With Rainbow Six Siege's annual premiere tournament almost upon us - and indeed, the first offline Siege esports event since the start of the pandemic - Ubisoft have discounted games across the Rainbow Six franchise over at the Ubisoft Store by up to 75%.
Battlerite developers Stunlock Studios have come up with a different take on the online survival genre. In V Rising, every player is a vampire. You start with nothing but a mothball ridden cloak and a broken fang dangling from your mouth (I assume), and build up from there. Every neck gnawed is a step on the goal to building your own castle and crafting a Dracula-like legacy.
I've found that the dingy post-apocalyptic world of Metro Exodus always looked quite good, but today developers 4A Games made those visuals even better. They've released the Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition, expanding the FPS's ray tracing capabilities, increasing framerates and display resolutions, among other technical upgrades. You can download the Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition right now if you'd like, but be warned: it requires a ray tracing-capable GPU at the very minimum.
Hot on the heels of their decision to bring back their charitable donation sliders, Humble have announced their latest monthly Choice bundle - and this month's big headliner is none other than Metro Exodus, which upgrades into the brand new Enhanced Edition today for free. The May Bundle also includes 11 more games, too, and is available to new customers for a discounted price of £8.61 in the UK or $12 in the US.
Back in March, Assassin's Creed co-creator Jade Raymond started up Haven Studios, an independent Canadian developer with plans to make a new PlayStation game. She had previously been the head of Stadia Games and Entertainment, but left after Google started shutting down its development studios earlier this year. Now it seems Raymond has tempted some other Google alums over for her new project, who also all happen to be former Ubisoft developers too.
After I lived and breathed NieR Replicant for review, I looked back on my play time with a mixture of fondness and pain. The payoff of the fifth and final ending was worth the effort, but good lord was it a test of resolve. It was brilliance nestled in multiple layers of gift wrap, and I was happy to call it a day once I'd seen the final (x5) credits.
But one thing I haven't stopped thinking about is the menu sounds. NieR Replicant has excellent noises for its start menu and inventory management, both of which aided that sense of being transported to another world of monsters and emotion.
Whoever said "nothing is certain but death and taxes" never played Eve Online. The space-faring MMORPG has no central government to shake you down for road money, and space pilots are cloned anew after every ignoble death. After 18 years and countless updates, Eve is one of the longest-running MMOs in the industry. It predates World of Warcraft by over a year. It is older than Facebook. Alongside long-toothed MMOs like Runescape, it has survived where others have fallen. But surely even this infamous generator of sci-fi skulduggery must pay the final toll some time. Well, not according to Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of the game's developer, CCP.
"It's never going to die," he says.
The PC’s never-ending march to add ray tracing to everything has now made it onto other platforms. Super Mario 64 RT (or 'SMT64RT' if you're pressed for time) is the latest, albeit unofficial version of the Nintendo 64 classic for PC, grafting a lighting system onto the 24-year-old console game. Digital Foundry took a look at the mod and cried fully dynamic and simulated tears of joy.
Rogue Lords is an upcoming gothic fantasy roguelike being developed by Cyanide Studio (the creators of Blood Bowl and Styx) and Leikir, and it's set to release this year. It caught my eye when it was first announced amidst the notE3 celebrations last year, mostly due to the eerie aesthetic and cool concept art shown during publisher Nacon's announce-a-thon stream. But today, the devs released a new gameplay trailer that's piqued my interest once more, because it shows that players can kind of cheat to win runs.
From the beginning of its inception, Yakuza was a game made for the adult male audience in Japan. It’s a point that its creators have previously brought up when interviewed about the games.
Yet, as the entire mainline series is finally available on PC, Yakuza has become an international hit for Sega, and I’m thrilled that many new converts and some of the most vocal cheerleaders are women. Coming to the latest entry, Yakuza: Like A Dragon (LAD for short), there are a lot of drastic changes to the formula, from new protagonist Ichiban to a turn-based JRPG battle system - but one notable shift is its relationship with women.