Gaming in Finland. Reviews, Walkthroughs, News

Sega has been playing a little fast and loose with Sonic the Hedgehog lately, using the blue blur for experimental projects like The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog. At the same time, the movies based on the franchise have been surprisingly good. Here’s another treat for the Sonic enjoyers out there: Sega just announced Sonic Rumble, a 32-player PvP mobile game created with Finnish studio Rovio.

Today, Finnish developer Remedy Entertainment decided jointly with Tencent to cancel the cooperative multiplayer game they were developing.

Despite the love it received from core gamers and critics alike, Remedy's recent effort, Alan Wake 2, has yet to make back its development and marketing budget. This surprising situation has plenty of contributing factors, which we first covered in December, but the reality is that sales are soft. No doubt striking while the irons are hot, Chinese multinational holding company Tencent, the largest video game company in the world, has increased its stake in the Finnish developer from 5% to 15%, securing additional shares and voting rights.

Housemarque and Dark Horse comics have announced Returnal: Fallen Asteria.

Housemarque's critically acclaimed sci-fi game Returnal celebrates its third anniversary with an all-new graphic novel. While fans eagerly awaited news of potential DLC or a sequel for Returnal after yesterday's tease, it turns out the Finnish developer had something else in mind to commemorate the occasion.

Chinese tech and entertainment giant Tencent has increased its stake in Finnish games firm Remedy.

Tencent has increased its shareholding investment in Remedy Entertainment to 14%.

Returnal developer Housemarque has this morning posted a cryptic tweet teasing… something for tomorrow. The team out of Finland uploaded a black and white image seemingly featuring Returnal protagonist Selene's eyes reflected onto broken shards of glass, then teasing news «tomorrow» in a yellow font. You can view the tweet below.

Remedy has provided an update on Codename Condor, the co-operative multiplayer game set in the Control universe.

The history of the roguelike genre isn't just that it is popular — it's ever-changing, from second to second, depending on who gets asked what defines it. While there are extremely strict definitions available for absolute purists, the general sense of a roguelike is that it features a decent number of qualities attributed to the original. Beyond those attributes, they're often defined by their innovations rather than their adherence to their genre, with plenty of roguelikes making a push for Game of the Year candidacy in their release years.

Clash of Clans studio Supercell has announced that its first major game in five years will be released next month.

This morning, Finnish game developer Remedy Entertainment announced a couple of key changes to its core management team. First and foremost, Chief Operations Officer Christopher Schmitz has resigned and will leave the company on May 31.

The console version of Cities: Skylines 2 has received yet another delay, which will prevent it from reaching Xbox and PlayStation users until at least late 2024. This is the second major postponement that the Cities: Skylines 2 console ports have suffered in the past seven months.

Sales of Fallout games have shot up across Europe, with Fallout 4 reclaiming the No.1 spot.

A devoted Alan Wake fan has bought 4,000 digital Xbox 360 codes of the 2010 game that are unfortunately unusable. The original Alan Wake was released in 2010 and became a cult classic Xbox 360 title over the years. The creepy story of fiction writer Alan Wake being haunted by his own writings coming to life in the Pacific Northwest town of Bright Falls captivated fans with its unique and gloomy atmosphere.

Privacy concerns regarding Apple's iPhone have recently been highlighted by researchers from Finland's Aalto University. Despite Apple's reputation for prioritising privacy, the researchers found that keeping personal data hidden from Apple is challenging. The study focused on eight preloaded Apple apps, including Safari, Siri, and iMessage, which are integral to the Apple ecosystem and difficult to remove.

A Duolingo user discovered a hidden reference to the massively popular Witcher series while using the language-learning app. Since its first story in 1986, The Witcher has garnered international acclaim from its legions of fans scattered all over the globe, with comics, video games, and a live-action TV series providing several portals into author Andrzej Sapkowski's fantastical world of magic and monsters.

Supercell’s Community Manager Paula Baguena just dropped a video with some juicy details. So, they’re soft-launching Squad Busters on April 23rd, 2024. If you haven’t been in the loop, it’s a new squad-building action game with the most popular Supercell characters.

The Witcher has moved far beyond its core collection of books and games, with a Netflix show, official manga, tabletop game, and even a cookbook all on offer, but now it's even showing up in language learning app Duolingo.

Phantom Gamelabs, a game studio funded by Supercell, just rolled out a new looter shooter title, Riftbusters. But it isn’t a full-fledged launch; it’s a limited open beta exclusively for Android users in select regions.

Greetings. This is Hyung Tae Kim, director of Stellar Blade. We are pleased to officially announce the upcoming free playable demo for Stellar Blade, coming March 29 to PlayStation 5.

The remakes of the first two Max Payne games have a budget on par with that of Alan Wake 2, Remedy Entertainment has revealed. This insight into the much-anticipated Max Payne project has been shared along with a new status update on its progress.

Remedy Entertainment has said players should expect a “more regular cadence of sequels” for Alan Wake and Control.

Today, Remedy released its latest quarterly report for the period between October and December 2023. Despite the successful launch of Alan Wake 2, which was the fastest-selling game ever made by the studio even launching in a highly competitive release window, Q4 2023 marked a decrease in both revenue and profitability compared to 2022 due to significantly increased investments in the other game projects and to the impairment charge cost (€ -7.2 million) related to the reboot of the free-to-play Project Vanguard, from now on known as Kestrel.

Finnish games firm Remedy has reported €33.9 million ($36.8 million) in revenue for 2023.

Remedy has published its financial results for 2023, and reported a 22.2% decrease in revenue to €33.9 million compared to €43.6 million during the same period last year.

Cities: Skylines 2 is introducing modding support, its first-ever asset pack, and another DLC on March 25. The addition of mod tools is bound to ennoble the game's replayability, while also addressing some common complaints that the fandom has previously aimed at Cities: Skylines 2.

Today is International Women's Day and to mark the occasion, we have decided to highlight some of the incredible women working in the games industry

In a rare move, Remedy Entertainment has lowered the minimum PC system requirements for Alan Wake 2. The unexpected change arrived as part of the game's latest patch that Alan Wake 2 players can download as of March 6.

Developer Remedy Entertainment has announced it has acquired the full right to the Control IP, something it previously shared with publisher 505 Games. Remedy reportedly paid 17 million euros for the privilege; however, 505 Games will remain publisher throughout 2024 while the transition takes place.

Ahead of launching, Alan Wake 2 made the news because it required graphics cards with hardware support for DirectX 12 Ultimate's Mesh Shaders feature. That left unsupported GPUs like NVIDIA's GTX 1000 series and AMD's RX 5000 Series in the dust.

Finnish games firm Remedy has bought the rights to its smash hit title Control.

Remedy Entertainment has confirmed it has acquired the full rights to the Controlfranchise from 505 Games, the company that originally published the 2019 title.

Remedy Entertainment has acquired full rights to the Control franchise from 505 Games.

Today, Remedy announced the acquisition of the full rights to the Control franchise from publisher 505 Games for €17 million, which is basically what the publisher had paid for the development of Control 2 and codename Condor to date. 505 Games will remain the publisher of the original Control through a transition period that will end on December 31, 2024.

Control has joined Alan Wake in being fully owned by developers Remedy Entertainment, as the studio announced they have acquired the complete rights to their supernatural shooter - including its upcoming sequel and co-op spin-off - from publisher 505 Games.

Remedy Entertainment, the developer behind 2019’s Control and critically acclaimed games like Alan Wake 2, now fully owns the rights to the Control franchise. That means the Finnish studio now has full, for the lack of a better word, control over the future of this series, including its sequel and multiplayer spin-off.

Remedy has reacquired the rights to its hit action game Control from 505 Games.

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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.

Finnish smartphone manufacturer HMD announced its rebranding plans at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024 Barcelona. The company's name now stands for ‘Human Mobile Devices'. For the last few years, HMD (formerly HMD Global) has been Nokia smartphones. As part of its new multi-brand vision, it aims to create ‘HMD original devices' while it continues to sell Nokia phones. More importantly, the company also announced plans for a Barbie flip phone!

Fans want a physical edition of Remedy’s horror sequel Alan Wake 2, but the critically acclaimed game isn’t exactly struggling on digital storefronts. The title has now sold 1.3 million copies worldwide, making it the fastest-selling title in the Finnish firm’s history. It previously reached one million units by the end of December 2023, so it looks like word of mouth has been good through the first two months of 2024.

Alan Wake 2 received widespread critical acclaim when it was released in late November. Our own Francesco De Meo gave it a 9/10 and said:

Alan Wake 2 still hasn't recouped its development costs despite establishing itself as Remedy Entertainment's fastest-selling title to date, the Finnish developer has revealed. That disclosure was accompanied by some specific sales figures for Alan Wake 2, which look promising enough to suggest that the game will manage to break even in the near future.

The eagerly-anticipated Alan Wake 2 has shifted over 1.3 million copies since its release.

PS2 and Xbox racing classic FlatOut is currently free to claim on GOG as part of an extended Valentine's Day promo that runs until Saturday, February 17. The limited-time offer is geared toward promoting a newly launched GOG sale that includes thousands of deep game discounts.

Supercell has published its financial results for 2023, in which revenue dropped by 4.2% to €1.7 billion compared to last year.

The recently reported trademark dispute between video game giant Take-Two Interactive and renowned developer Remedy Entertainment has already been resolved, the latter claimed. In addition, the studio noted that its working relationship with Take-Two Interactive remains unchanged.

Update - 19/1/24:Speaking to Stephen Totilo over at Game File, a Remedy rep said that the matter had already been sorted out. 

Finnish games firm Remedy has come into conflict with Take-Two Interactive over its new logo design.

As spotted by Twitter user @usemyhandle, Rockstar and Remedy have apparently entered into a trademark dispute over Remedy's new logo.

Ubisoft’s Project U will have a closed test for PC, starting on February 1st at 4 PM CET and ending on February 6th at 9 AM CET. Registrations are open until January 25th, 2 PM CET, for the session-based co-op shooter, which sees players battling waves of machines.

Just over two years ago, Netflix announced it would enter a new business: gaming. Amid a mobile gaming market dominated by free-to-play and ad-supported business models, Netflix’s plan was to make its games free without ads or in-app purchases. The gambit may now be starting to pay off. In 2023, Netflix Games downloads increased by over 180% year-over-year, according to estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. In total, the games have been downloaded 81.2 million times worldwide across the App Store and Google Play in 2023, with the fourth quarter accounting for around 53% of those downloads.

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Some 22 years after it first released, the cast of Max Payne recently reunited for a strange but brilliant Alan Wake 2 moment, absent one key member.

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Highly anticiapted (at least around here) surival shooter Road to Vostok has a brand new demo out. It's a lot like the old public demo, indeed the developer calls it Public Demo 1 Version 3, with one huge caveat: Road to Vostok now runs on the Godot game engine rather than Unity.

Our Game of the Year coverage continues with the Best PS5, PS4 Story Game of 2023, of which a top four has been put together by the Push Square editorial team. This category highlights the best adventures you can venture on from a narrative perspective on PS5 and PS4. With an intriguing main plot, wonderful characters, and fun distractions of the core path, they'll keep you engaged with their story no matter how long it takes to roll credits.

If you've played through Alan Wake 2, you know the scene. It's a ridiculously amusing, unforgettable surprise from way, way left field during an otherwise generally bleak game, and I wouldn't have it any other way. For the unfamiliar, turn back and play Alan Wake 2 (it's worth it) before reading this article, as we will be getting into spoiler territory from here on out.

James McCaffrey, the voice of Max Payne, died Sunday at 65, TMZ reports. A representative for McCaffrey told the publication that the actor, who is known for roles across Control and the Max Payne and Alan Wake franchises, died of multiple myeloma, and that he was surrounded by friends and family at the time of his death.

As we eagerly anticipate IGN’s Best Game of 2023 announcement, we as the Podcast Unlocked panel thought we’d tell you what we think is the best Xbox game of this year. After all, we talk about Xbox every single week, we use our Xbox’s constantly, and we’re fully immersed in the Xbox ecosystem. And so our group gathered, discussed, and debated. We’ll get to the winner in a bit, but first, here are the five games we settled on as nominees, listed in alphabetical order.

Remedy Entertainment's Alan Wake 2 received widespread acclaim from fans and critics when it launched on 27th October, continuing the tale of the tortured, titular writer. The sequel to the cult-classic Alan Wake, buoyed by more than a decade of hype and developed by a Remedy with the momentum of a well-received Control behind it, you'd expect the game to sell like gangbusters, wouldn't you?

Old Gods of Asgard, the fictional heavy metal band from Alan Wake 2, has entered the iTunes global top 10 album charts.

Alan Wake 2 was one of the big winners at The Game Awards 2023, earning three awards (Best Art Direction, Best Game Direction, and Best Narrative), the most after Larian's Baldur's Gate 3.

Larian Studios and Remedy led The Game Awards last night, with Baldur's Gate 3 winning six awards including Game of the Year, and Alan Wake 2 taking home three of the eight it was nominated for.

If Alan Wake 2 didn’t completely melt your face, Poets of the Fall are back to finish the job.

Sam Lake is one of the creative powerhouses behind the eclectic masterpieces released by Remedy. If you’re trying to make sense of the Finnish artist’s incredible imagination, it would be a great idea to start by having a look at his recommended reading list, which he has recently shared.

Activision Blizzard planned to open its own mobile game store before being acquired by Microsoft, court documents from the Epic Games and Google antitrust jury trial show.

Fans of the UK-based comedy panel show Taskmaster will have just finished up watching series 16. The program itself just seems to go from strength to strength, so it’s not surprising that it’s being turned into an official video game. Specifically, a VR game.

Remedy is known for its meta-narratives and intricately detailed worlds. Fans are familiar with this, and a hidden QR code demonstrates just how forward-thinking the Finnish developers are.

The Game Awards 2023 takes place on December 7, and as usual, Geoff Keighley will serve as host. Voting for the Player’s Voice award has opened, and the list of impressive nominees will make picking the best tough this year.

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Alan Wake 2 developer Remedy Games has kicked off the holiday season early by sharing the official knitting pattern for Saga Anderson's signature festive jumper, and we're a big fan.

Celebrate the festive season Remedy style with Saga Anderson’s cozy sweater. With the studio’s knitting guide, you’ll have a sweater of your own in no time.

Xbox Series sales in Europe have dropped considerably compared to last year, while PS5 sales experienced a major boost year-on-year.

Following the success of Returnal, many people are hotly anticipating whatever comes next from Finnish PlayStation Studios developer Housemarque, but unfortunately, the main mind behind Returnal won’t be contributing. Today it was announced that Returnal director Harry Krueger will be leaving Housemarque after 14 years with the company. Here’s what Krueger had to say about the move…

After a stellar career at Housemarque, Harry Krueger is ready to move on to the next adventure in his life.

Returnal and Nex Machina game director Harry Krueger is departing Housemarque after 14 years.

Harry Krueger, the director of Housemarque’s acclaimed PS5 exclusive Returnal, has announced he’s leaving the Helsinki-based developer after 14 years.

Returnal and Nex Machina director Harry Krueger will leave Housemarque after 14 years, the studio announced.