While many of Spelunky 2’s secrets are designed to be discovered over the course of a single playthrough, using shortcuts allows you to easily access later levels quickly. This is perfect if you need to quickly reach the challenging later stages, practice facing their bosses or using their mounts, and get to the game’s normal ending without starting over each time. However, unlocking Spelunky 2 shortcuts is still a demanding endeavour - requiring you to complete each stage a number of times, and hand over certain items, before you can start using them....

Proceedings get underway at 5pm in the UK/10am PDT, and Square promises 40 minutes of trailers and announcements. The world premiere of Life is Strange 3 (or whatever it ends up being called) is obviously the headliner, but there’s quite a lot more besides. There’ll be another look at Outriders, for instance, ahead of its launch on 1st April, as well as another airing for Balan Wonderland, which releases a little sooner, on 26th March....

A report from XGP (via VGC), reveals that those who had pre-ordered the game have been receiving messages informing them that their orders have now been cancelled. The message goes on to state this is due to the fact that Stalker 2’s release date has been pushed back to an “unconfirmed date in the future”. Meanwhile, the pre-order option on the Xbox store appears to have been disabled. Eurogamer has contacted Microsoft for confirmation of pre-orders being disabled....

Earlier this week Barone announced Stardew Valley would once again become available on the European PlayStation Store (including Australia and New Zealand), and at time of writing it now has listings on the UK, EU, Australian and New Zealand versions of the PlayStation Store. The UK listing still has “do not use” written on it, but I was able to buy a copy. Although the return to the store has not yet been formally announced, Barone previously explained the delay had been caused by the “simulated gambling” in Stardew Valley, which changed the age rating and required an “entire new build of the game”....

In a recent Q&A with director Todd Howard, details were given on the game’s trait system. Each trait comes with positives and negatives, as well as an accompanying side quest to remove them. As PCGamesN spotted, one of these traits is called “Hero Worshipped” in which the player has “earned the attention of an annoying ‘Adoring Fan’ who will show up randomly and jabber at you incessantly. On the plus side, he’ll give you gifts…” See for yourself in the below video at the 3:17 mark....

XCOM’s gift to the world is that brilliant two-action set-up. These tactical games can get dizzyingly complicated, so know from the off: each of your soldiers can do two things per turn and then it’s done. Invisible, Inc took this idea and delivered one of the greatest espionage adventures in all of games. And now Spirited Thief is building on that. This is a lovely pixel-art immersive sim, built around the core idea that you have two actions per turn....

On the surface, this is a game that tells a simple science-fiction of a cat who, after falling into the city’s underbelly, Lion-King-style, must escape a mysterious place with the hope of reuniting with their family. But beneath that is something more. Still, when it comes to simply recreating the experience of being a cat, developer BlueTwelve Studio has done a wonderful job; playing as a cat feels unique, while also being surprisingly easy to master....

Though the concept of switches to move or activate objects in a level is nothing new, this stage greets you with a huge number of them - with the wrong choice quickly spelling your doom. You can complete the level through trial and error, but you might - sensibly - just want to skip ahead to the solution, especially as it’s a rare case of a level which relies on luck than skill....

Dialogue between Kamala Khan and her high school friends revealed they play Super Smash Bros together - meaning Nintendo’s all-star fighter is now Marvel Cinematic Universe canon. Kamala herself seemed to be a fan of Smash, though her friend Nakia was less keen. “Are you inviting me over to play Smash Bros? Because if so, I’m busy,” Kamala’s friend Nakia says at one point, when discussing the group’s weekend plans....

This mechanic, spotted by VGC, now offers players the opportunity to switch game regions from 50Hz PAL (a notably slower standard) to NTSC 60Hz through Syphon Filter 2’s settings menu. You can see how this process looks in the image below. This comes after many were disappointed to find that this option was missing across the service’s classic selection of games on PS Plus’ release in June. At this time, Sony said it would provide “NTSC options for a majority” of these games in the future....

Online team battles are included, though you’re limited to set times to access next weekend. Nintendo also announced post-launch updates are on the way, which will include some - as yet unannounced - new characters. Online team battles allow you to team up with friends online to challenge others, with a maximum of four players per team across two consoles. You can also team up with random players online. The demo will give players their first taste of gameplay and the unique abilities of the game’s 10 playable characters....

Here are Eurogamer’s picks for the best PS4 games you can play right now. It’s a heady mix, and arguably director Hidetaka Miyazaki’s strongest game yet; come the end of the generation, it’s really between this and Breath of the Wild as to which was the greatest game of the era. A boy nurses an injured beast back to health, and then boy and beast make their way through a vast, almost deserted kingdom....

This a modest saving of a fiver so its by no means a massive discount, but this is the cheapest we’ve seen the console selling for on its own during the festive period, and that includes Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If you’d prefer to pick up the Nintendo Switch OLED with some games as part of a bundle, there are some great Nintendo Switch OLED deals available right now....

As detailed in a Take-Two earnings report last night, the Murder on Eridanos expansion will be released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC by the end of the current fiscal year, which ends on 31st March (via SeekingAlpha). Murder on Eridanos is the second of two DLCs for The Outer Worlds’ £19.99 expansion pass, the first being Peril on Gorgon - which launched back in September last year. Very little is known about the second expansion, other than it being “Halycon Helen’s final and finest adventure,” so perhaps it’s something of a murder mystery....

Talking to Sony Santa Monica’s Alanah Pearce, writer Tim Schafer revealed that The Secret of Monkey Island was originally too long and had to get some heavy editing. “We were writing on Monkey Island, and we were told ‘you guys, we can’t go on six floppies. We have to go on five. We have too much text,’” Schafer recalled before remarking how strange that sort of thing is to imagine now....

The defining structure of Forza Horizon is the marriage of driving and open world exploration. Players are plunged into an expansive map packed full of races and events - participation in or simply reaching these events allows players to drive a wide range of powerful cars along the way. To make this work effectively, the game needs to render large open areas that are both visually striking yet completely legible while also retaining near-field detail capable of showcasing both the cars and the environment....

Of course, there’s a slight problem here in that PlayStation 5 does not support 8K output via HDMI 2.1, despite proudly displaying an 8K logo on the box. In this case, Shin’en is using the extreme resolution for super-sampling anti-aliasing: essentially, every pixel on your 4K screen is downsampled from four pixels for pristine image quality. As for what kind of difference this makes to the overall presentation, Shin’en has you covered there too....

Based upon the Final Fantasy 14 Endwalker’s Reaper job class and sold in a fancy presentation box, the wine has been produced in partnership with The Prisoner Wine company in California. Sadly, the wine is seemingly only available via Square Enix’s Japanese store. A bottle costs ¥12,100, which converts to around £80 or $106 excluding shipping and tax, of course. Shipping is expected to commence from March 2022. According to Siliconera’s translation, it’s thought unsold bottles will eventually pop up on the Square Enix store, but it’s not clear if they’ll be available to fans outside of Japan, and it looks like all preorders have now sold out....

The same applies to the HD 458BT, which can certainly be an improvement over your computer, laptop or TV speakers. John Lewis has shaved £84 off the price, meaning you can get yourself a new pair of Sennheiser headphones for pretty much half price. Sennheiser HD 458BT Noise Cancelling Over-Ear Headphones- £85.00 at John Lewis (Was £169) The HD 458BTs offer good deep, dynamic bass that will make listening to music or battling in those boss fight arenas that much better....

It’s an IPS panel with a 1080p resolution. That means you’re going to get wide viewing angles and higher image clarity. But the best part of the display is the 165Hz refresh rate. This is perfect for those of us who prefer frame rate modes over visual fidelity, and makes it suitable for gamers who spend their time on multiplayer games such as Call of Duty, Apex Legends, Rocket League and Fortnite....