So what do you want to know? Oli Welsh is our editor-in-chief and was reviews editor before it, and has been reviewing games for 17 years. Chris Tapsell, meanwhile, has handled some of our biggest reviews, including Cyberpunk 2077 and, more recently, Returnal. They are the people to ask. It’s time to get all of those questions off your chests. Please note that if you veer off topic, away from reviews, you probably won’t get an answer....
Across the game, there’s a range of different types of romances you can get involved in - from one-off flings to stable relationships, flirtatious friendships and deeply romantic love affairs. This page offers a list of romance options in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, as well as Wrath of the Druids romances for the DLC. Note - while most romances are there to add a little bit of flavour to Eivor’s time in England and beyond, but at least one has a considerable bearing on the story....
It means the studios’ debut project will be funded by EA and be shown on the same stage as the publisher’s biggest games, as well as fellow EA Originals such as A Way Out, Fe, and Sea of Solitude. The announcement caps off a successful first year for Silver Rain Games, a remote studio headed up by former BAFTA Games programme manager Melissa Phillips and Salim himself - who you may know better as Bayek in Assassin’s Creed Origins or Father in the Ridley Scott HBO series Raised by Wolves....
By comparison, Astrologaster really doesn’t care about you all that much. If I have to call it anything, I want to call it a play, set in 1592. It takes place on a stage, with characters in a scene standing on marks, the city background like something crafted from wood painted in bright colours, each scene beginning with you unfolding the stage like a pop-up book, which is especially charming on the Switch when you slowly drag your finger across the screen instead of using the shoulder buttons to flip the page....
But, actually, thankfully, it’s more than that. Scrabbling around in the game’s oddly enticing dark for long enough has allowed me to admit I was very much wrong. Back 4 Blood is interesting. It is unfamiliar, in places. It is good! Really good. Much of this comes down to its system of runs. As you may well know by now, Back 4 Blood is a close spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead, being developed by original Left 4 Dead studio Turtle Rock - once known as Valve South, during the Left 4 Dead years, before it was re-founded in 2011 again by some key names like Michael Booth, Phil Robb and Chris Ashton - and the history here is important....
Not so much of a surprise, really, given that Balan Wonderworld marks the first collaboration between Naka and Naoto Ohshima, the artist behind Sonic the Hedgehog, since 1998’s Sonic Adventure. There’s an undeniable sense of Sonic Team in its 90s and early-00s pomp to Balan Wonderworld, and after a playthrough of the soon-to-be-released demo I’ve come to realise that’s no bad thing at all - it’s an enjoyably colourful and energetic antidote to the winter lockdown blues....
EA Dice has confirmed that specialist Emma “Sundance” Rosier is non-binary after fans noticed descriptions of the character used they/them pronouns. Lead Community Manager of EA Dice Adam Freeman confirmed the news replying to a fan on Twitter. Sundance is an Assault Specialist with a wingsuit to soar over the battlefield and Smart Explosives to take out enemy aircraft. The character is also Black and fans have praised their hair, a seemingly small detail many games don’t get right....
The fund’s creation is part of a settlement between Activision Blizzard and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which we heard last week was one of a number of organisations currently investigating the company. Claimants who have experienced “sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination and/or related retaliation or constructive discharge” will now be able to apply to the EEOC for relief. The commission will then determine whether a claimant is successful and how much they will be awarded....
Now, Blizzard has shared a detailed blog post to explain why and how they’re moving forward. “Our server outages have not been caused by a singular issue; we are solving each problem as they arise, with both mitigating solves and longer-term architectural changes,” it reads. “A small number of players have experienced character progression loss - moving forward, any loss due to a server crash should be limited to several minutes....
The dreaded DMR 14 has seen the following new nerfs: Bullet penetration reduced from sniper to AR Damage falloff ranges decreased: 55 damage before / 48 damage after 750 units (down 70% from 2500 units) Recoil increased: Increased moderately for second and third bullet; Increased slightly for subsequent bullets Locational damage multipliers adjusted: Headshot now does less than 100 damage after 750 units; Lower torso reduced from 1.1 to 1....
The glitch, which first appeared back in October last year, allows players to use infinite tactical items, thus making it possible to spam healing stims and hide away from other players until the game is over. It’s also possible to use the glitch to spam stun grenades, which seems just a little overpowered. Numerous videos have popped up on social media showing players using the exploit over the last few days, including one in which a hacker and a stim glitcher go toe-to-toe....
The news comes as sales of the game hit 1.8m after just a month in early access. Tale of Immortal is an open-world role-playing game developed by Chinese indie team GuiGu Studio. It’s part of a new breed of cultivation sims, where you grow to become immortal, defeating monsters from the Classic of Mountains and Seas (a Chinese classic text and compilation of mythic geography and beasts). The game launched on Steam late January 2021 and soon hit an all-time peak of 183,985 concurrent players with a “very positive” user review rating....
Below, you’ll find details on everything we know about the expansion, including a list of those new civs and their details, as well as any other general Rise and Fall details and links to our specific Rise and Fall guides and all the info on what’s new in Civ 6 Rise and Fall, too. A quick note: we’ve refreshed out Civ 6 guides for the game’s launch on Nintendo Switch, but just be aware that they contain information regarding the Rise and Fall DLC as well as the base game, which means some things only apply if you have that DLC!...
Players can now band together to experience “story-driven historical narratives and objectives”, including all the same gameplay you know “but tailored for the cooperative experiences”, as well as fully-voiced dialogue and enemy AI that can take on two opponents instead of just one. Up until now, players could only enjoy the game together via competitive multiplayer - there was no co-operative play at all. “The new Co-Op Historical Battles are now available, bringing a co-operative multiplayer experience to the vivid historical and objective-based content you love, now with a friend,” the development team exclaimed in its latest Steam update, confirming that your co-op buddy doesn’t have to own the DLC to get involved....
You play as a kind of fly-person, who carries various glowing spheres around various exotic worlds. It’s wonderfully moody, the opening desert hinting at some Sable-like vibes before we move on to a range of other ones, “worlds within worlds” as the blurb puts it. Even from just the trailer you get the sense there’s some real cleverness to the puzzle-platforming to go with it. Looks good! You can “unravel a cosmic mystery” in it next year, as it’s coming 2023, like an awful lot of games it seems, on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Game Pass....
Perhaps it’s something of a surprise to discover that bonafide arcade games even exist in this day and age, but should you ever be lucky enough to stumble upon one yourself you’ll see they’re largely propped up by one company alone: Raw Thrills, a small outfit operating out of Skokie, Illinois under the watchful eye of a certain Eugene Jarvis. That’ll be Eugene Jarvis, creator of Defender and Robotron amongst other all-time classics, because while the video game world moved on from the smoky scrum of the arcade, Eugene decided to make it his lifelong home....
Expanding substantially on Crusader Kings 2’s Poet trait, Crusader Kings 3’s attempt will bring reworked stats, character interactions, and, most importantly, randomised poetry generation, meaning you can bask in the digital ditties conjured by rhyme-loving computer-folk all day long. Poetry will be generated in-game by combining a particular subject with one of five overarching themes - romance, legacy, mourning, strife, and incompetence - enabling characters to influence events with a catchy rhyming couplet or two....
Yerli left Crytek in 2018 after more than two decades, following a turbulent period where the company struggled to stay afloat and left some staff for months without pay. He’s now developing Room, software designed to create “lifelike virtual meetings”, built on a new “real-time AI 3D engine”. Yerli is serving as chairman and CEO of its developer, TMRW Foundation. A brief video shared with Eurogamer showing how Room is supposed to look depicted a swanky board room environment....
This is a bug-fixing update with no new content, unlike last month’s big release which also saw the game’s PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions finally become available. Still, there are dozens of tweaks here - including solutions to various technical problems. Save issues on PlayStation have been sorted and, on PS5, “wet roads will now be as reflective as on the PC version”. On consoles, various “memory improvements and crash fixes” are mentioned but not detailed....
Inexplicably, there is no in-game setting to do this, meaning you have to learn how the PlayStation 5’s chat system works - that is until an update hopefully arrives. And, if you haven’t already, there’s a way to mute your own microphone at all times if you prefer not to broadcast your own voice to other players. UPDATE (February 5th): A hotfix several days after launch has disabled voice communication in lobbies by default, making much of the advice on this page redundant....
