As an outgrowth of the naval combat experiences in the Assassin's Creed series, I've been curious about Skull and Bones since its announcement as a standalone title in 2017. Since then, the game has seen numerous delays and fundamental reworks on the development side. Our cover story on the game captured one moment in the evolving project’s life in the summer of 2022, and it has continued to change in the months that followed. In recent weeks, some sentiments on the internet and in gaming communities have concluded that, by this point, the game that is releasing must be a mess.

I’m happy to report that’s not the case; Skull and Bones is a lot of fun.

Review access only opened up a few days ago, and the game on offer is exceptionally dense and large, so we’re still working on pulling together a complete review. But in the meantime, as the game comes into full release for all players today, I wanted to share that you should consider setting aside your preconceptions about Skull and Bones, and evaluating it in its finished form.

Capcom launched new apparel designs inspired by Resident Evil 4 Remake, Street Fighter 6, and Monster Hunter for Amazon Merch on Demand. These new designs are now available to order via the U.S. and Japanese Amazon sites. Each design is available in four different apparel types: regular T-shirt, long-sleeved T-shirt, sweatshirt, and pullover hoodie.

The Street Fighter 6 design features the aged series protagonist Ryu. Meanwhile, the Resident Evil 4 Remake apparel design includes Ada Wong who starred in the Separate Ways DLC. Capcom also added two new Monster Hunter designs based on Deviljho and the Capcom Town booth.

Here are some of the sample images of Capcom's new apparel designs:

Palworld is stepping up its efforts against cheats and hackers in the coming weeks, with the developers of the hugely popular Pokémon-a-like survival game saying they are focusing on stamping out ne’er-do-wells on its official servers.

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Greetings, fellow solitary gamer. If you’re thinking of giving the third-person co-op shooter Helldivers 2 a shot on your own, well, you’ll have your work cut out for you. Helldivers 2 is not only typically more fun with friends, much of the game’s challenges and mission structures are designed with multiple players…

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Sushiro revealed more information on its upcoming collaboration with Genshin Impact and the merchandise that will appear. You’ll be able to enjoy exclusive menu items, as well as have the chance to get some limited items, between February 21, 2024 and March 24, 2024. 

There will be four different kinds of items on the collaboration menu. The first one is a platter of three nigiri sushi (tamago, maguro, ebi), and the second one is a platter of tuna nigiri (with takuan pickle). You’ll also be able to order shoyu ramen and a soda milk parfait from the menu. The ramen will come with a little Gorou picture and the parfait will come with a Kokomi one. Meanwhile, if you order the sushi, you’ll have a random chance of getting either a Yae Miko, Ayato, Ayaka, or Thoma pick.

UPDATE 8.45pm UK: Eurogamer sources can now corroboate the earlier reports that the Switch 2, once destined for release later in 2024, is now set for Q1 2025.

The console's launch moving into early next year - but still within the coming financial year - is designed to ensure Switch 2's launch line-up features as many titles as possible, Eurogamer understands.

Separately, VGC has also now reported on the move to Q1 2025, with publishing sources saying Nintendo recently briefed third-party game companies on the move from late 2024 to early 2025.

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Alan Wake 2, last year’s best horror game, best game overall or best-game-featuring-an-unexpected-but-extremely-welcome-musical-dance-number depending on who you ask, has shifted over a million copies. Musical dance numbers don’t come cheap, though, so it’s still yet to turn a profit - despite outpacing the momentum of any of Remedy’s previous games, including Control.

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Palworld developer Pocketpair has acknowledged the significant impact "cheating and the influence of fraudulent activities" is having on rule-abiding players of its hugely popular survival game, and has outlined some of the steps it'll be taking - including the introduction of an "external anti-cheat solution" - to tackle the problem.

Writing in a post shared on Steam, Pocketpair admitted that, while the studio has been "dealing with each issue on a daily basis and taking measures", there are "many cases where we are not able to keep up" with cheating and fraudulent activities - leading, it acknowledged, to "some players [being] unable to play the game properly."

Pocketpair apologised for "any inconvenience this may cause" and - expanding on a recent tweet promising a cheating-related patch "soon" - revealed it's currently working on a number of specific measures to deal with cheating and fraudulent activity "strictly and as a priority".

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In the spirit of the season of love we asked you, dear readers, to share with us your biggest video game crushes. The answers are in, and they are varied. Turns out there are a lot of characters to love across countless video games. Heroes, villains, sidekicks, you name it, somebody is crushing on them. While there…

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A new official Ai Fairouz song featuring the Pokemon Snorlax has appeared on YouTube. It is titled "Kabigon neterunkaai" in Japanese, and the song also has an official English title, which is "You're sleeping soundly, Snorlax." The Pokemon Company revealed that it worked with Minto to produce the music video.

The Japanese-Egyptian voice actress Ai Fairouz is the singer of "You're sleeping soundly, Snorlax!". Prior to this Snorlax song, she has also been involved in the Pokemon franchise by providing Japanese voiceovers for the Levincia Gym Leader Iono in the mobile game Pokemon Masters EX and the anime show Pokemon: Paldean Winds, as well as Alisa in Pokemon Concierge.

Tokyo Logic's Karasuya Sabou composed the song, while itami worked on the music video's animation with Studio Alble's Mizuki Watanabe acting as the latter's producer.

The music video for the Ai Fairouz song is available to watch via the Japanese official Pokemon YouTube channel:

This week on the Eurogamer Newscast, we discuss Microsoft's business update that brought us confirmation Xbox will launch four console exclusives - for now - on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.

But why did Microsoft choose not to name those four games (even though Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Grounded and Sea of Thieves were immediately reported to be the titles in question)? What happened to the previously-reported plans to include larger games such as Starfield? And where will Microsoft draw the line for what to launch elsewhere? Right now, these four feel like something of a soft launch for Microsoft's multiplatform strategy,

As well as all that, we also discuss the news nuggets Microsoft dropped for the Xbox faithful - including mention of new Xbox console hardware this year and the proper next-gen Xbox that's still years away. With me this week are Eurogamer's Ed Nightingale, Victoria Kennedy and Liv Ngan.

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One of the three upcoming Star Wars games in development at Apex Legends and Titanfall studio Respawn is reportedly a bounty hunter game where you play as a Mandalorian.

That's according to Insider Gaming, which said the project was still in the early stages of development, but was a first-person shooter starring a Mandalorian bounty hunter during the time of the Galactic Empire.

The report stops short of confirming the Mandalorian bounty hunter as Din Djarin, star of Disney+ hit TV series and upcoming Mandalorian movie. A time period set during the height of the Galactic Empire would also place the game prior to the TV series - making a Baby Yoda appearance unlikely.

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If you’ve been looking to pick up a new-gen console on the cheap, then today’s your lucky day. Target’s got the Xbox Series S on sale at an eye-popping discount—$219.99, or $80 off. Sure, it kinda looks like a hot plate. But it’s still a lot less fugly than the PlayStation 5, and we’re big fans of the small-but-mighty…

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Helldivers 2 is one of the most refreshing - and straightforward - multiplayer games I've played in a while. It's a third-person bug-shooting blitzkrieg, offering simple sets of objectives and a broad armament to help satisfy them. The actual action of defeating the game's foes is a lot of fun, with hordes of enemies to shoot into gibs with a four-person player squad. But does all that multiplayer chaos come with strings attached? Few games try to achieve destruction at this scale, especially factoring in the unpredictability of multiplayer gameplay, so what kind of visuals and performance should we expect in the game's console outing on PS5 and how does the quality of the PC port fare?

Visually, Helldivers 2 hardly advances the state of the art, but that's not to say that its visual make-up - and its environments - aren't compelling. There's a typical mix of modern graphical staples, but they are deployed effectively. Volumetric lighting is heavily used, for instance, with shafts of light shooting through rocks and trees. The quality level is high, presenting without obvious aliasing, even on the PS5 in its performance mode. The clouds are also volumetric in nature, at least at lower levels of the atmosphere, and resolve without distracting artifacting. Low-lying fog also appears to be part of the equation, with ground-level fog often giving planets a certain ethereal quality.

The Suika Game (Watermelon Game) social media account warned users that in late February 2024, it will reset players’ online scores. This only applies to the Nintendo Switch version of the game.

According to Aladdin X, this is due to how the system works on the Nintendo Switch. It did not provide any specific details or further explanations on the matter. It apologizes for the trouble this will cause players, especially those who have very high scores on the online leaderboards. While the online scores will disappear from late February 2024, you will still be able to look at your own personal high scores, since the game saves that data locally.

Madame Web, the new Sony film about the titular Marvel comics character starring 50 Shades of Grey’s Dakota Johnson, just released on Valentine’s Day. As if Johnson’s press tour (where it seemed very clear that she does not like the movie) wasn’t enough, the reviews are pouring in—and according to them, the film is…

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I promise I'm not trying to turn RPS into a Soggins the Frog fansite, but... If you have a) been enjoying Cobalt Core as part of RPS Game Club this month, and b) especially like it when Soggins turns up with his ship of malfunctioning missile launchers, then I implore you to make Sunshine Heavy Industries your next port of call in your Steam library. It's what the Cobalt Core devs Rocket Rat Games made first, and you can immediately see a lot of shared DNA between the two games - not least its chunky, charming pixel visuals and some crossover between its cast of characters - including our pal Soggins.

It is, I should stress, a very different game to Cobalt Core - it's a sandboxy spaceship builder with zero combat involved, for starters - but I've been playing it again this week ahead of some other Game Club-themed articles I've got cooking, and I've been having a lovely time with it. Not least because I get to spend more time with Soggins the very smug frog, all while listening to even more excellent chill tunes from Cobalt Core composer Aaron Cherof.

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The ESRB issued its rating for the upcoming action game Stellar Blade and dubbed it “Mature.” This comes after the Game Rating and Administration Committee (GRAC) in Korea rated it for players ages 19 and up.

The description shared by the board offered explanations for Stellar Blade being suggested for players ages 17 and up. Some of it involved the way women are depicted in the title. It specifically mentioned the physics for bodies and “revealing costumes.” The degree of violence, which involves various guns and swords and involve blood, also ended up cited. It did note only one swear, with that being the word “shit.”

Here is the full ESRB description as taken from the official site:

February is here. Let’s watch some movies. Welcome to io9's latest edition of the Nerd’s Watch, where we pare down the enormous lists of new films and television shows arriving on all your favorite streaming services into the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror titles we think you’ll like most. (And sometimes, just the ones…

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McDonald’s Japan announced that the next Happy Meal collaborations toys include Kirby plush and Sanrio’s Pompompurin. The first round of Kirby plushies and Pompompurin toys will appear on February 23, 2024, and the second one on March 1.

The company's X (formerly Twitter) official account shared two posts showcasing the new plushies and toys. When it comes to the new McDonald’s Japan Kirby plush, there will be eight available, with four appearing in each round. The plushies feature Kirby in different poses. The first round also includes a Waddle Dee plush, with the second one including a special yellow Kirby plush.

Meanwhile, the first round of Pompompurin Happy Meal items includes a ball maze toy, a jumping Pompompurin, and a picture matching game. The second round a fridge-shaped mini container with a magnet, a Pompompurin sofa stamp, and a tissue case.

Bandai Namco has revealed it cancelled development of "at least" five projects following a review to implement "stricter standards" and an "emphasis on quality" in its upcoming games.

The information comes from the company's latest financial report for Q3 of FY2024, which contained changes to its projections of profits and sales for the full fiscal year.

The Tekken 8 and Elden Ring publisher lowered its projections for profits due to "valuation losses". These losses include "loss on disposal of titles following a review of the composition of the titles within the next mid-term plan in mind", the company stated in its report.

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Epic Games will begin developing a mobile version of the Epic Games Store for launch on iOS in Europe, the company has said, now it has officially received an Apple Developer Account.

The store's launch will also herald the return of Fortnite to iPhones, years after its previous version was locked down after Epic Games added the abililty to make direct in-game payments, circumventing Apple's standard 33 percent cut.

Epic said today it planned to launch the Epic Games Store on iOS in 2024, operated by Epic Games Sweden.

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Larian Studios released the Baldur’s Gate 3 Patch 6 notes and, as someone might expect, they are huge. The biggest new additions involve some additional animations that add ambiance to the world when romancing characters or hanging around camp, but there are also new fixes to improve the overall experience. 

The actual notes went into more detail about how these animations will look when you are at camp and around your companions. With the kisses, it is random which one you will see or get when you kiss a character you are in a relationship with. However, there are different ones and character heights will be taken into account. As for the new idle animations, there are six total. Halsin, Jaheira, Lae’zel, Minsc, Minthara, and Shadowheart will all do different things than before when they’re relaxing.

Here are the full Baldur’s Gate 3 patch notes, as taken from Steam. Note that they do contain spoilers if you haven't beaten the game.

HIGHLIGHTS

One of the best things about video games is that they can act as a form of wish fulfillment for the player. Save the world, go to space, or harness the power of dragons. But one of the newest additions to Game Pass offers one of my personal favorite bits of wish fulfillment: having a clean apartment. A Little to the…

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Dune: Part 2, the long-awaited follow-up to January’s erotic popcorn bucket, is less than two weeks from release. Among the most anticipated films of the year, Dune missed its original October bow because studios were trying to bankrupt writers and actors, forcing the film to compete in the shadow of Madame Web. But…

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Atlus and Vanillaware revealed six new Unicorn Overlord allies and one enemy. Dinah, Morard, Nigel, Ramona, Sanatio, and Yunifi will be on Alain’s side, while Elgor will be another foe.

Three of the new Unicorn Overlord allies are bestrals, which means they belong to humanoid species with animal traits. Dinah leads a group of soldiers called the Snowpetals and is voiced by Sayaka Senbongi. Both Ramona and Morard are part of the Bastorias Frostblooms. She’s the group’s leader and is voiced by Nanako Mori. He’s one of its most valuable warriors and is voiced by Tomoyuki Shimura. Ramona’s adopted (human) daughter Yunifi is an archer with the group. She’s played by Hisako Kanemoto. Sanatio isn’t a beastral, but he is a Heavenswing Knight with the wings of an angel. Mutsumi Tamura is the voice actor for him. Finally, the last new ally revealed is the Knights of the Sacred Heart leader Nigel. Takayuki Ishii provides his voice.

Here’s how all of those characters look in and out of battle.

The 27th annual D.I.C.E. Awards took place yesterday. While it doesn’t have the mainstream flashiness of the Game Awards, D.I.C.E. is a more industry-focused (and arguably more prestigious) event that honors the best games and creators of the last year. It is hosted and judged by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) along with votes from over 30,000 industry experts, developers, and studios. 

You can view the full list of nominees here. The big winners were Baldur’s Gate 3, which won Game of the Year among other accolades, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which walked away with six awards. Additionally, legendary Nintendo composer Koji Kondo was inducted into the AIAS Hall of Fame during the ceremony.

Here's the full list of award winners:

Game of the Year - Baldur’s Gate 3

Outstanding Achievement in Game Design - Baldur’s Gate 3 

Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction - Baldur’s Gate 3

Outstanding Achievement in Animation - Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 

Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction - Alan Wake 2 

Outstanding Achievement in Character - Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 – Miles Morales 

Baldur's Gate 3's latest update has, as per most of their updates, a colossal number of improvements. Notably, there are new animations for folks who hunker down in your camp and a speedier way to dismiss unwanted companions. But most importantly of all, the smooching has been improved tenfold for fans of romance, or voyeurs who relish virtual characters trading saliva.

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After days of basically edging the community with videos of new kiss animations, Larian Studios has finally released Baldur’s Gate 3’s patch six. The roughly 21GB update brings new kisses for your lovers, quality-of-life improvements, and a slew of bug fixes. Here are a few of the highlights:

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The latest, and very timely, update for Baldur's Gate 3 is now live across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

Patch 6 has been teased by Larian Studios since last week, when we learned it would include more kissing animations and easier party management, but we didn't know when it would be rolling out - or everything else it would contain.

Well, the update is now live, and with it comes the usual delight of patch notes a la Larian, which are too lengthy to be contained in Steam's character limit (of course).

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A Tomb Raider fan and modder has revealed that they put their own personal projects on hold for a very good reason: they have actually been leading the development of Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered.

XProger is the brains behind OpenLara, an open-source cross-platform engine of the classic Tomb Raider series. However, this project and others are now on hold, as XProger was scooped up by Aspyr's parent company Saber Interactive to work on its official Tomb Raider project.

"For the past year I've been busy with a dream project that has become the culmination of the last eight years of my life - Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered," XProger shared on X, thanking Saber for "trusting me to lead the project and assemble a dream team of true fans".

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Square Enix Music is streaming the FFVII Remake soundtrack on its YouTube channel. The stream will run until 11am JST on February 17, 2024.

Here's the stream now for folks to watch:

The stream will play the original FFVII Remake soundtrack, the Plus version of the soundtrack, and the soundtrack for Intergrade. As of the time of writing, the stream is playing “Let the Battles Begin! Break Through” from FFVII Remake. According to the chat, this is a very sudden atmospheric change from the previous song, and that the stream is going through the soundtrack in the order it is on the CD.

I'm kind of fascinated by what happened to Hello Neighbor. The original, a stealth horror game against a creepy AI that learned your likely movements, was hugely popular in alpha in 2016. The series was acquired by TinyBuild in 2020, and since then there has been a heroic number of spin-offs. There's one set in an amusement park, a multiplayer game called Secret Neighbor in which one small child is actually a large adult man in disguise, a direct sequel called Hello Neighbor 2, and a VR game called Search And Rescue. I think everyone got a bit of Neighbor fatigue there, lads.

This might include the original creator Nikita Kolesnikov, as (still under the auspices of TinyBuild) he's made a new thing. Currently on Steam for playtesting, the project currently known as RBO isn't falling far from the home invasion tree, as players will either be a home-owning Protector - a McCallister, if you will - or an Intruder, or Wet Bandit.

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It’s been a whirlwind week or so for Xbox. The weekend of February 3, rumors began swirling that major console exclusives like Starfield and the upcoming Indiana Jones game would head to other platforms, and Xbox fans’ reactions were intense, to say the least. The backlash prompted head honcho Phil Spencer to announce…

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Square Enix announced that it will sell its Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories playing cards again.  They will come out on April 27, 2024.

You can pre-order the cards from the Japanese Square Enix store. They cost 3,080 JPY, which would be around $20.50. During their initial run in 2023, pre-orders opened up in June 2023 and the cards shipped out on September 30, 2023. These cards are still not available in the North American store, which means that if you want to purchase them but you live outside of Japan, you’ll need to use a proxy service.

Payday 3 will finally be getting an offline mode - although we don't know exactly when.

Payday 3 hasn't exactly had the best of launches. It was plagued with matchmaking issues and online-only requirements on release, and subsequent patches were delayed. All this lead to developer Starbreeze admitting that sales and player activity were lower than it had hoped, but it would endeavour to turn this around with a series of prioritised improvements.

Now, we know more about what these upcoming improvements will be, thanks to the reveal of Operation Medic Bag. Here, the developer announced that an offline mode is coming to Payday 3, as well an overhaul to matchmaking (Starbreeze admitted that right now, "matchmaking isn't doing a good job of bringing people together"), tweaks to the UI, a solo mode and a quickplay option. Additionally, "challenges will be removed", with the developer stating it will "switch infamy progression to be tied to heist completion".

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Helldivers 2 director Johan Pilestedt is hoping the game's second weekend will go much smoother than its first.

In a thread posted on X, Pilestedt reflected on the changes developer Arrowhead Game Studios has made since Helldivers 2 released to huge success on 8th February for PC and PlayStation 5.

"I am completely exhausted by the success," he stated, but "very, very pleased."

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When my daughter was learning to write her own stories at school - learning composition, I guess, in the language of education - she'd come home with poetry and essays about animals and little bits of this and that, all of which she was fine with, but never more than fine. When it all clicked is when they wrote stories - specifically silly, scary stories with ghosts and people falling on their butts and all that kind of jazz.

Silly, slightly scary stuff really clicked in fact - not just with my daughter, but with the whole class. For a few glorious weeks, alongside spelling and long division and the bus-stop method (something to do with division too I think?), the class was busy turning out pulps. She loved it. They all loved it. I loved it.

This came to mind this week when we realised that Helldivers 2 wasn't just a success, but a massive, horizon-filling smash. This sequel to a game that I have fond memories of, but not a lot of other people seem to remember playing, is suddenly everywhere. It's our game of the week, inevitably.

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Because it’s somehow my job to worry about the technical fidelity of electronic toys, I’ve been eyeing the long-overdue arrival of Skull and Bones with some nervousness. After nearly a decade of delays, you’d probably just want to get it out the door, right? Skip straight to the open-world pirate adventuring, none of that 'making it work on a range of graphics cards' nonsense.

But nope. For all its other shortcomings, Skull and Bones performs alright on PC, very often more smoothly than its system requirements suggest. Though I’d still recommend abiding by its SSD storage requirement – following the rules might not be very piratey, but installing on a hard drive will curse you to some pretty tedious load screen waits. Geoffrey Rush would hate it, honestly.

While Edwin sequesters himself in the starting area, let’s head below deck for a closer look at Skull and Bones’ PC particulars. That includes a full rundown of its graphics options – which include ray tracing and DLSS – and a quick guide to the best settings for an ideal prettiness-to-performance ratio.

The first Streets Of Rogue was an RPS favourite when it launched back in 2019 (we literally couldn't stop playing it), and we've known for a while now that its sequel, Streets Of Rogue 2, is due to arrive later this year. Ahead of the game's launch, developer Matt Dabrowski has started releasing a series of dev diary videos detailing his design process and how it's all coming together. The latest is about how he creates the game's proc-gen open worlds and biomes, and it's a fascinating watch if you've ever wondered how its particular blend of randomised chaos works behind the scenes.

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