Gaming in Australia. Reviews, Walkthroughs, News

If you thought the days of porting Doom onto every possible device known to humanity were over, think again. Now, get ready to slay demons while also maintaining a neat yard. You may be a lover of violent FPS games, but you’re also a responsible adult now.

Games are weird again!

OTT Releases This Week: As we step into the last week of Feb, brace yourselves for a wave of new and exciting content hitting your favorite OTT platforms. From entertainment powerhouses like Disney+ Hotstar, JioCinema, Zee5, Netflix, Prime Video, and others, a diverse array of movies and web series is set to grace your screens. The global lineup spans various genres and languages, promising a delightful binge-watching experience throughout the week and into the weekend. If you're on the lookout for quality additions to your watchlist, we have handpicked a selection of upcoming releases on different OTT platforms.

Streaming giant Twitch has been fined over $300,000 by the South Korean government for violations of federal law, as the platform prepares to terminate its services in the country. Twitch is ending service in South Korea on February 27, and this massive fine has once again raised eyebrows in response to the streaming service's decision.

WWE 2K24 has continued to reveal ratings for the superstars that make up its massive roster, now confirming the ratings for Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns, current WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins, and 15 other superstars. The WWE 2K24 ratings reveals have been going all week, with some of the ratings proving to be somewhat controversial.

Disney Realm Breakers is a new strategy game developed by JOYCITY Corp. It is now available for Android as a soft launch in select regions, including the Philippines, Australia, Singapore, and Malaysia.

In a significant development, Turkey's National Lottery Association has announced the prohibition of both Twitch and Kick within the country. The decision stems from concerns surrounding gambling activities prevalent on the widely-used and well-established live-streaming platform Twitch, along with its competitor Kick, which has also attracted a huge audience and top content creators since its inception in December 2022.

Australian wildlife AI project receives $750,000 boost for wildlife identification; Abridge raises $150 mn in series C for AI clinical documentation tools; Tyler Perry halts $800 mn studio expansion amid AI job loss concerns; AI generated car free city images boost support for sustainable policies in the US- this and more in our daily roundup. Let us take a look.

The "It Runs Doom" meme remains alive and well, considering we can now add robotic lawnmowers to that list.

If you’re a streamer on Twitch and you’re somehow managing to make money off it, it seems there’s a bit of good news on the horizon. Well, provided you’re based in the UK, Canada, Australia, or Turkey. However, if you’re a subscriber to streamers, this may sting a little.

Twitch has announced it will increase the price of channel subscriptions for the first time next month.

Twitch subscriptions are getting more expensive in select countries starting March 28, and the US may be one of the regions seeing a price increase in the near future. These updated prices for Twitch subscriptions will «help streamer revenue keep pace with rising costs» and account for inflation in several countries, according to Twitch.

 Tinder is expanding its identity verification program at a time when artificial intelligence (AI) can make it hard to tell who's real and crime is rising on dating apps. Tinder, the world's most popular dating platform, is rolling out the system in the US, the UK, Brazil and Mexico over the coming weeks and months. It's already been testing the feature in Australia and New Zealand, where people who had been verified saw a 67% increase in matches compared to those who didn't, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. 

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and were last seen together at the Super Bowl. Following that, fans wondered if she’d join Kelce during the Chiefs Parade in Kansas City, but that didn’t happen as she flew to Australia for her concerts in Sydney and Melbourne. But is Kelce going to be with her in Sydney now? Here’s all you need to know.

The next Pokémon Presents showcase will be arriving next week and promises «exciting Pokémon news.»

Astronomers and researchers have been studying the Universe for decades with the help of advanced telescopes and equipment around the world. Now, with the help of the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have located the brightest object in Universe. It is a quasar. Experts believe that this is the most luminous object ever found in deep space. And the brightness does not stem from something ordinary. The quasar is said to be energized by what is reported to be the fastest-growing black hole on record. Know more about the brightest object in the Universe here.

The success of Helldivers 2's simultaneous launch on both PS5 and PC appears to have caught several interested parties off guard, blowing through initial projections with its ludicrously addictive brand of chaotic, cooperative gameplay. That's despite fairly serious server issues since launch on Friday, with multiple patches (including another released today) already deployed.

It's tough to get a read on the current state of the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake, which is being developed by Bloober Team, published by Konami, and supposedly launching later this year. Surfacing at Sony's recent State of Play showcase, long-suffering fans were subjected to a combat trailer which seemed out of touch with the series's more cerebral roots.

Yoshitaka Murayama, the creator of Suikoden, director of Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising, and head of Rabbit & Bear Studios, has passed away at 55 following complications from an ongoing illness.

Blizzard is a company notorious for inflicting microtransactions on its player base, a hell Diablo 4 players have been enduring for a while now. But the company's latest overpriced aesthetic offering goes so far beyond the pale that we can't help but admire its outright brazen nature. For just $30, the asking price of many better games, you could own the Dark Pathways pack, which changes the colour of a player's portal.

Starship Troopers-simulator Helldivers 2 continues to conquer new worlds, deep-striking past Destiny 2 in terms of concurrent player count and approaching Palworld in terms of popularity. Notable, from a PlayStation perspective, is another surprising feat developer Arrowhead achieved in terms of PC dominance: more concurrents than the peak player count of every single PlayStation PC port released on Steam so far.

Bandai Namco has revealed that it cancelled at least five in-development games, and will change its internal development structure moving forward. Stricter rules will make it more difficult for future games to proceed past specific development milestones, as increasing costs make games even more expensive, risky propositions.

Some 700 unionised Ubisoft employees downed (development) tools in France, walking off the job in a day of organised strike action. Following the collapse of annual salary negotiations, on Valentine's Day, workers from Ubisoft Paris, Montpellier, Lyon, Annecy, and Bordeaux took part, taking to the streets in the time-honoured French tradition.

Players booting up Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered will be greeted by a content warning explaining why current custodian Crystal Dynamics kept in some of the iffier moments from the earlier games. The first three entries in the series were developed by UK studio Core Design in the 90s. They featured some unfortunate racial and ethnic stereotypes, which Crystal Dynamics has decided to preserve for future generations.

Upcoming PS5 exclusive Stellar Blade has been given an adults-only rating in Korea, where developer Shift Up is located. Considering the attention-grabbing headlines the game has been generating, it should come as no surprise this is due to apparent (or suggested) nudity and extreme violence.

Arrowhead Game Studios has promised to compensate players who were not adequately rewarded for their heroic service in Helldivers 2, with promised loot going missing amidst a chaotic launch experience. When you can get a game, the cooperative shooter is some of the most outrageous fun on the market, so this is hugely welcome news.

Respawn Entertainment, the developer behind the Star Wars Jedi series and Apex Legends, seems to be in the early stages of developing a first-person Mandalorian game. Sadly, it appears to be set during an earlier, pre-Grogu timeframe, but the prospect of hunting bounties for the Galactic Empire seems like a fun time.

Dragon's Dogma 2 will mark publisher Capcom's first foray into the world of $70 games, an apparent necessity the industry at large is grappling with. But where Ubisoft has been quite bullish about this brave new world, Capcom is taking a more thoughtful approach, quietly considering a pricing review of its catalogue. Still, we don't get the feeling there will be any discounts incoming.

The unfortunately named Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate — Daemonhunters was revealed for PlayStation platforms last month and is on track for a 20th February deployment on PS5 and PS4. Daemonhunters tasks players with purging pestilent Nurgle cultists with flame, Bolter, and righteous fury in tense, tactical encounters, and we got an illuminating gameplay overview trailer showing us how it all works.

Yesterday, we brought you word of a brewing controversy surrounding the upcoming PS5 action game Rise of the Ronin after director Fumuhiko Yasuda made some comments alluding to a controversial 19th-century Japanese philosopher. It was supposed that these comments were why Sony confirmed the game would not be released in Korea, but now Sony says it never planned on selling the game in one of the world's most lucrative markets in the first place.

FromSoftware took the extremely influential Dark Souls formula open world with its magnum opus, Elden Ring, ably assisted in this by publisher and co-IP holder Bandai Namco. Now, it appears that potentially, thanks to that significant injection of cash from Sony and Tencent to a 30% stake, FromSoftware is the sole proprietor of the IP, with Bandai Namco transferring ownership rights back in April 2023.

Sony shares plummeted by some 8.4% on Thursday, their sharpest drop in almost two years, following publishing the firm's latest quarterly financial results. The proclamation that PS5 has reached its peak and the prediction that it expects growth to decline gradually from here seems to have spooked some shareholders.

Developer ZA/UM reportedly cancelled a standalone expansion to Disco Elysium back in 2022, said to be «one to two years away from completion» then, and the third project in as many years to be consigned to the endless void. Now, roughly a quarter of the studio is facing redundancy, which makes us want to put on sad disco music and contemplate the grim, seemingly inevitable fate that awaits all video game developers.

If, like ourselves, you're only passingly familiar with the complex, extremely fraught history between Japan and Korea, you might have missed the significance of specific comments made by Rise of the Ronin director Fumuhiko Yasuda in a behind-the-scenes trailer released last week. We certainly did, despite reporting on the thing, and so were surprised to learn that Sony has since cancelled the upcoming title's Korean release.

Sony president and PlayStation chairman Hiroki Totoki was asked in a Q&A session following Sony's latest financial results briefing why the game division is seeing an increase in gross income but not profits and what the company could do to improve its bottom line. Totoki said that there are two key areas he wants to focus on in this regard: hardware and first-party games.

In recent days, the “right to disconnect” has entered Australia's legislative agenda. It refers to employees' rights to refuse unreasonable after-hours contact from their employer.

It's appropriate that President’s Day comes right after Valentine’s Day because there’s nothing we love more than democracy. To celebrate this most sacred of holidays, we’ve collected some games and literature to deliver some of that piping hot liber-tea directly into your veins.

Horror game documentary series adds three more prominent names in video game horror to its cast.

Google's AI chatbot Bard has now been renamed Gemini, which matches the name of its new multimodal model. In the process Gemini itself has now received new capabilities for users to find all the required AI features in one place. With Google Gemini, users can now generate images with text prompts. Gemini, which is powered by Imagen 2 model, enables the tool to generate high-quality images that match the user's prompt. Just like any other AI image generation tool, Gemini also requires detailed prompts to generate AI images. Know how to use Google Gemini for AI image generation.

Adam Duncan, art director and “founding member” of Australian game studio League of Geeks, has died.

The co-founder of Australian studio League of Geeks, Adam Duncan, has died.

Hellbent on harvesting your nostalgia forever, megacorp Disney has purchased a $1.5 billion stake in Epic Games, teaming up to create a persistent, social universe within Fortnite. It sounds wildly ambitious and more than a little dystopian, allowing fans to «play, watch, shop, and engage» with their favourite Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars characters and bringing us one step closer to the future promised in Ready Player One.

Final Fantasy VIII was (until XIII rolled around) the most divisive entry in a series famous for changing things up, with oceans of ink spilt by the game's rabid detractors and stalwart defenders. Aside from stoic protagonist, Squall, and the way enemies levelled up alongside the party, players' most significant issue with the game was how it handled progression: the complex and quite vague Junction system.

Square Enix has ordered a complete review of its developmental pipeline to increase the quality of future games and streamline, optimise, and synergise its way into increased profit margins. That's under the direction of Square Enix Holdings president Takashi Kiryu, responsible for the company's "aggressive" pivot to AI, who announced the news during Square Enix's latest financial results briefing.

The sequel to CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 is already in development, known by the codename "Project Orion", and developers with some serious credits have begun to assemble at the company's Boston studio (and a satellite studio in Vancouver). In a press release announcing the passing of another milestone, CDPR crowed about several high-profile additions to the development team.

Set during the disastrous final days of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Rise of the Ronin will take players to Bakamatsu-era Japan and arm them with an arsenal of early-modern weaponry. We got a new trailer and an accompanying PlayStation Blog write-up, shedding further light on the game's depiction of this pivotal moment in Japan's history.

Until Then is a gorgeous-looking pixel adventure game set in a world recovering from catastrophe, bringing an emotional adventure to PS5 sometime in 2024. It follows a cast of «achingly familiar characters» using modern technology and social media, where chatting with friends, classmates, and total strangers can have unforeseen effects on the narrative at its core.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has been awarded a Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media, a rare nod from the more established mainstream award industry. Jedi: Survivor beat out the likes of God of War Ragnarok, Hogwarts Legacy, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical for the honour.

The Thaumaturge is an upcoming isometric RPG that's caught our eye with its intriguing alt-history setting, concerned with demonic beings called salutors, and coming to PS5 sometime in 2024. It takes place in Warsaw in 1905, and as a Thaumaturge, the player can commune with these dark entities in battle and out against the fearsome Russian Okhrana (the Tzar's secret police), who controls the streets with an iron fist.

Despite being delayed six times so far, Ubisoft co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot is highly confident in Skull and Bones, so much so that he is tempting fate, invoking the dreaded «AAAA» moniker. The last developer we can recall doing that was the ill-fated Striking Distance Studios with The Callisto Protocol, a game with a sad ending.

Last week was a relatively quiet moment in what's been a very busy period for game releases, but the latest UK retail chart still has a new entry. While we presume most of its sales will be digital across PS5 and PC, it appears Helldivers 2 isn't doing too badly with its boxed copies, either. The PS5 version has debuted in the top 10 at number seven.

Even to casual fans of Yoko Taro's esoteric NieR franchise, the similarities to the upcoming and eagerly anticipated Stellar Blade are apparent—both feature flashy, action-based gameplay and buxom, blade-wielding protagonists, for starters. Rather than shy away from these comparisons, director Hyung-Tae Kim of Seoul-based developer Shift Up is refreshingly forthright, proclaiming it a «great honour» to be compared to such a storied developer as Taro himself.

Venerable publisher SEGA has been around for a long time. It was founded, appropriately enough, in Hawaii back in 1960. In its latest game, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (which ventures to the tropical locale), SEGA couldn't help but give itself a pat on the back via a fourth-wall-breaking conversation between protagonists Ichiban Kazuga and Kazuma Kiryu.

With the release of Grounded II: Making The Last of Us Part II, fans have been given a unique insight into the challenges and triumphs developer Naughty Dog encountered while creating its violent sequel, The Last of Us Part II. One of the biggest genuine surprises was a few almost throwaway lines, revealing that the cinematic adventure originally began life as a purely melee open-world game, one heavily inspired by FromSoftware's own grim epic, 2015's Bloodborne.

Iconic actor Mads Mikkelson will not be returning for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, creator Hideo Kojima has confirmed, with the tragic tale of his character, Cliff Unger, having been resolved in the original Death Stranding.Kojima confirmed the news on Twitter in response to fan inquiries about the star returning.

With the industry as volatile as it is, publishers and developers must find new ways to monetise and offer value to their players to keep them coming back. Released on Friday, Helldivers 2 from developer Arrowhead Studios had a massive weekend, doing things slightly differently from its competitors in the service space, which might be part of the reason for its success.

Players of the original Final Fantasy VII and its Remake returning for the upcoming Rebirth have been anticipating a particular gondola ride for a very long time. The Gold Saucer date scene is shaping up to be more dynamic and romantic than ever; the mysterious system that determines your potential partner laid bare, as it were.

SEGA has issued a financial warning after what it described as «sluggish» and «weak» sales over the crucial holiday 2023 period, traditionally when sales peak. The venerable publisher and developer has revised its sales and profit forecast appropriately downward to compensate.

In a tragic update to a story we brought you back in September, the coolest companions in the original and upcoming Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will not join Cloud and company on the battlefield after all. It was first thought that «accompanying characters» Cid and Vincent might lend a hand in an automated fashion as Red XIII did in Remake, but sadly, this will not be the case.

Layoffs have been reported at Toys for Bob, the developer behind Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time and the Spyro: Reignited Trilogy. They form part of the ongoing consolidation efforts necessitated by parent company Activision's acquisition by Microsoft, resulting in 1900 roles being made redundant. Some 86 workers have been let go, and the studio's office shuttered. Contrary to some earlier confusion, that's the physical address; Toys for Bob will remain active, and most remaining employees will now work remotely.

One of the more heartbreaking revelations of Naughty Dog's recently released Grounded II: Making the Last of Us Part II documentary was the extent to which unwell The Last of Us fans took their grievances. The worst of it, according to Abby actor Laura Bailey, was «real hardcore death threats», some of which were even directed at Bailey's newborn child.

Tarnished stuck waiting in limbo for any scrap of Elden Ring DLC information will have to endure that fate a while longer yet, as FromSoftware parent company Kadokawa has crushed our Shadow of the Erdtree hopes in as dry, corporate fashion as possible. Despite meaningful evidence emerging last month to suggest that some surprise re-reveal was imminent (which may still be the case), it doesn't sound like we can expect a release date anytime soon.

According to recently revealed sales data from publisher Take-Two, it looks like Sony's PS5 has outsold Microsoft's Xbox Series X|S by a factor of roughly 2:1. Microsoft stopped trumpeting console sales a while back, so getting to a concrete number requires taking a slightly circuitous route.

A sequel to spooky crafting sim Subnautica has surfaced unexpectedly and looks set to begin preparatory test dives in the future. That's according to a recent earnings report from publisher Krafton, which developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment later clarified.

Spotted by our sister-site Nintendo Life, publisher Capcom is currently holding what it's calling "Super Elections", asking fans and players for their feedback relating to its lineup of games and offering eligibility for various prizes (Capcom wood badge set, a key art catalogue, and Capcom Hanafuda) for taking part. It's pretty cute stuff for the most part, but some questions certainly stand out.

Persona 3 Reload launched on PS5 and PS4 on Friday, introducing a new generation to the Dark Hour and giving veterans the best way yet to relive the adventure. And while Atlus predictably had a swathe of day-one DLC ready to go, the publisher has stated fans can feel confident this is the complete package, and no expanded edition ala Persona 4: Golden or Persona 5 Royal are planned.

The now-venerable Apex Legends is looking to change things up in a big way with Season 20: Breakout, an overhaul coming to the game to mark its fifth anniversary, arriving 13th February. 120 frames-per-second should shake things up for players on PS5, and the Body Shield system is going the way of the dodo, with Legend's instead now having an inherent Legend armour rating, which will increase as they level up.

Helldivers 2 experienced a somewhat chaotic descent from high orbit, deploying onto PS5 and PC simultaneously and paying for it, with players experiencing matchmaking issues and unable to link up with their comrades. Thankfully, developer Arrowhead is doing its part to keep the intergalactic war effort going. Confirmation of a hotfix has been received and is expected imminently on PS5, having already been deployed on PC.

The identity of another playable villain coming to the villain-centric Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has seemingly been leaked, not by an account chasing clout on Twitter, but by DC's resident brain maniac himself. A bugged line spouted by the Justice League's most enduring antagonist, Brainiac, indicates that a particularly cool character could be coming to the game.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's playable demo is available now on PS5, and immediately, musically gifted players took the opportunity to show off for Tifa in the included piano minigame. Tifa's Theme is set as a challenge for players to overcome in-game, but rousing tributes to other tracks quickly appeared, a testament to the flexibility of its freeplay mode.

Helldivers 2 is proving to be a rousing success for developer Arrowhead Game Studios, but the chaotic cooperative shooter's launch has been marred by some persistent bugs (pardon the pun) and recurring issues; the good news is the recently deployed patch on PS5 and increased server capacity should help with matchmaking, but unfortunately, instances of players not being adequately rewarded for their in-game efforts looks to persist, at least for the foreseeable future.

The modern Persona series is synonymous with slick, sexy UI design, making games like Persona 4 Golden, Persona 5 Royal, and the recently released Persona 3 Reload instantly recognizable. Atlus' efforts are so far ahead of the curve in this regard, and shockingly, it turns out the secret to this success relies simply upon retaining key staff and paying them appropriately.

According to a new leak, Tekken 7's Lidia and Fahkumram will be included in Tekken 8's first season pass as DLC fighters. Tekken 8 has a roster comprised of a healthy mix of newcomers and veterans. Some of the characters that were introduced in Tekken 7 have returned for the eighth mainline entry, which include the Wing Chun practitioner Leroy Smith, the exorcist Claudio Serafino, and the Saudi Arabian fighter Shaheen.

A Tekken 8 dataminer has uncovered several clues that hint at some of the DLC characters who might be making up the game's first season pass alongside Eddy Gordo.

Upcoming OTT release week: Christopher Nolan's “Oppenheimer” arriving on Peacock and a documentary and album from Jennifer Lopez are some of the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you.

Disney Realm Breakers soft launches for Android users in select regions today. Developed by JOYCITY Corp., it’s free to play and offers in-app purchases. JOYCITY is known for a number of other popular titles, including Pirates of the Caribbean: Tides of War, Game of Dice, Rule the Sky and Gunship Battle: Helicopter 3D.

IGN Fan Fest returns this month with a lineup that’s filled with some of the biggest names in games, movies, TV, anime, and comics like Dune: Part Two, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Avatar: The Last Airbender, WWE 2K24, and so much more.

Like many modern releases, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League put its short early access period behind a paywall. While the game fully launches on February 2, anyone who paid for the Deluxe Edition is meant to be able to play 72 hours early. However, that is not working in practice.

Mortal Kombat has wrapped filming, and to mark the occasion Karl Urban shared a snap of himself on set. The Boys star plays Johnny Cage in the sequel, and we’ve only had a very brief tease of his character so far with this typically obnoxious picture.