Action Adventure News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Back in 2022, Blizzard announced that they were working on a survival game set in an "all-new universe". Not much more was known about the game except that the studio were actively ramping up recruitment, seemingly after having been working on the project since 2017.

Berserk Boy first appeared on Steam in 2022 and immediately impressed as a fast-paced action platformer inspired by classics such as Mega Man. Then it vanished from Steam - and re-appeared, and vanished again, and so on.

The Pokémon Company has broken its silence regarding Steam mega-hit Palworld, and said it’s investigating if it infringes on its IP rights.

A new Five Nights at Freddy's game leaked online, but rather than getting upset about it, series creator Scott Cawthon has said we can all chat about it.

A video that showed Legendary Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma standing alongside Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto in a very fetching high-vis vest and hard hat combo at Universal Studios Orlando has been pulled from the internet — prompting speculation he was there because a Legend of Zelda attraction is in the works.

Pocketpair has published Palworld’s early access roadmap, which is viewable below.

Veteran pen-and-paper RPG Dungeons & Dragons is getting its first official virtual reality game. Before you get all excited about being able to let Astarion bite your neck in first-person or shack up with a bear-shaped druid using hand tracking, know that it’s more likely to be a virtual reality experience emulating the original experience of rolling dice on a tabletop. Still, that’s what imaginations are for, right?

Supermassive Games’ breakout horror game Until Dawn is apparently headed to PC, becoming the next previously PlayStation 4-exclusive title to make the leap as an enhanced re-release after the likes of Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War and The Last of Us.

The Bulletstorm VR team is «committed to improving the quality» of its recent, really rather broken, release. To do this, it will be prioritising fixes based on severity.

Poppy Playtime Chapter 3 is set to launch next week and will introduce new antagonist CatNap.

Rival survival sims Palworld and the just-launched Enshrouded are now openly battling for hearts and minds on Steam, and here comes genre supremo Valheim out of the blind corner like, errrr, one of the celebrity WWE wrestlers who hasn't turned out to be Problematic - I don't know, maybe Zack Sabre Jr? Educate me, wrestling fans.

Palworld now has the second highest concurrent player count in Steam‘s history.

Nintendo has revealed new transformations in its forthcoming game Princess Peach: Showtime!..

Obsidian's Avowed is a game for the more indecisive or changeable RPG player, with no "enforced" classes and an emphasis on easily respeccing and experimenting with different combinations of weapons and abilities. Or at least, that's my overall takeaway from a new Xbox podcast interview featuring game director Carrie Patel and gameplay director Gabe Paramo. In the video, the pair delve a little deeper into last week's Xbox Developer Direct showcase and how the game compares to their previous Pillars of Eternity games, which are set in the same world.

The former chief legal officer for The Pokémon Company International has said that the breakout hit Palworld looks like “ripoff nonsense”.

Developer Rocksteady have detailed Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's initial post-launch plans, confirming The Joker will arrive as a playable character in a free content update accompanying the game's first «season».

Pocketpair has said it’s working to fix several “serious” Palworld bugs.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Rocksteady’s multiplayer Destiny-like with DC villains, will fill the conspicuously Joker-shaped hole in its rogues’ gallery of Batman baddies in March with the launch of the live service game’s first season of free post-launch content.

The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered released last week, giving players a native-PS5 version of Ellie and Abby's harrowing experiences.

A new update to Monster Hunter Rise on Steam which adds Enigma DRM has caused the game to no longer run on Steam Deck.

The director of Steam’s colossal breakout hit, Palworld, has responded to allegations of plagiarism, as accusations mount that the game could have copied Pokémon designs.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi reckons chocobo smell like horses.

Palword lets players capture NPC humans in a tiny ball — and then sell them on the black market.

Master Chief actor Pablo Schreiber has said he will stake his reputation on Halo's next season being better than the first.

Palworld is a bit different on Xbox compared to Steam in part because of Microsoft's certification process.

When Edwin popped the reveal trailer for new Metroidvania Deviator into The Maw this morning, he really wasn't kidding about it looking a heck of a lot like Hollow Knight. You've got a small, diminutive hero with a nasty little blade up his sleeve, a haunting and melancholy piano score, a beautiful hand-drawn animation style, and lots of mean-looking creatures to fight. Then again, the trailer also makes it clear there are lots and lots of spikes and traps to navigate here, which puts me more in the mind of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Either way, I'm well up for another platforming-Metroidy hybrid, and developers Gami Studio have announced that there's Steam demo coming in February.

When I innocently went on holiday on Thursday evening, Palworld was that flagrant cash-in survival game where you can make Pokemon - sorry, Pals - shoot guns and work on an assembly line. As of this morning, it's among the most-played games in the world, one of just six to exceed one million concurrent players on Steam. Right now, it's doing almost twice the numbers of Steam's usual chart-topper Counter-Strike 2. We have entered the Pal Age, it seems - but how long will the feeding frenzy last? How much is owing to it releasing during the quiet time of year with a meme-ish premise, while capitalising on pent-up demand for a proper PC version of Nintendo's monster-catching series? Much will depend, I think, on how quickly developers Pocketpair can update it and stay ahead of the usual early access game avalanche of community requests and complaints.

«Pokémon with guns» game Palworld has just blasted through yet another sales milestone — of 5m copies sold in three days.

Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth releases this coming week and takes the series' best boy protagonists to the new shores of Hawaii. It's one of our most anticipated games of 2024. There's a slight snag though: New Game+ mode, a staple of both the genre and the series, is this time locked away within the more expensive Deluxe and Ultimate Editions.

Pokémon-style survival game Palworld launched its early access version on Friday and is already a huge hit.

The long-rumoured Great Deku Tree Lego set will reportedly be released later this year.

Palworld was obviously destined for success the moment a million games journalists and Twitter users wrote “Pokémon with machine guns”. (Acceptable alternate nicknames include “Eevees with uzis” and “Abras who’ll stab-ya”.) Having finally launched into Early Access on Steam and Game Pass this week, that prophecy has rung true as the monster-catching survival game has caught (ha, ha) so many players that its servers are struggling to handle the load.

Palworld, the upcoming open world survival and crafting game which the internet has dubbed 'Pokémon with guns', is already seeing some impressive player numbers on Steam — to the detriment of its servers.

Sony is issuing refunds to those who purchased The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered full price by accident, if they have it on PS4 already.

Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu believes the company needs to diversify its gaming output, but also focus on fewer releases.

Pablo Schreiber, the face (quite literally) behind Master Chief's helmet in Paramount's Halo adaptation, thinks it was a «huge mistake» to introduce a romantic relationship for the Spartan warrior. In fact, he pushed back against it.

Obsidian Entertainment has revealed its first-person RPG Avowed is set to release this autumn.

Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 finally has a release date: 21st May 2024.

Tonight's Xbox Developer Direct brought an update on Avowed, Obsidian's first-person fantasy RPG. A new trailer provided a substantial look at combat, including pistols, dual-wielding swords and wands, as well as a slightly updated release window: this autumn.

Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 was featured in this evening's Xbox Developer Direct. Ninja Theory gave a further glimpse of the things they show when talking about Hellblade: motion capture, graphical fidelity, mental health representation, and stabbing. They also provided a release date: May 21st, 2024.

I think we're well into "milking the gimmick" territory for bodycam horror games now - last week's Digested was one giant snake too many, perhaps - but Zoochosis does have the additional virtue of being heavily inspired by the cute doggy scene from The Thing. And also, perhaps, Five Nights At Freddy's.

Developer Supermassive's acclaimed PS4 cinematic horror game Until Dawn is being turned into a movie by the writer and director of 2017 horror hit Annabelle: Creation.

Swedish video game holding company Thunderful Group is to implement a «restructuring programme», which will see around a fifth of its workforce laid off.

Naughty Dog's Matthew Gallant has said he doesn't «understand some of the consternation» surrounding The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered's release.

Voice artist Cody Christian, who plays Cloud in the forthcoming Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, thinks «shippers» who «overtly sexualise every relationship can ruin great story development».

As the release of the (deep breath) Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Starring Lara Croft approaches (yes, that is its full and official Steam title) on February 14th, developers Aspyr have detailed some of the game's new features over on the PlayStation Blog, and how they've approached bringing the art, controls and effects up to date for 2023. Personally, I'm extremely pleased to see they've added a photo mode, for example, as I spent inordinate amounts of time making Lara do creepy side-eye smiles during inappropriate Shadow Of The Tomb Raider scenes. But I'm also heartened to see they've kept in the original tank controls as an optional extra, alongside a more modern control scheme to make them more approachable.

Dave The Diver was one of last year's surprise hits, but though some called it an indie game, it was actually the work of Mintrocket, a subsidiary of Korean publisher Nexon. Now Mintrocket have announced their next game and it seems less likely to cause such confusion. It's called Wakerunners, and it's a team-based "battle action game" about heroes smashing at each other.

It looks like the wait for Final Fantasy 14 Online on Xbox Series X/S could be ending very soon; Microsoft today announced that an open beta for the acclaimed MMORPG was now «officially available» before yanking the post and tweeting to say it had «incorrectly» shared the news.

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl developer GSC Game World has revealed a release date for the survival horror sequel of 5th September, 2024.

Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl's release date is September 5th 2024, GSC Game World have announced, as the developers make some final adjustments to a post-apocalyptic FPS that was revealed way back in 2010 and has been racked by more than its fair share of setbacks and changes of circumstances. They've published a new trailer to mark the occasion, in which a group of the game's quarantine zone mercenaries squat around a campfire, supping mugs of what probably isn't cocoa, and listening to guitar music. It strikes a fitting note of world-weariness.

The Last of Us Part 2 is still one of the best games ever made.

The previously-delayed Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology has been postponed again — this time until 20th February.

Ahead of its release in just over a month, Square Enix has shared a new preview and trailer of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth now it's available to pre-order.

Ned Luke, the voice actor behind Michael De Santa in Grand Theft Auto 5, has called out a company for using his voice as the basis of an unofficial AI chatbot.

A fan-made VR mod for Lethal Company is out now, so you can fully immerse yourself in your work for the Company.

Faheem Rashad Najm, aka T-Pain, is working on GTA 6 with Rockstar.

Several upcoming additions to The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered have leaked.

The mysterious, long-rumoured Halo battle royale project from series co-developer Certain Affinity is no longer in development, a new report has claimed.

Given the sheer quantity of games releasing on Steam these days, having a neat little elevator pitch for your game can be vital in helping it stand out. For example, if I get an email saying a game is like "Obra Dinn meets such and such" or "Into The Breach but a deckbuilder", that's like personal catnip to me, and can be a handy indicator of whether I should investigate further - maybe watch a gameplay trailer for it, say, or see if it's got a demo. Case in point: this is exactly how I stumbled upon the upcoming Donkey Kong Country-esque platformer Windswept last week, although instead of an email, I saw it on the growing "Your game is too much like..." thread over on Xwitter - which is definitely worth a browse if you have very niche interests in need of a good scratch.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, the well-received Three Kingdoms-era Soulslike from developer Team Ninja, is bundling its base game and all DLC into a single Complete Edition, launching for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and PC on 7th February.

Golden Sun and its sequel Golden Sun: The Lost Age are coming to Switch next week.

Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight has been on my 'to play' list since a friend mentioned it several years ago. It's been a long enough time that a sequel has emerged. Momodora: Moonlit Farewell is out now and like its predecessor is a 2D action platformer about smashing and dodging enemies.

Remember last year, when The Last of Us composer Gustavo Santaolalla first suggested a new version of Part 2 was on the horizon? He said players would be able to make his in-game character «play certain themes» during the then-unannounced remastered's release.

The odd mashup of Pokémon-like monsters, crafting, and machineguns, has made each new trailer for Palworld a delight over the past couple of years. Now it's taking the bold step of moving beyond meme by becoming a playable video game, when it launches on January 19th.

Sam Barlow's Immortality — an epic mystery of self-reference and cinema — is coming to PlayStation 5 later this motnh

The forthcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will be a tribute to the late Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy.

Stephanie Tyler Jones, the model who provided her likeness to Mary Jane for the recent PlayStation Spider-Man games, has spoken out after «some followers crossed boundaries».

Sony has provided a very brief first look at its Gravity Rush film project, courtesy of a quick clip shown during the company's CES 2024 press conference.

Reigns is a kingdom management game which boils narrative choice down to its simplest form, by presenting the player with a long series of binary choices they swipe left or right on. From that basic interaction, it spins enjoyable yarns with some strategic underpinnings.

Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread creators Bossa Studios have laid off around a third of their staff, with 19 people departing the London, UK-based independent in December due to what co-founder Henrique Olifiers has called "a perfect storm of events" - heavy competition from blockbuster games at the backend of last year, increased operating costs, and delayed funding decisions across the industry.

Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy was one of 2021's biggest surprises, succeeding where Square Enix's Avengers game failed by finding an identity beyond its movie counterpart thanks to strong writing. Alas, it didn't meet Square Enix's sales expectations.

Kim Kardashian: Hollywood is shutting down in April, after nearly 10 years of A-list fabulousness.

Amazon Prime Gaming is offering four free titles throughout the month of January, including Atari Mania and Endling — Extinction is Forever.

Korean publisher Nexon have been fined 11.6 billion won - around $8.9 million - for secretly altering the drop rates of coveted items in free-to-play MMO gacha game MapleStory. The fine, issued by the Korea Fair Trade Commission, is the largest penalty ever doled out for violation of South Korea's Act on Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce.

Definitely-not-an-indie-game Dave the Diver has reeled in an impressive sales milestone, just six months after the mix of fishing sim, restaurant management game and slice-of-life RPG exited Early Access.

I greet news of the completion of a Unity remaster for The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall with equal parts excitement and horror. Excitement because I have never played Daggerfall and it is one of the weirder, more fantastical Elder Scrolls RPGs - the one with multiple endings which sequels have explained away as somehow all being canon thanks to a metaphysical event called a Dragon Break, whereby timelines branch and reconnect. And horror because I have never played Daggerfall, which is said to be 62,0000 square miles in size, and I'm getting to that point in life where I seriously ask myself whether I can finish certain games before I perish.

Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft's upcoming open world Star Wars game, is set to release "late this year", according to Disney. Announced via a Disney Parks blog post of all things, Star Wars Outlaws ranks as the No.22 most "Ooooh-Worthy Thing" out of the 2024 Disney Experiences line-up - which, considering the list only stretches to 24 entries is a bit of an unfair burn on the game, if you ask me, especially when No.21 is... *checks notes* new Disney Eats and Stitch clothes collections.

Ubisoft's upcoming open world Star Wars game Outlaws looks to be set for a «late» 2024 release.

While the weather outside is still a bit chilly and everyone’s bank accounts are recovering from the holidays, visiting an escape room with friends might not be at the top of your to-do list. Fortunately, you can currently get some of the same puzzly satisfaction for free - and without having to go outside - by nabbing Escape Academy over on the Epic Games Store for the next 24 hours.

The ESRB has rated Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake.