Void Interactive has lost the publisher for its SWAT game Ready or Not days after comments suggested it would include a school shooting mission.

The game was released in early access on 17th December, but in a statement on Twitter Void Interactive said it had parted ways with publisher Team17.

Though no reasons have been given so far, a recent Reddit post asking if the game would include a school shooting level received a response from one of the game's developers saying "You better believe it's gonna".

Read more

Hello! We're continuing our look at some of the most memorable games and moments of 2021. Here's Henry.

I had to remind myself about this year's releases before choosing a moment that impacted me. Sinking countless hours into older JRPGs (looking at you Trails) didn't help matters, and even the most generous editor would struggle accepting that. As a reviewer, I've gone through numerous big releases and had some fantastic experiences. Seeing the Great Ace Attorney finally localised is up there, Metroid's 2D return was magnificent, and Mario Party continues infuriating my very core. Choosing a major gaming moment was tough, yet when I considered Before I Forget, there was no contest.

Launched last year on PC, Before I Forget jumped over to consoles back in April, hence the inclusion here. Much has already been written about 3-Fold Games' incredible experience and while it takes an hour to complete, I'm still thinking about it eight months later. Playing as Dr. Sunita Appleby, we have the tale of an esteemed cosmologist who has retired after developing early-onset dementia. I lost my own great-grandmother to dementia eight years ago, so this quickly became an emotional journey for me.

Read more

Nearly two years after its debut, Final Fantasy 7 Remake is finally available for PC. It's a port of the PlayStation 5 'Intergrade' version that came out earlier this year and as you may have seen from the headlines, it's a contentious release to say the least. While Square-Enix's conversion retains all of the graphical features of the PS5 game, it's a barebones release, plagued with awful hitching and stutter problems and one of the most basic options screens we've seen in years from a major release.

In terms of its qualities as a PC port, we've not got much to say that's positive about this game but it is important to point out that the game itself truly is great. Character models are the highlight here, with superb definition and lighting. It's rather reminiscent of Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children, the 2005 CG film, although of course rendered in real-time. Cutscenes are absolutely stunning, with well-realised characters, storytelling and action. Battles look superb as well, with smooth animation work and vibrant GPU effects. Environments are at times less impressive, with spotty geometric density in places, along with low resolution baked shadows, but the game is a visual showcase overall. The Intergrade release delivers enhancements to lighting, textures, volumetrics and performance - in addition to new content.

Beyond that though, the positives fall off dramatically. The menu system is fine - effectively a copy of the console user interface - but the settings menu is remarkably sparse. There are options for screen resolution, texture and shadow resolution, a choice of frame-rate caps and a bunch of HDR settings. Most curious of all is the 'characters displayed' setting with an 11-point scale, which isn't actually about the amount of characters displayed but rather NPC draw distance. PlayStation 4 sits at the zero level, while PlayStation 5 gets an upgrade to seven here. PC at the max 10 all but eliminates pop-in on character draw distance - one of the very, very few enhancements available over the PS5 game.

Read more

Editor's note: Hello! Over the next few days we're running a "Games That Got Away" series, where we finally get round to reviewing games that released at some point in 2021 but, for various reasons, we couldn't quite manage to cover at the time.

In Loop Hero you don't walk in circles, you walk in loops. Each procedurally created path leads back to its own beginning, but the shape will have a few kinks and bends. It reminds me a bit of those natural artworks formed by the discarded rubber bands that the people who deliver post leave behind them as they make their rounds. Rounds which are frequently loops, I've just realised, and not circles.

Loop Hero is quite simple really, but it can be a faff to explain. Let's get to it. It's an RPG, with all the monsters, loot, quests and bosses you might expect. There's even a story - quite a good one, about a world that has ended but could yet be rescued, brought back to life one chunk at a time. It has heroes and classes and all that stuff, but what marks it out, what makes it different, is that it doesn't let you directly control the hero. Not really. You can't fight their battles or choose their next objective. Instead, you keep them kitted out with the best stuff and you start them and stop them as they walk around their loop, a tiny little pixel person in a dinky pixel world, a charismatic presence straight out of the Commodore 64.

Read more

FIFA 22 is the UK's Christmas number one this year, at least by physical sales.

EA's football game is followed by Among Us and Call of Duty: Vanguard, according to the latest sales report from GSD.

It means that EA now has more Christmas number one games than any other publisher.

Read more

Halo Infinite's holiday event Winter Contingency has launched, featuring various Christmas related rewards.

The free event runs until 4th January 2022 with ten rewards available.

As explained on Halo Waypoint, those rewards will be rolled out one-per-day until 30th December, with a few extra days afterwards to catch up on missed items.

Read more

The Final Fantasy 6 pixel remaster now has a release date of February 2022.

Square Enix has been re-releasing its early games on mobile and Steam, with Final Fantasy 6 being the last installment in the collection.

The first three remasters were released on 28th July, so fans have been eagerly anticipating the close of the collection.

Read more

Hello! Over the next few days we're going to be going back over some of our favourite games and moments and themes and whatnot from this very strange year. We hope you enjoy looking back with us!

I know what happens next. I know because this is Deathloop, and what happens once here will happen a thousand times, each enemy dancing to a predestined script they have no idea exists. As I watch on, they do exactly as they did the last time I was here. One Eternalist turns left. The other heads right. The third settles down onto the steps in front of her. I raise my gun until her head fills the small red circle in my reticle, but my attention shifts briefly to the Eternalist just ahead of her.

Is he far enough away, do you think? I have a silencer, sure, but if I fire now, will he hear the rush of displaced air as the bullet rushes towards her skull? And if he does hear it, he'll call out to the others, won't he? And the Eternalists around him - I know there's at least three up there ahead of him - will come running. I hesitate, giving him an extra second to step further away and...

Read more

As the games industry reels from NFT backlash, a new mod has been created for Doom 2 that allows you to screenshot monkeys.

NFT Doom, a mod by Ultra.Boi, allows you to race through hell with demons replaced by those demonic apes from Bored Ape Yacht Club often sold as NFTs.

Instead of shotguns, chainsaws and BFGs, Doomguy now sports a camera with which to screenshot those pesky primates.

Read more

Towards the beginning of Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker, an unnamed soldier hands a man from the opposing side a coffee-filled mug. After dealing with countless hardships throughout the story, filled with destruction and death, the soldier tells the man, "It's the little things that make life worth living, don't you think so?" This single statement was enough to bring me to tears. Final Fantasy 14 is one of those little things in my life that has brought so much joy and comfort in the past two years of hardships around the world.

I started my journey in Final Fantasy 14 at the beginning of the pandemic, not unlike many other players in the MMORPG. A good friend of mine over in England had suggested I play, seeing that I have been a huge fan of other popular RPGs such as Dragon Age, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Final Fantasy 7. Since then, Final Fantasy 14 has fast become my favorite game to play, and having just finished Endwalker, I can honestly say that Final Fantasy 14 has one of the best storylines I have ever witnessed in a video game.

While there has been some trouble with queue times since Endwalker has come out, it hasn't been too much of a hassle for me over on the Crystal Data Center. Final Fantasy 14 has seen a massive rise in popularity since July this year due to many popular streamers promoting it on both Twitch and YouTube. The highest queue I had seen was when early access first dropped for Endwalker, which was around 5,000 for my data center. Despite this, I have found that playing the game in the early morning or later part of the evening has much smaller queue times of around 50-100 max.

Read more