Action Adventure News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

The announcement trailer for Lost Legions opens with a Roman Emperor bellowing “GIVE ME BACK MY LEGIONS” like a kid who’s just had his pudding taken away. I'd just had a big swig of coffee before watching, and was instantly swept off by visions of an apoplectic Roman bigwig rampaging through the forests of darkest Germania, gluing abducted legionnaires together into a sort of Octavian katamari... and then they revealed that it’s another open world survival game, with no less than two trailer beats dedicated to the act of hacking down a tree.

Tucked away in the corner of this year's Day Of The Devs at GDC I discovered a lavish, strangely unattended action-RPG, in which austerely beautiful young women in elaborate skirts kick the bejazus out of each other on fields of whirling flowers. That game was Aikode, the work of Spanish solo developer Ace.

We haven't written much about Korean MMO ArcheAge since reviewing it nine years ago, and there won't be many future opportunities to write about it, either. Its developers have announced that its European and North American servers will shut down on June 27th.

The director of Stellar Blade has explained that what players are describing as input lag during certain moves is a deliberate choice.

Stellar Blade’s New Game Plus mode has been made available earlier than expected.

Alien-infested submarine sim Barotrauma has received a chunky update, bringing two new-ish monsters into its lethal aquatic world. The shrimp-looking Mantis may be recognisable to veterans (it once appeared in pre-Steam builds). And the Viperling is a venomous variant of the existing Spineling (a thorny seaworm with hull-piercing porcupine-like spikes). But don't worry, the medical systems have also seen a "mini-rework", which means drugs like morphine are "less of a 'solution for everything'". Wait. What?

There was a moment in Nier Automata when I knew that I was in for something special.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s creative director has ideas for further developing the story of the game’s protagonist Basim.

Stellar Blade in-game graffiti which references a racial slur will be patched out in the game’s day-one patch, Sony has said.

As a somewhat deflating example of the money-churning might of GTA Online becoming the sole focus of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 5 efforts over the last decade, the actor who played Trevor in the ridiculously well-selling crime epic has teased some details of planned story DLC that would have turned the controversial protagonist into a James Bond-style spy. The pack supposedly got as far as shooting with the actors, only to end up cancelled and folded into a GTA Online heist.

"If only you could talk to these creatures" is never more funny or true than in games like Rotwood, where you play cat people and orcs sent to biff snail worms and flies with scythes. From Klei Entertainment, the gang behind Don't Starve, Invisible Inc. and Oxygen Not Included, to name but a three of their fine games, Rotwood is out later today in early access, ready to provide co-op highjinks in a roguelike dungeon crawl that is really a forest. A forest crawl. You'll get muddy knees.

Zenless Zone Zero is the next action-RPG from Genshin Impact developers HoYoverse. Where Genshin is all Zelda-style pastoral greens, Zenless is an urban fantasy. It's expected to release sometime in the first half of 2024, and you can now pre-register on all platforms.

An independent UK developer says it’s been forced to announce and postpone its game on the same day, and lay off more than half of its staff, due to the sharp downturn in investment in the games industry.

As one of the Treehouse's resident Atlus sickos, I was incredibly happy to wake up to 25-minutes of Metaphor: ReFantazio's director Katsura Hashino talking us through some new footage. We get a look at a new rural town and the activities you can get up to, like bounty hunting. Travel on your magic mech is compared to "camping", which I wasn't expecting. And there's lots of combat on show, with transitions from real-time to turn-based battles outlined in a bit more detail. Oh and it's coming out in October, which gives me plenty of time to clear my JRPG backlog before this inevitably takes over my entire existence for the foreseeable.

I spend a portion of my every week surviving and crafting. And in the game, where the game is called Minecraft. I still have appetite left for Tinkerlands: A Shipwrecked Adventure, a demo that offers topdown, 2D construction and fights with giant frog bosses, among others.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor seems to be in the process of making its way to EA Play.

Ahead of Final Fantasy 14’s next massive expansion, Dawntrail, arriving this summer, Square Enix recently put out a graphical benchmarking tool. Dawntrail’s benchmark is especially noteworthy as it’s the first time we’ve really been able to put the MMO’s much-anticipated graphical update arriving with 7.0 into practice and see what sort of demands it might make on our hardware by overhauling the 10-year-old game’s visuals.

Visions of Mana, the next entry in Square Enix's Mana series, sadly won't have co-operative multiplayer.

No Rest For The Wicked, the top-down soulslike that released yesterday in Steam early access, is already seeing its fair share of performance and QOL issues, including instability, lack of keybinding options, and players losing their progress. In response, developer Moon Studios have put out a blog saying that, yes, they’re aware of the problems and, yes, they’re actively looking to address the most common hiccups.

Star Wars: Outlaws isn't just an open world retread of existing Star Wars locations, like Tatooine. It contains a whole new moon of developer Massive Entertainment's creation - Toshara, which is home to the Pyke criminal gang and visually defined by huge deposits of crystalline orange material and cities hacked out of mountains. What's it like adding a whole bloody world to Star Wars? Here are some quick thoughts from Massive Entertainment's creative director Julian Gerighty.

The latest update for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is now live.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits looks set to be released for Xbox consoles.

Eiyuden Chronicle developer Rabbit & Bear Studios will continue working on a sequel following the death of its creator Yoshitaka Murayama.

Former PS4 hit Ghost of Tsushima is the next big PlayStation exclusive to make the leap to PC, and it’s bringing some extra PS-shaped features with it. The game’s Director’s Cut - representing the fact this re-release will include its Iki Island expansion and co-op mode - will be the first game that lets you earn PlayStation trophies from your PC, if you so wish.

Earlier this week Hades 2 developer Supergiant announced its technical test, which players can sign up for now ahead of the game hitting early access.

Friends, I have officially discovered another game I can play with my life partner, who regards most games with enormous suspicion and fatigue. That game is Morels: The Hunt 2, released this week, and as you might guess, it is about finding and identifying various species of mushroom in lush, photorealistic wilderness locations. There are also unicorns, crystal skulls and robot parts. Slightly confused by the unicorns, crystal skulls and robot parts, if I'm honest. It feels a bit like developers Abrams Studios are unconvinced as to the popular appeal of mushroom hunting, and have garlanded the concept with random mythology so as to widen the Venn diagram overlap between "fungi fans" and "people who want to live in cyberpunk Narnia".

If you'll be hiding from the sweltering sun in July (I say, daring the fates to try to spite me by delivering a cracking summer), good news: you won't be the only shadow-dweller. The fascinating Schim finally has a release date, July 18th. It stars a little shadowy soul trying to reconnect with its human by hopping from shadow to shadow through city streets, farms, factories, and parks bustling with life and moving parts. See how it works in the new trailer below!

Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe has said he’s “proud” to see other studios making games inspired by Palworld.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes — the atmospheric new puzzle adventure from Simogo, perhaps best known as the extraordinarily talented team behind 2019's glorious Sayonara Wild Hearts — finally has a release date and is launching for Switch and Steam on 16th May.

The team at Nixxes Software has laid out the crossplay and system requirements for Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut on PC. It has also detailed a new optional PlayStation UI overlay for PC, and it all sounds pretty great.

Ubisoft has released a free trial for Assassin’s Creed Mirage on PC and consoles.

Grounded's Fully Yoked update arrived yesterday, marking its debut on PlayStation and Switch. However, it also brought its fair share of issues with it.

Ubisoft has responded to backlash following its decision to lock a Star Wars Outlaws mission behind a Season Pass on day one.

Get your dealing hands ready, as Star Wars Outlaws will let us all participate in a round of Sabacc or two.

GTA 6 publishers Take-Two Interactive have announced that they're "rationalizing" their "pipeline" and positioning/restructuring/streamlining for growth by, you guessed it, laying off a load of people and cancelling a bunch of games. As detailed in a Security Exchange Commission filing, Take-Two are doing away with five per cent of the approximately 11,000 people who work for them, and have cancelled several in-development projects worth tens of millions of dollars.

Is waiting for Hades 2 to release starting to feel like a sisyphean endeavor? If so, push that boulder no longer. Supergiant announced yesterday that fans of the action roguelite can sign up now to be considered for an upcoming technical test, via Hades 2’s Steam page.

Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two has announced it will lay off five percent of its 11,000-strong workforce — equating to around 550 people — and cancel multiple in-development projects. The company said the move was the next stage in its ongoing restructuring plan, which began in February.

Nintendo has announced that the next Indie World Showcase will take place tomorrow.

Following a mild-to-moderate outcry, Ubisoft have clarified that queasy worm gangster Jabba The Hutt isn't, in fact, a Star Wars Outlaws special edition or season pass exclusive. The apparently much-beloved star slug will appear in every edition of the game, but if you scrape together the credits for the Gold or Ultimate Editions, you'll get access to a Jabba's Gambit mission as part of the game's season pass.

Ubisoft has responded to the outcry over Star Wars Outlaws' Jabba the Hutt mission, which will be available at the game's launch only to owners of the game's pricey Gold or Ultimate Editions.

Co-op smash-hit Lethal Company has received its first update in a couple of months, and it’s a biggie! Version 50 brings a new map and some new creatures to contend with, alongside some changes that make being a shovel-wielding monster-slayer or speedrunning the game a bit less easy.

As MMORPG Final Fantasy 14's upcoming Dawntrail expansion gets ever closer, Squeenix have released a benchmarking tool that lets you see how your rig might handle its graphical update. Not only that, but it also lets you sample the new female Hrothgar playable race. So far, folks seem to be happy with the tool and the catmoms.

Perhaps this should go without saying, but there's no need to drop £115 on Star Wars: Outlaws' expensive Ultimate Edition, which includes an «exclusive» mission with Jabba the Hutt.

Star Wars Outlaws will include a mission at launch which can only be accessed with a Season Pass.

The Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail benchmark tool is now live, allowing players to check out the graphical upgrade on the way with update 7.0.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth players have been perplexed since release over its confusing retry screen, but Square Enix has quietly tweaked it in the latest patch.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has reportedly sold «about half» the sales of its predecessor Remake in the same timeframe.

It continues to be a difficult time at Ascendant Studios, the developers behind last year’s magical shooter flop Immortals of Aveum, as it’s claimed that the studio have now furloughed most of their staff - only a matter of months after almost half of their employees were laid off.

Need anything from the shop? Mushroom milk? Fresh tarts? Mystical bejewelled skull? I'm just popping out to Dépanneur Nocturne, a lovely little game which came out in 2020 and I kept forgetting to post about. It's a small first-person explore-o-chatter set within a corner shop in a magical, mystical Montreal, full of things to admire, find, poke at, and chat about with the owner. And it'll only cost you about as much as a pint of semi-skimmed and loaf of Kingsmill from your own local shop.

There's a little game coming out next year you may have heard of. It's called GTA 6, and it's the next entry in Rockstar's prolific, rather chaotic and often debauched Grand Theft Auto series.

A new update for Tomb Raider 1 — 3 Remastered has given Lara Croft an outfit worthy of Scary Spice. Sing it with me, 'When tomb become one!'

Wanted: Dead is a terrible game that I sort of adore. Created by some of the people behind the Ninja Gaiden series, it's the kind of rough diamond or perhaps, chunk of lacerating windscreen glass you find at the bottom of a mouldy box at a service station car boot sale along a particularly depressed stretch of the UK's M1.

Stellar Blade's developer has asked players to «go easy» on the game's demo, with some players racking up over 50 hours of playtime.

Pocketpair has teased plans to release a big Palworld update this summer, ahead of the game’s Arena mode later in the year.

Meganium with the Mightiest Mark will be added as a raid in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet this weekend.

If you've been eying up your teetering games backlog and thinking to yourself, «You know, this games backlog isn't anywhere near teetering enough!», the Epic Games Store has you covered. It's just announced The Big Con and Town of Salem 2 will be its next freebies, from 18th April.

Ascendant Studios, the developer behind last year's EA-published magic shooter Immortals of Aveum, has reportedly furloughed the majority of its staff.

After a lot of speculation and a few rumours, the Five Nights at Freddy's movie adaptation is officially getting a sequel.

Square Enix has released a further update to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which finally fixes a bugged quest that prevented some players from achieving the game's platinum trophy.

Revealed during yesterday's Triple-i Initiative, procedurally generated detective sim Shadows Of Doubt largest update yet is playable right now. Dubbed "The Sharpshooter Assassin", the the patch introduces two new killer variants, both snipers who'll blast lead from vantage points around the city. And the city's expanding too, with new uber-rich gated communities as well as a contrasting shanty town. Not to mention a new auto-travel feature that lets you wander about these spots and attend to some casework without pausing the game.

Pocketpair has teased plans to release a new PvP mode for Palworld.

Among your obvious blockbuster video games ripe for similarly blockbuster film and TV adaptations like Fallout, Borderlands and The Last of Us, it seems there’s room for some of the smaller gems to be fished out and brought to the big screen, too.

As part of this evening's Triple-i livestream, the developer of Darkest Dungeon 2 has detailed a new campaign mode, Kingdoms.

A number of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Kickstarter backers have been met with unexpected shipping costs, which in some cases have nearly doubled the amount people will pay.

World of Warcraft Classic, the nostalgia-tweaking old-school version of Blizzard's long-running MMORPG, is set to move into the next era of history next month, with World of Warcraft Cataclysm Classic now confirmed to be launching on 20th May.

Paradox have a reputation for updating their games in perpetuity, with both free patches and DLC, even if players would rather they stopped. Star Trek Infinite is bucking that trend, it seems.

A major Palworld update has introduced significant issues on Xbox consoles.

The physical version of Star Wars Outlaws will require an online connection to install, it’s been revealed.

Ubisoft has released a new story trailer for Star Wars Outlaws, which is viewable above.

Ubisoft Massive's open world action-adventure Star Wars Outlaws will release on 30th August 2024, according to a new story trailer which introduces us properly to "emerging scoundrel" Kay Vess, aka Hannah Solo. If you haven't had the pleasure, Kay is a budding crook on the run from her underworld boss, a journey that sees her tangling with several other Star Wars crime syndicates on various planets. It really feels like they're keeping a lot of the headline Star Wars stuff at a respectful distance for this one: yes, Jabba the Hutt makes an appearance, but there's nary a whiff of The Force, Jedi or Sith in the trailer and not once does anybody build a Death Star.

Cosmic horror fishing game Dredge is getting a live-action film adaptation.

Ubisoft has revealed a new Star Wars Outlaws story trailer — and with it, confirmation of the game's release date.

This month's RPS Game Club pick is Lethal Company, the indie co-op horror game where you must collect scrap for a mysterious Company or face the ultimate penalty... being fired.

The release date for Star Wars Outlaws has seemingly been leaked.

Gears 6 will be announced on June 9th, according to a report by The Verge.

Rumour has it there'll be «news» about Ubisoft's Splinter Cell remake at this year's Ubisoft Forward showcase in June.

I think we might be nearing the point where there are Too Many Retro Zeldalikes, and specifically Too Many Link’s Awakealikes – recent candidates include Isles Of Sea And Sky and Blossom Tales - but I’m definitely willing to go adventuring with Castaway, in which you are a spaceman called Martin who has crashlanded on an island’s worth of gently rounded, 8-bit scenery.

A new Star Wars Outlaws story trailer will premiere next week, on April 9 at 9AM PST / 5PM CET, Ubisoft has announced.

As World Of Warcraft Classic - an MMORPG that is, confusingly, a new version of the old version of World Of Warcraft - enters phase 3 of its Season Of Discovery, PCGamer has an interview with some of the devs where they talk about the decision to not run Player Test Realms - servers where they roll out the new content to smaller numbers of players to road test it. This means that when they launch new stuff for Seasons Of Discovery it'll probably break more often, but it means players get to discover brand new things together. Which is great! And the developers think it's good too.

Square Enix has launched a new merchandise shop for pets in Japan, featuring designs based on Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts.