Remember press events for game launches? Thanks to the pandemic, they've felt like a long distant memory for us here at Eurogamer. Things started to feel a little more normal last week though as Aoife and I were finally able to head out into the great outdoors in search of a video game related adventure.

Enter Persona 4 Arena ULTIMAX in the red corner, a spin-off beat-em-up game set in the Persona universe and featuring a cast of recognisable characters. Persona 4 Arena ULTIMAX actually first released way back in 2013 but this new version, which launched last week, now brings the game and all of its DLC and updates to PS4, PC and Switch.

During that event, I was busy working up a sweat in the blue corner because, to celebrate the launch of the game, I was thrown into a boxing ring for the very first time, where a duo of professional boxers taught me how to throw a proper punch.

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Amazon Games and Smilegate would "consider" a console port of Lost Ark, if fans wanted it.

Speaking to VG247, Amazon Games' franchise lead Soomin Park was asked about whether the game would be ported to Xbox and PlayStation - especially after the success of main rival Diablo 3.

"If Lost Ark on consoles is something that fans really want, then I think it's something both parties would consider," he said.

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From the moment you take control of Akito, they're everywhere. On the crosswalks and the pavements. In the hospital and the subway stations. Small, forlorn piles of clothing that once kept someone warm and dry. But now they lie in the same position they fell, sitting in untidy little clumps across the streets and buildings of Shibuya, kind of together but also kind of separate, like uneasy strangers at a dinner party.

For all the sights and sounds of Ghostwire: Tokyo - and trust me, there's a lot of 'em - it's these sets of clothes that touched me most. Despite a mainline story that does its utmost best to pull at your heartstrings and connect you in some way - any way - to Akito and his psychic roommate, for all its cloying sentiment, nothing in that story made me feel as sad as the sight of all those empty outfits.

It's to my considerable frustration, then, that Tango Gameworks kicks off Ghostwire: Tokyo with such a dazzling conceit but goes on to do so very little with it. Much like the neon and the puddles, the pray sites and the Jizo statues, most of what you encounter on the empty streets of Shibuya are just props. Window dressing. Though occasionally you'll find a note or a phone or some small keepsake to identify the hospital scrubs or the business suit or the school uniform beside them, most of the time you won't. Most of the time, the people of Shibuya don't seem to matter.

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DICE has learned "valuable lessons" from Battlefield 2042's disastrous release.

The studio will be "reverting a lot of the changes we made in Battlefield 2042" according to an inside source (thanks, Xfire).

The next Battlefield game has already entered pre-production, where original plans to use Battlefield 2042 as a foundation to build on, have been scrapped.

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There is a point with kittens where they can basically break fundamental laws of physics. Where they can reach such speed and hectic enthusiasm that they can essentially run up a person, up the legs, the torso, navigate the fleshy intricacies of the face. They're not so much defying gravity as refusing to engage with it. Kittens have zip.

Aztech Forgotten Gods has a bit of zip to it as well - and it has the kitten leg-dash move down perfectly. At times it has far too much zip, even. I've been playing the early stages of Aztech on Switch over the last morning or so. I had read reviews that suggested the camera is extremely wayward (it is) and the open world is kind of empty (it is), and that the whole thing feels like it's pushing the boundaries of this kind of action game beyond the point where it's comfortable. True, I think! But it doesn't matter to me so much. Aztech is the epitome of one of those games that is just wildly ambitious - it's very hard for me not to get swept up in its ideas.

There is something really wonderful here. Lots of wonderful things. Take the world, for instance. Aztech's far-future Mesoamerican city is a wonderful open world, filled with buildings that look cool and are also brilliant to scale. I spend a lot of time here already ignoring the main quest line and just seeing where I can get to, which peaks I can reach. It looks like no other world I can think of in a game.

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Seemingly not content with chart-topping pop songs, spin-off games, and an acclaimed Netflix animated series, developer Riot Games is giving League of Legends the literary treatment, with the game's "first ever novel" set to release this September.

Ruination, as the forthcoming novel will be titled, is the work of Riot Games' principle writer, Anthony Reynolds, and will focus on two League of Legends champions: Kalista, the Spear of Vengeance, and the Ruined King Viego.

As publisher Orbit Books explains in its announcement, Ruination "tells the story of Kalista, military general to King Viego, as she searches for a legendary realm that may have access to ancient magic - the only way to cure the poisoned Queen Isolde."

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Following last week's big Elden Ring patch, which added the likes of NPC quest markers and expanded NPC quests, FromSoftware and publisher Bandai Namco have released a smaller update tackling a range of issues on all platforms - which, most importantly for PC players, includes a fix to stop hackers from ruining others' saves.

The remedy in question is referenced toward the bottom of the patch notes accompanying today's 1.03.2 release for Elden Ring, explaining the update has "fixed a bug in multiplayer that allowed players to teleport others to incorrect map coordinates".

This directly addresses an exploit malicious hackers were using to teleport players beneath the map after having invaded their world. This would first manifest as a game crash during an invasion, but when affected players attempted to restart their game, they'd find they'd been teleported beneath the map, falling infinitely to their doom - with no way to salvage their potential many-hundreds-of-hours save.

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The game director for CD Projekt's just-announced new The Witcher project has spoken out on the issue of crunch.

CD Projekt has been criticised in the past for its track record on staff working conditions, and previously U-turned on its promise not to enforce crunch during development of Cyberpunk 2077.

This week, with its new The Witcher project now public, CD Projekt veteran Jason Slama announced he would serve as the project's game director.

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CD Projekt RED has officially confirmed the existence of a new title based on The Witcher. In an announcement that reveals no concrete information on the game itself, the focus is very much on technology. The firm's in-house REDengine is being mothballed in favour of Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5. CDPR talks of a 'multi-year strategic partnership... [covering] not only licensing, but technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine where relevant'. In essence, CDPR has chosen to throw in its lot with Epic Games, even though core Unreal Engine 5 technologies are still at an early state, with the firm helping to shape the tech 'with the primary goal being to help tailor the engine for open-world experiences'. We're at the embryonic stages here as no development time frame or release dates are being shared at this time.

It's a seismic shift for the Polish developer, which has shipped all of its titles from The Witcher 2 onwards on its own engine - but to be clear, while the REDengine's days are numbered, it is still the core foundation of Cyberpunk 2077, so the upcoming expansion for that title will still be based on the same technology. Beyond that, however, it seems that Unreal Engine 5 is the future.

From the perspective of the staff members at Digital Foundry, this is not the best news and while it's clear that there are reasons why CDPR has moved on, the end of development on a hugely impressive independent engine is a blow. After all, REDengine in its various guises has produced a visually unique presentation that has undoubtedly helped to shape some brilliant games. Going all the way back to The Witcher 2, CDPR delivered a title quite unlike any other that genuinely pushed back barriers - a game that still looks brilliant today. Environment detail, lighting, character rendering and post-processing were well ahead of their time. The Witcher 2 launched during the PS3/Xbox 360 era yet from a technological perspective, it was a class apart, a generation beyond.

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CD Projekt Red has confirmed to Eurogamer that the medallion in the picture teasing the new Witcher game does indeed resemble a lynx.

"Ok, some mysteries should not be so mysterious," CD Projekt Red global communication director Robert Malinowski told me this afternoon. "I can confirm that the medallion is, in fact, shaped after a lynx."

It puts to an end speculation that has been swirling ever since the image was released on Monday. The medallion's likeness to a lynx is clear (see image below); the problem was that no Lynx School existed in the Witcher canon - not in the books or games or anywhere. That's what had people's brains in a twist.

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