Developer Heart Machine has unveiled Hyper Light Breaker, a fully 3D rogue-lite spin on its acclaimed 2016 action-adventure Hyper Light Drifter that's coming to PC early next year.

While Hyper Light Drifter served up a tautly designed single-player adventure blending rich exploration with challenging melee combat in a strikingly presented top-down, 2D world, Hyper Light Breaker looks like a very different take on the same universe.

It all unfolds in the Overgrowth, a new "vast, ever-changing" (and fully 3D) world consisting of massive, open biomes and deep labyrinths - which players can navigate using the likes of wall-dashing, hoverboarding, and gliding. Here, they'll be able to "defeat brutal monsters, create new builds, survive the mysterious Crowns and overthrow the almighty Abyss King."

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Microsoft is reportedly set to plug a gap in its Game Pass line-up by launching a new family plan, enabling five users to access the service using one subscription, later this year.

That's according to Windows Central's Jez Corden, who, citing "trusted sources familiar with with Microsoft's efforts", reports the family plan has been in the works for some time as Microsoft navigated issues around royalty distribution and third-party licenses. Those kinks are presumably close to being ironed out now, however, with Corden suggesting an official unveiling may happen relatively soon.

As for what the family plan might offer, it'll reportedly enable five users in the same country to access Game Pass' entire library using a single membership, with the cost said to be "far cheaper" than paying for five individual subscriptions.

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Closing in on seven years after the launch of its hugely successful Kickstarter, Castelvania spiritual successor Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is still ticking off stretch goals, with its latest update delivering its third and final promised playable character - which turns out to be a cameo crossover from Ubisoft Montreal's fondly remembered fantasy platformer Child of Light.

"Aurora has lost her way and awoken in a strange, dangerous new land," explains developer ArtPlay in a new Kickstarter update. "Armed with the Sword of Matildis and accompanied by the loyal Igniculus, she must find a way to escape."

Upon downloading today's free 1.30 update, players can take Child of Light protagonist Aurora (who joins existing playable characters Miriam and Zangetsu, plus "bonus" character Bloodless) on a gothic romp through Bloodstained's familiar castle, making use of her sword, companion Igniculus - who can slow opponents or heal Aurora - and her directional Light Ray skill, which damages any enemies caught in its beam.

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This week on the Eurogamer Newscast, we discuss PlayStation's big new subscription revamp. With a keen eye on Xbox Game Pass and a need to reform its own Plus and Now offerings, Sony laid out its plans - to a mixed response.

Sony's approach clearly differs from Microsoft - it sees no need to bundle in its £70 games on day one. But does this then create confusion for PlayStation fans down the line? When will new games join the Premium service?

Chatting with me about PlayStation Plus - and also Nintendo's delay to Zelda - are Eurogamer news reporters Ed Nightingale and Victoria Kennedy. Join us to hear what we think this might mean for Wind Waker and Twilight Princess ports, and whether we'll be subbing to PlayStation Plus Premium...

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We've already covered Death Stranding: Director's Cut last September, when Hideo Kojima's unique epic received a range of tech and content upgrades for its PlayStation 5 debut. Chief amongst them was the ability to play the game at a targeted 60 frames per second - something that wasn't possible on the PS4 original, even though Kojima Productions originally designed the game for this performance target. The Director's Cut is now available on PC but the upgrade isn't quite so marked. After all, 60fps was on the table for PC users from day one, the port was exceptional and the DLSS implementation opened the door to great performance at high frame-rates.

Obviously, the content improvements of the Director's Cut make their way across, but is there anything new from a technical perspective? Well, the original Death Stranding port's 'default' graphics settings effectively delivered PS4 Pro quality to PC, with only limited upwards scalability. In the case of the Director's Cut, default now delivers the same improved visuals as PS5, which basically means that draw distance has been pushed out a touch while everything else remains much the same.

The Director's Cut also ships with a more refined version of DLSS - version 2.3.7, according to the files. This reduces and eliminates the occasional ghosting trails seen in the initial release. It's worth pointing out that DLSS .dll downloads are readily available for download, and there's nothing stopping you replacing the .dll in the original release for improved DLSS image quality. Eventually, the game will also have XeSS image reconstruction upscale, but we should not expect that until desktop Intel Arc GPUs arrive in the summer.

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Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt, developer Sharkmob's free-to-play battle royale spin on the long-running RPG series, is getting its full PlayStation 5 and PC launch on 27th April.

Bloodhunt (not to be confused with Big Bad Wolf Studio's upcoming RPG Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong, Paradox Interactive's troubled Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, or indeed 2019 visual novel Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York) was announced toward the end of 2020 and had a limited Steam early access run the following year.

It is, all in all, pretty much exactly what it sounds like, casting participants - either playing solo or in a team of three - as vampires and setting them loose across the rain-soaked, moon-drenched streets and rooftops of Prague. All players have access to basic vampire trickery such as the ability to scramble up walls, but the characters they choose (from one of several vampire clans) inform the additional supernatural powers they're able to deploy. Oh, and there are lots and lots of guns to loot too, if you'd just rather just do the shooty thing.

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Vermintide follow-up Warhammer 40,000: Darktide will launch on Tuesday 13th September.

The four-player co-op game builds on Vermintide 2's melee combat with the addition of "deep and balanced gunplay", developer FatShark has said.

You'll need a mix of melee and ranged combat to fight off Darktide's new menagerie of monsters, which you glimpse in the new trailer below:

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"It'll be a game for freaks," said Ben Esposito of Neon White in a gameplay trailer when it was announced for Nintendo Switch last July.

Really, it's a game for people who like fun, campy, melodrama alongside their speedrunning. In a video preview of the game, Esposito describes Neon White as a speedrunning first person shooter meets visual novel that's "nostalgic but not in a superficial way".

"We really wanted to make a game that felt cool and it really felt like the self-indulgent Y2K anime game of our dreams," he says.

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Let me get this out of the way quickly: Superfuse looks really good. It's basically a Cel-shaded action RPG in the cut of Diablo. Four-player co-op or single-player fun. There's a comic book presentation - and a comic book plot, about people who have become gods and whatnot - which means that gorgeous comic book panels pop up during cut scenes and the designers have been wonderfully bold with the application of halftone. I am a fan of halftone. And from hubs you are despatched to various procedurally wrangled dungeons to splatter sci-fi horrors and take on bosses and pick up loot. Repeat.

All of this looks great. I had a build for a while and was very happy splattering and looting - doing the inventory Tetris thing and the skills-bar glissando. Mutant crabs. Horrible shambling monsters. And me at the heart of it, a Berserker class who seemed to be lamping people for the sheer luminous joy of it all. (The voice acting is supremely charismatic, incidentally - courtesy of Eli Harris in this case, I think.)

Right. That's out of the way. Now I want to talk about the point where I almost fainted with happiness. Reader, it's to do with skills.

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A choreographer is suing Epic Games over dance moves included in an old Fortnite emote.

Kyle Hanagami, a choreographer who has worked with Britney Spears, Justin Bieber and J-Lo, filed suit against Epic regarding the "It's Complicated" emote, which was released within Fortnite back in August 2020.

Lawyers for Hanagami have said the emote uses copyrighted dance moves from a 2017 video set to Charlie Puth's "How Long" (thanks, Kotaku) without credit or compensation.

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