Bad news reminder of the day: the servers for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain will be shutting down at the end of May 2022. The good news: it's now going for 5 clams. At that price, you can still experience this amazing Kojima masterpiece as it was originally intended. Failing that, I'd heartily recommend you all buy Alien: Isolation at the current price. It's still one of the most pant-soiling games ever made.
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Gaming News
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On this week's episode of IGN's PlayStation show, Podcast Beyond!, host Jonathon Dornbush is joined by Jada Griffin and Mark Medina to dig into the various bits of PlayStation news this week, including new updates for PS5, PlayStation Plus, and PlayStation's PC and preservation plans.
After a brief Beyond Movies and TV podcast interlude about Everything Everywhere All at Once (no spoilers but you can skip ahead with timecodes below!), the gang dives into all the new reports surrounding PS Plus' new game trials. We break down what the deal is with these new game trials, how they affect PS Plus' offerings, what exactly they are as compared to traditional demos, and much more. We break down what it might mean for players, how it could...
Get ready to hear from a lot of confused and angry cheaters.
Activision’s Team RICOCHET has unveiled several new ways they’re working against cheaters in a new blog post, including a rollout for the PC kernel-level anti-cheat driver for Call of Duty: Vanguard. The update will release across both Vanguard and Call of Duty: Warzone in an effort to curb players who cheat in the popular first-person shooter.
In the past, they have enacted a number of in-game mitigation techniques to help identify cheaters. Not only do these help identify their behaviors by collecting their data but it also employs ways that impede their ability to properly play the game. Today, the newest technique called cloaking has been unveiled, and it heavily...
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe releases today, and while it presents itself largely as a remaster and console port with some new content added in as well, returning players may be surprised to find a lot more than that last point lets on.
First, a great big SPOILER WARNING!
This article is about to dive into the details of exactly what that means. You can read my review for a less spoiler-y look at what Ultra Deluxe offers, but turn back now if you don’t want to know the scope of its new content and how it is presented to you.
Still here? Okay, let’s get into it.
Ultra Deluxe opens by asking if you’ve played the original already, the entirety of which is still available within this game. However, there’s also pretty much enough...
Disney fans, buckle up. Today, Gameloft has unveiled an upcoming new Disney and Pixar gaming project, a life-sim adventure game called Disney Dreamlight Valley. It's coming to PC and consoles in 2023.
Disney Dreamlight Valley takes place in the titular Dreamlight Valley, where a bevvy of Disney and Pixar characters have lost their memories after a mysterious event called The Forgetting that left their village full of strange plants called Night Thorns. Players will customize their own character, build friendships with the townspeople, and help them recover their lost memories.
Alongside interacting with the Disney villagers, players will also get to customize their own homes and towns in a number of Disney-themed locales, and can...
Plenty has already been said about why 2013’s The Stanley Parable is so phenomenal – so much, in fact, that one section of 2022’s The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is a literal shrine to all of the praise and accolades that have been deservedly heaped upon it. To prattle on further about how it cleverly messes with your own video game expectations or how it dissects the choices games often give us would only belabor long-since made points (not to mention risk my own words showing up in the inevitable 2031 re-rerelease). But then again, there I go doing exactly that, because despite those points having already been well made both about and by The Stanley Parable, they still ring as true as ever – and Ultra Deluxe’s new content proves it...
For Disney fans who’ve always wondered what it would be like to live in a Disney or Pixar movie, Disney Dreamlight Valley might be the closest real-life version of that experience. Dreamlight Valley is a free-to-play game that lets you play as yourself and live in a fully customizable Disney…uh, World! The main story campaign will allow you to bring in characters from Disney and Pixar movies and have them live in your town, which will enhance the life-simulation aspect of the game.
Disney Dreamlight Valley’s Game Manager Manea Castet gave me a tour of the gameplay as well as the customization menus the game has to offer. What I witnessed was a very personal life-simulator/adventure hybrid game magically unfold before my very eyes...
Final Fantasy XIV's producer has asked players to stop trolling each other in the game's new Crystalline Conflict PvP mode, and said some could even be suspended or banned for it.
Naoki Yoshida said in a blog post that he and the team are receiving "an unprecedented number of reports" of uncooperative, abusive, and lethargic behaviour from players in PvP. Yoshida added that, "Participants must bring their best to the fight."
Players have been spamming chat options such as "Nice job!", repeatedly emoting or setting off fireworks on top of a downed enemy, and using the Tell command to directly insult opponents, but these are all prohibited as per Final Fantasy XIV's rules. Yoshida said some players have even found their opponents on...
The original two Elder Scrolls games are available on Steam for the first time ever – and they're free.
1994's The Elder Scrolls: Arena and 1996's The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall have arrived on Steam ahead of Bethesda's own games launcher being retired next month.
As reported by Kotaku, five games have been moved to Steam so far including these two, plus Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (which is also available for free) and two Elder Scrolls spin-offs from the late 90s: An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire and The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard.
The latter two are a little more expensive at $6 each, but fans probably needn't panic in trying to grab the freebies before the price goes up - Arena has been free since 2004 and...
Want free games? Whether you play on PlayStation, Xbox, or PC, you can pretty much always find free games to download. While the free PC games tend to be fully, actually free, the free PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch games tend to require a subscription service. Such is life.
Even so, it can be hard to keep track of what free games are available on your platform of choice at any given time. So we're making it easy on you. Below, you'll find a running list of all the free games available at all the reputable marketplaces. All you have to do is check back often to make sure you get the free games you so richly deserve.
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Free PC games
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Free PC Games...
Elden Ring is unofficially getting VR support on PC this week, thanks to a work-in-progress fan mod.
Luke Ross, who's previously added virtual reality to Grand Theft Auto V and Cyberpunk 2077, said in a Patreon post (spotted by Road to VR) that a playable version of Elden Ring in VR would be available this week.
The project "will likely be a work-in-progress for quite some time", Ross said, but a YouTube video of the first two minutes of the game shows a fairly put-together experience as Ross walks through the opening Chapel of Anticipation area. Suffice it to say, the Grafted Scion boss in the area is going to be even more gross from this perspective.
With a VR headset on, Ross is able to walk around in first person, look up at...
Prior to the infamous invasion of Normandy Beach on June 6, 1944, covert ops agents prepared the French theater of war behind enemy lines, and this is how Sniper Elite 5 sets the backdrop for one Sniper Elite veteran Karl Fairburne’s return to the PC and modern consoles late next month. Sniper Elite 5 reverts to – and improves upon – the series’ roots by placing you back into the third-person perspective and offering the expansive range of stealth options that Sniper Elite fans have come to know and love since the series started way back in 2005. However, it now has a few extra twists, including deeper weapon customization and expansive map layouts that offer plenty of ways to play, improving on (rather than revolutionizing) what fans...
A new update for Elden Ring has fixed a number of bugs introduced in the recent patch 1.04, including a glitch that caused Malenia to regain health for no reason during fights with summoned players.
As announced by Bandai Namco, Update 1.04.1 has "fixed a bug with Malenia, Blade of Miquella in which her HP was not healed correctly in the online multiplayer environment". This should mean that in fights where you have summoned co-operative player help, Malenia won't be able to regain her health unless her blows actually connect with a player. That's good news for anyone trying to overcome the game's hardest boss with friends.
There's good news for spell casters, too; the Cerulean Hidden Tear has been fixed. Update 1.04 accidentally...
Dying Light 2's latest patch, 1.03 includes dozens of changes – including a New Game Plus mode that developer Techland said will "significantly alter" gameplay.
Upon completing Dying Light 2's story (though not all 500+ hours of content) players can restart the game and experience it again with extra changes. Though Techland remained somewhat vague in its notes, the second playthrough will acknowledge that it's not the player's first time by modifying certain content and adding new and exclusive things to do.
The new content, completely unavailable in the first playthrough of Dying Light 2, includes: 30 new inhibitors, new platinum objectives for parkour challenges, updated distribution of the enemies (for example Volatiles and...
As the headline states, SEGA has plans to Robot-nix four classic Sonic games on various platforms. Lace up your red shoes and grab 'em before they're gone (in standalone form, at least). Today is also a great day to spinball into the best versions of Borderlands 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2. Stone cold must-owns, the both of them.
Notable Sales for Nintendo Switch
Purchase Cheaply for PC
Exciting Offers for XO/XS
Product Savings for PS4/PS5
Adam’s our Aussie deals wrangler. You can watch him game on YouTube.
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The Xbox has its best March since the Xbox 360 era, and IGN's Xbox crew discusses the ins and outs of the numbers. Plus: Gearbox is bringing back Tales from the Borderlands itself – and Ryan has a bone to pick with them – 343 Industries details Halo Infinite's 2022 roadmap, and more!
Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 download of this week's episode. For more awesome content, check out our latest IGN Unfiltered interview, where Joseph Staten – one of Halo's original creators and now the head of creative on Halo Infinite – discusses his fascinating career:
Oh, and you can be featured on Unlocked by tweeting us a video Loot Box question! Tweet your question and tag Ryan at...
The long-in-development Overwatch 2 finally went live with a PvP beta this afternoon. Soon after launch, the first Overwatch broke its previous record of total Twitch viewership in mere hours.
In honor of the sequel beta, several high-profile twitch streamers such as Lirik, Myth, and most notably, xQc streamed the first Overwatch. The game peaked at around 450,000 views today, and xQc's amassed over 150,000 views of Overwatch on his own.
Overwatch fans have been dying to see if they were selected for the Overwatch 2 PVP beta. The only way of accessing a beta key is to watch partnered streamers for a certain length of time while having their Blizzard battle.net account linked on Twitch. Lucky users can pick up a PC beta key only...
Players turned off by Sifu's unrelenting difficulty can give the game another go thanks to an easier difficulty mode coming next week. Sloclap, developer of the martial arts beat-em-up, has revealed the roadmap for Sifu for the remainder of 2022.
The first major update for the game, coming next Tuesday, May 3, includes advanced training, outfit selection, and most importantly of all, difficulty options. The three options are Student, Disciple, and Master, with Student presumably offering an easier road for players want to experience the world, combat, and story without the brutal learning curve. On the flipside, players looking to challenge themselves can look forward to Master difficulty.
The Spring update is just the first of four...
The Coalition announced that it will be removing the Map Builder from Gears 5 so that the team can focus on future projects. However, the studio says it will also unlock the Achievements related to the mode for players so that they don't become unobtainable.
The Map Builder is used to create custom Escape Hives for Gears 5's Escape Mode, which will still be available. For Achievement hunters, the two Achievements related to the Map Builder are "I Made It By Myself" and "Homegrown Hive."
These two Achievements are relatively easy to unlock. The former requires players to simply create and publish an Escape Hive map, and the latter just requires players to complete a featured community build Escape Hive.
Those who've already unlocked...
Sega is delisting individual versions of the included classic Sonic games from digital storefronts in anticipation of Sonic Origins.
Sega announced in a press release that Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic CD will not be available as standalone titles as they will be a part of Sonic Origins which compiles the Blue Blur's earliest adventures in one collection.
The press release says Sega plans to remove the digital versions of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic CD from digital storefronts on May 20. There are a couple of exceptions, as Sonic 1 and 2 will still be available on the Nintendo Switch eShop through the Sega Ages collection, and Sonic 2 will remain on the Sega Genesis Nintendo...
Grand Theft Auto V might be nearly 10 years old, but Rockstar Games is still working on the game. Today, the publisher introduced long-awaited improvements for the next-gen version of Grand Theft Auto V via Update 1.56.
Update 1.56, which quietly released for PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, hosts a variety of improvements and bug fixes detailed on Rockstar’s website. While most of these tweaks simply fix minor glitches, the update also includes some highly-requested quality of life improvements, including:
Even shorter load times
Music now continually plays while in an Xbox Live party
Tweaked adaptive trigger feedback on PS5
Perhaps the most exciting addition for players, however, is the newly added option to turn motion...
I’ll be blunt: if I were to rank prominent space 4X games of the past decade, Galactic Civilizations IV would come in near the bottom of the list, even behind Galactic Civilizations III. It’s not a disaster – like the previous three Galactic Civilizations games, this is a decent, functional 4X space game – but its predecessors were good for at least a round or two before they wore thin due to the lack of an “X factor” to really keep me hooked. None of them stacked up to Endless Space 2, Stellaris, or even 1996’s Master of Orion 2, which each deliver more substantial variety, flair, polish and creative identity than any GalCiv game managed for me.
I had hoped that GalCiv’s fourth iteration would finally find and deliver the spark that...
The Quarry has, to be precise, 186 different ending variations. The ending you get depends on the choices you make with nine different playable characters; some of your camp counselors will be forever changed by their experiences at Hackett’s Quarry, while others may not even make it to see the new dawn. A story that shifts and changes depending on your choices is nothing new for developer Supermassive Games, but creating The Quarry was a “mathematical nightmare” that resulted in a script longer than a thousand pages.
As part of IGN First, we spoke to The Quarry’s director, Will Byles, about the challenges involved in creating a choice-driven horror game.
“Writing a branching narrative is a really interesting exercise,” Byles tells...
Call of the Sea developer Out of the Blue has revealed American Arcadia, a '70s retro-futurist game that promises to mix 2.5D platforming and first-person puzzling.
The game has a Truman Show-like concept, in which a whole metropolis is unknowingly part of a 24/7 TV show – and those who fall out of favour with the viewing audience are killed off. The story follows Trevor Hills, whose uninteresting life is interrupted by a mysterious voice seemingly helping him escape backstage.
Players will take the role of two characters – presumably Trevor and his guiding voice – one of whom will play in a chase-filled 2.5D platformer, and the other in a first-person puzzler featuring hacking, exploration, and stealth.
The voice cast is made up...
The BBC Proms, an annual series of classical music concerts, will include video game music for the first time.
Music from Kingdom Hearts, Shadow of the Colossus, Battlefield 2042, and Dear Esther will feature in the concert, revealed by the BBC and spotted by Eurogamer.
The gaming Prom, From 8-Bit to Infinity, takes place on August 1 in London's Royal Albert Hall - which will be decorated to represent the history of gaming - and is being performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Robert Ames - who's previously conducted a sci-fi themed Prom with music from Interstellar, Alien: Covenant, and more - will conduct the event, with the longest performance of 14 mins coming from Battlefield 2042's "suite" composed by Hildur Guðnadóttir...
Starfield’s composer has explained how Starfield’s music reflects what you do in the game, with a flowing signature theme that's inspired by heading out into the stars and then returning home.
Talking as part of the latest Into The Starfield developer diary, composer Inon Zur said “ The way I looked at Starfield is what I call ‘The Sanctified Triplet’. Which is, everything is streaming, right? Everything is changing and everything is returning back.”
Zur used the signature theme of Stafield, heard in the trailer and the dev diary, as an example. “So basically it presents itself, it develops, it goes back. Some sort of circular journey. There's always this drive to go back home. And that’s what feels so complete for us, right? We...
Telltale's The Walking Dead was originally pitched as a Left 4 Dead spin-off game, before the team took the idea to Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman.
In a documentary celebrating the game's tenth anniversary, as spotted by Eurogamer, the game's original developers revealed they were at first in talks with Valve about a Left 4 Dead narrative-led spin-off.
A simple prototype was made but the plans fell through, and only later did Telltale approach The Walking Dead's creator Robert Kirkman about setting a game in his universe.
"The very first Walking Dead prototype, which actually was for a different zombie thing that ended up turning into the Walking Dead, the first conversation was actually with Valve," said season design and...
Valve has released a hefty update for the Steam Deck that adds a lock screen, window switching, and more.
The changes were revealed in the latest patch notes, but Valve also released a deep-dive into the more significant features, first showing off the new lock screen (below).
The optional feature lets users set a PIN when the Steam Deck wakes or boots up, or when logging in or switching to Desktop mode.
Window switching can now be used on any software that already supports the feature and essentially brings up a handy quick select menu that lets users move swiftly between their games and apps.
Valve also updated the achievements page to make it load faster and easier to navigate, and added the option to compare your achievements...
The latest addition to the Vampire Survivors roster is a dog that farts flowers, part of an update that also adds a new challenge map called The Bone Zone.
The game's most recent patch notes revealed the addition of O'Sole Meeo the dog, whose weapon of choice is an array of really quite beautiful flowers that come in all shapes and sizes.
You can check out O'Sole Meeo in glorious action in the tweet below:
The patch also adds a hard Challenge Stage called The Bone Zone – in which hundreds of skulls will come after you – a new weapon, one more rank for the Reroll and Skip power ups, two Arcanas, and a handful of minor tweaks and bug fixes.
Developer Poncle announced in March that it would be adding five more levels, nine more...
Sometimes you gotta cut the crap and write a really fast intro. Why? Because the awesome deals you're trying to list keep selling out. Today is one of those days, my friends. Good hunting and get amongst the bargains!
Notable Sales for Nintendo Switch
Purchase Cheaply for PC
Exciting Offers for XO/XS
Product Savings for PS4/PS5
Adam’s our Aussie deals wrangler. You can watch him game on YouTube.
Continue reading...