Rock Paper Shotgun News, Tips, Tricks, Ideas

Former Dragon Age director Mike Laidlaw is making a new fantasy game. Eternal Strands is third-person adventure pitched as a mixture of Shadow Of The Colossus and Monster Hunter with Tears Of The Kingdom's physics powers. The trailer, which you'll find below, certainly has giants you can clamber across and spray with goop.

Hey, do you like going shoulder-to-shoulder with a pal to battle in same-screen local multiplayer games? Follow-up question: do you enjoy deceiving your pal while trying to uncover their own deceit? Last question: do you want to throw knives at your pal's face? If so, check out Neon Knives, a fun free same-screen game for two players where you must both try to blend into a crowd of NPCs while identifying and assassinating your mate.

I like horror, I like bunnies, I like cool little games. Hey, y'here that, Rental? You're alright, kid. It's a free (free!) little game originally made for 2022's 32bit jam that takes about 20 minutes to play through, wherein you play a child rabbit who has arrived at a holiday cabin with her family. You're the first to head inside and, oop, the door locks behind you. Classic twist. A further twist is that, while Rental is entirely free to download and play, you can buy a supporter zine as DLC to kick some funds to the devs. Noice.

So, how was everyone’s long weekend? I don’t want to alarm anyone, but I think I may have even sensed the fading ghost of an immeasurably whisper-thin ray of sunshine at one point. Enough! Says a new patch for co-op shooter Helldivers 2. You know who else enjoys basking in the pleasant glow of mildly enjoyable weather when there’s freedoms that need fighting for? Bug sympathisers, that’s who. As such, the developers have gone and added new planetary hazards in the form of blizzards and sandstorms, alongside the usual balance tweaks.

If you're partial to the grim delights of Phasmophobia and not averse to the sicko enjoyments of Lethal Company, you might like new horror game Content Warning, which kind of blends the two and has the additional virtue of being free on Steam till 9am PT/5pm UK on 2nd April.

It’s usually better when writing about games to defer to personal experience before regurgitating marketing, but in the case of bizarre and deeply intriguing 90’s FPS PO’ed, the trailer that STAR WARS: Dark Forces Remaster studio Nightdive released over the long weekend contains a quote that sums up my memories perfectly: “First game I ever owned and played on my PS1,” says quote-ee matt.baller, “In hindsight, I’m surprised I’m not more messed up.”

New week, new PC games! It's another mercifully brief four day week in the UK due to reasons of religion, so let's roll with an appropriately snappy intro that avoids any extended digressionary preambles about, oh, I don't know, magpies fighting outside my flat this morning. Did you know that European magpies are great mimics? Second only to the Northern Mockingbird, apparently, though many ornithologists contend that the Brown Thrasher is sorely overlooked. You certainly hear their vocal range when they squabble - I reckon somebody should train up a ChatGPT AI on their calls and no, stop it, I'm doing an anecdote!

Hello, dear RPS reader. Do you have a somewhat complicated relationship with online adverts and would like to see them banished into clean, white and uninterrupted space? Then why not sign up for a free month of our RPS Standard subscription? Starting from today, Tuesday April 2nd, until the end of Tuesday April 30th, you can use the following discount code below to get ad-free browsing across the whole of RPS, all for absolutely nothing. It's ad-free, and literally free, so why not give it a try to see if you like it?

Final Fantasy 14’s crossover with Final Fantasy 16, as teased last year, arrives tomorrow. The crossover between the MMO and latest single-player entry in the RPG series has the usual selection of goodies up for grabs, including a very cute minion, a not-so-cute (but still kind of cute) mount, some Clive-cleavage armour and more.

XDefiant, the free-to-play arena-shooter - a la Apex Legends, Overwatch 2, Valorant or the multiplayer team-based game of your choice - built around classes and factions from across the Ubisoft universe games from Splinter Cell and Far Cry to Ghost Recon and Watch Dogs, has been delayed. Originally outlined for a launch before the end of March - you’ll note that we’re now in April - the upcoming FPS will apparently now decide a release date after an upcoming stress test for its servers.

Louis Gossett Jr., who made history as the first Black man to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and had a prolific, successful career across film, television and stage - as well as voicing the friendly Vortigaunt aliens in Half-Life 2 and its follow-up Episode One - has died.

Terraria is apparently entering the “final stretch” of updates for the 2D crafting and exploration game (though whether this will actually be it remains to be seen), and it looks like developers Re-Logic are seeing off their 2D Minecraft-a-like in style. Emphasis on the ssssstyle.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is seemingly a superb game, when it's not buggy or surprising its players with microtransactions.

The Oculus Quest launched back in 2019, just five years ago, but come May new apps released in the Quest Store won't be playable on the Quest 1. This isn't because the Quest 1 isn't powerful enough to play them anymore, but because developers will no longer be able to upload them and players won't be able to see them.

I still think of Rain World as the beautiful, brutally hard game about accidentally going down tunnels butt-first and being crushed to death by weather, but it's grown and expanded a lot since its release almost seven years ago. It's about to grow again with a new DLC: The Watcher.

TimeSplitters Rewind, a fan-made remake of the zany shooters’ multiplayer in a single game, might well represent the last gasp of the beloved first-person shooter franchise following the closure of resurrected original developers Free Radical - who were working on their own TimeSplitters reboot - at the end of last year. With over a decade of work already invested in the fan project, however, the team have now released a call for help to overcome development hurdles caused by the ongoing troubled state of the games industry.

CD Projekt Red are continuing to bulk up the team developing The Witcher 4 - officially codenamed Polaris - with two-thirds of the studio now working on the follow-up to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Meanwhile, the team working on Cyberpunk 2077 has shrunk to fewer than 20 people, less than half the number working on its upcoming sequel.

Dragon's Dogma 2 has dropped its first update, addressing one of the fantasy action-RPG’s most baffling decisions - the inability to start a new game once you’ve begun your first adventure - and letting you acquire a home of your own earlier, providing a reliable place to rest and save. There are some other small tweaks too, while Capcom dare to raise the question about future DLC in the wake of the game’s controversial microtransactions.

It’s been close to three years since Celeste and TowerFall developers Extremely OK Games revealed their next project, the similarly gorgeous-looking and sumptuous-sounding 2D exploration platformer Earthblade. While the studio didn’t give any indication of a release date at the time, we now know not to expect Earthblade until 2025 at the earliest.

Rhythm shooter Metal: Hellsinger has you circle-strafing Quake-style level layouts at high-speed while you shoot demons to the beat. I meet the news that it's getting a VR version this year with some trepidation, therefore. Do I really want to vomit on the beat?

Earlier today, megacorp Embracer announced they were selling Borderlands developer Gearbox to Take-Two. During an investor call about the divestment, CEO Lars Wingefors confirmed that this brought an end to the restructuring process Embracer announced last year. He was also asked whether this meant Embracer had plans to start acquiring other studios again.

Head over to the Epic Games Store on April 4th and you'll be able to grab The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition and Thief (2014) for free and to keep forever. Like a thief!

Sega Of America employees have become the first a major US video games studio to ratify a union contract. The contract covers guarantees minimum yearly pay increases for around 150 staff through 2026.

A regular rogue's gallery of independent game developers - including the creators of Dead Cells, Slay The Spire, Darkest Dungeon, Spiritfarer, Terraria and V Rising - have clubbed together to run their own videogame showcase: the Triple-I Initiative. Initially screening on 10th April, it'll be a 45-minute, unhosted, back-to-back series of trailers, reveals and surprise game or demo releases, designed (as per the press release) "to highlight fan-favorite games and hype up established indie classics as well as new IPs". It could become a yearly thing, but that'll obviously depend on how well the first showcase goes down.

Alongside announcing plans to buy Borderlands developers Gearbox from the collapsing wreckage of Embracer Group, Borderlands publishers Take-Two overnight casually mentioned that they are "in active development on next installment in Borderlands series". This isn't a formal announcement as much as a businessblast to hype shareholders, so it didn't have anything specific to say about what Gearbox are up to with their wildly popular and deeply unfunny looter shooter series. It had seemed curious that the much-delayed Borderlands movie was coming out five years after the latest main series game and with no new one in sight.

You know me and Soulslikes. We're not particularly best buddies most of the time. We've had a couple of successful outings over the years with the likes of Death's Door and Hollow Knight and company, but anything with pure FromSoft blood running through its veins has always left me cold. Void Sols, however, is an upcoming Soulslike that feels like it might be able to satisfy both sides of the 'git gud' camp, appealing to nervous dodge-rollers like myself while also giving hardened Elden Ringers a run for their money. It's all down to its plentiful supply of approachable customisation options, allowing you to ratchet up the difficulty if you're finding things a bit easy, or knock it down, reapply your stat points, and even create whole new loadouts - each with their own individual stat combinations - to win the day. It's all wonderfully considerate, and having played the free demo that's just launched on Steam, I'd strongly recommend giving it a go if you're feeling in need of a little training ahead of Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree coming out.

Stardew Valley, one of our favourite RPGs despite coming out almost a decade ago, still has an attentive steward in the form of developer Eric Barone. After the recent 1.6 mega-update to the game, which added a whole bunch of stuff, Barone (better known in his developer form as ConcernedApe) Xeeted out a list of fixes in the now-available 1.6.3 update. This makes tweaks to things arising from 1.6 (many of them addressing moss, a new foraging item) and fixes bugs, one of which was causing 'excess trash' to be fished.

Today I learned that ‘Wanko’ is Japanese for dog, rather than just being Aussie slang in the vein of ‘smoko’ or my favourite, 'bottle-o', which is what they call an off-license. I learnt this because of Doronko Wanko, a lovely free game about a dirty pomeranian where you try to score as high as possible by doing actual, financial damage to your owner’s home.

Activision have revealed what's coming to Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone 2 in its upcoming Season 3 update. For Modern Warfare 3, there's a slew of new and remastered 6 vs 6 maps, new modes, and Zombies story additions. As for Warzone, highlights include the return of fan-favourite Rebirth Island, biometric scanners, new perks, and four new weapons. Let me break the details down for you, like how I used to break my friends' spirits by sprinting at enemies without communicating my intentions, going down, then spectating as they attempted to pick up the pieces.

Embracer have announced that they're selling Borderlands developers Gearbox Entertainment to Take-Two Interactive, owners of 2K Games and GTA 6 developers Rockstar, for $460 million in Take-Two shares. Three Gearbox Software studios - the flagship studio in Texas, together with Gearbox Montréal and Gearbox Quebec - will change hands as part of the deal. Take-Two will also acquire the Borderlands and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands franchises, together with Homeworld, Risk of Rain, Brothers in Arms and Duke Nukem.

Chymicalia is an adventure game and/or visual novel "about causing chaos in a small Yorkshire town with unlicensed alchemy". Hey, I'm from a small Yorkshire town originally! I recognise that chip shop with the palsied neon sign! And hey, that looks like the underpass they told us kids to stay away from! And the textile mill they eventually turned into an old folks home! And the teleporting sentient potion shop where we used to hang out and play pogs! Wait, scratch the last one.

Sonic Dream Team developer Hardlight and Total War studio Creative Assembly have been hit with a round of layoffs by publisher SEGA Europe, affecting around 240 roles across Creative Assembly, SEGA Europe, and Hardlight, via IGN.

I've not played Hellgate: London, but I'm sure I must've passed it on the shelves in Gamestation (I'll never forget you, friend) way back when. Apparently, the original was a dark fantasy action RPG with roguelike elements and MMO subscription models before developer Flagship Studios shut down. Then it was re-released a bunch of times, with London giving way to Tokyo in one expansion. Now, Hellgate's original creator Bill Roper has announced he's working on a brand new Hellgate game under his new studio Lunacy Games.

Xbox Cloud Gaming, Microsoft’s game-streaming platform, finally lets you actually use a keyboard and mouse to play on PC. There’s a bit of a catch for now, though, in that it’s only a beta test for now with a small selection of games supported. Still, it’s something!

Overwatch 2’s next damage hero Venture is tunnelling into the free-to-play shooter a little early - for a while anyway. Before the new drillin’ DPS makes their official arrival next month, they’ll be available to take for a spin from tomorrow through the weekend.

You can now explore one of Ukraine’s most iconic natural landmarks - and the largest salt mine in Europe - in Minecraft. The virtual replica of the Soledar salt mines and their surrounding town, occupied by Russia troops for the past year in real life, has been led by the wartorn country’s government in an effort to help rebuild a school destroyed during the conflict.

More than three years after former Dragon Age lead designer Mike Laidlaw was revealed to have joined forces with fellow games industry veterans behind the likes of Assassin’s Creed under newfounded studio Yellow Brick Games, the developers are finally teasing their first game. And yup, it’s definitely a fantasy game!

After delaying the launch of Homeworld 3 by two months to address criticism of the spacefleet shoot-o-strategy game's demo, developers Blackbird Interactive have now laid out what they're changing. Improved controls, tougher ships, more useful formations, better Attack Move command, more HUD options, and more types of War Games mode objectives are among the tweaks and improvements detailed by game director Lance Mueller in a 3000-word blogblast. "This past month, everyone was heads down discussing every post we saw from Steam, social, Reddit, Discord and beyond," he explained. They have plans.

I approve of the recent trend towards making building games as relaxing as possible (e.g. Summerhouse). Today sees the release of a new one on Steam, this one a teeny medieval city builder called Le Château that gives you strict limitations for building a castle. You can have a go of the demo for free - I like it a bunch.

A decade or so ago there was a period when all videogames and especially all Unreal Engine videogames had to be brown and grey and dingy. "The Gears of Warrification of graphics," we used to call it, huddled up in the chest-high trenches with our Xbox 360 controllers. Survival MMO Dune: Awakening threatens to bring that back in a big way: the novel and films on which it’s based unfold, after all, on an entire planet made of sand.

Is there a developer more fiendishly dedicated to giving fans endless returns on their initial investment than No Man’s Sky studio Hello Games? It’s not a competition, mind, but they’d surely be a strong contender if it were. Despite dropping the Omega update just last month, and unveiling fantasy survival game Light No Fire at last year’s Geoffies, the Horsham team are back once more with the Orbital update. It looks to be a sizeable one too, with ship customisation and a “complete space station overhaul” among the new features. You can read the full patch notes here. I hope it includes a note about how much sleep they’re all getting, because I’m starting to worry.

Following up yesterday’s news on Ghost Ship Games’ upcoming Judas, courtesy of the Ian Games Network, another interview with the Friends Per Second podcast, via SkillUp on YouTube, has shed light aplenty on the upcoming Bioshock-ian FPS game. The hosts played the game for 5 hours at Ghost Ship Games in Boston, then interviewed director Ken Levine. Here’s a crunchy chipstick of a take to kick things off with; Judas is, says Ralph of SkillUp, “Definitely not Bioshock in space”. I...haven't played it, have I, so I'll put my cynicism in its horrible little cage for a bit. Aesthetically, at least, Judas does look to have a lot going for it.

In case Amy Hennig's Captain America and Black Panther game 1943: Rise Of Hydra wasn't going to be quite enough to satisfy your Marvel hunger, Netease have just announced they've got another comic book bun in the oven for you. Marvel Rivals is a free-to-play, third-person team shooter where two teams of six heroes and villains go head to head with each other in destructible arenas. I can't say its reveal trailer has me particularly pumped - the game looks and feels a bit like it's ten years too late. Still, why not come and have a gander at it below.

Fallen London and Sunless Skies developers Failbetter Games have blogged about the dark art of running a sustainable business, while sharing a tiny bit more about their next, unannounced game. Said game is apparently a change of genre from Failbetter's previous, exceedingly narrative-driven open world titles and free-to-play RPGs. It'll also be a little less oppressive, aiming for a feeling of "fireside menace" - that is, "an awareness of the world's dangers, but also warmth and comfort", which certainly feels like an appropriate mood for a time of mass layoffs and game cancellations, to say nothing of recent conspiracy-fuelled harassment campaigns.

Is there a definitive geological difference between rock and stone? Google tells me the main consensus is that stones are just smaller rocks, which sounds like a flimsy distinction to base a catchphrase on. I’m not sure when this would come up, unless maybe you were a biblical heretic trying to dunk on the people bludgeoning you to death by correcting them in some last gasp pettiness, but it still bothers me. Anyway, colony survival game First Dwarf cares not for rock, only stone, along with the wood you’ll use as the building blocks of your colonies. This is me burying the lede deeper than the mines of Moria, of course, because First Dwarf also has a tiny talking dragon companion that sits on the shoulder of the giant dwarven mech you use to swing a hammer at horrible toxic shitlizards. The dragon learnt your language by sneaking herself in a library. Do go on, game.

V Rising confirmed it would reach 1.0 on May 8th just a couple of weeks ago, delivering changes to the survival action RPG's PvP and endgame.

Lego Fortnite's latest update lets players construct their own vehicles. The Mechanical Mayhem update, out now, adds three vehicle builds, and new items which let players craft their own custom designs. It's the second major update to the blocky survival game since its launch last year.

On March 31st, Ubisoft's open world racing game The Crew will be turned off for good. As of right now, no one can buy the ten-year-old racer, but come the end of the month, even those that did buy it will no longer be able to play it.

Diablo 4 is headed to Game Pass in just a couple more days, on March 28th, giving the stingy-but-curious like me a chance to click demons to death at lower cost. As preperation, Microsoft have outlined the steps necessary to link your Game Pass account to a Battle.net account - because what is a launcher for, if not launching other launchers.

Fantasy craft-o-building survival sandbox game Enshrouded today launched its first big content update, two months after entering early access. You can now enter the Hollow Halls, a series of challenging dungeons scattered around the world with new enemies and rewards. Or at the opposite end of the intensity spectrum, you can now decorate your home with loads of lovely potted plants then sit down on a chair to admire them. Come watch this video showing off these changes and many more.

Good news for people who don’t cringe violently every time they encounter the phrase “Narrative Legos”! We’ve finally got some more details about the extremely Bioshock-adjacent Judas, courtesy of the Ian Games Network, who spent six hours playing the game and chatting to Levine at Ghost Story Games in Boston. It’s a massive interview, but very broadly, it's an FPS game that gives you guns in your right hand and “various organic powers” in your left. It’s got a big focus on story and choosing your own path through character interaction, and it also has roguelike elements. “The ship is different every time you die and come back, the ship layout can be different," says Levine.

Troubled city building game Cities: Skylines 2 is getting a little less troubled, as new patch 1.1.0f1 adds various performance and bug fixes alongside the main event: much requested mod support and tools in the form a nifty editor. We got a first look at the new editor tools last October, which looks to simplify the process by combining what was previously several different separate editors into a single application. It was later available only to some closed beta testers, but is now released for everyone. Emphasis on everyone, actually, since the tool looks refreshingly approachable, even for those with basically no modding experience.

According to our mysterious Treehouse member, our Jource (Joel Source) got in touch with them last night in regards to the APC story I'd posted (to safeguard democracy, I'm not going to reveal either of their identities). They wanted to "put the record straight" and say that it wasn't the work of Real Joel, because Real Joel's so busy scheming, he simply wouldn't have time to drop into games like some patriotic Bad Santa. Real Joel is, however, seemingly glad that the impersonator wanted "other people to have fun" as it's a goal that they "both share".

Journey developer thatgamecompany have announced the PC early access release date for their social MMO Sky: Children Of The Light. Having already built up a substantial community on both mobile and consoles, PC players will now be able to join in on April 10th on Steam. There will be some special PC-themed goodies available to celebrate the occasion, too, including a Companion Cube prop from Portal, a Journey cosmetic pack, and double rewards for sending Heart gifts to other players.

Palia, a cute-looking life sim MMO inspired by e.g. Stardew Valley, has been in beta since last year, but now it's officially out on Steam, where many more people can download and play it. With this launch comes a pretty substantial update - Patch 0.178, full notes here - which adds a new questline and Temple to explore, new furniture, and a bunch of new spring flowers and trees to grow in your garden. There is also a giant plushi frog, listed under 'Adjustments'. The patch notes say simply "What does he want? Does he come in peace?" which makes him sound way more sinister than I think he is, but as you can see from the screenshot, he isn't not sinister.

Look up to the skyline, and tell me what you see. It is me, standing on a hill, uttering firmly with my dying breath: Mass Effect: Andromeda was pretty good. For anyone currently gathered around the hill, searching the pockets of their N7 hoodies for more heavy objects to fling at me, however, here’s some good news: the as-yet unnamed Mass Effect 5 is in the capable hands of “trilogy vets”, according to project director Michael Gamble, via Le Epic Musk Zone (OP didn’t steal), formerly Twitter. The team heading up the space game franchise’s next entry comprises of veterans of the first three games in various leading roles, namely: Art Director, Game Director, Creative Director, and Executive Producer.

Remember when Ark: Survival Evolved was announced to be getting an animated series with a star-studded cast including the likes of Michelle Yeoh, Russell Crowe, Elliot Page, David Tennant and Malcolm-bloody-McDowell? I sure didn’t! That was over three years ago during the heights of a worldwide pandemic, though, so I think we can forgive ourselves a little. Anyway, Ark: The Animated Series has now arrived out of the blue, dropping its first six episodes on streaming service Paramount+.

Just over a year ago, Shinji Mikami - he of directing the original Resident Evil and Resident Evil 4 fame - was confirmed to be leaving Tango Gameworks, the studio that he had co-founded over a decade earlier to create a modern successor to his survival-horror classics, The Evil Within.

Generative AI is one of the biggest debates raging across not just video games, but art and culture as a whole at the moment. Into that debate has waded the CEO of graphics card giants Nvidia to drop a prediction that can only be described as searingly flammable: we’ll see games where everything seen on-screen is fully generated by AI, in real-time, within the next 10 years.

Everyone likes Dragon's Dogma 2, it seems. Except everyone also seems to dislike one specific part of Dragon’s Dogma 2: the fantasy sequel’s microtransactions. But that one dull spot has already been polished out by modders, who are offering more convenient (and less expensive) ways to pick up items that you’ll either need to potentially grind or cough up real money for.

Bethesda have marked the 30th anniversary of Elder Scrolls with the faintest of mentions of The Elder Scrolls 6, the faraway next game in the fated fantasy RPG series. They say they're even now playing work-in-progress versions of the game, which was announced five years ago, and are having a jolly old time revisiting Tamriel. Alright for some.

Here’s one for all you connoisseurs of the horrific consequences of your own actions. Regicide-em-up visual novel Slay the Princess’ new update brings with it new dialogue and music, fleshing out the game with additional choices, expanded scenes, and orchestral renditions of some choice tracks. The new content takes the form of new animations and “more than 3,000 words of additional and restructured dialogue choices and conversations.” That is easily enough words to tell the Stanley Parable-esque narrator that you’re on to him and whatever mind games he’s playing, with enough left over for the other voices in your head to make you doubt your own morality with alarming frequency.

Grab a pencil and start respooling, as tape-based Pokémon 'em up Cassette Beasts today revealed that the previously announced free update adding multiplayer will arrive on the 20th of May. Up to eight players will be able to explore together, as well as take part in two-player cooperative "raids" and duel each other. Also launching alongside this will be a collaboration with another Poké 'em up, Moonstone Island. Have a peek at all this in the video below.

One of my favourite things about Helldivers 2 is the fact it's home to a human game master, known as "Joel", who controls the narrative. Joel's been known to leave surprises, namely mechs before they officially launched a while back. And now he's seemingly granted a group of lucky players the chance to ride about in an armoured truck outfitted with guns. Maybe, just maybe this signals their imminent release?

If ever there were a game not to play on a Monday when you've had minimal sleep and basically want to crawl under the table and eat three-day-old pizza, that game - or rather, free "tech demo" - is Fractal Sailor. The work of Struct9 founder Matej Vanco, it hands you a distressingly unwieldy and roofless hovership and cuts you adrift in a vast ocean of malevolent mathematics.

There’s a teaser image on the wall. We stare at it and we think that’s the whole multiplayer shooter set in the Control franchise. Then, Remedy sneak a second teaser image alongside some tantalising lore snippets into their latest investor report (Thanks, resetera!) Also there’s an air fryer that turns nuggets into miniature black holes, or something. I’m not sure because, honestly, I never learned to appreciate Control’s wonderful architecture and lore because the combat made me want to gnaw my fingers off. Good news, then, for everyone except me specifically. We’ve got a few more scraps of info about its (presumably) almost entirely combat focused spin-off title, currently known as ‘Condor’.

On top of announcing the release date for Final Fantasy 14's next expansion, Dawntrail, at PAX East over the weekend, producer Yoshi-P set Final Fantasy tongues wagging even further by mentioning the words "Final Fantasy 9" and "secret" in the same sentence. Many of the pre-order and special edition bonus items players can get with the upcoming Dawntrail expansion are suspiciously FF9-themed, you see, but when pointing this out to PAX-goers, Yoshi-P said "the reason is a secret" for now, sparking fresh rumours about Square Enix's supposed Final Fantasy IX remake/remaster.

GTA 6 is facing development troubles, leaving leadership “nervous” that the hotly anticipated open world crime-athon could be “falling behind’ expected schedules. That’s according to Kotaku, who were told by an anonymous source that studio heads are “worried” that the game could miss 2025 completely and not see release until 2026. Kotaku were told that the studio is still “aiming” for a Spring 2025 release date, but sources feel Fall of the same year is more plausible. However, the title could be delayed until 2026 as a “fallback plan.”

It's Monday and I'm tired, so do I really have to write out hundreds of words telling you who Nic Reuben is? You already know Nic! He's been writing here as a freelancer loads. He threw a rock through the treehouse window and were preparing to sacrifice him to appease Horace's great coils, but the endless bear spake and instead commanded us to hire him, after a rigorous interview process. Say hello to Nic in his new and official capacity here on the site! My enthusiasm has woken me up again!

Days Gone is that zombie x motorbike open world game (except they were at pains to point out that Freakers weren't zombies) that Sony did for PS4 in 2019, and ported to PC in 2021 - both years after people were done with Sons Of Anarchy as a thing. As alluded to in The Maw this week, there hasn't been much news out of Bend Studios since then, but they're now hiring for a lead project manager for "crafting our next high-profile AAA title." Another clue? The successful applicant must have experience "with an emphasis on live operations" and "in leadership roles shipping AAA live service games". Hmmm.

It's a brand new week in Computer Game Land, and right now, I am playing a nasty little survival sim called "Beating Jetlag". I landed back in the UK from GDC on Saturday afternoon, and my brain and eyeballs still feel as though they're being gently sautéed in a medicinal blend of oil and vinegar. The sun and sky bear down with a terrible, holy light and I can't seem to conjure any warmth into my elbows. In the street outside, a small dog is barking. Soon, very soon, I will catch that dog, place it in a box and FedEx it to China.

Final Fantasy 14's next expansion, Dawntrail, will launch in early access on June 28th and then release in full on July 2nd. Producer Yoshi P announced the date onstage at PAX East, while acknowledging the release date's proximity to another RPG: Elden Ring's Shadow Of The Erdtree expansion, which releases on June 21st.

Fortnite, one of the biggest third-person shooters in, well, ever, could be about to become one of the biggest first-person shooters ever. Epic have revealed that a first-person camera mode is headed to their ridiculously popular battle royale game later in 2024, letting you blast Peter Griffin, Solid Snake's flat butt and other pop-culture icons up-close.

Seeing as Path Of Exile 2 has already undergone a curious journey from 'sequel released as expansion' to 'actual sequel' in the four years since its announcement, not to mention years of delays, what's one more diversion? The action-RPG's developers announced last night that the closed beta planned to start on the 7th of June will now not. They think they could have something ready by then but it wouldn't be up to their standards, so what's the hurry?

There’s a The Sims movie in the works, and it’s already signed up some major star-power in the form of Margot ‘Barbie’ Robbie’s production company and the director behind Marvel show Loki and the upcoming second season of The Last of Us. EA’s on board, too.

Shadows of the Damned, the unexpected collaboration between No More Heroes, Killer7 and Lollipop Chainsaw creator Goichi ‘Suda51’ Suda and Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, will finally see a PC release with a new remake later this year - over a decade after it first hit consoles.

Dragon's Dogma 2 arrives on PC and consoles today, but despite high critical acclaim when reviews hit earlier this week, players on Steam have begun review-bombing Capcom's high fantasy RPG after the appearance of some sudden and confusing microtransactions. These weren't present in the press build of the game, and players are so up in arms about them that the game is currently sitting on a fat red "Mostly Negative" Steam rating based on over 11,000 reviews and counting.

Last night, IGN posted a news piece about how Undawn, a free-to-play survival game starring Will Smith as some kind of apocalypse pal called Trey, has been a massive flop. Released in June 2023 for mobile and PC, Undawn had an allegedly huge budget, according to Reuters sources, but which only brought in under $300K last month, as estimated by research firm Appamgic. And on hearing this news everyone went: "Sorry, what are you talking about?"