Oneal, formerly the boss of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy studio Vicarious Visions, was hired as Blizzard co-leader alongside Mike Ybarra following the departure of Blizzard president J. Allen Brack - who left amid the fallout from the State of California’s ongoing lawsuit alleging sexual harassment, discrimination, and a “frat boy” work culture at the company. “I am doing this not because I am without hope for Blizzard,” Oneal wrote of her decision to step down on Activision’s website, “quite the opposite....

The Bloodborne demake is the work of Unreal Engine 4 tech artist and engineer Lilith Walther, and harkens back to the graphics of the PlayStation One era, this new demake embraces its pixelated predecessors’ history in gloriously nostalgic detail. Here’s our own Ian giving it a go: To accompany the launch of their Bloodborne demake, Walther additionally released a new trailer that shows off the bloody chaos that players can expect to come their way....

The experiment was conducted by streamer MarleyThirteen, who enlisted 149 followers to join him in a Warzone game to create the “biggest explosion Verdansk has ever seen” (thanks, VGC). The players agreed on a ceasefire and were tasked with finding as many vehicles as possible, with MarleyThirteen’s team picking up recon contracts to show upcoming rings and the location of “ground zero”. Players were also told to pick up as much cash as possible - and use all that money to buy a bunch of cluster strikes....

Drop into Verdansk right now and you’ll see the new Shipwreck in the bottom right hand corner of the map. It’s the Vodianoy cargo ship that’s been threatening to crash into the map - and, as expected, it’s got zombies on it. I’ve tried dropping in to Shipwreck to check it out and it’s pretty much impossible. You’re likely to die within a minute or so. At least I am!...

The Monster Hunter Orchestra Concert has been an annual fixture in Capcom’s calendar since 2014, with last year’s show marking the first time the concert was held online. 2021’s effort promises “a powerful combination of video visuals featuring beloved characters and monsters from the game, along with a full orchestra performance of tracks from the series” by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. Hirofumi Kurita, who’s been part of the show since its 2014 debut, returns as conductor, and Capcom says this year’s music selection from across the Monster Hunter series will be augmented by tracks from this year’s steller Monster Hunter Rise....

This countdown will end on Sunday, 20th February at 10pm PT / 1am ET (So, 6am on Monday 21st February for those in GMT time zones). This will coincide with the season finale of Capcom’s Street Fighter Pro tour, which starts on February 17th. While this could be a coincidence, this has left many speculating that Capcom is finally getting ready to announce Street Fighter 6. After all, a reveal of Street Fighter 6 to fans at the culmination of the Pro Tour would certainly make sense....

“Here is our updated Roadmap for Early Access!” exclaims Wales Interactive. “It does not list everything we are working on (we have to keep some things a surprise!) and is only a response to the majority of features requested in the Steam Forum, Steam Reviews and on the Discord.” The studio adds that the list “doesn’t include many of the on-going development such as new episodes (and the base content released for each episode), optimisation, network improvements, balancing, UI and QOL etc” and confirms that the ping system, re-roll miracles, POV increase, enemy-auto-respawn times reduction and XP levels have already been addressed....

Speaking to PressPlayNews, studio creative director Wojciech Pazdur discussed the war, as well as the future of the game. “This war, like any other, is an unnecessary violence which takes lives of innocent people and forces millions to flee and abandon their homes while those who stayed have to fight for their lives during the humanitarian crisis,” he said. “It’s impossible to imagine that one day, instead of having a nice morning coffee before work, you hear there is war in your country and nothing will be the same again....

The widely-suspected announcement, made official this afternoon via a CD Projekt Twitch stream, comes more than 14 months after Cyberpunk 2077 originally arrived (itself massively delayed) for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. A five hour demo is also available until 15th March, so you can see how the game runs on your console before committing to a purchase. “With the update, Cyberpunk 2077 takes advantage of the additional power of the newest generation of console hardware, allowing for ray tracing features and 4K with dynamic scaling, faster loading times, and a variety of other visual and technical improvements, as well as utilises the DualSense controller’s adaptive triggers and haptic feedback functionalities,” CD Projekt wrote....

It’s been over 183 days since the servers were shut down following the discovery of a security issue in the multiplayer functionality affecting all three Dark Souls games on PC. However, an update to the game on the SteamDB page suggests a solution could be on the way soon. Watch on YouTube Dark Souls Remastered R.E.A.L. VR Mod Gameplay Will BLOW YOUR MIND! Spotted by Soulsborne dataminer Lance McDonald, two new debug files have been added to the game - the first in years....

Published in this month’s Edge Magazine, Cage discusses in depth the company culture of the studio and denies a lack of humility in its response to allegations. “I don’t think we had an aggressive attitude,” he said. “When you’re accused of things that go against everything you believe in, everything you’ve done in your life, it hurts. It went beyond just attacking the studio culture. “Of course, like any human organisation, we are not perfect by any means,” Cage continued....

Evil Empire first discussed improving Dead Cells’ accessibility back in January, when it began canvassing players for feedback on how it could expand the game to better suit a wider range of needs. It then shared an update on its progress in May, detailing some of the accessibility options that were on the way. After a round of beta testing, all that work has now been moved to the live game with the official launch of Breaking Barriers....

Though Reedus didn’t give away too much in the Portuguese interview - and auto-translations can sometimes be inaccurate, meaning we can only take this as a rumour for now - IGN Brasil reports he said he “thinks” a second Death Stranding is on the way. “I think we’re doing a second Death Stranding,” Reedus told AdoroCinema, which is a partner site of IGN Brasil. “[Death Stranding 2] is in negotiations right now....

Over 30 improvements and options have been added in this latest update, including - at last! - the option to navigate menus using directional buttons instead of a cursor. Also included are gameplay settings to customise combat difficulty and game speed, and new HUD and subtitle options, which can be found in a new accessibility category in the options menu. “One of the things we didn’t expect when starting on accessibility features was how some of these options can be useful and fun for everyone,” said studio director Dinga Bakaba, stating the bleeding obvious....

These clue you in as to what the Master and Legend Lost Sector is today in Destiny 2, which rotate every 24 hours at the Destiny 2 reset. Guardians who are skilled enough to conquer these Lost Sectors by themselves have a chance to earn unique Exotic armour that aren’t available anywhere else in Destiny 2. Note Due to a known bug as of the writing of this guide, some players were not receiving the Rose hand cannon....

I described it as a game of two halves - an assortment of third party trailers followed by a procession of first-party wares. This was essentially Sony’s E3 2021, pushed back a couple of months and presented as an online show. Unfortunately, a procession of trailers and CG visualisations presented in sequence doesn’t quite cut it. Publishers and platform holders seem to think that a procession of imagery for successive titles running one after the other works, but it doesn’t really....

Perhaps I’m over-exaggerating. After all, the arrival of Unreal Engine 5 and the release of The Matrix Awakens city sample for PC users is a big deal, along with the wealth of information ‘dropped’ in Epic’s State of Unreal presentation last week. And yes, we’ve got plenty to say about that - especially with the news that the next Tomb Raider game will ship on UE5, likely meaning the end of the excellent Foundation Engine used in the the latest series entries and of course, Marvel’s Avengers....

DICE detailed its plans in a series of tweets on the Battlefield Direct Communication feed, noting the first of its updates will arrive tomorrow, 20th January. Update 3.2, as it’s known, will offer smaller fixes and improvements focussed on stability, plus adjustments to XP in Portal mode that will “enable more servers and game types to progress on Mastery and Weekly Missions”. More specifically, the per minute XP cap across all Portal modes will, from tomorrow, increase to 300 - “Obtaining XP usually comes in bursts, and our intent for this change is to reduce the frequency of XP bursts being capped during gameplay”, DICE notes - while items available to earn in Mastery and Weekly missions will now be determined by modifiers used, and whether the Rules Editor, Damage/Health modifiers, or AI are enabled....

Without formal announcement, Pandemic was delisted from Steam on 6th January, and it looks as though players can’t pick it up on mobile devices now, either (although if you already own the game, you should be able to re-download it again from your library if you’re quick). All signs of the game have been scrubbed from the company’s website, too. The notice on Steam simply says “At the request of the publisher, Pandemic: The Board Game is no longer available for sale on Steam”....

During this event, you’ll be able to catch as many Digletts as possible, which may lead you to finding a 100% perfect IV Diglett or a shiny Diglett. Elsewhere in the world of Pokémon Go, the Mountains of Power event is currently running during the Season of Heritage alongside the Go Battle League. You can also partake in January’s XP challenge if you’ve purchased a Go Tour: Johto ticket. On this page: Evolving such a Diglett will give you a Dugtrio with perfect IV stats....