Marvel's Avengers' Hawkeye expansion is only just out today, but developers Crystal Dynamics have immediately announced the next major expansion to come. Black Panther: War For Wakanda will bring Black Panther to the game later in 2021, and the first trailer sets up a fight against the villain Klaw.
Square Enix have spent the past year occassionally teasing a new game codenamed Project Athia. Now we know it's actual name - Forspoken - and there's a new trailer below that introduces its protagonist. Which is all well and good, but the real stand-out here is its magical free-running movement.
I thought I'd seen and played enough Life Is Strange games at this point that I'd be immune to its combination of teen melodrama, golden hour lighting and supernatural abilities. And then came the announcement trailer for Life Is Strange: True Colors, and nope, this still works on me. You can watch it below.
Today brings a new four-hour version of the irredeemable Justice League film, the infamous 'Snyder Cut' made at great cost because fans demanded it. Mystifying. But it does make me wonder: which game would you like to see get its own Synder Cut-style revamp? I'm not asking which game Zack Snyder should take a pass at, because too many games already have bad writing and gratuitious slow-motion. No, I'm asking which game's creators should receive a big sack of cash to revel in self-indulgence with a new expanded edition.
Sony unveiled their next-gen PlayStation VR controllers today, and boy do they look familiar. Having ditched the ice cream cone motion controllers of yore, the next-gen PSVR controllers will adopt a similar, ergonomic orb shape to ones we currently enjoy on the Oculus Quest 2 and HTC Vive Cosmos. But there's one feature in particular that I would love to see come to those PC VR headsets. That's right, folks. Dualsense is coming to VR, and I want it.
Gamescom's organisers have announced the event intends on making a return to the real world this year. They're calling Gamescom 2021 a "hybrid", with plans for both digital and physical parts of the event - though the number of tickets available for the in-person side will be "significantly reduced" from previous years. It'll run from the 25th to the 29th of August online and at Cologne's Koelnmesse, with the Opening Night Live Show taking place on the evening of the 24th.
Cats went chasing after dogs on the Electronic Wireless Show podcast this week. Birds flew upside down, water fell upwards, and men became beasts, as Nate and Matthew plunged headlong into the chaos of a world where Alice is on holiday for a week. Needless to say, the conversation on this wild new frontier turned immediately to the subject of the best eggs depicted in PC gaming.
Immediately, that is, after an intense discussion of goldfish husbandry, dogs with human hands, and eggs in general. But eggs were indeed discussed, Dizzy was needlessly disrespected, and there was a deeply experimental Cavern of Lies, in which Matthew and Nate had their bodies swapped by friend of the show Sir Anthony Hopkins.
Microsoft are bringing their Auto HDR feature to PC, allowing HDR-capable gaming monitors to play games in high dynamic range even if they don't have native support for it. First seen on the Xbox Series X and S when Microsoft's next-gen consoles launched last November, the new Auto HDR Preview mode for PC works with thousands of DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 PC titles and can be toggled on and off in Windows 10's settings menu.
While Silent Hill 2 is the best Silent Hill game, its PC release is far from the best version. Thankfully modders are fixing a lot of its issues with Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition, which fixes old issues while adding modern polish too. Splendid. Now if Konami could start actually selling Silent Hill 2 for PC again, that would be just grand.
I’ve had a lot of "road to PC games Damascus" moments in the last year - braving competitive multiplayer matches in Age Of Empires 2, jumping into Dishonored to break myself out of a two-game rut, and then letting Agent 47 free me from my obsessive, fun-dampening quicksave habit last month.
Now, it seems, I’ve had another shot of PC gaming validation, courtesy of clashing-eyed funboy Zagreus from Hades. This time, I learned not to be too quick to presuppose what I'm rubbish at. And much like surrogate father Achilles, who instructs Zag in the way of how to do fights good, Hades was a consummately shrewd teacher.