The original Monster Hunter Stories came out back in 2017, attempting to fuse the traditional RPG gameplay/monster catching of Pokémon with the world of Monster Hunter with some success. Capcom also used the occasion to announce a new demo for Monster Hunter Rise, which prolongs the lifespan of the original demo while adding a new, tough-as-nails quest which has players taking on Rise’s signature beastie Magnamalos. It’ll be available on the eShop from March 11th....

As with previous Monster Hunter games, monsters and their associated hunts are split into two categories - Low Rank, and High Rank. The latter tasks you with tougher monsters and higher level gear to farm as a reward - with your current High Rank (or HR as it’s often referred to by the community) representing your progression through the end game. Following the April 2021 ‘2.0’ update, the previous High Rank cap was unlocked - allowing players to collect Hunter Rank points....

Series veterans will also encounter a number of quality of life improvements - from the way you explore biomes with wirebugs to using the camera in the heat of battle with gyro controls. However, though the on-boarding is better than ever, there’s still a learning curve for newcomers, and so our list of Monster Hunter Rise tips for beginners will help you get to the good stuff as fast as possible....

With MultiVersus Season 2 now underway, fans want to know where each character sits in terms of a tiered ranking. As the dust settles from the latest patch and with the arrival of Marvin the Martian as the latest DLC character, a new meta is beginning to emerge. MultiVersus is very much still taking shape as a fighting game, but there’s certainly enough to go on now in terms of Season 2 fighter rankings....

The arcade centre inside London’s County Hall off Westminster Bridge shut its doors at 6.30pm last night, 12th August. “We’re heartbroken to have closed our landmark site that has been entertaining families, friends, and corporate groups from all over the world for 25 years,” reads a post on the venue’s Facebook page. “We look forward to seeing you at another Namco venue soon and thank you for amazing memories!” Namco Funscape had a bowling alley, bars, bumper cars and over 100 arcade cabinets....

All this comes via a listing, still live at the time of writing, on Japanese retailer Neowing’s website - which, assuming its veracity (highly likely given the nature of the assets and details included), corroborates virtually all previous rumours circulating around the game in recent months. First is the name, Need for Speed: Unbound, which tallies with a report from Insider Gaming at the end of September, as does Neowing’s listed release date of 2nd December this year....

This weekend’s Netflix Tudum event, a Nintendo Direct-style announcements livestream, included confirmation of a third season of The Witcher (the second starts airing this December), plus a sneak peek of the upcoming spin-off series Blood Origin, which you can watch below. Next, The Witcher showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich popped up to confirm two further projects - a second anime film, following this summer’s Nightmare of the Wolf, and a Witcher show for kids....

Announced back in June 2020, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a 10-episode collaboration between Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt and Japanese animation studio Trigger (Little Witch Academia, Kill la Kill) that tells the story of a street kid trying to survive in the technology and body modification obsessed Night City. “Having everything to lose,” explains Netflix, “he stays alive by becoming an Edgerunner - a mercenary outlaw also known as a cyberpunk....

Following the release of The Isle Dragon Roars last year, The Forsaken Maiden is the next in the NieR creator’s deck-based role-playing series. The game is available digitally now on Switch, PlayStation 4 and PC (via Steam). It’s set on a remote chain of islands protected by maidens, and follows the protagonist and a girl who failed to become a maiden. It’s a “touching stand-alone tale”. Taro is joined by music director Keiichi Okabe (Drakengard, NieR) and character designer Kimihiko Fujisaka (Drakengard)....

This version will be the remastered edition which launched for Nintendo Switch, PC and PlayStation 4 back in 2019. It’s never been available on a Microsoft console before. Its follow-up, Ni No Kuni: Revenant Kingdom, will then also arrive for Xbox consoles and Game Pass in 2023, Microsoft confirmed today during its Tokyo Game Show 2022 livestream. Level 5’s Studio Ghibli-inspired role-playing game series is well worth trying - and its arrival on Xbox today is a big deal....

Now, an official English-language version of Nintendo’s answer has been published, giving the company’s clear and accurate response. In short, don’t expect a Nintendo metaverse anytime soon - unless you think “metaverse” really does just refer to a game like Animal Crossing. As for NFTs, Nintendo had nothing to say at all. “The metaverse has captured the attention of many companies around the world, and it has great potential,” Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said....

The final judgement in this civil case was filed last night, and is separate to the federal lawsuit Bowser already pleaded guilty to at the end of October. For that, he was ordered to pay $4.5m, and faces up to 10 years in jail. Bowser, 51, made a business out of selling console mods which enabled video game piracy. Working with modchip firm Team Xecuter, Bowser “knowingly and wilfully participated in a cybercriminal enterprise that hacked leading gaming consoles” since 2013, it was reported last month....

Expeditions, in case you’re out of the loop (or, equally likely, at the other end of the loop, still trying to figure out everything that got released in-between), are effectively No Man’s Sky’s stab at live-service-style seasonal content. They’re limited-time, curated experiences that condense and reshuffle the game’s sprawling tangle of systems into a series of progression-based milestone challenges that plop everyone on the same starting planet and reward fun cosmetic doo-hickeys to those that get to the end....

Unlike the team’s previous luchador Metroidvania, Nobody Saves The World is an action RPG with an emphasis on creating your own personal playstyle. It will be released on 17th January on Xbox consoles and PC, including Game Pass. As a new Xbox Wire blog explains, players start the game as a baby Nobody and slowly develop their character by taking on more forms. A total of 15 forms are available - from typical rangers and guards, to slugs and horses - and players are able to mix and match abilities for wild combos as they explore the game’s dungeons....

Before we get into the benchmarks, it’s worth covering the makeup of this new Ampere card. Nvidia has claimed that it’ll deliver twice the ray tracing performance and the biggest generational leap ever, and that’s largely down to the die shrink from a 12nm process to an 8nm process, delivered courtesy of Samsung rather than usual fab, TSMC. That allows Nvidia to pack in many more transistors than ever before, boosting performance and power efficiency....

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition - £369 (UK RRP) Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition - £469 (UK RRP) Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition - £649 (UK RRP) The RTX 3070 and 3080 remain excellent graphics cards for the money, offering extremely strong performance for 1440p or 4K gaming plus some essential next-gen features: hardware-accelerated ray tracing and DLSS, a feature that uses AI to boost frame-rates considerably....

The following nine games leave the subscription service soon: Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars Tropico 6 Scarlet Nexus Secret Neighbor Outer Wilds Gorogoa The Pedestrian Embr Iron Harvest (Windows) Oddly, the games were not announced as leaving Game Pass in the latest Xbox blog post which revealed which games were headed there this month. As a reminder, the big games to launch on Xbox Game Pass this month are LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and High on Life....

TikToker Ziccs has taken to roleplaying as an Uber driver, picking up players and driving them to a destination in Al Mazrah of their choosing (in return for in-game cash, of course). The result is rather hilarious, with Ziccs later encountering one of his passengers in the Gulag. Tragically, Ziccs had eliminated his former customer and apologised for it. Ziccs’ second ride also ended in tragedy, when he crashed the vehicle and his passenger left without paying....

In the first two parts of John Linneman’s investigation, we’ve covered off the first four years of the Triple’s lifecycle and moving into 2010, the overall fortunes of the PlayStation 3 continued to improve. The platform holder released - what was then - the most advanced motion controller in the console space, backed up by experiments with stereoscopic 3D, which turned out to be a short-lived but still formidable pairing....

The launch gives us our first proper look at the service’s full catalogue of games - although fans say it contains far fewer titles in its catalogue than previously expected. Indeed, a guide to PlayStation Plus published yesterday on the PlayStation blog mentions “700” games available across the subscription’s various plans - a rough figure we’ve heard from Sony before - albeit with the caveat that these games will vary “over time and plan”....