Don’t you hate it when your toaster gets an error, and pop-up ads start appearing? Same thing seems to have been happening with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey this week, which Ubisoft is blaming on a “technical error,” and they don’t even have the terrible pun as an excuse.
Ubisoft has said that pop-up adverts seen last night within Assassin's Creed games have now been disabled, and were the result of a technical error.
The adverts, which promoted other games in the Assassin's Creed series that are currently on sale for Black Friday, were spotted by some players yesterday evening, prompting complaints online.
Players reported seeing the adverts pop-up when they paused the action to load the in-game map. One example shared on X, formerly Twitter, shows an advert for 20 percent off Assassin's Creed Mirage fill the screen when a player accesses the map within Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
Pokemon designs are often indicative of their Typings through name, color, shape, and other visual attributes. However, there are a few Pokemon who may look like a certain Type, but are something completely different entirely, or appear to have colors linked to a secondary Type not incorporated in their species.
Here are ten Pokemon whose typings caught us all off guard at some point.
This week on the Electronic Wireless Show podcast we talk all things GTAVI augury, what with the community going bananas for secret GTAVI clues, and Rockstar finally announcing that they'll have a trailer for the next Grand Theft Auto arriving in December. Our predictions are in fact not as outlandish as you might think, although there are gorillas, obviously.
Alongside this we talk about the games we're playing right now (largely Darktide, it turns out), and dish up some recommendations. We also spent like a third of our recording time playing a deranged Age Of Empires 2-themed RPG using an abbreviated D20 system of Nate's devising, but don't worry, I edited it down quite a lot. Apologies for my poor mic quality!
You can listen above, or on on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or Pocket Casts. You can find the RSS feed here, and you can discuss the episode on our Discord channel, which has a dedicated room for podcast chat.
It is admittedly unfair of me, but any time a video game reveals itself as free-to-play, my interest immediately dissipates. Free-to-play games are not universally bad; plenty of brilliant design ideas, engaging stories, and fun mechanics can be found in games with no upfront admission fee. But once a game’s goal shifts from singular experience to long-term engagement, any excitement I may have folds in on itself and disappears like Pac-Man.
It all stems from my desire for experiences, not obligations.
In free-to-play and comparable models, success is marked by player engagement. The more rounds a player queues into and the longer they play, the more likely they are to engage with the monetized elements. And the best way to encourage that engagement is to incentivize players to return. Daily check-in unlocks and numerical goals related to how often you use certain mechanics – those are obligations without a finish line. I’ve fallen into the trap a few times with mobile games and online shooters, but I no longer have the patience to engage.
Video games are a medium of artistic expression. My favorites have something insightful to say with their story, force you to reconsider basic mechanics in new ways, make me laugh, and have proper conclusions. I don’t want to be distracted with goals outside the canon of the world I’m trying to lose myself in.
Star Ocean The Second Story, despite being a sequel, marked the first exposure to a series that blended sci-fi sensibilities and fantasy elements to the world. To get a better idea of what the process of preparing Star Ocean The Second Story R looked like for new audiences and platforms, Siliconera spoke to Square Enix Producer Kei Komaki and Gemdrops Development Producer and Director Yuichiro Kitao about the game.
Jenni Lada: How did the Star Ocean The Second Story R project get started?
Kei Komaki: This title was made in parallel with the development of Star Ocean: The Divine Force, to align with the 25th anniversary of Star Ocean The Second Story.
While the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 is most at home tearing through 1440p games, it’s a graphics card that can do a little bit of everything – even a spot of light 4K, and at a drastically lower price than the next GPU in the stack, the RTX 4070 Ti. Black Friday now provides the chance to grab one for even less, with good-quality partner cards having fallen as low as £550 in the UK and $515 in the US.
Earlier this week reports surfaced of players encountering in-game pop-up adverts for this year's Assassin's Creed: Mirage, while innocently trying to visit the map screen in Ubisoft's older open world stabathon Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.
Embracer Group's restructuring process is still in its "early stages", and as such, we can expect "more cancellations, potentially some more closures" and some possible "management buyouts", according to Phil Rogers, CEO of the operating group that includes Crystal Dynamics and other Western studios previously owned by Square Enix.
The first Life is Strange game has been played by over 20 million people.
The developer shared this milestone as part of a Thanksgiving post, stating it was grateful to everyone who had visited Arcadia Bay with Max and Chloe and experienced Life is Strange's time maniplating and emotionally charged story.
"We want to thank each and every one of you for playing," the account wrote, with an accompanying reel showing moments from the game (which made me get a little choked up, I won't lie).
Since it actually is Black Friday now, we can probably rule out any further price cuts to the Samsung Pro Plus – king of the best Steam Deck microSD cards. No time like the present, then, to net yourself a top-quality storage extender for your Steam Deck or Steam Deck OLED.
It is of course possible to swap out the Deck’s internal SSD for something bigger, and if it were a desktop PC, normally that would be the way to go. But replacing components in a tightly-designed, hyper-compacted machine like Valve’s handheld is a far trickier business, and just doesn’t have the same appeal when a fast microSD like the Pro Plus is right there. Now, you can get plenty of extra space, an incomparably easier "installation," and performance that still comes remarkably close to NVMe SSD level, all for up to £38 off.
Ned Luke, the actor behind GTA 5 main character Michael De Santa, has been swatted while playing the game for fans in a Thanksgiving livestream.
Luke's stream ended abruptly last night as sirens were heard in the background, and as he received a call warning him that police were outside.
"Oh nice," he said. "Alright I've gotta go, now these assholes have swatted my house."
Original Bayonetta director Hideki Kamiya suspects many of his ideas for the series will be going to the grave with him.
Kamiya's comments come as part of his most recent YouTube video, where the PlatinumGames co-founder said he fully expects the Bayonetta franchise to continue without him.
"I worked on Bayonetta 1, 2, 3 and Origins," he said. "I've talked about this in various interviews, that the Bayonetta series would consist of a total of nine episodes, and that I wanted to grow the franchise as the Bayonetta 'Saga', but it seems like I may have to take the full saga to the grave with me."
As we enter the grey early days of winter, and as I seem to more frequently start each day with a Lemsip wafting restorative lemony goodness next to me, a game that offers the simple pleasures of bright colours and pleasing shapes is worth more and more. Inevitably, then, our game of the week is Snakebird Complete, a Switch compilation of brilliant puzzley brainteasers that see you moving your bright, charming snakebirds past a range of obstacles and towards each level's exit goal.
Snakebird would be our game of the week even if it wasn't grey and chill outside. It's sheer playfulness and elegance, a game in which each level is a chance to experiment with the rules and learn more about the possibilities they contain. Like Blockade, or Snake, which the game seems to be deeply influenced by, your Snakebird grows as you consume items in the level, so certain levels with ask you to work out the correct order to consume things and move through the environment, while others will then turn your own growing body into the main obstacle to overcome.
What a charmed life the WD Black SN850X leads, if you don’t count how its existence is spent almost entirely locked inside a hot, dark box. Not only is it the overall best SSD for gaming, but it’s also arguably the single brightest highlight of this year’s Black Friday storage sales, with the spacious 1TB model down to £65 in the UK. Its US deal price of $80 also represents a sizeable $50 saving.
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: haunted writers, roller skates and Skeletor.
If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We've Been Playing, here's our archive.
I have a new nemesis, and his name is Skeletor. This bright purple cartoon villain has been hunting me relentlessly in Modern Warfare 3, and it has turned into a vendetta. Call of Duty still pretends to be a serious military game, but wading into the quick play rotation I have been gunned down by several variations of Spawn - Todd MacFarlane's Batman with guns antihero - as well as a glowing twig monster called Gaia and, occasionally, Nicki Minaj.
Every so often a new game surfaces that aims to be a successor to classic, stylish, mid-'90s antigrav racer Wipeout. Released back in 2018, BallisticNG was among the better attempts, managing to capture the speed and a little of the style while hewing close to the chunky polgyonal style of the PlayStation 1-era original.
Fast Forward five years and BallisticNG has been regularly updated since that initial launch, and a new trailer to mark its release on GOG is keen to brag about
It’s a story that likely sounds familiar to anyone who works in video games, or even plays a lot of games. Every year around this time, a few friends and family members ask for game-buying advice. That’s great, as I love having the opportunity to help someone find gaming experiences that will lead to a great time. But it can be especially challenging if the giftee in question is a younger child who wants to play games, but is perhaps too young or inexperienced with the hobby to know what they might enjoy. We’re here to help with a brief rundown of some foolproof suggestions for parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, or anyone looking to find the perfect holiday gift for the young game player.
One of the most common questions that comes my way, especially from parents who might not be into gaming themselves, is which gaming console to give as a first way to play games.
There’s no fundamentally wrong answer here. But if you’re looking for the most straightforward and surefire way to get this right in the year 2023? The answer is a Nintendo Switch.
The Switch is a fantastic first gaming console for a lot of reasons. One of the most important reasons is that its library of games has standout options targeted for family play, including big franchises like Mario and Zelda.
Deliver Us Mars is a third-person puzzle adventure which manages to marry planet-sized problems with personal family drama. Katharine was a fan when it released not so long ago, back in February.
Which makes it nice that it's free to keep this week from the Epic Games Store.
American Truck Simulator will head to Kansas next week, with the release of its latest DLC on November 30th. Before that the truck driving and management sim has received a new update which adds improved weather effects, revised mountains, used truck deals, and the Moon.
The Call of Duty franchise is packed with Easter Eggs and secrets. The Zombies mode has even built questlines around finding objects and solving complex multi-step puzzles. Unfortunately, the urgency of missions and the chaos of gunfights can lead players to miss some of Call of Duty’s best Easter Eggs.
As Alec wrote in his Styx: Shards of Darkness review, what the goblin stealth 'em up has going for it is purity. It's a third-person adventure where stealth is the only option and being spotted is swiftly punished.
It's currently free from GOG.com.
Earlier this month, developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio released its second – and not to mention best – game of 2023, the hilariously longly titled Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. One of the most notable features is how RGG rethought its classic brawler combat. Protagonist Kazuma Kiryu now has two fighting stances, Yakuza and Agent, the latter of which comes with a host of new secret-agent tools, such as an exploding cigarette, a Spider-Man-like cable he can use to whip enemies around, and so on.
We recently had a chat with RGG series chief producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto – who we spoke with last year about the future of the studio – to learn how Gaiden's new combat together, maintaining the series' identity despite how much has changed over the years, and why RGG doesn't look to other games for inspiration.
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity.
GAME INFORMER: Can you walk me through the early conversations about expanding Kiryu's fighting styles with the Agent stance?
Hiroyuki Sakamoto: We had discussed two points: what gadgets to use and whether they could be put together in such a way that they could be considered "a style."
Cheap graphics cards are practically mythical these days, which is great news for gaming obsessed unicorns and centaurs, less so for us mere mortals trapped in boring old reality. But there is one last torchbearer of the budget GPU, and weirdly enough that's Intel. If you happen to live in the US, then you can get your hands on the best cheap 1080p graphics card for a smidge more than $200 for Black Friday.
Now I know the idea of Intel making graphics cards sounds almost as preposterous as horses with horns, but they've been at it for a while. Granted, they've not been especially good at it for most of that time. The original launch of the Arc series was pretty disappointing. But Intel have worked to imrprove the performance of their GPUs, and now the Arc A750 is an excellent 1080p offering.
It's also a perfectly acceptable card for those looking to make their first-steps into the world of Ray-tracing. As James notes in his review "if you’re specifically looking to try ray tracing on the cheap, know that the Arc A750 turns the tables on the RX 6650 XT with these kinds of settings. Where the A750 produced 47fps in Hitman, the RX 6650 XT could only manage 29fps, an even steeper drop from its respective rasterised performance."
Slow news day? You betcha. But look, it’s Thanksgiving, and there’s a good chance people are cooking and eating just about anything they can find right now. Please, if we can save just one person from trying to cook their Steam Deck, then it will have been worth it.
The Steam Deck is a wonderful piece of hardware, but if you purchased the 64GB version of Valve's transformative handheld, it isn't going to be long before you're struggling for storage space. Modern games are large, to the point where some titles, like Baldur's Gate 3, wouldn't even fit on the basic model. Luckily, the Deck's drive space can be expanded through slotting in a MicroSD card. And wouldn't you know it? One of the best budget MicroSD cards is even cheaper than usual Black Friday.
On this special Thanksgiving episode of The Game Informer Show Podcast, we discuss which fictional video games birds would taste the best. We talk about some video games, too. Charles Harte talks about Chants of Sennaar, a puzzle game about language, and Kyle Hilliard talks about Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, a game about beating up people on the streets of a fictional Japanese city. Kyle also touches on Assassin's Creed VR before the duo moves on to the main course: ranking fictional video game birds on criteria like how tasty do they look and how bad would we feel about eating them. After that, we finish out the show with some gestures of gratitude and reader questions.
Follow us on social media: Kyle Hilliard (@KyleMHilliard) and Charles Harte (@chuckduck365).
While it’s always great to be thankful for what you have, it’s also important to be thankful for the things to come. Like when you know something big, fun, or meaningful is just ahead of you, and if you are a little patient you’ll get to savor it. So this year, we each decided to pick the 2023 game announcement we’re each most thankful for and can’t wait to play in 2024 and beyond.
It has to be Unicorn Overlordfor me. This was the best 2023 game announcement for me, and probably the most unexpected. I adore Atlus. I love many of the Vanillaware games. Tactical titles are often among my favorites. We're combining all three with this new addition to the catalog, and it's looking gorgeous so far. I can’t wait to play it and I’m so thankful it’s happening. — Jenni
I am really excited and grateful to be able to finally complete Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door next year. Seeing Nintendo pay attention to it and Super Mario RPG gives me hope that the series might return to its roots and bring new original characters. — Daniel
American Truck Simulator rumbles ever-onward, and developer SCS Software has announced it'll be making its next stop, this time in the state of Kansas - the destination of its newest paid expansion - next Thursday, 30th November. Plus, its substantial 1.49 update - which adds a dynamic night sky, the moon, HDR skyboxes, and more - is out now.
Kansas was confirmed to be the focus of American Truck Simulator 's next, post-Oklahoma expansion back in February, bringing the tally of explorable states in the game up to 14, joining the previously released California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Texas, and Oklahoma.
American Truck Simulator's rendition of Kansas - or the Sunflower State, if you will - promises to give potential visitors and their hefty transportation a tour of the area's "native grasslands, streams, abundant blue skies, and green grassland vistas". You can see some of that across copious screenshots in SCS' launch date announcement post.
VR might not have revolutionised the games industry as its early advocates predicted, but it has spawned a whole new way of playing games, which is arguably far more interesting. We've reached the point where if you don't own a VR headset, you're missing out on some genuinely fantastic titles, from stone cold masterpieces like Half-Life: Alyx, to exciting experiments like The Last Clockwinder and the 7th Guest. Luckily, you can get one of the best VR headsets around for a heavy discount this Black Friday, and you'll also get some Amazon credit on top. Bargain!
We bet you’d forgotten about sort-of-Intellivision’s disastrous attempted console, the Amico. Revealed in 2020 as this super-cheap, super-exclusive, family-friendly gaming machine, replete with exclusive $8 games, the following years saw the business go through clusterfuck after clusterfuck. And yet it seems it’s…
As families come together to gorge on turkey/give thanks for Doctor Who being 60, what better way to mark the occasion than with a bit of a (spacey) freebie from the Epic Games Store, specifically in the form of Deliver Us Mars?
Deliver Us Mars, if you're unfamiliar, is this year's sequel to developer KeokeN Interactive's 2018 sci-fi puzzle-adventure Deliver Us the Moon. For this secound outing, players step into the massive space clogs of an astronaut, Kathy, as she travels to the red planet in search of her missing father and technology that might just help save Earth from ecological disaster.
What follows is a mix of first-person platforming and puzzle solving reminiscent of its predecessor, although it doesn't appear Deliver Us Mars enjoyed quite as positive a critical reception as the fist game. Still, free is free, so if some cerebral spacey excitement appeals, you'll want to be pointing yourself toward the Epic Games Store over the next seven days.
Ah, Thanksgiving. It's a time of year for gratitude, togetherness, repeatedly attempting to explain my job to older relatives, and most importantly, a time when a lot of people come together to eat one really big bird. But here's the thing. Why do we always eat the same kind of bird? I mean, turkey is fine and all, but why not branch out a bit? Why not chicken, or quail, or pheasant?
And that got me thinking – why limit my daydreaming to real-life birds when there's so much delicious-looking poultry in video games? Sure, not every video game bird would be tasty, but it's worth assessing in case I ever get Jumanji-ed into a game one day.
Here's my rating of video game birds based on how good they'd be for Thanksgiving dinner.
Intel CPUs have disappointed twice this year, first with the why-even-bother Raptor Lake Refresh generation and now with a notable lack of decent Black Friday deals. There’s a small handful of 13th-gen chips at good prices, but nothing on par with the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X or Ryzen 7800X3D that Will highlighted earlier this week.
I have, however, spotted a surprise £20 discount on the Intel Core i7-14700K, which just happens to be the only CPU in the new 14th-gen lineup that actually is worth buying. And so, just as it carried the Raptor Lake Refresh launch, so too must it redeem Intel’s Black Friday showing.
Lethal Company - the game in which you exit a dropship, enter an abandoned factory, pick up exactly one (1) piece of salvage, and are immediately eaten by something made entirely of teeth - is getting a VR mod. Created by DaXcess and rodabafilms, it will surely only make life more oppressive for people deserted by their co-op buddies and left to fend off giant spiders with a shovel, not that I'd know what that's like.
Here's some test footage. Don't worry, the player makes it all the way to the end intact. No jump scares, I promise!
This year's Call Of Duty entry is Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, but it's actually the second Modern Warfare 3 because the first Modern Warfare 3 came out in 2011. In my multiplayer review, I say that it preys on nostalgia, because it does! The game's multiplayer schtick is all about bringing back classic maps to act as a smokescreen for a lack of direction. At least, that's what I think.
I find all this nostalgia stuff interesting, mainly because it's coincided with three other events in my own personal timeline (Chapter 29 Season 11, you could say): A League Of Legends pro-player called Faker, the resurgence of a badminton star, and Fortnite's own OG event. The thing that separates them all from COD? A plan.
This week on the Eurogamer Newscast, we discuss this year's various video game remakes and remasters, including the recently-announced The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, which is headed to PlayStation 5 in January.
While TLOU2 was launched on PS4, it's still just three years on from that game's arrival. How do we feel about there already being a "Remaster", and are its DVD extra-style additions worth a £10 upgrade?
We also discuss some of the other remakes to arrive (again) this year, including the excellent new versions of Dead Space and Resident Evil 4. It's good these games are finding new audiences, but are we in danger of focusing too much on the past, and on safe, known franchises? Joining me to discuss all that and more are Eurogamer's Victoria Kennedy and Liv Ngan.
When over 50 indie games come out a day on Steam alone, it can feel impossible to keep up with what’s worth playing. One of the best techniques is to curate a wishlist, meaning games that deserve attention float to the surface on release. And that’s where we can help: here are ten games you’ve likely never heard of,…
EA Sports FC 24 players will be able to experience the UEFA Euro 2024 tournament from the comfort of home thanks to an upcoming free in-game update.
This update is set to arrive next summer, to coincide with the event itself. It will be available across platforms.
Additionally, all those who have played EA Sports FC 24 by 16th January will be "granted one of Europe's biggest stars as an exclusive, untradeable Ultimate Team Player item", starting next month on 18th December (although, EA has said those playing EA Sports FC on iOS and Android devices will be able to get their hands on their UEFA Euro 2024 item starting today).
Black Friday has officially started and there are already plenty of deals to be found on SSDs for your PlayStation 5 console or gaming PC. This is unquestionably best time of year to score a fast and reliable PS5 compatible gaming SSD at the lowest price possible. Most of these deals we've found so far are part of the Amazon Black Friday Sale, although some may be price-matched elsewhere as well.
If you're looking for PS5 games or accessories, check out the best PlayStation Black Friday deals.
For those of you looking to upgrade your PS5 console, this is the best Black Friday deal and the one that you should be picking up. The Crucial P5 Plus meets all the requirements for your PS5 SSD upgrade. It supports transfer speeds of up to 6,660MB/s which is well above the 5,600MB/s minimum threshold. The integrated heatsink is robust and entirely made of aluminum for effective heat dissipation. It's also slim enough to fit in the PS5 bay with the cover on. If you're worried about opening up your PS5 case, don't worry it's very easy. Crucial has an official YouTube PS5 SSD install guide.