Lego Bricktales, as detailed on its newly materialised Steam page, sees players traversing five gorgeous, brick-based dioramas - a lush jungle, sun-drenched desert, bustling city corner, medieval castle, and tropical island - as they attempt to help their grandfather reinvigorate his rundown amusement park, with assistance from a cute robot pal. That plays out as a series of puzzles and quests, the latter set by minifigure NPCs strewn around each diorama, in which players are asked to create solutions using Bricktales’ brick-by-brick building mechanic....

In a way, this month’s column is an extension of what I talked about in the first letter last month: what constitutes a busy release schedule and what doesn’t. Back then, I was musing on the contrast between 2021’s meagre lineup of big releases and the parade of positive reviews of mostly smaller games we have run recently. (Indeed, in the weeks since I wrote that, we’ve added two more Essentials and Stephen Totilo’s Axios Gaming newsletter did us the honour of undertaking a statistical analysis of our reviewing - complete with graph!...

But it turns out he was almost cast as Geralt of Rivia in 2018 when the role was first being cast. According to a report by redanianintelligence, Hemsworth was actually a frontrunner for the part before the role ultimately went to Cavill. As such, sources state the casting process this time around was very quick, with it being implied the producers went back to their original audition tapes before settling upon Hemsworth as the replacement Geralt of Rivia....

The console version is being developed in conjunction with Lab42 and promises to “utilise key capabilities” of the Xbox Series X/S and PS5, “like super-fast load times for a seamless gameplay experience”. “Xbox Series X/S players will be able to quickly switch between gameplay and consulting a YouTube tutorial on how to quell a peasant revolt,” Paradox says in its announcement. “PlayStation 5 users will experience the game’s stress mechanics themselves, as their DualSense controllers physically react to in-game events as they unfold....

Aussie site Vooks.net first spotted the new release date on the Nintendo Switch eShop. We’ve checked and same date also shows on the UK eShop here. The original Spelunky is priced at £8.99. Spelunky 2 will cost £17.99. We knew both were set for Switch this summer, but not when. It’s odd to see this date now, rather than last night during Nintendo’s packed indie presentation which detailed many other upcoming games....

Spotted by TwistedVoxel, the ever-leaky Taiwanese Game Rating website now has both a native PS5 and Xbox Series X/S release of the game listed in its catalogue. While there have been no official announcements made as yet, publisher Annapurna Interactive does have its 2022 showcase scheduled for later this month. The company has promised us all “reveals, announcements, and much more” when its show streams on the 28th (which will be at 8pm UK /12pm PT / 3pm ET), so perhaps we will get confirmation of a new-gen Edith Finch there....

The addition of Black Panther as a DLC character to the game, delayed last year due to the sad passing of actor Chadwick Boseman, arrives as part of the War for Wakanda expansion. In the brief trailer, below, we hear the leader of A.I.M. talking with Black Panther villain Klaw. It sounds like an invasion of Wakanda is on the cards. Before War for Wakanda comes out, Marvel’s Avengers will get new villain sectors, events like the Red Room Takeover, and a new patrol mode....

Hanslow has nystagmus and albinism, which causes poor vision and a sensitivity to light. It means that he is not eligible to hold a driver’s licence, but he has loved cars as long as he can remember. “It probably started with my dad,” he tells me over Skype. “He always had Formula One on TV at the weekends.” His first gaming memories are of Gran Turismo on the family’s new PS1....

The new feature is expected to launch later this year, Microsoft said. Microsoft’s announcement on this is pretty vague - there’s not much to go on beyond it’s a feature that’s coming out later in 2022. We don’t have a list of the “select” games that will work here, either. Microsoft made a raft of Xbox-related announcements today, including the ability to play Xbox games on a telly without a console....

Large Herbivore Bones are a new crafting resource that can be harvested from certain small monsters in Monster Hunter Rise. They are used to forge new armour pieces, as well as Decorations. Here’s where to find Large Herbivore Bones in Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak. We’ll be focusing on Rhenoplos, which are primarily found in Sandy Plains and Lava Caverns. Make sure you have unlocked these areas in Master Rank before proceeding....

Its not much, but Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann has revealed a new piece of concept art (see the image above) for it and said it will be as big as any single-player game the team has done, if not bigger – which given the size of Part 2 is quite the claim! This multiplayer will have its own storyline and it takes place in another part of the United States....

In the UK weekly boxed game chart, the new Need for Speed only managed to chart in 17th place - that’s behind last year’s Just Dance 2022 and the Lego Harry Potter Collection. UK sales data seen by GamesIndustry.biz reveals the game’s physical sales were down 64 percent on the series’ previous entry, 2019’s Need for Speed: Heat. Why has it failed to make more of an impression? Yes, last week was a busy week for new releases, with Marvel’s Midnight Suns and The Callisto Protocol also vying for gamer’s wallets and attention....

It’s something I was discussing with John Linneman recently: what exactly is peak Criterion? Some might say it’s Need for Speed Hot Pursuit - a game that radically rebooted the franchise, bringing over the best of Burnout but respecting the core DNA of what made the original NFS titles so great. And then there was Autolog, of course, a remarkably successful attempt to meld social networking into a video game....

As with volume 1, which released last September, this second collection bundles together 10 gaming favourites from SNK’s short-lived but much-loved Neo Geo Pocket. Somewhat unhelpfully, SNK is yet to announce what those 10 games will be, but sharp-eyed readers with better SNK knowledge than me might find some clues in the accompanying announcement artwork below. Inevitably, there’s no pricing details yet either, but expect it to be similar to volume 1, available on Steam and eShop for £29....

Have you watched Sandman on Netflix yet? Wes and Bertie won’t stop going on about it. But they both come at it from different points of view. Bertie is a newcomer to Sandman whereas Wes is a devoted fan of the comics. So does it do those comics justice, and can a newcomer enjoy it just the same? We mushed Wes and Bertie together to find out. Bertie: I’d heard a lot about Sandman....

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is finally getting some new content in the form of Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade’s Episode INTERmission, a PlayStation 5-exclusive DLC starring none other than Final Fantasy 7’s favourite ninja Yuffie Kisaragi. The video shows a close look at Fort Condor, the board game sensation sweeping Midgar, some new Yuffie and Sonon combat gameplay, and some of the bosses you’ll fight in the DLC.

Available as a toggle in the options, players can now turn off pickup animations so that Aloy instantly grabs nearby resources, speeding up the flow of exploration considerably. It seems the feature was added in the most recent patch, though it’s strangely missing from the patch notes. The feature impacts minor items, like natural resources and loot that Aloy shoots off machines, but anything found in a chest or a dead robot will still need to be picked up without moving....

Word of a new entry in the Twisted Metal series first emerged last September, when GamesBeat journalist Jeff Grubb claimed the project was in early development. Shortly after, reports suggested Destruction All-Stars developer Lucid Games had landed the gig and that this latest instalment would be turning the car combat series into a free-to-play game. Earlier this week, however, VGC reported a major shakeup for the project, with Sony said to have ditched Lucid Games as the developer in favour of a then-unnamed first-party Sony studio....

The £35 fantasy MMO launched today and has already shot past the half a million concurrent players mark on Steam, making it the second most-played game on Valve’s platform behind only Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. As you’d expect, the servers are struggling. According to SteamDB, New World has now beaten indie hit Valheim’s concurrent players peak to take the fifth spot on Steam’s all-time concurrents list. At the time of this article’s publication, New World had 532,535 concurrent players on Steam....

It’s been another week dominated by news of Microsoft’s $68bn Activision Blizzard takeover attempt, which is currently being scrutinised by the UK’s anti-competition regulator. Partially-redacted documentation from this process has now been made public, revealing some eyebrow-raising arguments from Sony - which is trying to block the deal. Both Sony and Microsoft have gone on the defensive to make themselves look the smaller fish - with Microsoft admitting Sony’s exclusives are better and Sony saying any loss of Call of Duty would leave itself “extremely vulnerable”, particularly if the series was made available through the popular Xbox Game Pass....