Open-world News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

The release of Team Ninja’s upcoming action role-playing game, Rise of the Rōnin, is getting closer and closer, and it’s now been revealed what major Japanese locations players will be able to explore in it. 

The first Ubisoft game to carry a $70 / £70 price tag has been heavily discounted less than two weeks since its release.

If you’re looking forward to playing Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, especially to experience its story, your time on the internet just got a little bit harder. Some big plot points have leaked online, and naturally, developer Rocksteady isn’t happy.

Genshin Impact developer Hoyoverse has revealed two new characters coming to the open-world RPG in update 4.4: Pyro user Gaming and Anemo user Xianyun. 

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has been crowned IGN's Best Game of 2023, narrowly beating the much-celebrated role-playing game Baldur's Gate 3. Despite missing out on the main honor, Larian's RPG still walked away with three awards, namely Best PC Game, Beyond's Best PlayStation Game and, unsurprisingly, Best RPG. It equalled the number of awards picked up by Tears of the Kingdom, which was crowned Best Open-World Game and NVC's Best Nintendo Game in addition to Best Game of the year.

Fuse materials in can create some of the best items in the game when paired with different weapons. Stronger resources allow Link to mold tools with very high damage bonuses for different combat situations. Bosses and other tough enemies are best fought with the Fuse materials that have the most potential throughout your adventures in Hyrule.

Asgard’s Wrath 2 is the most acclaimed VR game since Half-Life Alyx, mainly because of how it seamlessly adapts the open-world RPG experience onto virtual reality goggles.

One new Elden Ring mod makes all enemies immobile as long as you don’t blink, channeling the most terrifying Doctor Who monsters.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a game this writer has been waiting a long time for. In many ways, it is the Hogwarts Legacy for fans of big blue folk and vibrant alien worlds. But with that apt comparison and Ubisoft Massive at the helm, does it do enough to stand on its own two feet? Or is it nothing more than a pretty tour through Avatar’s greatest hits? While it certainly is pretty and it does its best to hit those Avatar beats, Frontiers of Pandora actually won us over with one of the most enchanting open-worlds available on PS5.

The holidays are here and people -perhaps you- are finally able to buy consoles without jumping through huge hoops. But now the question arises: what games are you going to gift?

The Legend of Zelda and its protagonist, Link, reached new heights this year — literally. The hero soared through the skies and plunged into the deepest depths of Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The game’s developers took their risks, too: This time around, players wouldn’t just explore but also construct devices with Link’s new set of powers.

As we head into one of the last holiday weekends of the year, we’re wrapping up GOTY-related announcements with more nominees. This time, it’s for Destructoid’s best PC game of 2023, and I reckon you already know it’s a competitive bunch.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is here, and the Massive-Entertainment-developed game is surprisingly complex, offering a huge open world, survival mechanics, crafting system, combat, and more. It can all be a lot to take in at first, but we’re here to help.

ACE Entertainment has released a four-minute gameplay trailer for Tales of Seikyu, its upcoming oriental fantasy-style farming simulation adventure game.

Ubisoft has quietly delisted The Crew from digital storefronts, and confirmed that the online-only game will no longer be playable from April 2024.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is here, and the Massive-Entertainment-developed game is surprisingly complex, offering a huge open world, survival mechanics, crafting system, combat, and more. It can all be a lot to take in at first, but we’re here to help.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a pretty impressive visual package on PC, with its highest “Unobtanium” settings challenging even the beefiest of GPUs, but how does the game fare on consoles? Thankfully, the answer is “pretty darn well!” I can confirm this from my own play testing, but the folks at Digital Foundry has given the game a full analysis on Xbox Series X/S and PS5, and the results are fairly impressive. You can check out their full video below, provided you have around 20 minutes to spare, or you can scroll on down for our rundown of the salient points.

A new Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora mod released today promises to bring performance improvements on a variety of system configurations while also making the game playable on a mechanical hard drive.

Ubisoft has registered domain names for what appears to be an unannounced Might and Magic game.

A new month means a new PlayStation Plus Monthly Games lineup. December’s titles of Lego 2K Drive, PowerWash Simulator and Sable will be available to PlayStation Plus members on Tuesday, December 5 until Monday, January 1.  Let’s take a closer look at each game.

Publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment and developer Insomniac Games have delayed the “New Game+” update for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 from its previously planned 2023 release window to early 2024.

Legend of Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma has said he believes that traditional linear series entries are “games of the past” and called requests from some fans to return to the style “nostalgia”.

Comments made by Disney's head of gaming, Sean Shoptaw, suggest that the long-awaited Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake is still on the way.

If you haven’t been keeping up with all the juicy drama surrounding The Day Before, an absolute disaster of an early access zombie survival game, then here’s a quick run down.

Update: Valve has seemingly made the move to delist The Day Before from Steam. While the game's Steam page is still up, you can no longer purchase the game. Those who purchased the game are reporting being able to receive refunds, even well beyond the usual 2-hour limit.

The Day Before was pitched as an open-world multiplayer survival game that looked to be part survival horror and part extraction shooter. However, after a short-lived stint in early access on Steam, the game and its developer disappeared.

Earlier this week, The Day Before launched its early access lauch to near universally negative reviews, quickly landing itself a spot among Steam's 10 worst reviewed games list. Now, just after announcing its closure a few hours ago, studio FNTASTIC has removed the purchase button on the game's Steam page and is now seemingly wiping its presence from the internet.

Fntastic is shutting down. This comes just days after the launch of its most recent game, The Day Before, which has been met with overwhelmingly negative reviews from fans and critics alike.

The near-400 members of the ZeniMax Workers Union (ZWU) can tentatively choose how artificial intelligence is implemented in the workplace. 

Last Thursday, the studio behind “post-apocalyptic open-world MMO survival” game The Day Before launched the game that had become Steam’s most-wishlisted title based on a splashy reveal trailer. On Monday, the studio said it was shutting down and that no more updates will be released for The Day Before.

The producer of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has revealed he doesn't quite understand why fans want to revisit the series' older, more "restricted" games when the new ones give you so much more freedom. 

From bustling New York streets to rolling Hyrule fields, 2023 gave us our fair share of fantastic open worlds to get lost in. With vast maps full of combat, puzzles, and intrigue, everyone steps into a new game world looking for something different, but all searching for escapism like no other genre can provide. This year, they took us to places rooted in the real world and fantasy, as well as our distant past and future. We unlocked the secrets of Hogwarts, slid through the shadows of ancient Baghdad, swung between Manhattan skyscrapers, leaped around the floating islands of Pandora, and dived into the Hyrulian depths. But which of these proved the most fun to spend time in? These are the best open-world games of 2023.

This article is written in partnership with MicroProse.

Grand Theft Auto 6 (GTA 6) finally got its first trailer earlier this month (December 4), and while it arrived to much applause, there was at least one person who didn't look upon it so favorably. 

Google has revealed its list of the 10 most searched video games in 2023.

Parrying has been a video game constant recently - center stage in everything from Sekiro and Assassin’s Creed to the Star Wars Jedi games - but the upcoming indie V.A Proxy takes the art of warding off attacks to new extremes. Oh, and the first demo is out right now.

During The Big Bang Live event, fans got their first official look at the next big collaboration between LEGO and Fortnite. Just days after Epic Games introduced players to a new era of the battle royale with Fortnite Chapter 5 Season 1, the open-world adventure went live. LEGO Fortnite can be played solo, but you can also invite your friends to craft, build, and battle it out against enemies alongside you.

The GTA 6 trailer was remade using GTA V's assets, further highlighting how big the visual quality gap will be between the two main entries in the series.

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Normally we would begin these introductory guides with some sort of preamble about how “X game is FINALLY here”, but in the case of Lego Fortnite, we really can’t do that. Shadow dropped out of nowhere, Lego Fortnite wasn’t on anybody’s mind, and then suddenly, it exploded onto the scene to bend the fabric of reality to its blocky, bricky, whims.

With Genshin Impact, Honkai Impact 3rd studio Hoyoverse managed to spin its gacha playbook into a free-to-play RPG with a premium feel, and now another Chinese giant is seemingly trying to do the same. Arknights: Endfield is a new "strategic" open-world action RPG based on the tower defense hit of the same name, and with a PS5 release now confirmed alongside PC, it's following Genshin's footsteps almost to the letter. 

Cyberpunk 2077 studio CD Projekt Red very cheekily congratulated Hello Games on the reveal of its ambitious new fantasy game Light no Fire at The Game Awards 2023, seemingly joking about the two studios' respective controversies and eventual redemption arcs.

Sean Murray of Hello Games took to the stage at The Game Awards 2023 to unveil Hello Games’ newest project, a multiplayer fantasy open-world game titled Light No Fire.

The saga of The Day Before has been quite a wild and winding tale. One, it seems, without a happy ending. Originally revealed back in 2021, developer Fntastic promised an ambitious open-world looter-shooter zombie MMO along the lines of something like The Division and impressive early “gameplay” trailers earned the project a large following on Steam. Then the delays came, with Fntastic sometimes offering odd excuses for why the game had to be pushed back, including unexplained trademark issues (an explanation they later walked back). Fans also began to pick apart the gameplay showcases we’d seen, accusing them of being mere mockups and not representative of an actual game.

What’s an open-world adventure game without a glider? Since Breath of the Wild revolutionized open-world exploration, every tantalizing cliffside has looked like a great starting point for your next voyage. The Glider in LEGO Fortnite makes the jump just as safe as walking, if not safer.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 was in the running for a plethora of awards at The Game Awards 2023 but left the event empty-handed.

Some Monster Hunter Wilds fans are convinced the new game has a fully open-world design, a big departure from the Capcom series' usual formula.

One of the most surprising reveals at last night’s The Game Awards ceremony was the sudden return of Skull and Bones, a co-op open-world pirate action-RPG that was first announced all the way back in 2017.

Grand Theft Auto VI is setting out to be a much better-looking game than even Red Dead Redemption 2, as highlighted in a new video shared online.

A new Rise of the Ronin action-packed trailer was shown during yesterday's The Game Awards, providing the best look yet at Team NINJA's open-world action game.

No Man’s Sky developer Hello Games has announced Light No Fire, a game about adventure, building, survival, and exploration together in an open-world earth. It will be available for PC via Steam. A release date was not announced.

While TGA 2023 undoubtedly featured many gorgeous games, Last Sentinel was easily one of the most impressive. This is the debut project of Lightspeed LA, a California-based division of Tencent's Lightspeed Studios.

Sharkmob has revealed its first original game project at The Game Awards 2023 — a tactical open-world extraction shooter called Exoborne.

Last Sentinel is a new triple-A open-world game announced at The Game Awards from Lightspeed LA, a Tencent-owned US-based developer. Lightspeed is led by Steve Martin, who previously worked on Rockstar Games and Electronic Arts.

Lightspeed LA, a division of LightSpeed Studios, has announced Last Sentinel, a “new AAA open-world experience” set in a futuristic Tokyo. Platforms and a release date were not announced.

We've just got a first look atLast Sentinel, the upcoming sci-fi dystopian open-world game made by Lightspeed LA, a division of Lightspeed Studios known for working on PUBG Mobile. 

Capcom unveiled Monster Hunter Wilds at tonight's Game Awards live show, and it looks like a long-awaited mix of Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Rise.

10 Chambers, the Swedish studio founded by former Payday and Payday 2 developers, has announced Den of Wolves.

Exoborne is an eye-catching new tactical open-world extraction shooter for PC and consoles, built in Unreal Engine 5 by team members who worked on Ubisoft's The Division.

For the tenth anniversary since the announcement of No Man’s Sky, Hello Games has revealed their next game, Light No Fire. As is tradition at The Game Awards, it also came with a trailer.

Developer Sharkmob, makers of the battle royale Vampire: The Masquerade- Bloodhunt, have revealed a new open-world extraction shooter called Exoborne.

Sharkmob, best known as the maker of Vampire: The Masquerade battle royale game Bloodhunt, is wading into the increasingly crowded extraction shooter waters. Its next game is Exoborne, a tactical open-world extraction shooter built around mech-lite exo-rigs that'll help you compete and survive in a post-apocalyptic world beset by cataclysmic natural disasters. 

Sharkmob, the developer of the World of Darkness battle royale Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt, unveiled its new game tonight at The Game Awards: Exoborne, a «tactical open-world extraction shooter» set in a devastated near-future world where the remnants of humanity use powerful «Exo-rigs» to survive, scavenge, and—of course—shoot at each other.

Last Sentinel is a new triple-A open-world game announced at The Game Awards from Lightspeed LA, a Tencent-owned US-based developer. Lightspeed is led by Steve Martin, who previously worked on Rockstar Games and Electronic Arts.

Rise of the Ronin, the next big action game from Team Ninja, will debut exclusively on PlayStation 5 on 22nd March 2024.

The Day Before was recently Steam's most wishlisted game, but on the day of its long-awaited and oft-delayed Early Access launch, it's marred by an 'Overwhelmingly Negative' Steam rating and countless reviews citing poor performance and missing features.

The Day Before has a bit of a weird history. We recently summarized it here, but the gist is that it's an open-world survival MMO—or at least, that's how its combative and zealous developer describes it—that has attracted both hype and skepticism since it was announced, with some questioning whether it even existed at one point. After a fairly long delay apparently related to a trademark dispute, The Day Before proved them wrong and finally launched in early access on Steam today as promised.

It’s good news and bad news for Assassin’s Creed Mirage. First, the bad news: the permadeath mode Ubisoft had said would come out in December is delayed to early 2024.

The Day Before, the open-world MMO zombie game that’s been at the top of Steam’s wishlist charts since developer Fntastic dropped a splashy reveal trailer two years ago, is finally out. But players of The Day Before say the game that launched in early access Thursday isn’t the game they were promised, and are flooding Steam with thousands of negative reviews.

After trademark disputes, multiple delays, and everything in between, FNTASTIC has finally released The Day Before on Steam in early access. But it is not off to the best start right now with many players complaining, citing server and performance issues as among the biggest problems.

Wanting a piece of the Minecraft pie, Epic has teamed up with some iconic Danish toymakers to create their own flavour of a blocky open-world survival game and to help you jump in, we’ve got how to play LEGO Fortnite and if it is a separate game explained.

The second chapter of the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet DLC is next week on December 14, offering new story content, the return of multiple Legendary Pokemon from previous games, and a slightly terrifying mind-control device called the Synchro Machine. But for me, the highlight change is the reintroduction of a feature that first reared its head nearly a decade ago.

Greetings, Adventurers!

Fans of James Cameron's sci-fi epics will be delighted that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora releases today on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.

When Epic Games first pitched Fortnite back in 2012, it envisioned a cooperative sandbox game of crafting, building, and survival. Players would scavenge for supplies during the day, build shelters and weapons, then fend off creatures of the night when the sun set, à la Minecraft.

A man who believes he's been parodied by GTA 6's trailer has addressed the similarities between himself and an in-game character.

Warhorse Studios has confirmed the arrival of the Kingdom Come Deliverance Switch version in early 2024.

And now you can breathe a sigh of relief: if the 2025 release window did not make it obvious enough, GTA 6 will be a current-gen-only game. It's not getting a PS4 version; the game is coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S at launch. That also means it's not releasing on PC day and date with the console versions.

The PS5 is about to take a trip to Pandora. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora blasts onto Sony’s console on December 7th, thrusting players into the fantastical world from James Cameron’s mega-hit blockbusters. But what is actually in store for players when they boot up this massive AAA movie tie-in? Well that’s exactly what we aim to answer in our latest Push Square video!

The average height of a Na’vi — the blue cat-like people of James Cameron’s Avatar movies — is around 10 feet. By comparison, average human height is well below 6 feet. That’s about waist level for our blue buddies. I vaguely understood this disparity while watching the films, but y’all, it’s inescapable when playing Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.