Martin published a new blog post saying the reviews for Elden Ring - which have made it one of the best reviewed games in modern history - were "music to the ears".
"The wait is over," the legendary author wrote. "Years in the making, ELDEN RING was released last week, and has been taking the gaming world by storm.
But don’t listen to me. From Software brought me on to do their worldbuilding, so I can hardly pretend to be objective."
Martin went onto point to some examples of almost universally good reviews, and wrote, "And… well, there’s more. Lots more."
Miyazaki previously commented that Martin, who was brought on years ago to develop the world and history of Elden Ring, may be shocked by what became of his characters. But...
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
Gaming News
Everyone can post news here.
The news posted here could be anything from gaming to world news.
This section will be monitored fairly heavily.
Filters
Show only:
Loading…
New Xbox Game Pass additions for the first half of March have been announced by Xbox, and the headline game this month is Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Developed by Square Enix, Guardians of the Galaxy came out quite recently during the tail-end of 2021, and will be available for cloud, console, and PC Game Pass from March 10.
If you missed out on the game during the holiday rush, this is a great time to jump in and give it a go. Other games hitting the service this month include Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, Kentucky Route Zero, and much more. See below for even more details.
Marvel's Guardian's of the Galaxy is on Xbox Game Pass This Month
Guardian's of the Galaxy earned some decent reviews during its launch period...
Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy has gotten its first patch in nearly three months, which seeks to improve the three games' overall stability and visuals.
The trilogy launched back in November 2021 with myriad performance issues but developer Rockstar has been quiet on it since December 3, when it released its previous 1.03 update.
The latest 1.04 patch, now available on all platforms and affecting all three GTA games in the collection, will also fix an issue where players couldn't retry a mission from the latest checkpoint, and fixes certain collision issues.
Rockstar appears to have made good use of the three month wait as the patch notes feature more than 120 separate, detailed updates to GTA: The Trilogy.
In Grand Theft Auto III...
Some of the best gaming experiences you can have are achieved via co-op. Today is all about grabbing a super cheap copy of the best buddy games available (and maybe another one to enable online play). My personal pick: Broforce. Simple, 2D ultra-violence for the whole family!
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...
Bigger isn’t always better. In the case of Far: Changing Tides, a sequel to 2018’s lovely and underappreciated Far: Lone Sails, bigger certainly means more to do and see, but it doesn’t necessarily mean those things are any more interesting. It’s still an absolutely gorgeous and at times almost meditative roadtrip across a world full of stunning vistas and clever puzzles – but developer Okomotive’s efforts to make it a more mechanically varied journey, while successful, also inadvertently tip the balance of the original’s formula from peaceful to tedious at times.
Far: Changing Tides puts you in control of an almost comically small person, at least compared to the large sailing vessel they are piloting all on their own. Like its...
When Elden Ring was announced the developers announced it was a creative collaboration between Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki and Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin.
While Elden Ring is much closer to previous From Software RPGs than Martin's Game of Thrones, there is still a nice easter egg reference to Martin's famous series-turned-HBO mega-hit.
Spoilers for Elden Ring boss and weapon below.
George R.R. Martin wrote the lore for Elden Ring which served as the foundation for the game's story. While Elden Ring has no ties to Martin’s other works, the team at From Software did throw in a nice reference to Martin’s most famous work in the form of a weapon called the Grafted Blade Greatsword.
This Greatsword is several...
MiHoYo is best-known as the studio behind the absurdly successful Genshin Impact, the free-to-play open world RPG that generates billions of dollars each year. But MiHoYo also has another goal: Science.
As reported by Pandaily, MiHoYo is a major investor in Energy Singularity, a startup dedicated to exploring commercialized fusion technology. Founded by a body of experts from the world's top universities, the company was able to raise $63 million in its first round of funding. Other investors include NIO Capital, Sequoia China’s Seed Fund, and BlueRun Ventures.
Energy Singularity is working on a tokamak reactor — a device that uses powerful magnets to confine plasma particles in order to achieve fusion. Tokamak reactors have existed...
Sid Meier, the creator of the Civilization franchise, says that video game companies could lose their audiences if they continue to heavily focus on different kinds of monetization tactics such as microtransactions and NFTs.
In an interview with BBC, Meier explained, "People can assume that a game is going to be fun and what it needs for success are more cinematics or monetization or whatever - but if the core just is not there with good gameplay, then it won't work." The point is that games need to be fun, first and foremost. Gameplay is critical in order to keep players happy and engaged with the product.
Over the years, games have shifted business models and now some rely on microtransactions as well as in-app purchases...
Shadow Warrior 3 doesn’t beat around the bush. In an era where games feel like they keep trying to be bigger, this one is happy not to draw itself out with lengthy dialogue or exposition-filled cutscenes. Instead, it throws you into the action right away and rarely lets a moment of ease set in from there. And while that focus on fun is refreshing, Shadow Warrior 3 is almost completely unremarkable in its execution, being about as straightforward as an FPS can get. It might not offer many new ideas, and its protagonist may be unbearable to listen to, but sometimes solid movement and satisfying weapons is all you really need.
Picking up a good while after Shadow Warrior 2, a massive dragon is wreaking havoc across Earth and it’s up to...
With Elden Ring finally out in the wild, eager players are undoubtedly combing every inch of FromSoftware's new fantasy world to find the influences of writer George R. R. Martin. Martin, the author of the Game of Thrones series, was famously brought onto Elden Ring to write the backstory for the in-game universe.
But in a new interview with New Yorker, game director Hidetaka Miyazaki revealed that he placed a few key restrictions on what Martin could do.
According to Miyazaki, Martin primarily wrote snippets of text about the world's history, its characters, and mythology, including the destruction of the Elden Ring and the subsequent scattering of shards. While this was something we learned previously, Miyazaki further clarified...
Crate Entertainment, the developers behind 2016's excellent action-RPG Grim Dawn, has announced its next project: the city-builder Farthest Frontier. It'll be coming to PC, though no release date or window has been revealed yet. Get your first look in the announcement trailer above.
You'll hunt, harvest, fish, and farm as you craft items and strategize on the best ways to protect your village dwellers (and later town-goers and city residents as you build up your settlement) from both Mother Nature as well as external threats from other humans. A pacifist mode will be available for those who want to build their town in peace.
Farthest Frontier also promises the "most detailed farming system ever," described as such: "Strategically...
We love Batman because he’s a multifaceted superhero. He’s a kung-fu master with a cool costume and an arsenal of fancy toys. He’s a billionaire playboy. He’s arguably the world’s greatest detective. And most of all, he’s an orphan with a mountain of trauma who takes it out on the criminals of Gotham night after night.
Plenty of Batman comics, movies and TV shows have explored the many sides of the Caped Crusader, but the video game realm has been a very different story. In fact, it’s only recently that the Batman games have really hit on the ideal Batman formula. Let’s look back at Batman’s long, if not always glamorous, history in games and why it took so long for developers to truly put us in the Dark Knight’s shoes.
The Early...
Valve is taking Elden Ring performance issues into its own hands by working on an update to optimise the game for Steam Deck. Users on PC have reported numerous frame rate issues for which publisher Bandai Namco apologized, but Valve coder Pierre-Loup Griffais posted on Twitter (below) that his team is currently working on a fix that should benefit the game on Steam Deck.
Heavy stuttering and frame rate issues will be fixed next week, though a test version of the update is available now.
IGN's own test of Elden Ring on Steam Deck showed that, in offline mode, it ran at around 45 frames per second and occasionally dipped below 30. The game is verified to work well on Steam Deck, but that applies to how it interacts with the hardware...
FromSoftware has announced that online maintenance for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC versions of Elden Ring will be carried out over the next couple of days.
As revealed on the Elden Ring Twitter account, maintenance will be carried out across today and tomorrow, depending on your time zone. The timings will vary by platform.
For those on PlayStation consoles, severs will be down for maintenance between 6pm and 7pm PT today, February 28. For most other territories this means severs will be down on March 1, between the hours of 2am-3am in the UK, 3am-4am in CET zones, and 1pm-2pm in Australia AEDT.
Over on Xbox, the maintenance period will begin today at 7pm PST and last for one hour. Other territories will experience the maintenance...
A few years ago, a London-based teacher of deaf and hard-of-hearing children, Cameron Akitt was brought to Playground Games to participate in a workshop for the in-development Forza Horizon 5. Over two days, he spoke to numerous designers within Playground about his experience playing games with subtitling and captioning in video games.
At one point during the workshops, he gave a piece of feedback that he never expected to see implemented. He suggested that Playground could take a step beyond subtitles and captions, and include American Sign Language and British Sign Language as supported languages within their game.
“Subtitles and captions are okay,” Akitt says, speaking to IGN. “But if you are a sign language-first language user...
Valve boss Gabe Newell is apparently hand delivering Steam Decks around the Seattle area, where the developer is based.
Reddit users who preordered the tech have claimed that Newell appeared at their door with a signed Steam Deck, and was even giving them away for free. User bitfiddler0 posted a photo of the case with Newell's signature and the Steam Deck itself, adding that it was free and the highest specs version.
A camera crew was also allegedly accompanying Newell, meaning the deliveries could be part of a promotional stunt for the Steam Deck's launch.
In a separate post, user SeattleRainPidgeons said he saw Newell delivering a Steam Deck to his neighbour, and when he and his flatmates shouted over to Gabe, he handed them one...
Elden Ring has already dominated the gaming sphere since it launched on February 25 and, at least on Steam, it's only growing in popularity.
Per SteamDB data, Elden Ring has hit record peak concurrent users every day since it was released. More than 764,000 played Elden Ring on February 25, followed by more than 861,000 the next day, and more than 891,000 the day after.
Elden Ring's peak concurrent users is 891,638, placing it seventh in the all-time list behind only New World, Cyberpunk 2077, Dota 2, Counter-Strike: GO, Lost Ark, and PUBG: Battlegrounds in first.
But it's fast approaching sixth place. Elden Ring is currently just 21,996 peak concurrent users behind New World, meaning if the trend continues and even more people...
I can't put a finger on why Borderlands 3 never clicked with me, but outside of its excellent expansions, I never felt enamored with its world. It wasn't until my chance to play a few hours of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands I think I unraveled my feelings towards the last numbered entry in the series: the stakes felt too high and were often at odds with the humor Borderlands is known for. Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, on the other hand, is pure fantasy, in more ways than one.
Its story is completely self-contained, and so while I was playing through the quests offered during the four-hour preview, I never got the dissonance I felt from Borderlands 3. Instead I felt exactly how I want to feel when I'm playing Borderlands: invested in the story so...
Robert Pattinson Shares His Love for Final Fantasy 7 and the Cloud, Aerith, and Tifa 'Love Triangle'
The Batman's Robert Pattinson has shared his love for Final Fantasy 7 and the Cloud, Aerith, and Tifa "love triangle" that caused him a lot of (Cloud) strife growing up.
Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz were being interviewed by Clique and Pattinson began excitedly talking about Final Fantasy 7, specifically the difficult choice of having to choose to fall in love with Aerith or Tifa.
"I was in love with Aeris & Tifa," Pattinson revealed. "It’s the two options of girls… It’s a love triangle where Aeris, or Aerith depending on what version of the game you have… its sometimes mistranslated. She’s really kind girl that has superpowers to heal everyone and make the world a better place…"
"Poor women, we have to heal everyone," Kravitz...
Welcome to the start of another week of exceptional deals and a dash of existential dread! It's a great time for a bit of escapism, my friends. I heartily recommend the long-form, fantasy holidays that are Elden Ring or The Witcher 3 GOTY. That deal on the post-apoc Far Cry New Dawn...uh, maybe less so.
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...
Marvel and Fortnite are once again teaming up for a new comic mini-series that will launch in June 2022 and star Spider-Man, Wolverine, Iron Man, and Shuri.
As detailed on Marvel.com, Fortnite X Marvel: Zero War follows 2020's Fortnite X Marvel - Nexus War: Thor and has our heroes on the hunt for a crystallized fragment of the Zero Point that was sent to the Marvel Universe. Spider-Man and Wolverine will team up with Shuri and "several fan-favorites from Fortnite" to find this Zero Shard.
Spider-Geddon's Christos Gage will be writing the story and he is teaming up with Epic Games' CCO Donald Mustard and artist Sergio Davila (Captain Marvel) to bring this series to life that will have "enormous ramifications for both universes."...
While Valve president Gabe Newell has shared that he doesn't think the company needs its own version of Xbox Game Pass right now, he said that he'd be "more than happy to work with [Microsoft] to get that on Steam."
Speaking to PC Gamer, Newell discussed that despite him understanding the popularity of such services like Xbox Game Pass, he just doesn't see Valve committing resources to do a similar version any time soon.
"I don't think it's something that we think we need to do ourselves, building a subscription service at this time," Newell said. "But for their customers it's clearly a popular option, and we'd be more than happy to work with them to get that on Steam."
These comments align with Newell's previous comments that...
This review in progress of Destiny 2’s The Witch Queen expansion is based on ~35 hours of playing, which includes completing the main story and most of the side content. However, the new raid and any endgame content that may follow doesn’t debut until March 5, after which we will release a final, updated review and score.
The reason I’ve stuck with Destiny for more than seven years, through both its highest highs and lowest lows, has everything to do with its incredibly strong foundation. Even when things like a poorly told story or a lack of content have held it back, firing magical space weapons and throwing flaming hammers at aliens just feels good! And while the past few expansions were adequate but flawed iterations that kept my...
Valve has already taken a stance on NFTs and cryptocurrency being allowed on Steam, blocking games that feature blockchain technology. President and co-founder Gabe Newell has now explained the reasoning behind the decision, saying that the biggest issues were the volatility of cryptocurrency and the bad actors behind NFTs.
In an interview with Rock Paper Shotgun, Newell noted that it's important to separate NFT technology from nefarious users. The concepts of digital ownership and shared universes are fine by themselves, he said, but he thinks that the bad actors in the NFT community outweigh any of the potential positives.
"The people in the space, though, tend to be involved in a lot of criminal activity and a lot of sketchy...
Close to six years after its original release, Pokémon Go continues to be one of the most popular mobile games in the world. Nevertheless, its promised AR revolution hasn't quite materialized, and Valve co-founder Gabe Newell is among those disappointed.
Speaking with Rock Paper Shotgun on the occasion of the Steam Deck's release, Newell said he thinks Pokémon Go should have had "more implications" for mobile gaming. Instead, follow-ups like Harry Potter Wizard's Unite have mostly fizzled out.
By contrast, Newell hopes that Valve can follow up on the release of the Steam Deck by building more mobile experience that make sense for the platform.
"I think Pokémon Go really should have had more more implications for people thinking...
We already knew that Valve planned to make an official dock for the Steam Deck. Until today, we never had a good look at what the product actually looks like. You can check out one of the two new images of the dock below.
This is the first time we are seeing full renders of the Steam Deck's official dock. Though imagery has appeared prior to today, it never really painted a clear picture of what we could expect. As Valve confirmed previously, the Steam Deck Dock features a USB-C cable used to connect to the Steam Deck's USB-C port on the top of the handheld. The dock also includes one HDMI 2.0 port, one Display Port 1.4, one Ethernet port, one power in port, and three USB-A ports (one USB 3.1 and two USB 2.0).
In our first...
Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons is the latest expansion headed to the MMORPG and releases on February 28, 2022. Not only will this new story take players back to the beloved land of Cantha after two centuries of in-game time, but it will also add the first multiplayer mount in the siege turtle, new elite specializations, personal skiffs, fishing, and so much more.
To get you ready for the return trip to Cantha, we’ve highlighted five of the best new features coming to Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons below. Additionally, we’ll also reveal a sweepstakes that will give fans the chance to name an in-game NPC and take a trip to ArenaNet to meet some of the team behind the game.
Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons’ Story Takes Players Back to the...
Welcome back to IGN Game Scoop!, the ONLY video game podcast! This week your Omega Cops -- Daemon Hatfield, Sam Claiborn, Justin Davis, and Michael Swaim -- are discussing Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, next-gen Cyberpunk 2077, and more. And, of course, they play Video Game 20 Questions.
Watch the video above or hit the link below to your favorite podcast service.
Listen on:
Apple Podcasts
YouTube
Spotify
Stitcher
Find previous episodes here!
Continue reading...
Surprise! Valve woke up this morning and decided to announce a brand new game that isn't Half-Life 3. Instead, it's called Aperture Desk Job, a free playable short made especially for Steam Deck.
Aperture Desk Job is, per Valve, a reimagining of the "walking simulator" genre in favor of "the lightning-spanked, endorphin-gorged world of sitting still behind things." you play as an entry-level employee of Aperture Science (the deeply fraught organization at the center of Half-Life and Portal) whose job it is to inspect products. It's not clear what all that exactly entails in the game itself, but the trailer implies some explosions.
The game is specifically made to show off the Steam Deck, which officially launched today, though it's...
The elusive shambling grifter and part-time gameshow host, Xûr, is now live in Destiny 2 for the weekend until next week's reset. If you're looking to get your some shiny new Exotic armor or weapons for your Guardian, look no further.
Each week, Xûr has a random assortment of Exotic armor, one for each Guardian class, as well as a random Exotic Weapon and an Exotic Engram available for purchase. In addition to his Exotic wares, he's got a random collection of Legendary weapons and armor to deck out your Guardians.
We've rounded up all the info on Xûr for the week including where to find Xûr, which Exotic weapons and armor are available, as well as which Legendary weapons you should pick up, either for PvE or PvP.
Where Is Xûr Today...