Assassin's Creed 2

I was really moved this week to see how a small number of people have powered a profound change in games. I'm a bit embarrassed to say I often overlook accessibility in games, which isn't to say I don't benefit from it. And I assumed the range of accessibility options in modern games was simply improving because someone somewhere decided it should. But of course that's not what happened. Behind the celebrated and ground-breaking accessibility tools in a game like The Last of Us Part 2, for example, is the tireless work of a community campaigning for the opportunity to play and enjoy games too.

It's that community I watched in action this week at the accessibility in games conference, or GAConf for short, and I've rarely been around a more engaged or supportive group of people. The conference is having something of a moment, because, wonderfully, the tide of accessibility in games seems to be turning. The Last of Us Part 2 - the sparkling diamond of accessibility and deservedly so - as well as Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Gears of War 5, Watch Dogs: Legion, Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, and Remedy's Control, are all setting industry-leading examples of what good accessibility in games can look like. There is a long way to go, but this is progress.

Good accessibility can look like high-contrast modes for low visibility, and automatic navigation and clever, spatial audio cues. It can look like assistance for aiming and movement, and the removal of time-pressured button presses and quick-reaction challenges. It can look like invulnerability, because some people like setting their own challenges. It looks like a whole suite of options you can tailor your gameplay experience with if you want to. Accessibility looks like choice.

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HomefrontĀ®: The Revolution

Earlier this week, the internet was abuzz after a developer revealed a fully playable version of TimeSplitters 2 had been squirrelled away in Homefront: The Revolution. The only snag was the code required to unlock the easter egg had been lost to time - or so it was thought, until now.

Word of the substantial easter egg first surfaced over the weekend, when former Homefront: The Revolution developer Matt Phillips revealed the TimeSplitters 2 cameo seen in Homefront's retail version - two story levels playable on an in-game arcade cabinet - was originally intended to be "fully playable" via an unlock code that was never publicly released.

Unfortunately, "the unlock code has been lost to time," Phillips tweeted, explaining he no longer had the notebook with it in any more. The developer did, however, reveal the code had been shared with a friend to leak in a Discord channel prior to its disappearance ("They called him a liar and banned his account", Phillips noted), and it's this very same friend - Xbox principal software engineer Spencer Perreault - who's re-emerged to save the day.

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Eurogamer

If you're a particularly impatient sort and simply can't quell your hunger for all the Resident Evil Village news ahead of its launch next month, Capcom has you covered with a spoiler-filled peek at the game's sprawling, countryside-spanning map.

To be fair, when I mean map, I mean map. As shared by IGN, this isn't a top-down, in-game snapshot of Village's polygonal geometry; rather it's a slightly more abstract cartographical interpretation, all inky lines on faded parchment, so we're not in complete spoiler territory.

Lean in close and you'll get a glimpse of Village's four main areas, alongside a number of key landmarks. Three paragraphs in, I'm going to assume you're not that fussed about spoilers, so these are Castle Dimitresu itself (last see in the PlayStation 5-exclusive demo), Heisenberg's Factory, House Beneviento, and Moreau's Reservoir.

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The Last Campfire

Hello Games' charming narrative puzzler The Last Campfire is getting a free new update today on all platforms, adding new puzzles, performance improvements, and more.

The Last Campfire, if you've not yet had the pleasure, follows the adventures of "a lost Ember trapped in a puzzling place, searching for meaning and a way home".

It's the work of a small team within Hello Games, which includes Steven Burgess and Chris Symonds, respectively the lead designer and lead artist on Frontier Development's fondly remembered Wii platform adventure LostWinds - a title which The Last Campfire's delicate ambience and exploratory puzzling brings to mind.

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Eurogamer

If you're a regular over on the Eurogamer YouTube channel you might have noticed that Aoife, Ian and Zoe tend to stream console games a lot there - and often only the more basic PC titles, like Among Us. If you guessed this was because their PCs were getting a little long in the tooth, you'd be right. We were just thinking about speccing out upgrades when Intel handily offered to supply the team with brand new, cutting-edge builds based around their 11th generation CPUs.

There was just one catch: Aoife would need to build hers herself. On camera. Behold the results in the video below. Be aware that this video features some extremely festive rainbow-coloured LEDs.

This would be Aoife's first PC build, but she's ably assisted in the video by her other half Seb. (Hi Seb.) Spoilers: it goes OK! We showed the video to Digital Foundry's Rich Leadbetter with some trepidation, but he gave it the thumbs up. As Aoife wrote on Slack: "I'm coming for your job Rich."

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Job Simulator

Humble has cast its net into the vast ocean of PC games for us once more and collected together a new bundle containing eight VR games, including the likes of Job Simulator, Star Trek: Bridge Crew, Borderlands 2 VR and more.

The timely-titled Spring into VR Bundle offers up around $215 worth of games that can be yours for less than £11. Various VR headsets are supported so have a browse through and see if there's anything worth using as a temporary escape from the real world for cheap!

For less than a pound you can grab the space exploration game Detached and see how you would fare in a Gravity-esque scenario. Sadly, incorporeal George Clooney is not included.

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Eurogamer

Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've found ourselves playing over the last few days. This time: Halo, traffic lights, and more Halo.

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What we've been playing,
here's our archive.

Some games are better on the big screen. And I mean the proper big screen. I used to be a projectionist, back when that was still a thing, and for a while after every Saturday shift I'd take over the main screen, plumb in an Xbox 360 and have some friends around for an all-nighter. You haven't really played Rockstar's Table Tennis until you've done it with a 20-foot tall Liu Ping, really.

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Eurogamer

Neo: The World Ends With You arrives for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 on 27th July, and later in the summer for PC via the Epic Games Store.

Square Enix's long-awaited follow-up to the Nintendo DS cult classic features a fresh cast of characters but a familiar stylised version of Tokyo's Shibuya district.

This time around, Shibuya is created in full 3D, but it keeps the original's comic book aesthetic. Here's a new trailer:

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Eurogamer

Netflix has signed a streaming licensing deal for Sony's upcoming films, including Uncharted.

The US-focused licensing deal is for theatrically released Sony films, beginning with its 2022 slate. It means Netflix has "first pay window" rights to stream these films following their theatrical and home entertainment windows. The streaming deal spans five years, The New York Times said.

Tentpoles such as Morbius, Uncharted, Where the Crawdads Sing, and Bullet Train will be among the initial 2022 offerings, Netflix said.

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Eurogamer

Grinding Gear Games has shown off 19 minutes of new Path of Exile 2 gameplay.

The footage below shows off the second act of the game, set in the Vastiri Desert. We see a number of new weapon classes at play (spear, crossbow etc), improved animations and greater detail compared to the original action role-playing game.

There's a great-looking mini-boss fight where each time it pounds the ground some of the ceiling collapses, shining light onto the floor. Then, if you stand in the light you won't get hit by bits of the ceiling!

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