Liz Albl, whose previous writing credits also include Far Cry 4 (as well as its Valley of the Yetis DLC), Far Cry 5 and Watch Dogs Legion, announced she had recently joined the team at Cloud Chamber, taking on the role of its narrative lead for the studio’s upcoming Bioshock game. “The dream is real,” Albl shared last night. The next entry in the Bioshock series was first announced all the way back in 2019....
Although full patch notes won’t be available until next week’s launch, DICE community manager Kevin Johnson (thanks VGC) has shared some of the release’s key features on Twitter. Attachments will, for instance, receive an overhaul in Update 4.0, with DICE aiming to ensure all feel unique and have an impact on loadout choices and gunplay. Additionally, XP for Support Actions and Teamplay has been balanced “to ensure teamwork remains king”, and there are balancing changes arriving for Vehicular Warfare in a bid to give Infantry/Vehicle counter play “some bite”....
The challenge is clear - and it’s all down to just how difficult this game was to run on PS4 and Xbox One. Despite relatively pedestrian visuals, the title targeted 900p without any anti-aliasing, with somewhat messy performance on both machines. The typical run of play was 40-60fps, with combat and open-world traversal causing issues. It’s important to keep this relatively poor showing in mind, because the Nintendo Switch falls far short of those machines in raw number-crunching performance....
The trial version of Capcom’s upcoming beastie basher was released at midnight last night, following a Nintendo Direct full of juicy new details about the game. Switch owners reported struggles trying to download the demo overnight, and this morning the Switch eShop is currently unreachable in the UK. At the time of writing, attempting to connect to the eShop brings up the following message: “The server is currently undergoing maintenance....
The sound library comprises music and sound effects from the 2006 DS games Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, launched back in February. However, an announcement on the library page states it will shut down on 31st May. No data will be available to stream or download after this date. If you’ve already downloaded data, it can still be used per the - rather stringent - terms and conditions. The library had music and sounds divided into various playlists, though none of it could be used for commercial use of course....
YouTuber Bob “WulffDen” Wulff has spent the past five months subjecting a Switch OLED to the same image, taken from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (thanks, ArsTechnica). The good news? It’s taken 3600 hours for any burn-in to become noticeable. That’s 150 days sat on the same image almost entirely without breaks - something you’ll never need to do yourself under normal conditions. Even now, 3600 hours later, Wulff says the burn-in is only slight - showing the ghost of the image he had forced his Switch to display....
But that isn’t how this would smell. This would smell of pot pourri and corporate perfume wafting in from hidden vents. This would smell of marshmallow and candied fruit and sandalwood. That’s one of the biggest surprises of Nintendo Switch Sports, actually. For me at least. How beautiful it all is. The latest game in the Wii Sports series contains six games, three new, three returning, which might seem a little too slim a collection on paper, even after you factor in Golf, which is arriving in Autumn as a free update....
This newest addition to Hello Games’ ever-expanding exploratory space sim is described by the developer as an ‘accidental’ Halloween update, and primarily takes the form of a brand-new limited-time Expedition event, titled Emergence - the first to feature narrative elements. “Across the universe, planets have been blighted by the activity of Titan Worms,” explains Hello Games. “These colossal sandworms plough through the desert sands, blacking out the sun as they arc overhead, and defiling the very terrain with their cursed dust....
Still, it takes some time to draw that out. Norco begins with you telling your own backstory, or if not telling then unearthing it, sorting through dialogue options to fill in blanks, as you will for much of Norco’s six-ish hours of narrative. A brief, clever little late-game reference to one of my off-hand choices in this opening had me wondering how much this impacts - I suspect not much, and hope not much either, if only because I’m unnaturally keen to have Hoovered up every little drop of Norco’s story....
As reported by The Telegraph, parts of the graphics chip business - America’s largest microchip company - have been offline for two days. A malicious network intrusion has affected Nvidia’s internal systems, including email and developer tools, which have suffered outages since last week. It’s so far unclear whether any data has been stolen from Nvidia - be it internal data or customer data - or if the attack has been solely to disrupt systems....
Whether this translates into a flood of new high-end graphics cards remains to be seen, but in the here and now let’s take a look at how Nvidia’s new ($1200/£1050) flagship performs. From the outside, the Nvidia GeForce 3080 Ti Founders Edition we’re testing looks nigh-identical to the original 3080 FE - same two-slot cooler, same 12-pin power input, same complement of DisplayPort and HDMI 2.1 ports and even the same colour - there’s just a sneaky ‘Ti’ suffix on the original RTX 3080 wordmark....
I first read about Hedra in a Polygon article back in 2020. A one-shot comic book with an astonishing visual conceit: each page is based around an arrangement of 35 panels - five by seven. Wordlessly, these panels come together to tell a story that spans the galaxy. Since I don’t know enough about comics, my impressions of Hedra are completely free of context. I had to buy it on Etsy, I think, and it came with a copy number stamped on the back - 0880 - and a lovely postcard with a thank-you note from the author - Jesse Lonergan....
“I see potential in Outriders’ endgame…,” I wrote in March. “But it’s just so… old-school, I’m not sure I’ll be able to suffer it long enough to get to that point.” Yesterday, after downloading the full game on PlayStation 5 and picking up my Devastator where she left off at the end of the demo, I ventured forth from the brown sludge of Rift Town to see if Outriders got more interesting....
Doctor Who: The Lonely Assassins launches for iPhone and Android on 19th March, and has been designed as a “found phone” game with new live-action performances from Doctor Who characters. UNIT expert Osgood is investigating the events of the legendary Blink episode, and the subsequent disappearance of Larry, one of its characters. (Blink star Finlay Robertson returns as Larry, alongside Ingrid Oliver as Osgood.) The Lonely Assassins is developed by “found phone” genre regulars Kaigan Games, which previously made similar apps such as Sara is Missing and Simulacra....
Pikmin creator Shigeru Miyamoto first confirmed Pikmin 4 to me as part of an interview with Eurogamer back in 2015. It’s fair to say we’ve been waiting on this one for a while. In 2017, I asked Miyamoto about the project again - and heard from the Nintendo legend that it was still progressing. I never gave up hope. A quick teaser for Pikmin 4 today showed gameplay from a new camera angle, situated with the Pikmin at ground level....
The promotion will run until 19th January 2022, with more games set to be added on 5th January 2022. The sale includes PlayStation exclusives from this year like Death Stranding Director’s Cut, Deathloop, Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade, Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. It’s also a great time to catch up on the likes of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Hades, Guardians of the Galaxy, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Psychonauts 2, Resident Evil Village, Tales of Arise and more....
The service has already launched in Asia and is set to be rolled out in Europe on 13th October. Dataminers have found references both in the PlayStation mobile app and the PlayStation website to a fifth membership level called Diamond. Information found in the PlayStation app suggests the Diamond tier will be invitation-only, leading people to speculate on the requirements for invitations. Reference to a collectible called “Level 5 Diorama - Bot’s Don’t Breathe” has also been found, which will be awarded upon reaching the Diamond tier....
Gather a strong team of bug, fairy and fighting-type Pokémon, so you can fight this legendary dark-type Pokémon. You might even finding yourself catching a shiny Darkrai. Like the other Legendary Pokémon it shares the Sinnoh region with, including Giratina and Cresselia, Darkrai will be available in five-star Raids, so, if you want to capture the living embodiment of nightmares, you’ll need a team of fellow Pokémon trainers. On this page:...
Mythical Wishes is a reference to Hoenn’s Mythical creature Jirachi, which has only appeared in Pokémon Go once previously. It looks set for a reappearance (and possible Shiny debut?) at 2023’s Pokémon Go Tour event, which is set to be detailed fully tomorrow. More tangibly, today’s new trailer also teases the release of Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre at the end - some of the most powerful creatures in the series, and a big deal for fans....
In an update posted to the company’s official blog (thanks, NME), Niantic said it is “continuously work[ing] to facilitate a fun and fair environment” and “[felt players’] frustration about how cheating behaviours” affected them. Its last post on cheating - posted way back last year - was “focused primarily on sharing a broad overview” on the topic, but since then, Niantic says it’s “becoming better” at spotting cheaters. “[W]e’ve invested in becoming better at observing cheating behaviours, and can now more reliably pinpoint these activities with higher speed and accuracy, preventing legitimate players from being punished incorrectly,” the post said....
