The problem with this is disjointedness: pauses in conversations where there would normally be none, mismatched tone where there wouldn’t normally be any. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s not. And however good the performer - and direction and sticking back together - the result is never quite what it’s aiming to be: natural. Because it’s not. South of the Circle got me thinking about this again. It’s a smallish game that came out on Apple Arcade a couple of years ago and resurfaced on PC and Switch this week, and I’m very glad it did, because it has some of the best performances in a game I have ever witnessed....

A teaser for the project was shown tonight during Sony’s PlayStation Showcase, and a tease is all it really was. An accompanying PlayStation blog post states the game is still “very early in development”. There’s no word yet on when we might see this project, since Insomniac is also hard at work on Spider-Man 2, which will pit Peter Parker and Miles Morales against Venom in 2023.

The QR code - again, visible at the 55 seconds mark in Nintendo’s trailer broadcast last night and available on YouTube - certainly exists. However, the ability to scan it is being hampered by the code’s size and the video’s quality. As fans look to read the code accurately, the attempt below appears now to be an attempt to hoodwink fans at a date beyond Nintendo’s official line of “summer 2022”....

Forspoken, if you’re unfamiliar, casts players in the role of Frey Holland, an “ordinary young woman who must harness her magical abilities to survive” in a “beautiful yet cruel world”. Frey’s skillset has grown increasingly elaborate every time we’ve seen more of Forspoken, with Square showing off some some splendidly acrobatic traversal across the game’s frequently breathtaking world back in September. And its latest trailer reveal is no exception, throwing some sort of magical hoverboarding into the fantasy mix....

Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars will be written by Sam Maggs, who has previously penned books and comics for Marvel and DC, plus video games such as Tiny Tina’s Wonderland and, fittingly, the upcoming Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic remake. Set between Jedi: Fallen Order and next year’s Jedi: Survivor, it will once again follow series protagonist Cal Kestis and the crew of the Mantis. Look for it to hit bookshelves on 7th March next year....

Strain is best known as the co-founder of Guild Wars developer ArenaNet (now acquired by NCsoft) and founder of State of Decay developer Undead Labs (acquired by Microsoft). It’s currently unknown what project the studio is working on, but talent includes industry veterans from the likes of Ubisoft, Warner Bros, Double Fine, Electronic Arts, Oculus, Valve and more. The studio says it aims to be vibrant and diverse and have an equitable and healthy working culture, dedicated to building joyful games around human experiences....

This latest tumble into demo-land was confirmed by Valve back in March, when it promised “hundreds” of “cool demos” throughout the week, alongside developer livestreams, chats, and other assorted activities. Proceedings get underway at 6pm BST/10am PT next Monday, 13th June, and will continue until the following Monday, 20th June. That’ll give you seven days to gorge on as many demos as possible (an increasingly daunting proposition the bigger Steam Next Fest gets), after which they’ll disappear once more....

Originally titled the Steam Game Festival, this eighth outing for the indie-focussed event (which gained the Next Fest moniker back in June), spans seven days - it concludes next Thursday, 7th October - and promises “hundreds” of new demos and “oodles” of developer livestreams. A full list of demos, alongside a complete broadcast schedule, can be found over on the Steam’s Next Fest landing page. As ever, it’s a daunting line-up and tricky to know where to begin, but we’ll be aiming to assist by highlighting some of our favourites throughout next week....

Toxoids will give players the tools to “gamble the future of their planets for immediate gains” on release, with empires featuring the new species able to grow and adapt faster than most creatures - albeit often with nasty consequences for their neighbours and themselves. To that end, the expansion introduces two new Origins: Knights of the Toxic God and Overtuned. The former revolves around a mysterious power rumoured to be buried under toxic sludge which can be unleashed on the galaxy if found, while the latter gives players the chance to play as a species able to gain more and more traits at the expense of their own lifespan....

The developer - which has assisted with work on the Halo series from as far back as Halo 2 - was reported to be working on a new battle royale mode back in January. The following month, it issued a statement to confirm it was “deepening” its relationship with franchise holder 343 Industries. Now, Certain Affinity exec Paul Sams has said the studio’s still-technically-unannounced project had been in the works for more than two years, with almost 100 staff working on it....

Publisher Playism, which specialises in bringing indie games from Japan - including Touhou Luna Nights, Fight Crab, La-Mulana 2, Bright Memory, and DEEEER Simulator - to the west, has picked up Swery’s debt repayment RPG and announced an autumn release date on PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The new trailer is below: The Good Life was due out this summer courtesy of indie publisher The Irregular Corporation....

Yamagiwa previously worked at Sony’s Japan Studio when it published Bloodborne, so understands the importance of balanced difficulty. “Difficult games shouldn’t be difficult just for the sake of it,” Yamagiwa told IGN. “I think it’s really important that this difficulty exists for the purpose of delivering a sense of accomplishment to the players once they have overcome it. That’s why I think players should always be able to blame themselves when they die....

The fighting game launched on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in June 2017, although it was available in arcades before that. Since then, Tekken 7 has seen a number of DLC characters released as part of seasons. Guest characters include Geese Howard from Fatal Fury, Noctis Lucis Caelum from Final Fantasy 15, and Negan from The Walking Dead. Most recently, Lidia Sobieska, the fictional prime minister of Poland, was added as a brand new character....

The Airborne Archipelago is an exciting world filled with an array of Temtem for you to find and tame. An important part of your adventure involves completing the Tempedia, so make sure you explore every inch of every floating island. Below lies every currently available Temtem in the Tempedia, including how many Temtem there are in the game. On this page: This includes the three starter Temtem and Luma Temtem, which are creatures with different coloration compared to the traditional Temtem style (think shiny Pokémon)....

I don’t want to explain too much - frankly, I’m not sure I can - but it’s safe to say this is not your typical video game commercial. Strap yourself in for three minutes of family drama, childhood flashbacks and a mildly creepy grandma - all before any footage of Elden Ring appears at all. (Thanks to industry analyst Daniel Ahmad for surfacing this on Twitter.) Speaking of Elden Ring ads, PlayStation has today published a live-action trailer starring the fab Ming-Na Wen, of ER, Star Wars and Marvel fame....

“The Falconeer in VR expands the boundaries of the Great Ursee offering fully immersive views of the oceanic world in 3D VR,” explains publisher, Wired Productions. “Soar through the skies aboard a majestic warbird, engage in epic aerial dogfights, and take on the role of Falconeer, a powerful airborne warrior traversing a vast world torn apart by generations of poisonous decisions and dissent, through a new and unique perspective.” If you’ve yet to give The Falconeer’s aerial combat a go, now just may be a good time; you can now pick up the game - with that aforementioned free VR upgrade - for 60 per cent off the usual retail price from now until 20th December, 2022....

As always, it’s a pretty eclectic bunch, with big-budget stuff like Halo in with wonderful indies about squirrels and cyber cats. Time loops appear more than once, Hollywood talent turns up in unexpected places, and one game at least features everything from the big bang to the death of the universe. This is games in 2021, then: familiarity and absolute surprise. Hopefully it will be a magical year for fans of the medium....

There are many legacy PlayStation 4 titles that see transformative improvements when run on PS5 under backwards compatibility, but The Last Guardian is special simply because of how challenging it is to run well on either of Sony’s last-gen machines, with frame-rates often dipping well beneath the 30fps target. And just why the game ran so poorly was always a point of contention too. On PS4 Pro, whether you ran at native 1080p or via its 4K output mode, there were still performance bottlenecks - though you clearly got a smoother ride with the console set to full HD output....

Pascal was papped in costume this morning by Kristin Raworth (thanks, The Last of Us News) entering the downtown Edmonton set which is standing in for the game’s Boston area. Further photos of the set have appeared online over the past few days, highlighting some of the work which has gone into making the area look like The Last of Us’ post-apocalypse world. It’s pretty impressive. First off, here’s a peek at Pedro Pascal....

However, PlayStation head Hermen Hulst has made it known that this is not the case. Well, at least, it is not entirely the case. Chatting to Axios, Hulst stated that the initial 2013 release of The Last of Us was “a little ahead of its time in terms of its creative vision”. Hulst claimed that the limitations of technology at this time meant that Naughty Dog’s ideas ultimately had to be dialled back a notch or two....