Action Adventure News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Crow Country, the retro survival horror game from the developer of Snipperclips!, now has a release date: 9th May across both Steam and PlayStation 5.

Crow Country and its spooky, mutant-stuffed theme park will be opening its gates on Steam on May 9th, developers SFB Games have announced. It's the first of two games from the Tangle Tower micro-studio coming to PC this year, the other one being The Mermaid's Tongue, which will be picking up the adventures of their Tangle Tower detective duo on a marginally less spooky-looking submarine later this year. Crow Country, however, is a very different kettle of fish, combining chunky, PS1-style Final Fantasy 7 character models with early Resident Evil tank controls and panicked monster shooting.

While we felt it wasn't an amazing game, we quite liked The Lord Of The Rings: Return To Moria's dwarven survival antics. It was a bit of cosy fun for a group of pals, and thankfully, open-ended co-op play looks to be the focus of the next big update, which adds a new sandbox mode that lets you pick rocks and sink pints free of storyline constraints. Not to mention new armour, weapons, and quality of life improvements like the ability to pause your single player sessions.

V Rising's two years of early access development are almost at an end; Stunlock Studios has announced its acclaimed vampire survival game will get its 1.0 release for PC on 17th may, with a PlayStation 5 release to follow later this year.

Not content with being one of the best single-player experiences of 2023, Sea of Stars is readying the modern-classic RPG to become one of this year’s most delightful multiplayer games. Developers Sabotage Studio have revealed that three-player co-op is on the way, letting you adventure through the entire campaign with a party of pals.

After almost four years in development, Dark Souls 3 mod Archthrones is set to release a demo on March 15th. If you were unaware of said mod, it's a Patron-funded expansion that puts Dark Souls 3 on an alternate storyline in a way akin to Demon Souls, with a hub area home to five gateways that'll transport you to five worlds. If there was ever a reason to return to Dark Souls 3, this is probably it.

Fallen behind on Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn’s story? Whether you’re still yet to finish Endwalker or are looking to pick up the MMO for the first time in anticipation of enjoying a lovely summer holiday with your fellow Scions of the Seventh Dawn, you’re going to have to work before your Warrior of Light can kick back in next expansion Dawntrail; there won’t be a free way to simply jump to the latest chapter of the story for free anytime soon.

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron HD Remaster is coming to Nintendo Switch next month.

Sea of Stars will receive a co-op mode allowing three players to adventure together.

Swedish non-profit Talita has created a new mod for GTA 5 to highlight real-life issues of sex trafficking.

Princess Peach Showtime pre-orders are still available ahead of the game's release date on 22nd March 2024. Our guide will help you find the best Princess Peach Showtime deals and pre-order bonuses in the UK and US.

There's a new update for Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered, which includes updated textures which will make keys more visible in TR1 (hurrah!) and improved lighting in those dimmer areas of the games overall (another hurrah!).

Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu believes game music has become too similar to film and «cannot develop further» if continuing in this direction.

Footage of a purportedly cancelled co-operative live-service Spider-Man game from developer Insomniac — titled Spider-Man: The Great Web — has appeared online following last year's ransomware attack targeting the developer and its employees.

An alleged trailer for Spider-Man: The Great Web has leaked online - Spider-Man: The Great Web being a cancelled Insomniac Games comicbook adaptation with a focus on co-op multiplayer. I am not going to embed the footage because I’m not sure if doing so would cause screaming Spider-Lawyers to crash through my window – best of luck finding tall objects to swing from in darkest West Yorkshire, webheads! - but I will do you the great honour of describing the footage below.

Having played Nightingale a bunch for early access review, I wasn't entirely convinced by its mixture of survival and Destiny-esque power level grind. I also wasn't too keen on its slew of bugs and tricksy interface. Still, the devs are hard at work fixing things, as the latest patch squashes major crashes, material losses when building, and further improves the UI.

Monster Hunter: World has reached 25m sales worldwide, Capcom announced today, as the series marks its 20th anniversary.

As the Mario Day celebrations continue, Nintendo has teased that new Lego Super Mario Kart sets will drop in 2025.

It's 10th March – Mar10 Day – which means Nintendo has several Mario-flavoured treats for us, including release dates for two upcoming Mario remasters, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Luigi's Mansion 2 HD.

Nintendo and Illumination have confirmed a new Super Mario Bros. film will be released in 2026.

A 45-minute demo of the upcoming PS5 exclusive, Stellar Blade, was added quietly to the PlayStation Store earlier today.

Nintendo hasn't announced which of its many development studios or partners is making Princess Peach: Showtime, this spring's biggest new Nintendo Switch game, and doesn't seem likely to before it debuts later this month.

The second part of Dune is out at the moment, and it has resulted in that most filthy of perversions, discourse - a pastime in which only the most unsavoury characters indulge. Is Dune appropriative? Is the appropriation the point? Whatever the case, Funcom want you to know that their upcoming survival game Dune: Awakening has nothing to do with any of that, posting a short Xeet from the official Awakening account that's the written equivalent of sticking your arms straight out, waving your hands, and going "Woahwoahwoah, hang on a minute."

Polish developers Mighty Koi have announced The Night Wanderer, a new sci-fantasy Soulslike RPG with metroidvania level design – yes, yes, tick those genre boxes! - in which you are a grim bearded swordsman exploring an alien world that looks a bit like pre-industrial Scandinavia.

Hogwarts Legacy developer Avalanche Software has moved to “set some expectations” for the game’s free summer update.

Developer Insomniac Games released its much anticipated New Game Plus update for Marvel's Spider-Man 2 yesterday, however it slipped up a tad and also accidentally gave players access to a development menu.

Tactical Breach Wizards is having a beta playtest, with space for around 2500 players over the next month or so. New to Tactical Breach Wizards? It's a grid and turn-based room-clearance puzzler in which you control a gang of door-kickers who happen to be armed with spells and magical artefacts, rather than plain old riot shields. It's the work of Suspicious Developments, the studio founded by former videogames journalist and - *engage mystic rite of disclaiming* - RPS contributor Tom Francis, and lets you do things like chain lightning bolts around cover and knock people into mystic portals or out of windows (a Suspicious Developments staple).

The latest update for Spider-Man 2 is now live, adding a long-promised New Game+ mode.

The latest update for Spider-Man 2 accidentally gives players access to developer Insomniac Games‘ debug tools.

In further confirmation that one can never truly own digital media, Warner Bros. Discovery has decided to "retire" 2016's noodling around puzzle game Small Radios Big Televisions - meaning it'll disappear off storefronts in the next 60 days. Developer Owen Deery revealed this news on Xitter a couple of days ago, simultaneously announcing that the game is now free to download. Deery also noted you can buy the synthy soundtrack to show support.

Funcom, developer of the upcoming Dune: Awakening, has issued a statement regarding the role of religion in the game after fan concerns erupted on the internet this week.

Final Fantasy fans are arguing over the redesigned moogles in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

Nintendo has released a free demo for Princess Peach: Showtime! ahead of its full release later this month.

Sony has confirmed it's struck a deal with publisher Square Enix to make the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy a PlayStation console exclusive.

11 bit studios are best known for grim games like colony sim Frostpunk, which is all about trying to survive in a world battered by relentless blizzards. But their latest venture - created in partnership with developers Chibig and Inverge Studios, and co-written by Rhianna Pratchett - is drastically different. Titled Creatures Of Ava, it's a fantasy game about saving Pokémon-like creatures, as opposed to, well, imprisoning them and using them for labour (Palworld, I'm looking at you).

Ukrainian developer Frogwares has announced The Sinking City 2, for launch on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2025.

We've finally got more information on Capcom's upcoming game Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, which was shown during the Xbox Partner Preview showcase earlier today.

Final Fantasy 14 now has an official release date on Xbox.

Creatures of Ava, an action-adventure creature saving game, was announced by publisher 11 Bit Studios during tonight's Xbox Partner Preview.

Fans of curly wind FX and striking from a sheathed stance rejoice - open world samurai action game Ghost of Tsushima is coming to PC on May 16th via Steam and Epic Games Store. This is the Director's Cut edition of the game, which includes the Iki Island story expansion and the co-op multiplayer Legends mode. It's being developed by PC port specialists Nixxes, the studio behind the PC version of Horizon Forbidden West - Complete Edition, and features customisable mouse and keyboard controls plus unlocked frame rates and assorted graphical whizbangs. I've got a trailer for you below.

Red Barrels' co-optional horror "therapy" simulator The Outlast Trials leaves early access today. I haven't played an Outlast game since reviewing the second numbered game and having excitable opinions about its portrayal of the moon. I'll be honest, I'd assumed the series had died, but Steam user reviewers seem pretty keen on Trials, which takes the first game's mucky asylum premise and spins it out into a low-key live service game about playing a series of human guinea pigs, trying to escape an experimental brainwashing lab run by the villainous Murkoff Corporation.

Nixxes Software and Guerrilla Games have revealed the Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition PC specifications, which are viewable below.

If you dislike getting stabbed in the back in first-person games, you might not like Voin. If you like ravaged Gothic masonry and dramatic evening skies, you might like Voin. If you dislike fighting fireball-lobbing demons with a sword, you might not like Voin. If you like open-ended, changeable levels full of loot and secrets, you might like Voin. If you are confused about whether you'll like or dislike Voin, you might want to try this dark fantasy action-RPG yourself during the first public Steam playtest on Friday, March 8th.

Warner Bros. Discovery gaming boss J.B. Perrette wants the company to move away from the «volatile» market of AAA games for consoles.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's first season of post-launch content gets underway on 28th March, introducing The Joker as a new playable character. Additionally, the delayed Epic Games Store version of Suicide Squad is now scheduled to launch on 26th March.

Ubisoft’s second $70 game, Skull and Bones, has seen its price reduced significantly less than three weeks after its release.

Tropical Haze, the developer of open-source Switch emulator Yuzu, has agreed to pay $2.4m in damages to Nintendo and cease all operations in response to the Mario maker's recent lawsuit.

Sandworms play a major part in Dune: Awakening, the big survival MMO coming some time soon from Funcom, the developers behind Conan: Exiles — but the game won't feature the novel's famous sandworm-riding come launch. And, presumably much more importantly for Conan fans, there'll be no penis sliders either.

Dune: Awakening, the massively-multiplayer take on Frank Herbert’s sandy sci-fi universe from dong-loving devs Funcom, has shown off some more of its online, open-world Arrakis in a lengthy developer direct. We’ve also learnt more about what we will - and won’t - be able to do during our time exploring the planet.

There's a Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth patch in the pipeline, which will aim to improve the graphics in the game's Performance Mode, and «very scary» lighting on some characters' faces.

The Star Wars strategy game from Bit Reactor and EA is still in development, following the cancellation of a Star Wars shooter by Apex Legends studio Respawn last week.

Square Enix's RPG Octopath Traveler has been delisted — temporarily, at least — from the Nintendo eShop.

Tropic Haze – the company behind the emulation software Yuzu – has responded to Nintendo's summons that accuses the company of «illegally circumventing Nintendo's software encryption».

The Gauntlet is coming to Diablo 4 next week.

Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley, the lovely looking musical adventure based on Tove Jansson's classic series of children's stories, finally has a released date and will be launching for Switch and PC via Steam on Tuesday, 7th March.

Four new cast members have been announced for The Last of Us Season 2.

Hope everyone enjoyed the RPS Game Club returning with Cobalt Core, though personally, I’ve always found deckbuilders a bit short on the screaming slaughter of unclean heretics. Put down the cards and pick up a boltgun, then, as this month’s Game Club pledges eternal service (until April) to Warhammer 40,000: Darktide.

Developers at GTA 6 studio Rockstar Games have criticised the company for telling employees they must return to the office full-time next month, calling leadership's decision «reckless».

If you, like me, fell rather in love with Visai Games' narrative cooking game Venba last year, I have good news. Its Cookbook DLC is on the way, with a release date set just two weeks away.

Crash Team Rumble will have no further content updates after 4th March, less than nine months after its launch.

Immortals of Aveum saw a very rough debut last summer, with the first-person magic-shooter from new studio Ascendant and EA reportedly suffering poor sales and mixed reviews - resulting in almost half of its developers being laid off mere weeks after its launch. Despite being a reported $125 million flop that “no-one bought”, its director believes that it could still go on to find an audience yet.

The creators of Tomb Raider I-III Remastered have apologised to players for releasing an unfinished version of the game on the Epic Games Store, following a series of unflattering comparisons between versions on ye olde social media.

Smite 2 was revealed as a standalone sequel to the third-person god-battling MOBA last month, using Unreal Engine 5 for a visual overhaul on the front end while making a number of significant gameplay and balance changes behind the scenes. Ahead of its planned alpha test this spring, developers Titan Forge have now shown off how the game’s Conquest mode will be evolving.

Sony-acquired studio Firesprite has recently suffered high profile exits amid accusations of a toxic workplace culture, Eurogamer has been told, as part of an investigation into the studio begun ahead of the layoffs announced by Sony this week.

If you go down to your web browser today, you're sure of a big surprise.

GTA 6 developer Rockstar Games are reportedly ending hybrid working and requiring employees to return to the office full-time, with a view to being in "the best position to deliver the next Grand Theft Auto at the level of quality and polish we know it requires, along with a publishing roadmap that matches the scale and ambition of the game." That's allegedly from an email to staff sent by head of publishing Jenn Kolbe.

Immortals of Aveum is a game which will continue to be discovered by players for «years and years» like Dead Space, according to its director.

Employees at Rockstar have been asked to return to the office five days a week, now that GTA 6 enters its final year of development.

Insomniac Games has released a public statement in response to layoffs at the studio announced this week by parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Almost a year after it launched into early access, Inkbound will release its full 1.0 offering this April. The cooperative mixture of tight turn-based combat and roguelike progression from the folks behind Slay the Spire-rivalling deckbuilder Monster Train will mark its full release with a new questline and final boss for its story, as well as a bunch of other additions and improvements.

If you are playing through Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered on the Epic Games Store, you may find it is a little different to other versions.

Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu, and claims more than 1m copies of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom were pirated ahead of its release.

Skull and Bones, the oft-delayed pirate game from Ubisoft that finally arrived earlier this month following almost a decade of development, has released its first season of post-launch content on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC — introducing, among other things, new world events, new contracts and bounties, plus a battle-pass-style progression track.

Ubisoft has launched Skull and Bones’ first seasonal update, Raging Tides.

Yuri Lowenthal, who voices Peter Parker in Insomniac‘s Spider-Man games, thinks the character will return in a future series instalment.

The Pokémon Company has announced Pokémon Legends: Z-A, a new Nintendo Switch (and Switch 2?) game to launch in 2025.

Four years after its initial release, Square Enix has patched Final Fantasy 7 Remake to amend one of Aerith's lines at the very end of the game.

Former Xbox exclusive Pentiment currently runs smoother on PlayStation 5 than on Xbox Series X/S, fans have realised — prompting the game's director to blame the situation on a «bug».

Disney Dreamlight Valley's first major content update of 2024 arrives this Wednesday, 28th February, introducing Monsters, Inc.'s Sully and Mike Wazowski to the village — and ahead of its arrival, developer Gameloft has detailed everything this week's free patch will bring.

Sometimes I wonder whether every genre fantasy RPG or RPG-inflected game is essentially a journey towards the Big City. Most such games start you off on the periphery of the world, out in the sleepy and/or brutish hamlets of FirstActShire, Chosen One County, and send you on a loose quest towards the cosmopolitan centre, where you'll typically learn about the ultimate villain of the piece, gain access to the juiciest concentration of shops, crafting facilities and quest-givers, and glean some hint at the location of the endgame dungeon. Sometimes the quest takes days of playtime, as in Baldur's Gate 3. Sometimes it takes less than an hour, as in the original Destiny. It's a common-enough device that when an RPG starts you off in the Big City, like Dragon Age 2, or creatively "provincialises" the Big City, like Roadwarden, I feel slightly unnerved.