“I've had a lot of experience in these gallery spaces and it always felt like this vague form of superficial hell to me,” Filippo Meozzi, director and producer of Doom: The Gallery Experience, tells me.
]]>I love it when a video game makes me say ‘wow’ out loud. It’s even better when it can happen often - and such was the case in an one-hour hands-on session with Split Fiction, the new game from Hazelight Studios that’s set to once again be published by EA.
]]>In case you missed it, last night was the kick off show for CES 2025, a massive tech event in which the biggest companies in the industry show off all manner of fancy hardware that has been cooking behind the scenes. And while there were loads of exciting reveals worth checking out, my terminally ill fighting game player brain has obviously been fixated on the brief glimpse at Virtua Fighter 6 during NVIDIA's presentation.
]]>2025 is the year in which we'll finally, finally get to see 2XKO come out. If it feels like an age since whispers about Riot's in-house fighting game were floating around... you're right! The developers at Radiant were aquired all the way back in 2016 - roughly 8 years ago. This year we'll finally see just how big a splash Riot can make in the fighting game space.
]]>The world can’t get enough of Elden Ring, and neither can FromSoftware apparently, with the announcement of a co-operative roguelite set in a world parallel to the gargantuan RPG’s events during The Game Awards last week: Nightreign.
]]>Will the next Battlefield save the series and bring it back as a major player in the shooter space? Is that something that it could even do? EA would certainly like the answer to both of those questions to be ‘yes’, and the publisher has been working to secure every possible advantage to help get it there.
]]>In recent years, some of gaming’s biggest breakout successes have been released during the post-Christmas lull between New Year and Spring. Traditionally, it’s supposed to be a quieter time on the calendar - where we’re all too full of turkey and trimmings and sated by games gifted over the holidays to have an appetite for anything new.
]]>I first played Another Crab's Treasure on the side of the street behind the Day of the Devs event in LA earlier this year, the sun glaring on a laptop screen, quickly running out of power. Next to me sat Nick, the studio head, who watched patiently as a hungover blob attempted to navigate his team's game. He muttered "interesting" as I struggled to navigate the tutorial at first, I assume in awe at how long it took me to jump into the ocean and start the game proper. It remains the most embarrassing moment I had this year.
]]>Look, it’s not my fault I like video games where you run around like a mischievous little Grinch ruining the Christmas that is people going about their everyday lives, by running them down with cars, slamming a bike over their head so hard they don’t get up, or firing an RPG directly at the pavement in front of them.
]]>Last year, around this time, I wrote a feature arguing that Starfield, with its perfectly OK, but a bit synthetic and cold universe, was 2023’s actual game of the year.
]]>I was there at The Game Awards 2024, on the ground in Los Angeles. I don’t know how it all felt and played out online, how the onslaught of ads, Muppet Interludes, and occasionally rushed awards categories worked online - but in the room, my first time experiencing that way, it totally just works. Witnessing it that way left me with only one predominant thought: god, 2024 was a pretty great year for video games.
]]>Warning: Spoilers for both Death of the Reprobate and Die Hard With A Vengeance lie ahead.
]]>I still think about the time, several years ago now, when I mentioned off-handedly in the comments of an article I wrote about video game adaptations of Stephen King stories that my dream game in this vein would be a Don't Nod adaptation of It. I've especially been thinking about that since the announcement of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – a game developed and self-published by Don't Nod, due out in early 2025 – because I'll be damned if it doesn't clearly take quite a bit of inspiration from King's iconic 1986 doorstopper about an eldritch spider-clown from outer space, and the ragtag bunch of misfits destined to fight it.
]]>2024 has been a year of massive, perhaps irreversible change for the games industry. The games media space, which has employed me for over a decade, has itself fallen on the hardest times I’d ever witnessed.
]]>You know all those games we were talking about potentially being the thing this year around the time that Geoff Keighley was putting on his best corporate forced smile and preparing to take to the stage at The Game Awards?
]]>I write about games for a living (lucky me, right?) and as much of a dream as that is, it has some downsides. If you can believe it. One of them is that I often don’t find games very stimulating or motivating. When you need to play something that’s not exactly to your taste as often as once a week to ensure you’re covering it correctly, you often find yourself engaging ‘work’ brain, rather than ‘fun’ brain. Pumping 50 hours into CoD in a week can be rough when you also need to spend a lot of the 9-to-5 editing, running meetings, generating reports, or yelling to colleagues about Google’s baffling new Core Update.
]]>I don’t believe we’ve ever covered Maniac here on VG247. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen much coverage for it elsewhere, either. Maniac is not the sort of game that generates headlines, even if its entire gimmick is one I can’t believe no one thought of sooner.
]]>The Thing (2002) never was a very scary video game. Sure, low-detail graphics were far spookier more than 20 years ago, and there are some effective jump scares in it, but by and large, Computer Artworks' adaptation-sequel was goofy above all. Nightdive Studios' The Thing: Remastered hasn't altered that.
]]>I recently realised with some alarm that I've spent nearly 2% of 2024 playing Ace Attorney. That's not just 2% of my free time or even the time I spent awake, to be clear, but a whole percentage of the time I was alive in 2024, in-game in Ace Attorney. But honestly, what can you expect in a year when five previously almost-lost games from one of my favourite series were remastered and rereleased for modern systems, literally doubling the amount of Ace Attorney accessible to contemporary audiences within the span of only eight months?
]]>When I started writing up my shortlist of 2024 GOTY candidates earlier this autumn – in an attempt to sort through a messy mixture of widely-agreed-upon hits I still needed to play and total heart picks I intended to go to bat for – The Casting of Frank Stone easily cleared my personal top 10, quite clearly in the latter category.
]]>I have a vicious love-hate relationship with Pokemon TCG Pocket. It is, without a doubt, my favourite mobile game released this year. It is a wonderful game, taking a snapshot out of the physical TCG and morphing it into this easy to endearing virtual collectathon. It has, also, manifested a side of me I thought died once I turned 21 years old. An angrier me, with a visceral hatred for strangers around the world.
]]>When your game(s) of the year largely consist of psychological horror and back-to-back, brutal boss fights — as mine did — you’ll almost definitely need something mindlessly relaxing to kick back with. Sure enough, as I wrapped up my time wandering around the streets of Silent Hill 2, an adorable, unsuspecting game began doing the rounds on social media: Webfishing.
]]>Looking back at 2024, there have obviously been a lot of fantastic games. No doubt about it - it's been a great year for pretty much anyone who loves turning on their PC, console, or phone and just throwing dozens of hours to the wind. But there is only one game that has truly astounded me this year. Not only on its own merit (a huge open world packed with mystery, secrets, and perilous dangers) but for the context outside of the game, too. Stalker 2 is a miracle game, and it deserves its flowers.
]]>On TV and in films and games, Star Wars has the same problem.
]]>2024 was a big year for folk with a never-ending affinity towards all things survival-horror, largely due to the fact that the Silent Hill 2 Remake finally released. A game that, after its initial announcement, I was truly dreading. I love Silent Hill 2, so much, and for the longest time, all I ever really wanted was for the original trio of games to be ported to modern platforms exactly as they are. Nothing more, and nothing less. I, admittedly, did not trust Konami or Bloober Team to do it justice.
]]>“You can't see it on [the device this interview was recorded using], but my smile is very big,” lead producer Bill LaCoste says, when I ask him how he feels about the year Fallout 76 has had, in what’s generally been pretty historic 12 months for the Fallout series as a whole.
]]>I emerge from the dodgy pool filled with dodgy barrels, geiger counter screaming like a white noise machine, and take it all in.
]]>With the release of Version 1.4 of Zenless Zone Zero, the game has found itself in a sort of soft re-launch. Big changes, overhauled features, massive adjustments to combat and story missions. It's a new era for the game, one that clearly hopes to both improve the experience for loyal fans and win back those who bounced off it.
]]>I don't know about you, but I find that so many games that try to be funny fall short. It's a hard thing to do! Different people are amused by vastly different stuff, so a developer looking to inject humour into their game is treading on inherently trecherous ground. Racoon Logic has somehow managed not only to traverse such dangers, they've slid over them, arms flailing. Revenge of the Savage Planet is an exceptionally funny video game.
]]>In a vanishingly rare moment of consensus among a modern gaming community, I think most of us can agree that The Sims 4 is ending 2024 on a high note.
]]>I'll cut to the chase: 2024 has been a great year for gaming. Just look at the various GOTY pieces that'll be going up over this week and into the beginning of 2025: each of the writing team here at VG247 has written three pieces - one about our actual GOTY, one about something that we feel has been criminally under-rated over the past 12 months, and one about something we're really looking forward to in the new year.
]]>The best expansions are unmistakably grounded in their base game, but take all of their strongest ideas and distill them down into a more refined, self-contained experience which not only celebrates everything that made the original great, but takes it just that little bit further, too.
]]>Warframe 1999 is here at last and players are having a blast exploring the past, zooming around on motorbikes, and thirsting over Viktor. However, it's also probably one of the most stacked updates in terms of popular voice acting talent. Warframe has always been solid in the VO department, but with Ben Starr, Alpha Takahashi, Amelia Tyler, and Trieve Blackwood-Cambridge the bar has been lifted to a whole other level.
]]>Den of Wolves stood out to me during this year's packed Game Awards celebration for one major reason. The music. Yes, the concept of a new first person heist game from the developers of Payday 2 is enough to garner significant hype, but it's the pounding, relentless rhythms that snatched my attention. Inside the Peacock theatre, you could feel your chair shaking.
]]>"Curse you, Jeff!" That's what I've yelled internally as I was thrown into the nearest abyss at least five times since Marvel Rivals' launch on December 6. Before that, I barely even knew who the hell Jeff the Land Shark was, and this is coming from a pop culture sicko.
]]>There's a long legacy of guest characters in fighting games. And the variation in quality between guests is as huge as the list is long - the tradition deals the rough with the smooth, to be honest. In Tekken alone, we've had Gon from Masashi Tanaka's manga (a farting dinosaur), Negan from The Walking Dead (a boring fart), and Akuma from Street Fighter (a tough old fart).
]]>We’ve heard some other awards show is also trying to steal our thunder and muscle in on our territory today, but who wants to travel to Los Angeles for a star-studded event anyway? The real action, and the real correct opinions, are right here.
]]>I'm gonna answer the question in my headline in very literal terms, just to get that out the way before anyone decides to comment "it's this, duh": Secret Level exists for IP expansion, and money. That's it, that's almost definitely the real reason, because all the executives care about these days is IP, why else do you think Disney is going all in on sequels and Hollywood is finding any game to adapt it can, even if it's a bit of a silly idea? Except, I don't even know how Secret Level is meant to do that.
]]>Path of Exile 2 is one 2024 ARPG I’d been looking forward to all year. Diablo 4 is my main one genre beacon, really, so I’d been secretly hoping PoE 2 wouldn’t arrive as I’m knee-deep in Vessel of Hatred or some other major event. Lucky for me, though, it managed to get well out of the way of Diablo 4.
]]>Warcraft 3: Reforged 2.0 is almost the perfect upgrade of one of the all-time greats of the RTS genre, but I think the upscaled OG graphics are still better.
]]>On October 15, Michael "Mynki" James Brennen died after a hard-fought battle with cancer. He is best known for his work at Digital Extremes and Warframe, on which he was the first art director. Even after his departure from the company in 2017, he retained contact with the team and contributed to the games art direction and overall style. Warframe, with all its merits, has never been lacking in that department.
]]>The home of Capcom’s development studios in Osaka is surprisingly unassuming. I’ve been here before, back in 2017 - but perhaps the most surprising thing is that Capcom’s recent successes haven’t really changed the publisher.
]]>Two Point, by now, is no doubt a master at what it does; turning everyday environments into charming simulation games that are packed to the brim with chaotic events and zany, British humour. We’ve witnessed a hospital, a college campus, and now, players are soon being invited to step inside Two Point Museum.
]]>When the Nintendo Museum was announced back in 2021, the reveal gave it a slightly different name to what it launched as. Back then it was known by the tentative name of the ‘Nintendo Gallery’ - and that conjures up a much fairer, more appropriate image of the final product than the title ‘Nintendo Museum’.
]]>Love - or platonic friendship - is in the air with Warframe 1999. While the next major update for Warframe has plenty of big features to get excited about, be it a motorbike, an infested boyband, or a whole new enemy faction to take on, it's the cast of new characters vibing around the run-down mall that has won the hearts of many. But how did this actually come about, and how did an award-winning romance writer end up working on the game?
]]>You know what's a just fine piece of telly? Arcane! It's an absolute stunner to look at, I'll give it that, but I personally don't find the story all that compelling, and season 2 is rushed beyond belief. As a lover of animation I really did just watch it for Fortiche's in-house style, that served me well enough, but I do still find spoilers annoying like anybody else, even for a show whose story I'm not that invested in. Thanks to "the algorithm", though, I didn't really have much of a choice in having pretty much all of Arcane season 2 spoiled for me.
]]>Even if you never actually played Path of Exile, you’ve likely heard about its comically gigantic passive skill tree. But a sentiment you’ve probably also heard repeatedly from the people who play it is that it’s one of the rare free-to-play games that does not prey on its users.
]]>Diablo 4 has completed more than a single rotation around the sun. Since its initial release in June, 2023, Blizzard delivered several fundamental changes to its itemisation, levelling experience, difficultly options, and dramatically changed the structure of its endgame.
]]>Stalker 2 has made me look back and realize that maybe it was a mistake to make Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5 become an industry standard for the next decade.
]]>“I remember going to what was probably the local video game shop or computer shop, and me and my friends saw it on the 3DO, and we were like ‘what’s this?’, we all jumped on it, and you felt badass,” current Need For Speed producer Patrick Honnoraty says. “Being able to drive it, being chased by the cops, there wasn’t an experience that was really like it at the time.”
]]>There are some games, really good games, which are time vampires. They entice you with engaging gameplay, snatch your gaze with beautiful visuals, and trap you in a vice of challenging fights you don't want to give up on.
]]>So there's a lot of excitement around 2XKO, obviously. Following various reveals of characters like Jinx and Braum, as well as an Alpha Lab test that appears to have gone down well, the average player has had ample opportunity to jump on board this particular hype train. But what about the game's competitive future? Believe it or not, discussions around this topic have been happening in spite of the game's unknown release date.
]]>Do you also think games consoles are a bit boring these days? I do. There's no whimsy to them anymore, nothing strange or eclectic about them, apart from the Nintendo Switch, but even then I reckon the most special thing about it is its hybrid format. Aside from that, it doesn't really change how games work, it's more just about the kind of spaces that you can play games in. That's all well and dandy, and it is typically Nintendo - strange, but incredibly influential - I just feel like I'm looking for… more.
]]>It wouldn’t be Black Friday without some of the best Star Wars deals of the year coming around, would it? Well, they’ve already started rolling in, and you can now pick up Star Wars Outlaws Limited Edition for just $49.99 from Amazon on PS5 and Xbox
]]>Stalker games suffering from bugs is a tale as old as the series itself, to the point where it's kind of a part of playing the games, at least on PC. Stalker 2 is no different. While the game has been created under especially rough circumstances due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine turning the lives of the developers upside down, hope of a more stable game with smoother edges isn't baseless. In fact, the game's saviour could be a long-held tradition.
]]>There sure were a lot of mini-games in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, huh? By my count, there are 21 different activities you can experience as Cloud and his company venture out from Kalm and across the planet.
]]>“A lot of shooters rely on resetting the economy,” says Scott Davis, lead product manager at CCP London, simply, during a presentation about EVE: Vanguard - the massively-multiplayer online first-person shooter in development at CCP. He doesn’t mention it by name, but he’s talking about Call of Duty, it’s obvious. He’s referenced triple-A shooters with annual (or near-annual) development cycles. It doesn’t take a savant to read between the lines.
]]>Can you even imagine what the world is going to look like at the end of the next Trump presidency? I can’t. I don’t even know if gaming itself will be the same by then; maybe The Powers That Be will just lay everyone off and we’ll have buckets of AI-developed slop to gorge on, instead. Like Ready Player One, but even more insidious, somehow.
]]>Over the last few years, the retro floodgates have opened - and it’s honestly never been a better time to be an elderly gamer. If you want to relive the glories of your childhood there are now numerous options from a wide variety of companies - but this latest contender might be one of the most exciting yet.
]]>I want to be absolutely clear: I really think Dragon Age: The Veilguard is rather good. It’s also true that it’s a game that is drawn taut between its different ambitions. It wants to reach new fans while satisfying series fans who’ve waited a decade for Inquisition’s cliffhanger to resolve. It wants to be accessible, but it wants to be a full-fat RPG. It wants to depict a world on the edge of a knife, the gentlest breeze enough to tip it into the pit – but it also wants you to have a nice time.
]]>GTA: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition's launch in 2021, three years ago, was infamously rough. From badly upscaled textures, to shoddy character models, to broken animations (and plenty more), the three games that defined modern open worlds were butchered. Now, Rockstar Games has wowed everyone by pulling off a complete 180.
]]>There was a lot working against Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines when it launched on this day back in 2004. Nobody wants to launch up against a game as hotly anticipated as Half-Life 2, let alone be pushed out half-finished due to a bizarre corporate mandate to launch on the same day as said game — which, incidentally, used the same brand-new engine as V:TM-B was built in, but as proprietary in-house technology rather than via a third-party licence, and so very much getting the better end of the deal.
]]>In a press roundtable following the Warcraft 30th anniversary direct, World of Warcraft game director Ion Hazzikostas stated that player housing is the "most ambitious feature in a WoW expansion ever".
]]>It's no news to anyone that I'm a pretty big fan of Pokemon, and I've been collecting Pokemon cards 'for fun' for just over three years now. The past three years, however, have largely seen me enjoying the hobby on my own, occasionally sharing rare pulls with my friends, before finally pulling the plug on it all. Now, I'm left with thousands of cards — all neatly organised — that are collecting dust in their binders and briefcases while I wait to win the lottery and pay to get them graded.
]]>Bloodborne, a legendary game. In my eyes, the best FromSoft game. The first one I fell in love with. The one that opened my mind to the grizzly machinations of Miyazaki and co., and that still echoes in my blood today whenever I pick up the pad and enter the Lands Between or venture back to Lordran.
]]>Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket has done the unthinkable for a mobile game: it’s actually excited and invigorated my group of friends.
]]>I’m hesitant to use the word ‘exciting’ when I’m talking about a piece of PC software that simply facilitates playing video games when I’ll be careful about how I use that word even describing actual full-blown video games. But we are where we are, and I have to embrace my inner saddo - so here it goes: I’m really, really excited about Nvidia’s new settings app on PC.
]]>I, like thousands of others out there, am absolutely enraptured by Arcane Season 2. As a fan of the first season, I was eager to sit down and watch the first act for an update on the misadventures of Jinx, Vi, and co. I expected the show to sink its hooks into me, but what I didn't expect was the majority of my anticipation to stem not from the core plot, but by the little stingers the writers placed at the end of each episode.
]]>It's kind of impossible to separate the Kingdom Hearts series from the word 'weird', because fundamentally it just is.
]]>Metal Slug Tactics gets many things right, but perhaps its most impressive achievement is that it isn't bogged down nor limited by the IP it honors.
]]>“We've all waited 14 years for this game,” modder Badass Baboon says of the original Red Dead Redemption, when it finally arrived on PC at the end of last month.
]]>So, you’ve probably seen the reviews for the PlayStation 5 Pro. I’ve not had my unit long enough to give a full, critical breakdown yet, but I have had enough time with the expensive new bit of kit to figure out my early feelings on it. And it’s all quite easy to sum up: Sony is weird.
]]>There are no ducks in my pool.
]]>Have you ever watched a movie that you kind of knew would be one of your favourite films of all time, before you even saw it? That's how I felt the day that the anime adaptation of Look Back was revealed in February of this year, but it wasn't until recently that I was able to actually get to the cinema and check it out (forever adore you, distributing companies that take forever to announce releases of anime movies in UK cinemas). Today, you'll be able to check the film out yourself even if it's not showing in a cinema near you, as it's arrived on Prime Video globally - and if you're a fan of Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto's work, it's really one you shouldn't miss out on.
]]>I've been spending much of my time in Pokemon TCG Pocket battling other players, especially as I wait 12 hours for another pack to become available. Doing so, I've seen truly unfortunate disasters. Sometimes it's me hitting countless tails with my Marowak EX deck. Sometimes it's the enemy Misty card never ever hitting heads. I've seen turn 2 concedes. I've seen turn 1 concedes! Such is the joy of a card game that relies, in some fashion, on luck.
]]>If you have the misfortune of following Call of Duty as part of your job, you’ll know that every annual release is an exercise of Deja Vu: The Deja Vu. This goes for the games themselves as much as it does the community’s reception to them.
]]>You know, it probably isn't great for my gnawing sense of panic about getting older to see more and more games from my childhood reaching 20 year anniversaries, but unfortunately time doesn't give a hoot about that, and it's a simple fact that The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap came out two decades ago now. Existential crisis aside, an anniversary like this is a great time to remember the Game Boy Advance classic, not just because it's timely, but because we've almost certainly got a brand spanking new Nintendo console coming up, and there's a lot the developer could learn from one of its best Zelda games.
]]>I hate to do it to you, but Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is one of those games that is best described through the most cliche of mediums: comparisons to other games. It’s a strange alchemy of things we know from elsewhere, mashed together into a unique, new form. I sort-of love it.
]]>If I had to recommend a single indie release this year, it'd probably be Mossmouth's UFO 50, mainly because it's a retro game anthology that actually feels like it could've been made back in the NES era (for the most part) while offering a fresh package.
]]>The Call of Duty series has a history of amazing maps. Activision’s esteemed FPS is basically teeming with them; Shipment, Terminal, Favela, Rust, Firing Range - the list goes on. With every game, CoD adds more maps, no matter what banner they come under. For my money, Modern Warfare typically has the best (but then, I usually prefer that arm of the series to Black Ops). That’s all changed this year, however, with the phenomenal deployment of a fantastic map in Black Ops 6.
]]>If you ask someone like me, who's really into the Yakuza/Like A Dragon games, why you should play the Yakuza/Like A Dragon games, fairly early on in the process there's a good chance they'll end just defaulting to grabbing you by the lapells and in their best husky Kiryu voice saying something like: 'Look, just play the damn things'.
]]>Have you played Call of Duty Black Ops 6 yet? The first thing you’ll notice when you boot up the game and jump into the single-player portion (if that’s what you’re into), is the theme. There’s one single horn, playing this gorgeous, simple motif, to start things off. Bass and drums build slowly in the background, and the scene is set - it feels solitary, isolated, one single unit awaiting a storm.
]]>The Sims 4 Life & Death expansion pack is due to launch on Halloween, which is all well and good for an add-on that gives playable ghosts their long-awaited overhaul. But while the spooky trappings aren't inappropriate for a DLC that's also reintroduced the oft-requested ability to bone the Grim Reaper, I can't help but feel that it undersells the pack's most revolutionary feature: for the first time in the franchise, you'll be able to say goodbye to your dearly departed Sims with a proper funeral.
]]>This year has been a bit of a mixed one for Dragon Ball fans - Daima, the first new TV anime since Super ended in 2018, started just this month, which came alongside the release of the hotly anticipated Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero. Of course, sadly, series creator Akira Toriyama sadly died in March of this year, meaning as enjoyable as both the new series and the game have been, there has been a smidge of sadness that comes with them, especially considering how deeply involved Toriyama was with Daima, but it's also clearly lit a fire in many Dragon Ball fans the series hasn't had in a long while.
]]>Monster Hunter Wilds fans rejoice; we're getting a massive beta test on all platforms soon. Announced today during a special livestream, Capcom announced a cross-play test coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Steam next week - and it'll support cross-play between all platforms.
]]>I beat Metaphor Refantazio in under a week. Not for work, not on some arbitrary deadline, but because the game has some bite to it. The story? Amazing. The presentation? Absurd. But, more than anything, it's a game that treats you like an adult. It gives you enough freedom to play through the game the way you like, sure, but it doesn't stop you from charging headfirst into tricky situations either. It's a beautiful thing.
]]>There's now a premium, extended version of this podcast that you can get as a VG247 paid subscriber - check out our Support Us page for more info. Doing so helps ensure that we can keep making the show! But don't worry if that's not for you, the main show will always be free.
]]>Have you ever wished Hades starred cuddly (but lethal) animals and had co-op? If your answer is positive, you ought to check out Motion Twin's Windblown, whose early access launch is just around the corner and is preceded by a killer Steam Next Fest demo.
]]>Objectophilia. That's the closest word I could find that might potentially represent the feeling of being attracted to a building, though it's more just attraction to general inanimate objects. After playing Building Relationships, though, I think they're going to have to invent a new word thanks to all the people this is going to awaken something in. Yes, there is now a game where you can be horny for literal buildings, and you know what? The Steam Next Fest demo for it is pretty good.
]]>There comes a point in the journey when you’re thinking to yourself ‘hang on, I didn’t think it’d take this f**king long’.
]]>If I'm being honest, consuming any kind of horror media any time of year is always the best time to do so, but it really does just hit a bit different when it's in October. I know that that's as much an influence from capitalism, what with all those Brands trying to sell me decorations and themed candy I definitely don't need, but also, I do just love getting into the Halloween season! There's a weird sort of comfort that horror brings, even the most uncomfortable of films or games, and engaging in something like that as the leaves turn brown and weather gets cold just feels right.
]]>It's been a busy few years for Too Kyo Games since it was formed as an independent offshoot of Spike Chunsoft back in 2017. Even with that whole global pandemic presumably slowing down production at least a little bit, the studio has managed to ship three games since 2020: FMV mystery Death Come True, kid-friendly(ish) action-adventure World's End Club, and acclaimed visual novel Master Detective Archives: Rain Code.
]]>The Russia-Ukraine war rages on, and there is no team more impacted by this reality than Stalker 2 creators GSC World. At the outbreak of the war, the team was split in two, with half evacuating the country and the others staying behind. The company fell victim to cyber attacks following its decision not to release Stalker 2 in Russia. It even suffered a server fire that wiped out an entire floor of its new Prague office.
]]>Playing Heartworm’s demo as part of October’s Steam Next Fest was a headache-inducing time, admittedly, but it made me feel that slightest bit closer to the protagonist, Sam. Almost immediately in the demo, we get a sense that Sam is in distress, mourning her loved ones and seeking a cure for her grieving in the depths of internet forums.
]]>Monster Hunter Now feels like the biggest secret you’re probably not in on. In the West, I don’t think the game is nearly as popular as it should be. If I boot it up in London, you know, the gaming capital of the UK, I will at most find three or four other players logged into the game nearby. I’ve been to New York whilst playing, and it’s slightly better there, but not by too much. The same goes for LA.
]]>I've now played (courtesy of the early access Ultimate Edition) the first two chapters of Life is Strange: Double Exposure, which sees original protagonist Max Caulfield return to the spotlight for her first full-length game in nearly a decade. The original Life is Strange celebrates its 10th anniversary in January, and while Square Enix hasn't explicitly associated Max's reappearance with this upcoming milestone, it feels like it can't be pure coincidence that they've decided to revisit her now.
]]>Have you ever seen a game that looks so ridiculously, insatiably cool that you're filled with such a strong desire to live so that you get to feel even a fraction of what the trailers show you? V.A Proxy is that exact game, and now that I've played its Steam Next Fest demo, I am filled with an even stronger urge to play the full thing before I die, because I need to feel as cool as the demo alone makes me feel in greater depth.
]]>When Ian Fleming first delivered James Bond to readers in 1953, Agent 007 arrived ready and raring to go. Casino Royale isn’t one of those novels that flitters about trying to slowly layer and build its protagonist into their ultimate form - Bond just already is that. In fact, it’s crucial to the narrative of the novel that Bond is an experienced agent, the best card player in the service, and trusted.
]]>Boutique retro gaming company Analogue has announced that the Analogue 3D, its latest console, will finally ship in Q1 of 2025 - and we also have our first ever images of the final console. Pre-orders will be live soon.
]]>Come hither ye refugees from Smash Bros and Multiversus, a new platform fighter has arrived in the Steam October Next Fest. Rivals of Aether 2 is finally playable, after years of waiting. A good platform fighter can be hard to find these days, and I'm happy to decladre here that this one is an absolute banger.
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