Gaming News

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Star Wars Outlaws is not out for a few more months, but as the release date slowly approaches, the game's ESRB rating summary revealed that a popular and nearly-forgotten card game is set to return as a playable mini-game. Spotted by GamesRadar, the ESRB summary description for Star Wars Outlaws reveals that "players can wager in-game currency on Sabacc, a blackjack-like card game with detailed rules." The card game, which first debuted in the L. Neil Smith novel Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu, has rules and concepts similar to those of blackjack and poker. The rules of Sabacc were first published in 1989 with the release of the Crisis on Cloud City supplement for the Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, which Games...
25 games are set to leave PlayStation Plus next month as part of one of the biggest clearouts of the subscription service. As reported by Push Square, 25 PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 games leave PS Plus Extra and PS Plus Premium on May 21, 2024, including eight high-profile Final Fantasy games. Highlights include Beethoven & Dinosaur's wonderful guitar adventure The Artful Escape, Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy 15, and Final Fantasy X|X-2 HD Remaster. The news comes as indie hit Dave the Diver hits the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog. Tales of Kenzera: Zau releases day one into the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog on April 23. Tales of Kenzera: Zau is an EA-published, Surgent Studios-developed 2.5D story-driven, action-exploration game...
While you’re exploring the land of the Enclave and taking on gargantuan bosses in Eternal Strands, you’ll unlock more and more magical abilities to help you on your journey. But unlike many games where magic might let you toss a fireball or Force push an enemy off a cliff, Eternal Strands has a unique approach to the nine physics-altering abilities it puts in your toolbelt, all of which allow for an impressive level of freedom. Continuing our month-long exclusive coverage of the upcoming action-adventure game from a new team comprised of ex-BioWare and Ubisoft developers, today we’ll be taking a look at a few abilities at the heart of this battle-heavy odyssey and how they can be combined in surprising and creative ways. In the same...
We’ve already reported on how the PC and console Fallout games have received a shot in the arm following the success of the Fallout TV show. Now it’s the turn of mobile game Fallout Shelter. Fallout Shelter, a free-to-play base-building and people management sim set within the post-apocalyptic Fallout world, has seen its daily revenue skyrocket from an average of $20,000 to $80,000, mobile analysis firm Sensor Tower said, as reported by GamesIndustry.biz. Downloads of the game have more than doubled around the launch of the Prime Video show, the data also revealed, from around 20,000 to over 60,000 within three days. Sensor Tower's data governs the mobile version of Fallout Shelter, but other versions of the game have seen an...
The boss of Pocketpair has accused Chinese game companies of making Palworld clones, saying: “These are incredible times.” In a tweet translated by Automaton, Takuro Mizobe, CEO of PocketPair, published a screenshot of a mobile and PC game called Auroria, alongside the following statement: “Tencent is already making a Palworld clone game! In China, many companies are simultaneously developing mobile clones of Palworld, and the budgets are in the 10 billion yen-range, 10 times larger than Palworld’s... Next year, we might see many Genshin Impact-level creature (or bishojo) raising games... These are incredible times.” Auroria, which has a Steam page as well as mobile store pages, is developed by Chinese studio Tianjin Wumai...
Microsoft has announced the second wave of games coming to Game Pass in April 2024. Highlights include Orcs Must Die! 3, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, and the hotly anticipated Manor Lords. Out today, April 16, is Slow Bros' narrative game Harold Halibut (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X|S) as a day-one Game Pass launch. IGN’s Harold Halibut review returned an 8/10. We called it “a wholesome, handcrafted adventure with plenty of heart.” Tomorrow, April 17, Robot Entertainment’s Orcs Must Die! 3 (Cloud, Console, and PC) hits Game Pass. Orcs Must Die! 3 got a 7/10 in IGN’s review. We said it was “very familiar to players of the second game but still a fun and goofy action/tower-defense challenge.” A day later, on April 18, EA...
Nintendo has announced the first Indie World Showcase for 2024. The digital showcase airs tomorrow, April 17, at 7am PT / 10am ET. As with previous Indie World Showcases, the event will be roughly 20 minutes and will feature news and updates focused on indie games heading to the Nintendo Switch. The last Nintendo Indie World Showcase was held in November; some of the announcements from that event included a Switch port of Outer Wilds, Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution, and On Your Tail. Though Nintendo did not tease or specify which indie games would appear this time around, many fans hope that Team Cherry will finally unveil a release date for Hollow Knight: Silksong. Silksong, the highly anticipated sequel to the 2017 game Hollow...
Mortal Kombat 1’s upcoming DLC character Ermac has a brand new Brutality that veteran Mortal Kombat fans have recognised as being inspired by a nearly 30-year-old Fatality. During a livestream held to show off the soul-obsessed ninja’s new telekinetic moves for Mortal Kombat 1, developer NetherRealm revealed Ermac’s new Brutality, a Telekinetic Slam that sees his hapless opponent (Reptile, in this case) repeatedly slammed into the ground until the only thing left to do is explode in a shower of gore. Check it out in the tweet video below: In Mortal Kombat, Brutalities are special match enders that are performed with special input commands. They’re not as flashy as Mortal Kombat’s iconic Fatalities, but some players prefer them...
The voice actor behind the popular Fallout 3 radio host Three Dog has expressed interest in appearing in season two of the Fallout TV show. Erik Todd Dellums played Three Dog in Bethesda’s 2008 post-apocalyptic role-playing game and became the sound of the wasteland for many players. While Three Dog remains Dellums’ only role in Fallout so far, his performance is a memorable one, given the character’s prominence on the in-game radio station, Galaxy News Radio, and how he would comment on various actions of the Lone Wanderer through his radio broadcasts. In a tweet, Dellums said he would love to voice a new DJ in Fallout Season 2, one “Darker than Three Dog, but just as funny and alluring!” He added: “I've got something new to...
Hot on the heels of the breakout success of The Last of Us and Fallout TV shows, many are wondering which video games would make a great pick for the next great series. Dragon Age is often suggested as a good candidate for the TV show treatment, but according to its co-creator, that would be a “terrible idea.” In a series of tweets, David Gaider, who created the setting for fantasy role-playing series Dragon Age and was its lead writer while at developer BioWare, said any Dragon Age TV show would have to be “more than a rote adaptation” in order to surface what makes the game’s story unique and interesting, which, he suggested, would be unlikely. Gaider agreed with a user who said the problem with adapting fantasy IPs like Dragon...
Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has released yet another update for the PlayStation 5 and PC third-person co-op shooter, this time patch 01.000.203. This update includes fixes to armor passives as well as various improvements to stability, Arrowhead said in the patch notes, below. Of most interest is a fix for the CE-27 Ground Breaker medium armor, which now has the Engineer Kit passive as previously advertised. Ground Breaker was added to Helldivers 2 as part of the recently released Premium Warbond, Democratic Detonation, and players soon discovered it had the wrong passive attached. Elsewhere, the update fixes a number of crashes and a troubling issue that caused different damage to be dealt to enemies between PC and console...
Ubisoft has responded to the ongoing backlash against the Star Wars Outlaws season pass, insisting Jabba the Hutt is part of the experience for all players. The publisher has come under fire for locking the Jabba’s Gambit mission behind Star Wars Outlaws' controversial season pass, which comes with the $109.99 gold edition and even more expensive $129.99 ultimate edition. "Play the exclusive Jabba's Gambit mission at launch," the Season Pass explainer reads. "Just as Kay is putting together a crew for the Canto Bight heist, she receives a job from Jabba the Hutt himself. Turns out that ND-5 owes Jabba a debt from years ago, and he has come to collect." The revelation sparked a backlash, with some players criticizing Ubisoft’s...
Let's begin with a shining pearl of wisdom—when Pokémon games go 40% off, secure a copy. Why? Because Nintendo AAAs seem to retain their value, and their prices don't often swoop this low. Also, the fact that Brilliant Diamond hasn't seen a similar chop suggests that this could well be an anomaly. Whatever the case, capitalise now. In retro news, I'm celebrating the 10th birthday of Trials Fusion, an impressive follow up to 2012's Trials Evolution. Like before, it was an arcadey, 2.5D take on the real-life sport of observed trials. My overriding memories of over-riding things in it are of an awesome track editor, epic 8-player multi, and the surprising inclusion of a quad bike. Oh, and also swearing bloody murder at my TV while trying...
Gaming saw a rise in team-based hero shooters from 2016 through 2018, with games like Overwatch, Battleborn, and LawBreakers as notable standouts. Lawbreakers is long gone, but an unofficial fan project aims to revive it, making it playable for the first time in six years. LawBreakers, developed by Gears of War lead designer Cliff Bleszinski's studio Boss Key Productions, was a 5v5 hero-based first-person shooter set in a futuristic anti-gravity landscape. Despite its promise, LawBreakers’ servers were shut down a year after its launch in 2018. At the time, Boss Key Productions' development team released a statement saying LawBreakers "failed to find enough of an audience to generate the funds necessary to keep it sustained in the...
Of Fallout’s narrative high notes, the peak is arguably Fallout: New Vegas, the much-loved installment set in post-apocalyptic Vegas and crafted by Obsidian Entertainment, members of which have shepherded the Fallout aesthetic all the way from the Wasteland games to the Outer Worlds. And although Obsidian were fated never to helm another mainline Fallout game, they did get to revisit the universe four times before being ripped away by cruel reality. It’s those four twists on the formula, those four adventures into the unknown, that we’re here to celebrate today. At the height of their storytelling powers, Obsidian gave us some of the best sci-fi in games with the four Fallout: New Vegas add-ons: Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World...
Bandai Namco's new trailer for Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama's desert wasteland manga, Sand Land, committed what could possibly be the most intellectual marketing song choice of 2024 by having it accompanied by the iconic 2001 dance hit, Darude's Sandstorm. While folks rightfully lost their minds at the trailer's apropos song choice, eagle-eyed Dragon Ball Z fans spotted a clue toward a Dragon Ball Z crossover. At the end of the Sand Land Sandstorm trailer, characters Beelzebub, Thief, and Sheriff Rao are sucked into an underwater current. When the trailer fades back in, Beelzebub appears, seemingly teleported from his arid desert to the wasteland of another word. Folks in the Sand Land Sandstorm YouTube trailer comment section...
If you’re watching the Fallout TV show as a fan of the video games, you might be wondering what XP level Lucy would end up with, based on all the events of the series. It’s a question that has popped up on social media ever since the Fallout TV show made its debut on Prime Video and fans worked their way through to the end of season one. Some are now having fun trying to offer an answer, applying the levelling system from Fallout 3 to what we see Lucy get up to during the show. We won’t spoil the show at this point, but it’s worth pointing out that it revolves around vault dweller Lucy MacLean venturing out into the wasteland for the first time in a scene reminiscent of the Bethesda's trademark ‘stepping out into an open world’ set...
Content Warning publisher Landfall Games has announced the viral Steam hit has sold an impressive one million copies even after its eye-catching free launch period. Landfall released Content Warning for free for the first 24 hours, signaling that it planned to charge for the game after the launch period. The Lethal Company-style co-op survival horror saw an impressive peak concurrent player number of 204,439 on Valve’s platform off the back of the promotion, but some questioned whether it would prove successful in the long run. Clearly, the launch strategy has paid off. In a statement published on X/Twitter, Landfall Games said Content Warning has now sold one million copies on top of the 6.6 million players who downloaded the game...
Ubisoft has already come under fire for single-player game Star Wars Outlaws having a Season Pass, but fans are expressing frustration once again upon noticing its highly anticipated Jabba the Hutt mission is locked behind it. As reported by Spanish outlet Area Jugones, Ubisoft's website outlining the contents of the Season Pass —an optional extra to the $70 / £70 standard game so far only available through its $109.99 gold edition and even more expensive $129.99 ultimate edition — reveals it includes access to the Jabba's Gambit mission at launch. "Play the exclusive Jabba's Gambit mission at launch," the Season Pass explainer reads. "Just as Kay is putting together a crew for the Canto Bight heist, she receives a job from Jabba the...
Almost all video games are painstakingly made by human hands, but Harold Halibut takes that idea so literally that you can almost spot the fingerprints of its creators on screen. This colourful, story-driven adventure features meticulously hand-sculpted characters that have been seated in detailed miniature sets, digitally scanned, and brilliantly brought to life in a 12-hour interactive stop-motion movie that we get to star in. Yet, like the oceanic alien world in which it takes place, Harold Halibut is deeper than it first appears. I came for the unconventional art style, but I stayed for the cast of quirky characters and a playful mystery to unravel that features plenty of warmth and humour beneath its striking stop-motion surface...
The boss of Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has ruled out a transmog system coming to the hit PC and PlayStation 5 co-op shooter, insisting: “it doesn’t make sense.” Ever since Helldivers 2’s explosive launch in February, some players have called for a transmog system for the game’s myriad armor pieces. Transmog, short for transmogrify, itself a portmanteau of "transfigure" and "modify", would theoretically let players change the appearance of armor pieces without affecting their stats. Helldivers 2 armor does feature gameplay affecting stats, and some are deemed more “meta” than others. One of the most popular armor pieces gives players a 50% chance not to die when taking lethal damage, for example. Responding to a user on...
The former boss of Blizzard Entertainment has suggested a post-purchase tip feature that would let players give $10 or $20 extra to the developers of special games. Former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra tweeted that he’s often felt that upon completion of a particularly enjoyable single-player game, he’d like to give more money to the developers “because it was worth more than my initial $70 and they didn't try to nickel and dime me every second.” Games Ybarra mentioned that had sparked such a feeling include Guerrilla’s Horizon Zero Dawn, Sony Santa Monica’s God of War, Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2, Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3, and FromSoftware’s Elden Ring. “I know $70 is already a lot, but it's an option at the end of the game I...
Elden Ring expansion Shadow of the Erdtree is just months away but dataminers are still discovering secrets within the base game, this time in unused alternate underground maps likely related to a scrapped "cataclysm" system. YouTuber Sekiro Dubi, who recovered an unused opening for the game earlier in 2024, uploaded a video showcasing the unused maps and how they were likely related to the cataclysm system, which would see Elden Ring's world of The Land Between changed drastically during gameplay. While the video shows a somewhat put together overworld map available, these unused areas are almost completley void of assets, instead only having the base shape of the world formed in bright blue and green polygons. Sekiro Dubi theorised...
The success of Prime Video’s Fallout TV show has spilled over into the video games upon which it is based, boosting player numbers in even decades old titles. Steam data tracker SteamDB reported that Bethesda's Fallout games have collectively more than doubled their concurrent players on Steam with the release of the Fallout TV series. That’s for Fallout 4, released in November 2015, Fallout New Vegas, released in October 2010, and Fallout 76, released in April 2020. The boost is significant enough to propel Fallout 76 to a new peak concurrent players Steam record of 39,455 — four years after it came out. Even the older, non-Bethesda developed Fallout games are enjoying a resurgence, albiet more modest. Fallout 2 has a new Steam...
The creators of the long-awaited Fallout London mod have delayed it indefinitely out of fear that the Fallout 4 next-gen update will break it. Last week, Bethesda announced an April 25 release date for the long-awaited next-gen update for Fallout 4, upon which the ambitious, DLC-sized Fallout London is based. That’s just two days after Fallout London’s already announced April 23 release date. As modders have experienced in the past, Bethesda game updates have a tendency to break existing mods, and it’s exactly that fear that sparked an announcement from a clearly exacerbated Fallout London mod team. "We've just been tweaking and testing non-stop in order to get things as stable as we can for you all in time for that release," said...
Welcome to the first day of the holidays. Bored yet? I am, which is why I've scoured the stores for the best deals on the hottest games. The Fallout series is still the thing to replay, plus Hogwarts Legacy has gone halfy Potter on PS and PC. Awful wordplay aside, save often and do stay safe during these holidays. In retro news, I'm celebrating the 13th birthday of Patapon 3, a PSP great and the highest point of an all-time franchise. Best described as a musical RPG where four-beat patterns and rhythmic button taps produce heroism, Patapon 3's catchy-arse songs still live rent free in my head over half a decade later. This Day in Gaming Aussie birthdays for notable games. - R.C. Pro-Am (NES) 1988. - Viewtiful Joe 2 (GC,Ps2) 2005...
The weekend is officially here, and we've got loads of new deals you do not want to miss! Some of the hottest 2024 releases are already discounted, with savings of up to $30 in some instances. The best deals for Saturday, April 13, include Unicorn Overlord, Persona 3 Reload, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, God of War Ragnarok, and more. God of War Ragnarok for $39.99 God of War Ragnarok is still one of the best PS5 games you can pick up. This action game acts as the sequel to 2018's God of War, following Kratos and Atreus as Fimbulwinter looms. This price matches the previous low we've seen Ragnarok at, so you know you're getting a great deal. If you've yet to play this game, this is a great time to...
By now, you've probably heard the buzz surrounding Amazon's live-action Fallout show. And as it turns out, it is a faithful and fun adaptation of the hilariously grotesque post-apocalyptic role-playing game series. The live-action show offers a glimpse of the wild world of Fallout and all the bizarre hijinks just waiting to be uncovered, and it's likely got you wanting for some games to try out that have a similar conceit. But if you've already taken the plunge into the Fallout series or already have them on your list of games to check out, we've got some other games to recommend that scratch the same itch as the games from Bethesda Game Studios. Along with similar games centering around choice and agency, our list also includes some...