous amount of respect for the people who devise them. But seeing as how they last about an hour and cost approximately the same as it would for Wales to secede from the United Kingdom, I can only afford to pay an immersive experience what it deserves every so often (the rest of the time I'm honourbound by my fatherland to donate to causes supported by Michael Sheen). I'm therefore pleased that there seems to be an uptick in escape room video games. Plese do more of those, developers.
Next month's open beta for Frontier Developments' new Warhammer RTS Age Of Sigmar: Realms Of Ruin may be focused on testing its 1v1 multiplayer mode, but the Elite Dangerous studio have told me there's still plenty to look forward to in its single-player story campaign. I got to chat with principal designer Sandro Sammarco last week, and he told me they've been hard at work making sure it's "filled with loads of cool new stuff that people really haven't seen before". He also said that their partnership with Games Workshop has allowed them to "really go to town in terms of the visuals, the lore, [and] the story that we're telling", and he hopes that the way they've characterised the campaign's principal faction, the Stormcast Eternals, will give players plenty to sink their teeth into when it launches in full.
Let’s School, the whimsical headteacher sim from My Time at Portia devs Pathea, will be out next month.
Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week is another shortie because Twitter is once again broken and refusing to show all the weekend's posts, which sure feels ominous for the social media platform. The games are still good. Come on in for an immersive sim with a clever little technology trick, an adventure game set in a city on a giant octopus, the throwing of an egg, and more attractive and interesting indie games.
In the same way that Alien: Isolation is, for many, now the definitive Ridley Scott’s Alien game, I’ve got no problem getting all ‘game critic who wants to feel important by making wild declarative statements’ and saying that Aliens: Dark Descent is now, for me at least, the definitive James Cameron’s Aliens game. It’s the first to really capture the white-knuckle vibe of setting up perimeters, quipping out that last line of top-tier banter you’ve been saving, and seeing the shapes on the motion tracker creep closer and squeal louder. It really does do the license justice, so if that’s what you’re looking for, dig in. I just wish it trusted me to be able to count higher than one. Not that much higher, either. Just four.
Dark Descent is not a game for strategy game fans nearly as much as it’s one for Aliens fans. You order your entire squad around at the same time, pausing or slowing time to issue commands like grenades or suppressive fire, using a stock of command points that refill over time. It’s a game that’s (rightly) decided that a very particular type of strategy game is the best format to convey Aliens’ whole schtick, but then seems to have realised, hang on, we’re at risk of (alien) isolating and possibly even (alien)ating a lot of potential customers here. What if there was a way to do XCOM but without all the knobbly bits?
Arc Raiders is yet another extraction-style shooter sat in this year’s calendar of releases, but this one’s been kicking around a while longer than most: it was originally announced at The Game Awards back in 2021, before being delayed into 2023.
We already knew the folks behind Slay the Spire mod Downfall were making their own standalone game, Tales & Tactics, and now we know when we’ll be able to play it. Tales & Tactics, in case you’ve forgotten, is best pitched as a mixture of Slay the Spire and Dota Auto Chess; in other words, it’s a fantasy roguelike (like StS), where you can pick up abilities, gear and whatnot during each run, with auto-battling combat (like Auto Chess) - except here it’s on a hex board.
Just in case your Steam wishlists weren't already stocked up from this year's Summer Geoff Fest bonanza, here we are with another edition of Valve's Steam Next Fest, which has unleashed hundreds, if not thousands of free game demos on us, starting from today, June 19th, until Monday June 26th. You can view the entire June Next Fest line-up right here if you'd rather browse at your leisure, but we've also been playing some of the demos in advance to bring you some curated highlights of what we've enjoyed so far. We haven't have access to every demo in this year's Next Fest, I should note, but think of these more as some initial tasting suggestions to get you started, rather than a complete overview of what's worth playing.
After creating Metal Gear Solid, founding his own studio to develop Death Stranding and becoming best pals with most of Hollywood, Hideo Kojima’s next big ambition is apparently to be blasted into space to make a game.
One mistake I often see novice PC builders making is overspending on the motherboard. It's true that higher-end models offer more features and can support better overclocking performance, but for the vast majority of people you're better off putting your budget towards the highest-tier graphics card and processor you can afford - as these actually determine in-game performance! - then slotting in the cheapest motherboard that gets decent reviews and supports your components.
One excellent example of just such a motherboard is the Gigabyte B760M Gaming X DDR4, a simple option that supports 12th/13th-gen Intel processors all the way up to the 13900K. With an asking price of just £116 right now, you can pick up this plus a cheap 16GB DDR4 RAM kit for just £152, letting you spend the vast majority of your PC budget where it really matters.
If you're after a clean white case with RGB lighting and great thermals without spending a fortune, then this discounted Phanteks Eclipse G500A D-RGB ATX case is a strong choice at £93.99, following a £56 discount at Currys.
For the money, you get a critically-acclaimed and good-sized mid-tower case, complete with support for modern (ie giant) components, three fans, and mesh panels used throughout to ensure a great balance between noise, dust and thermals.
Boy howdy, Voidigo is lively. Think Nuclear Throne but weirder. Every sprite oozes a frantic combination of energy and personality, from the steel-eyed sprint of your starting gun-bird-thing to the bobbing scuttle of the cyclops clayfish boss. Guns have punch, stomps have oomph, reward boxes have merry jingles. It's a top-down roguelike shooter that does everything right, and seldom have I seen a game more deserving of its Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam.
It left early access 11 days ago, which is 11 days you could have spent splatting crustaceans and wasps with skeleton trombones and deadly finger guns.
If Mewgenics were an actual cat, it would be approaching its twilight years. It's been nearly 11 years since Edmund Mcmillen, known for Super Meat Boy and Binding Of Isaac, first announced that the mysterious cat breed 'em up would be Team Meat's next game. The cats wound up waiting outside while they worked on other things, but we now have a much more concrete idea of what the game is.
The developers have actually been posting extensive development updates since January, but McMillen also just recorded an adhoc TikTok video where he points his phone at his screen. Turns out Mewgenics is a turn-based strategy roguelike with wizard cats who can cut their paws while opening windows. Could be worth the wait!
Fans of clicking on little men (and aliens) will be pleased to hear that Xenonauts 2 is releasing via Steam early access on July 18th, packing a mildly modernised dose of old school XCOM from back when turn-based action was more gritty and hyphenated. You'll futz about with fighter planes, build listening posts around the globe, and send hapless soldiers to get their faces torn off. Merry Xenonauts!
It's been ten years since Intelligible Games graced us with Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher, an Ace Attorny style argue 'em up where you confront a cavalcade of philosophers in an attempt to uncover the ultimate nature of morality. Also you're dead, and there are lots of silly jokes.
I loved it, so I'm very pleased that the devs have just announced that Pro Philosopher 2: Governments and Grievances will be out at some point in 2024. It's nearly time to get down and dirty with political philosophy, baby.
The single most interesting thing you could tell me about Final Fantasy 16 is that it will have actually good combat. One of the developers has just said that, as of course they would, but not just any dev: we're talking about Devil May Cry 5 design lead Ryota Suzuki, who's dubbed FF16's sword-slinging his "personal masterpiece".
I don't take that at face value, but it has given me my first pangs of regret over selling my PS5. Those who didn't sell their PS5 for travel money get to play in a few days, while PC players are in for an indefinitely long wait.
Sundays are for recovering from jet lag. Before you get up at 3am, let's read this week's best writing about games (and game related things).
I had a single, relaxing weekend with citybuilder Kingdoms And Castles almost six years ago, and I still look back on it as if it was a revitalising holiday I took. A city break, if you will.
Likewise, six years later and Kingdoms And Castles is still getting updates. The Infrastructure & Industry update was released earlier today, and it adds several community-suggested buildings.
I'm still mostly only excited about Flintlock: The Siege Of Dawn because it's from the makers of Ashen. I'll need to wait longer to find out whether it can justify that excitement on its own terms. Developers A44 announced today that the action-RPG has been delayed until 2024.
Valheim's latest update to the public test branch adds a new merchant: Hildir, the sister of existing dwarven trader Haldor. Hildir offers up fashionable items of clothing to buy, but the more exciting part of the update is its new difficulty levels, which let you try the open world multiplayer survival sim in either easy or hard modes.
One bonus treat in all this beautiful weather is the experience of everyone on my road having their windows open. We're letting each other into our daily lives a little more, and I'm hearing and smelling things I've never smelled before. I may not know your name, downstairs neighbour, but by god I certainly know you use Lynx Africa. Lots of Lynx Africa. Honestly, about seven bodies' worth of Lynx Africa. Anyway, what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!
I spend quite a lot of my time thinking about dice games, so my attention was piqued by the new demo for Dicefolk - a sort of Pokémon battler but with dice (and also it’s a roguelike).
Upcoming RTS Last Train Home will task you with protecting an armoured train as it barrels through post-World War I Russia to escape the civil war. And boy, does it look cold out there.
Shirley Curry - better known to the internet as ‘Skyrim Grandma’ thanks to a viral Let’s Play in 2015 - has shot down rumours that she made a cameo in the recent Starfield Direct, adding that she won’t even touch Bethesda’s much-hyped space RPG while she waits for Elder Scrolls 6.
We’ve been given our first proper look at Star Trek: Infinite, the new grand strategy game from Stellaris makers Paradox, in action - and yep, it’s definitely a Star Trek game from the makers of Stellaris.
It’s fair to say that Arkane’s vampire-slaying co-op game Redfall was… not well received when it released back in early May.
Spirit Swap: Lofi Beats To Match-3 To has been on our radar for a while now, and with its appearance at this year's Wholesome Direct during Summer Game Fest, I knew I had to go and check out the new demo.
It's different to the endless demo that Alice wrote about in February, which isn't available here. Instead, you get a taster of the game's story and versus modes. And with that, an introduction to some of the characters you'll meet (and maybe even date).
