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That’s right, Wii classic Coconut Mall has been fixed, so the Shy Guy-driven cars at the end of the course are no longer static. Bizarrely, however, rather than just move back and forth as they did in the Wii original, the vehicles now pull off doughnuts. I’m not sure this was an improvement. Fans complained about Coconut Mall’s stationary Shy Guys when this course first arrived back in March, and noted that they moved even in the Mario Kart Tour version of the same track on mobile....

The French publisher will reportedly “take players into the detective Hercule Poirot’s universe through a revisited classic and a brand new adventure”, suggesting at least one of the new projects is an entirely new story. The two games will reportedly be developed by two studios, although Microids is only willing to share the name of one of them for now: the newly formed Microids Studio Lyon. They come after the companies’ prior “successful collaborations”, Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders, and Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot: The First Cases....

As reported by Grist (via VG247), the shareholder advocacy group As You Sow filed a report in June urging Microsoft to analyse the “environmental and social benefits” of making device repair easier, so that consumers can repair their own tech. Microsoft will now run its own study into how increasing accessibility of parts could help reduce electronic waste and will take action by the end of next year. In the past, some tech companies have been accused of making their devices purposefully difficult to repair to force consumers into paying for expensive repair services....

“Just like any other app,” Microsoft writes in a post announcing the new measures, “third-party storefront apps will have a product detail page that can be found via search or by browsing - so that users can easily find and install it with the same confidence as any other app in the Microsoft Store on Windows.” Microsoft’s decision to open its store to third-party store apps follows a similar move by Epic Games earlier this year, when it announced that itch....

Speaking to the Friends Per Second Podcast, Microsoft’s Head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty praised the team which launched Halo Infinite after working through the pandemic to get the game done - but also admitted Microsoft had fallen short with its support for the game after its arrival. “In December I think we had a peak of around 20 million players playing the game, and just kudos to the team for building and shipping a game during some pretty challenging times, right?...

The four game additions are designed to be played in multiplayer groups within your Teams calls, in order to spark some light entertainment and office rivalry before diving into your latest Powerpoint deck. It’s part of an initiative which Microsoft has dubbed Games for Work, and is designed to show results and highlight winners of groups of players - from two people up to 250. Solitaire and Minesweeper are self-explanatory, as is Wordament - if you’ve tried the more recent Microsoft game which pits you against the clock to find words from a letter grid....

In this new version, players banned from an online server will now also see the ban applied to all servers they have access to. This will include both personal and private ones. Players who wish to see another player banned due to misconduct will have to send a ban request to Mojang. This will need to include a valid reason for the request. From there, the powers that be at Minecraft will either dismiss or approve the ban, and the accused will then be limited to the game’s single-player mode....

This should not be too surprising. Economy is always the thing with this game, in which so much of the chaotic city experience emerges as you draw roads between homes and offices. Mini Motorways’ new update adds challenges, which might not initially seem like a huge deal - if this was any other game. Each city now has a series of bespoke challenges, which basically juggle two or three conditions that you have to play under....

Despite being considered the most important composer in the impressionist movement, Claude Debussy was not fond of the label. “I am trying to do something different, an effect of reality… what the imbeciles call impressionism,” Debussy wrote in 1908.“A term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by the critics, since they do not hesitate to apply it to [J.M.W.] Turner, the finest creator of mysterious effects in all the world of art....

The remake itself is not due out until September, however, we are already seeing gameplay leaks making their way out into the wild. Déjà vu anyone? The most recent leaks, which have now been mostly removed from the internet by a very fast-moving Naughty Dog, showed off a scene from very early in the game’s narrative. I won’t spoil it for you here as I am sure there are some that are yet to play through the first game in the series, but I saw the clip and, well, it looks very much like The Last of Us but with some more polish....

Reportedly due out this November, publisher EA has officially kept very quiet about its upcoming racer, which was previously delayed from 2021. This week, screenshots apparently from a work-in-progress build of the still-untitled game began to appear on reddit. Last night, the brief gameplay clip these images were taken from was also posted. The clip, below, shows a vintage Chevrolet Bel Air car with boosters attempting to jump through a large donut-shaped obstacle, but not quite managing the feat....

That’s according to Netflix’s vice president of gaming Mike Verdu, who, speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt (thanks TechCrunch), explained the company saw the technology as “a value add” for subscribers. “We’re not asking you to subscribe as a console replacement. It’s a completely different business model. The hope is over time that it just becomes this very natural way to play games where wherever you are.” Addressing the elephant in the room - the dramatic failure of Google’s game streaming service Stadia, which will cease operations in January, a little over three years after its initial launch - Verdu noted that while Stadia was a “technical success” and was “fun to play games on”, “it had some issues with the business model....

Iterating on the previous handheld, the slick white Evercade EXP features a faster processor on par with its home console equivalent Evercade VS, as well as a higher resolution screen, built-in WiFi, and a new pair of triggers. In addition, Tate Mode will allow players to rotate the handheld for vertical play - the screen has been designed for this and the console includes extra buttons to accommodate the change in orientation....

Let’s put it this way, when the Saints Row team said the customisation will cover “all aspects of player choice in the game”, they really meant it. Everything from your teeth to your car’s horn can be made just the way you want. You fancy fangs? Go for it. You want to roll up to a job with a car that sounds like a clown mobile? I mean, each to their own, but if that’s what you want to do, you can....

Loot box researcher Leon Y Xiao has written a report stating the country’s gambling law regulation of video game loot boxes has been ineffective, as reported by GamesIndustry.biz. Despite the ban, paid loot boxes remained widespread in the top 100 grossing iPhone games in Belgium from 2021, with 82 percent including some form of random monetisation mechanic. Watch on YouTube Eurogamer Newscast: Would you eat a Pokémon? “Although the initial imposition of this measure promoted public discussion and debate both domestically and internationally, an unenforced ‘ban’ has many negative consequences, including giving consumers, parents, and policymakers a false sense of security and allowing non-compliant games to replace games that have been removed from the national market by more socially responsible companies,” posits Xiao in the report....

Even better, we heard it would be released soon - on 28th October - with a free demo available from the Nintendo eShop today. Oh, and it’s also coming to PlayStation 4 and PC. “Players will square off in experiences that reveal themselves through cards, including turn-based battles, where their skills - and a little bit of luck - will determine the victor,” the game’s blurb reads, describing Voice of Cards as a “fresh take on tabletop RPGs”....

The Mario maker previously said this week’s huge 2.0 update for the game would be its last major free release, marking the end of regular new content for the game. But this still left the door open for future paid offerings. During a preview session for Happy Home Paradise, Eurogamer asked Nintendo about the game’s future - but Nintendo declined to comment at the time. Now, in a new statement issued to IGN, Nintendo has confirmed this really is the end of its support - free and paid....

No Man’s Sky, of course, launched for PC and PS4 back in the summer of 2016, giving players an entire procedural universe to explore as their whims took them. That initial version memorably came in for some criticism, but Hello Games has continued to expand on the game’s solid survival core since then, delivering over 19, often significant, free updates. These have introduced the likes of base building, bobbleheads, farming, giant customisable space freighters, land and water vehicles, pilotable mechs, living ships, alien-infested space derelicts, new flora and fauna, pets, live-service-style community expeditions, music tools, sand worms, and more - all of which should be included at launch on Switch....

The Founders Edition we’re looking at today arrives in the same packaging as the RTX 4090 and in the same excellent casing. The only difference is that while the same controversial 12VHPWR socket is on the card (yes, the melting one - and we’re still waiting for definitive answers on why that happened) but this time you get a dongle adapter with just three eight-pin PCIe inputs. That’s still more than enough, bearing in mind that the much more power-hungry RTX 3090 Ti shipped with the same adapter - and the RTX 4090 worked with it too....

Auster’s a weird writer, and he’s weird in a way that no other writer I’ve encountered is weird. He’s playful yet also humourless. Is that combination even possible? Auster suggests it is: his stuff is filled with games and allusions and illusions, riffs on Don Quixote or Tesla - but you can’t really imagine any of his protagonists ever laughing, and his text unfolds elegantly while being scrubbed clean of much in the way of character....