It's been a great year for fighting game events. Not only did Evo 2024 — the biggest fighting game tournament in the world — wrap up after breaking records, but we've seen growth across the genre, and across the globe. It feels like more attention than ever is on a historically niche style of game, as well as the culture of high level play surrounding it.

However, while much of this growth and success has been reaped and sown by grassroots tournaments and community initiatives, a constant presence year-round has been the Esports World Cup. This event — entirely funded by the Saudi Arabian government — is seemingly throwing heaps of cash at any competitive gaming scene with a pulse. This includes Tekken 8 and Street Fighter 6, the tournaments for which have drawn in many of the world's best players thanks to prize pools exceeding many other established events.

This initiative has been identified as sportswashing by many critics and concerned groups, the practice of using sports (and yes, esports) to better a countries reputation. This is not the first time Saudi Arabia — a country with a poor human rights record and reprehensible treatment towards LGBTQIA+ groups — has invested in such a venture. It has previously gone on big spending sprees across F1, football, golf, and even wrestling.

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Earlier this year, we saw the biggest open bracket video game tournament conclude - Evo 2024. With over 16,000 tournament entrants and many spectators alongside them, Evo made clear to the Las Vegas crowd that it's not going away any time soon. Or, well, you could argue it said the opposite! Not in terms of a permanent goodbye, but more of a holiday abroad, as Evo international events in France and Signapore were announced live during the Sunday finals.

I wanted to learn more about this planned escapade beyond the shores of the USA and Japan, about how the countries were picked and how this'll change the event for better or worse. To do so, I sat down with Rick "The Hadou" Thiher to chat about the announcement, and what this means for the Evo brand.

VG247: How long has Evo International been in the works?

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Witchfire Is nearly one year old, and though a lot has changed since it first hit Early Access on the Epic Games Store, it remains one of the most interesting genre mash-ups you can play today. The game’s latest update - which is live now - further cements its status as one of the most unique shooters in the space.

Ahead of today’s launch, I played a few hours of a build of the game running this latest update. Dubbed The Wailing Tower, it’s Witchfire’s biggest ever since its release last year. The main addition here is the game’s first new area, which has quite a different vibe to the existing map.

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Video games are great, but sometimes you just have to admit that some of them are only available on consoles that, well, aren't great. Rubbish, even. You can guarantee an argument if you ask people to pick the worst games console, so that's what we did. But what is the best game on this worst console? Who showed their ineptitude and picked a game on a great console? Who picked something so perfect it could never be argued with? Did Jim say anything of interest or just stir things up?

Truth is, depending on your exposure to certain consoles you're likely to have different views on this to everyone else, but we had to make a definitive choice over the best game on the worst console. It absolutely won't annoy anyone!

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The Borderlands movie is so trash, so bereft of merit, that it's driven Borderlands refugees back to the old games. In the wake of the film's release earlier this month we've seen player counts spike for Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and Borderlands 3, as these poor souls search desperately for a reason to still care about the IP.

It's frankly a good move to make, as all three games are pretty good! Borderlands 2 is often held up as the best of the trilogy, though Borderlands 1 still has a home in my heart. Borderlands 3 is more... controversial among fans, but still features that wonderful gunplay that led thousands of players to fall in love with the sci-fi ppost-apocalyptic series in the first place.

Borderlands 1 went from roughly 644 players on Steam on August 7 to 2,949 on Auguest 11. Borderlands 2 went from 3,925 on August 7 to 7.938 on August 11, and Borderlands 3 shot up from 3,687 on the 7th to 12,379 on the 11th. These aren't like, world-shattering numbers, but for a trilogy that's been largely left in the past for years now it's not too shabby.

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If you’ve been wondering why Frank West has a new voice actor, we might have our answer: Dead Rising: Deluxe Remaster has a whole lot of new dialogue for you to hear - which means a lot of the game has been re-recorded.

The original Dead Rising was a real product of its time. In 2006 games were becoming more cinematic, but still had many of the tropes, hallmarks, and structural limitations of previous generations as developers got used to high definition content, more cinematic presentation, and more processing power and storage space. As a result, Dead Rising had some iconic fully-voiced cutscenes - but also a whole lot of in-game dialogue that simply passed by with text boxes.

Not so in the latest remaster of the game - which tries to live up to its ‘Deluxe’ moniker by adding quite a lot to the game. The whole experience ends up feeling like it straddles some no-man's land between traditional remasters and a proper remake. It’s clearly the same game in the end and is full of glorious 2006 energy, so it’s a remaster – but the additions are seismic enough to feel like a bit of a remake. The fact Dead Rising has already been remastered once, in 2016, doesn’t help matters.

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“Don’t.”

That’s the first thing Fallout: London project manager Dean ‘Prilladog’ Carter, through a cheeky grin and a chuckle, says when I ask him, aside from the obvious point of not being a modding novice, what advice he might give to someone who sees the massive Fallout 4 mod and decides to embark on a similar project of their own.

He’s obviously joking, but there's a serious point to be made in there - don’t sign up for something like this unless you’ve got a good idea of what you’re in for and are sure you want to do it.

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It's one minute to midnight, and you're wandering the front hallway of what looks to be an average American suburban home. The place is a bit of a mess, but for a house that presumably accommodates a young family nothing looks too unusual on first inspection. The lights are flickering intermittently, but that's probably just from the storm you can hear outside.

A voice on the radio soothingly narrates the actions of a man — maybe you? — who murdered his wife and their children. You take a closer look at the piles of rubbish on the floor and see that it's all a bit more sinister than you thought at first. The lights dim again and a baby with a way-too-raspy voice starts crying somewhere in the house. Yeah, something bad definitely happened here.

It's a setup many of us are extremely familiar with, despite how comparatively few of us ever got to actually play it.

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The 10th anniversary of Life is Strange is fast approaching: in January next year it'll have been a full decade since Max, Chloe, and co. first entered our lives and, in many cases, won our hearts. For many of us who really loved Life is Strange upon first encountering it, it's fair to say that we're still just as besotted with the world and its characters all these years down the line as we were back in the day.

For a fairly niche choose-your-own-adventure series about marginalised superheroes growing up in modern-day USA, Life is Strange has become a surprisingly sprawling franchise over the past decade, no doubt spurred on by the deep pockets of publisher and IP owner Square Enix. Life is Strange: Double Exposure, due for release on October 29th, will be the fifth main game in the series; but to focus on mainline releases alone is to rob yourself of some delightful side-stories in the form of DLC chapters, comic books, a planned TV series, and now even a couple of novels.

Life is Strange: Heatwaves was published on July 31st, a conveniently-timed prose addition to the franchise for anyone itching to get an LiS fix in before Halloween rolls around. It follows Life is Strange: Steph's Story as the series' second prose entry and, now that there are two LiS tie-in novels to compare and contrast, I'm more confident than ever in my overall assessment of the current state of the franchise. Sure, like most long-running series, it's essentially a fanservice machine; but I'm consistently impressed by the wildly different interpretations of "fanservice" at work here.

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My summer has been a bit miserable so far. Work is (somehow) good. Personal relationships are going well. But everything else has either kind of sucked or felt exhausting. In this situation, you'd think I'd be checking out something calm like Stardew Valley (yes, I've yet to touch it) outside of my work commitments. Think again: I started playing The Outlast Trials.

I can't speak about its early access period nor the transition into 1.0 earlier this year, as I've just jumped into it this week for the first time. Part of me was curious about both the game and its seasonal model, but one funny thing about my brain is that it's traditionally thrived in stressful games the more stressed I've been in real life. That's how I now find myself looking around for keys inside rotting corpses and hiding in closets from grossly deformed freaks.

This might need a bit more background without getting into specifics (as this isn't a blog post): Sometimes it's hard to juggle a lot of stuff all at once, and chances are you either break down or become bitter. But you can also just keep plodding along, waiting for the storm to pass. As stated before, my life is good right now, but I've got that fatal weakness of worrying too much about those close to me. Also, experience has shown me bad stuff tends to come bundled together. So, yeah, you can guess how things have been recently. As a direct result, I've put too much weight on my figurative shoulders while, well, plodding along.

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The Battlefield series is a classic for a reason. Battlefield multiplayer has always been its strongest element, even when DICE squandered built-in potential or fumbled something or other seemingly unnecessarily. For as old as it is, however, it never really had any proper competition.

Delta Force: Hawk Ops may be a bit of a silly title, but spend just a few minutes with it and you’ll see just how serious it is at taking on Battlefield. After a bit of a delay, the game’s alpha test kicked off in the West this week, allowing players access to a subset of modes, maps, vehicles and operators.

Let’s get this out of the way quickly: this is really Battlefield 2042 in all but name. It’s going for that specific look to the point it’s hard to tell the two apart just by casually glancing at them. The menus, HUD design/elements, icons, and even some of the lighting quirks are nigh identical. Even one of the alpha maps bears a surprising resemblance to a certain classic Bad Company 2 map (which itself inspired a recent BF2042 map).

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“I studied at University College London where they have the Jeremy Bentham auto-icon and the whole concept of that is weird,” Fallout: London project manager Dean ‘Prilladog’ Carter tells me.

“For those that don't know, basically he mummified himself and he called it his auto-icon and in his little box in UCL is his skeleton. His head didn’t get mummified correctly, so it all melted, so they gave him like a plastic wax head,” he continues. “Literally, I love the idea so much because that alone in the real world - it's there now - seemed very Fallout. I was like, let's put Futurama in this kind of deal. We're gonna whack that head in a glass thing sitting on a Protectron and yeah, the rest is what you see in the mod.”

Thus was born Fallout: London’s Jeremy Bentham bot, a mechanical marvel which lets you see just how dire a failed mummification can be for a person’s hairline. Oh, and it also lets you debate the state of post-apocalyptic London society with the founder of modern utilitarian philosophy.

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Dead Rising: Deluxe Remaster is aiming to be the definitive version of 2006’s stone-cold classic, and this do-over is smart in terms of what it adds to the game, and in terms of what it retains. A few changes have been made throughout the game that involve taking things out, however - and one of the most notable is an omission from the photography mechanic.

As he tells everyone, Frank West is a photojournalist - and taking snaps of the chaos of the zombie-infested mall of Willamette is as large a part of his story as saving survivors, taking down psychopaths, and uncovering the truth behind the outbreak. The photography mechanic has one major adjustment in the Deluxe Remaster, however - and it’s sure to ruffle some feathers.

In the original version of the game and its near-identical 2016 re-release, photos that Frank takes can trigger one of several photo categories - Brutality, Drama, Outtake, Horror, and Erotica.

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Fallout: London, the DLC-sized mod — which is a complete lie given how gargantuan this mod is — from Team FOLON launched on July 25. Now that the team at VG247 has had enough time to wet their appetites and see what this highly-anticipated mod is all about, we decided to discuss and share a few of our favorite things across post-apocalyptic London.

The mod is, unsurprisingly, full of neat Britishisms (not that there’s anything great about being British), and Easter eggs which are a real joy to experience. Sure, Fallout: London hasn’t been without its fair share of bugs and crashes (which is authentic to the Bethesda experience, if you ask me), but this hasn’t removed from the amazing amount of passion and detail that has gone into making Fallout: London a reality.

Without further ado, here are some of our favourite things in Fallout: London.

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Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is perhaps not a sequel I ever expected to play. The original Relic Entertainment game was unusual by perhaps every measure. It was a shooter-melee hybrid that came from a studio chiefly known for its strategy games. It wasn’t especially well-received at its release, but has since garnered something of a cult status among Warhammer 40,000 enthusiasts, and really, anyone who played it.

Space Marine was the full package; a decently lengthy campaign with some all-around solid production values, a horde mode you can spend time in after finishing that, and even a serviceable, if unremarkable, multiplayer mode - as was the standard at the time. By all accounts, it was an oddity you wouldn’t have expected to repeat.

Yet here we are, 13 years later, and we’re playing a sequel to it; albeit one made by different people and published under a different banner.

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There's now a premium, extended version of this podcast that you can get as a VG247 paid subscriber - check out our Support Us page for more info. Doing so helps ensure that we can keep making the show! But don't worry if that's not for you, the main show will always be free.

Video games are unparalleled in recreating real and fictional experiences. Only when both are channelled well, with love and passion, can a game transcend its place as merely a product and become art. For this reason being able to take a p**s in-game is paramount to the merits of the medium. Where would we be without Norman Reedus widdling onto the grass in celebrated Art Game Death Stranding? Or that bit in Postal 2 where you can take a wizz on Gary Coleman, and he gets really cross with you? God rest him. Anyway.

Fact is, there are loads of games which, for some reason, include the act of doing a Big Wee as part of their suite of player interactions. But which of these games is the best? To find the answer, listen to the latest episode of The Best Games Ever show: a podcasted parlour game about arguing over metacritic scores.

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I've been having a tough time figuring out what I want to play recently, so I thought a good cure for that would be to play something a bit nostalgic. A favourite from my childhood, maybe, and while watching a very fun Ratchet and Clank speedrun from this year's Summer Games Done Quick, I quickly came to the conclusion that this was the one I wanted to revisit. It had been a while, after all, and despite getting right to the final boss, I never actually managed to beat the game, so I wanted to set myself the challenge of beating it.

I still own my PS2 and my original copy of it, but I also didn't really want to have to deal with the hassle of setting it up, let alone not have the modern luxury of the PS4 and PS5's rest mode. Luckily, I also owned the HD collection of the first three games for my PS Vita - remember that old thing? - and that felt like the best way to go about it. It meant I could just lie down on the sofa, or take it with me to bed, and pick it up a little bit at a time, or even on the go. I hadn't played on my Vita in a while, a console purchase that was arguably a mistake in the grand scheme of things, but over the course of my playthrough of Ratchet and Clank I couldn't help but think… Sony should make another one of these things.

Yes, I know it didn't sell all that well, with estimates of around 16 million lifetime units sold, a far cry from the PlayStation Portable's 80 million. But it really was ahead of its time, a console that could play intensive, home console-like titles, an OLED screen, hell even just having two analogue sticks. It was the Nintendo Switch before the Switch, just without the, you know, switching element. There were other problems too, with easily one of the biggest being that there just weren't all that many games for it, at least not over in the West (there are a number of Japan-exclusives I'm sad I can't play due to pesky language barriers).

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When I first saw Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, I didn’t think too highly of it. I thought it looked cheap, like a nostalgia-needling cash-grab. I thought that it seemed cynical. In hindsight, perhaps I am the cynical one for thinking that way: as detailed in my earlier preview of the retro package, there’s a lot more to it than first meets the eye.

Criticisms I initially had, like being annoyed that the package didn’t include the full versions of the NES games it featured, quickly melted away. It becomes clear that stuff isn’t included because it would be a distraction, in a way: this is a game about tiny challenges where every millisecond counts - not playing Zelda 1 start-to-finish. With that said, it’s obviously not entirely magnanimous on Nintendo’s part - these same games are available on Nintendo Switch Online, and they’d rather you to pay for a subscription. But my point is, the package doesn’t feel incomplete.

Where NWC: NES Edition feels lacking, I suppose, is in the online element. You can see how the time trial nature and the multiplayer modes could really soar online and become a viral sensation, at least among those of us hurtling towards middle-aged desperate to show off our skills in 40-year-old games. Strangely, online is relatively anemic in this title. It’s come in for much criticism from critics for that, and it is deserved. It’s strange that even the leaderboarding is inferior to even something like Super Mario Maker.

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May 9th was a dark day in the 2XKO official Discord. A conversation on could-be characters begam harmlessly, as it has for years when there's been no news to discuss. But this time, debate devolved into arguments, as the intricacies of how Fiddlesticks - a lanky horror-inspired scarecrow would make the transition. League of Legends is packed full of champions that find themselves in a tricky position where a fighting game moveset can be derived.

I have dubbed this the Fiddlesticks problem. How do you take a weirdo - someone without direct links to the genre - and bring them over to this genre in an exciting fashion. The balance between keeping a character loyal to source material and keeping them fun to play is a perilous tightrope.

It's a problem that the 2XKO team has surely had to tackle with characters like Ahri, which had her moveset overhauled between public builds. Designer Alex Jaffe spoke to me a little about this balance back at Evo 2023, and here I was back at Evo again asking similar questions.

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Those About to Die recently joined the esteemed pantheon of Ancient Rome based drama, joining the likes of I, Claudius and HBO’s Rome but, refreshingly, telling the story of a less celebrated (and raked over) dynasty than the Julio-Claudians: that of the Flavians. And it tells their story through the lens of Rome’s public games: chariot racing, gladiators, and the various syndicates and stakeholders for whom they are the engines of wealth. It’s a good choice, particularly in the case of the Flavians, whose deathly dance with public opinion coloured their entire tenure. And it provides a baked-in excuse to widdle money all over the screen in the form of a fully populated Circus Maximus and the heart-pumping, limb-severing action that occurs within.

Roland Emmerich, the German director most associated with an alien themed mid-90s Will Smith vehicle (well, the other one), has had a mixed bag of a career. By which I mean he has produced and directed such a steady stream of hot dogshit throughout his 40-odd year career that it’s easy to forget he honestly does have his moments. I’ll always go to bat for Independence Day, which I regard as a much more cogent attempt at modernising (Americanising) The War of the Worlds than the Spielberg or George Pal efforts, with its much maligned conclusion echoing that of the original work with a knowing Y2K-era smirk. They all spectacularly missed the point, but at least ID4 had a cool skull gif and the one time only double act of Smith and Goldblum.

ID4 is a misunderstood masterpiece of a disaster movie, yes it is, shut up, which came hot on the heels of Stargate, a movie which took the core concept of Chariots of the Gods? – a wretched ahistorical treatise for racists and silly buggers – and turned it into the foundation of one of the most beloved and enduring science fiction franchises in the popular canon. What I’m saying is that prolific filmmaker Roland Emmerich has made two good films in forty years, which proves that he’s capable of good things but also that he’s unlikely to demonstrate such. So imagine my relief when he got his hands on my beloved Ancient Rome and made something… exquisite. Spectacular. Well researched. And dare I say it: nuanced.

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World of Warcraft: The War Within, is almost here. It's an ambitious looking expansion, taking players deep underground to lands and cultures unseen up until this point. But according to associate design director Maria Hamilton and lead prop artist Jordan Powers, this new selection of zones was built on the back of one special zone.

"I'd say we learned from Zaralek Caverns" states Hamilton. "We were trying to make Zaralek Cavern big enough that it didn't feel too tight or constrained, and we realized we needed these moments where things were vast and unconstrained, even if we were underground. Hollowfall pretty clearly points to us doing that. You come out of the Ringing Deeps and there's this vast, vast cavern."

Hamilton continues, "We've been setting up our journey underground for quite a while. We had to get some tech improvements in so that we'd be able to do that effectively, without loads and with that level of depth we wanted. Hence Zaralek Caverns! It was our first opportunity to have that seamless layer underneath another layer. It's something we couldn't do in the past."

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Every now and then, a joke is just too good to stay a joke.

Such is the case for Divorced Dads, a collectible card game that has its origins in a viral video skit from comedian Graeme Barrett, aka AudioOpera. You’ve probably seen something of his when doomscrolling Instagram or Tiktok; his most-shared video by my estimation is the skit news report about a group of live-action role players finding a body in the woods while mid-LARP.

My favorite bit of his, however, was the recurring series of a collectible card gaming character opening up booster packs of ‘Divorced Dads’, a card game where every card represents something a Divorced Dad has, or wants. In various skits, cards like ‘Bald Spot’, ‘Jam Band’, ‘Enchanted Forest’ (one of those tree-shaped car air fresheners), ‘Retirement Plan’ (a fistful of lottery scratch-offs), and ‘Hacked Facebook’. The rarest and most sought after card, of course, is ‘The House’ - because she usually takes the house.

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You might be looking at Star Wars Outlaws as your next stop in a galaxy far, far away, but Star Wars: Bounty Hunter's Aspyr-developed remaster is a more than welcome return to the PS2/GC-era Star Wars underworld.

I vividly remember the original PS2 release of Bounty Hunter becoming a personal favorite back in 2002, mostly because my most-liked character walking out of Attack of the Clones was Jango Fett. He was a guy sporting Mandalorian armor who actually did cool stuff on-screen and had two awesome laser pistols, so of course he was my fav. That was sound 10-year-old logic. The game itself I actually didn't get until Christmas Eve, but you can bet I was glued to it for months after that. Long story short: Warts and all, I'm very fond of this one, so I had very high expectations for Aspyr's latest Star Wars remaster.

Earlier this year, the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection launched to mostly negative reviews for a variety of reasons. While I thought the core experience was preserved quite well (and with previously platform-exclusive content added back in!), the online side of the games was a bit of a mess, and the bloated install size on most platforms was baffling to say the least. Most issues have been ironed out by now, yet I can't blame veteran Star Wars gamers for acting cautious when Bounty Hunter's remaster was announced a while back.

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I’m almost certain that I pitched Star Wars Outlaws to my mate Manky Kev when we were about 14. “All the Star Wars games are about Jedis or fighter pilots, the most boring bastards in the whole saga”, I definitely said, with the eloquence of a me three times my age. “You want a game where you get to be a baddie, but a good baddie, not a Sith, and it’s open world like GTA. And you’re Han Solo but before he started hanging around with Jedis and fighter pilots.”

I remember this really vividly. Manky Kev threatened to kick my head in if I came out with any more Star Wars patter and the idea was lost to time. Except, apparently, someone at Ubisoft pinched it from me and every other 90s teenager who liked Star Wars and GTA and wanted them smooshed together.

And yeah, after decades of shifting player tastes, genre convergence, and the general rise of Ubisoft’s Open World Formula™, comparing this decidedly Watch_Dogsy take on Disney’s 24th Acquisition to GTA might come off as a bit Boss Baby. You can’t even steal other people’s speeders. I checked, there isn’t even a prompt. Ubisoft are very serious about making you engage with the speed bike upgrade system, to the point where a techy-minded career criminal like Kay Vess would canonically rather pay legitimately for a better vehicle than just, y’know, pinch one.

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There’s one particular feeling I associate with a game being an all-time great. It’s a feeling that comes after you already know that it’s a classic, to be fair - after putting tens or possibly hundreds of hours into something. I haven’t played a game that’s triggered that feeling in a couple of years. But Balatro gets to join that illustrious list.

It’s that feeling of getting ready to begin the Suicide Mission in Mass Effect 2; of watching the last great large-scale Street Fighter 4 tournament. Of finally reaching the top of the ‘endless staircase’ in Peach’s Castle, hitting GTA5’s massive end-game choice as Franklin, or watching Sheik reveal their true identity. They all trigger a gut-punch of a feeling: this is the end. And then the realization: I don’t want this to be over.

Most of the time, this feeling is attached to heavily story-driven games. I think it usually only comes about at some nebulous axis of story and gameplay - where both are at some impossible-seeming level of formulaic perfection that alters something in the brain chemistry. The end result is the bonkers sentiment that finishing a game and being done with it feels like a loss, and ultimately offers up the varied and powerful emotions that come with that.

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I would say a pretty defining sentiment of the 2010s when it comes to work is this idea of hustle culture. You should always have something going on, always be working, always have a little side thing bringing in some money. This definitely manifested into encouraging people to start their own businesses, which worked great with the advent of sites like Etsy and the like which expressly let you do so, but it can even be applied to just things like making videos on YouTube, or doing art commissions.

Many "entrepreneurs" encouraged others to turn their hobbies into work, because you already have the skills, why not make some money out of it? But that kind of sucks, right? Sometimes turning the thing you love to do most in the world into work can work out, but it isn't always the way to go about things. And somehow, 35 years ago, the Studio Ghibli classic Kiki's Delivery Service captured this exact feeling, all through the lens of a young witch trying to start her own magical business.

To give a quick summary of the film to those that have never seen it (a point you should rectify immediately, seriously, stop reading this, go watch it, come back, and then you can skip this paragraph), Kiki's Delivery Service follows the titular character, a teenage girl who must set out from her home as all witches must do around her age. She flies off on her broom, and eventually settles down in a beautiful seaside town, quite the idyllic locale. Soon enough, she finds this quaint little bakery, where she starts to live, and sets up her goods delivery service.

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Oh god. Oh no. Oh, Christ.

That was my reaction when I saw Lego’s latest video game themed set: kit #71438, “Super Mario World: Mario & Yoshi”. Nintendo and Lego have been hand-in-hand for years now. A collaboration that began with kid-friendly, app-enhanced Mario sets but has quickly expanded. We have grown-up nostalgia bait like the NES and ? Block, Animal Crossing sets, and after rejecting multiple fan pitches featuring the series, Lego Zelda arrives in a little over a month.

My point is, the concept of a set like this isn’t exactly new. This gorgeous brick-built representation of Mario riding atop his trusty dinosaur pal fits right into that ‘nostalgia bait’ category above, a set aimed squarely at people hurtling towards middle age with a longing for their childhood and enough disposable income that £115 for some plastic bricks seems ‘fair enough’. It’s aimed at me, basically. So none of this is exactly new. And yet…

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Fighting games are one of those genres where the competitive scene - that brutal arena where the game's best battle it out - is tied by the waist to the general gaming experience. This means that 2XKO, Riot Games' upcoming fighter due to have its first public alpha test this August, will inevitably have tournaments hosted around the world. The question of how Riot Games intends to step into the competitive fighting game space is frankly something that will have a widespread effect on the player base.

It's also a peculiar and intriguing topic. Riot Games has previously taken a very hands-on approach to managing the competitive spaces around games like League of Legends and Valorant, whereas as the fighting game scene has proven itself capable of building communities regardless of developer support. There's a justified belief that the community itself knows best, and that the best hands to grow a grassroots competitive scene belong to the tournament organizers who've been doing it for decades, rather than those with corporate backgrounds.

Even so, Riot Games has proven eager to hop in. Not only has the team behind 2XKO hosted private meetings with players and tournament organizers, but they've also hired former pro-players and TOs to the development team. The game was first made available at Evo, rather than a Riot event. Right now at least, there appears to be a genuine desire to work alongside pre-existing fighting game infrastructure, a sentiment echoed widely by the team.

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I wasn't sure about Marvel Rivals after its initial announcement and previews, but the closed beta is giving me hope that something acceptable could come out of this one despite some glaring issues that need to addressed.

It's hard to deny Overwatch 2 has been struggling for a long time now, and depending on who you ask, the same could be said about Blizzard's once astonishingly attractive hero-shooter IP as a whole. The truth is that things started to spiral downwards after the first two years or so of Overwatch, after the powers that be deemed it wasn't enough to welcome players of all skill levels and grow from there, and instead started chasing eSports-related growth. Now, OW2, despite some recent wins, continues to feel like a shell of its former self, and Marvel and NetEase's shameless take on the formula might just be what many of us have been missing for years.

I must agree with my mate Connor in that Marvel Rivals very much feels like a reskin of Overwatch, but depending on which stage of Overwatch it's trying to copy, that might be a good thing, as the current iteration of OW2 (it even feels wrong to treat it as a sequel) isn't very good. Marvel and NetEase are just looking for that sweet hero-shooter money, right as most hero shooters and other live-service gambles are visibly starting to die out. All these recent developments are hard to predict, however, and harder to anticipate if we consider how long AA and AAA development usually takes nowadays unless you're a studio full of dev wizards (there are some fascinating cases).

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HunterXHunter NenXImpact asks an interesting question: how important are looks for a fighting game's success? The game is a down-dirty brawl, hilariously fun and easy to pick up. But, at the same time, it's not exactly a looker. Getting hands on with the game at Evo 2024 I can safely say it's now one of my most anticipated games this year, but how well it will actually do remains a mystery to me.

The game comes from the wild minds at Eighting, a beloved entity in the world of fighting games. The company has previously made legendary hits like Marvel vs Capcom 3, madcap romps like DNF Duel, and peak nonsense like Fate Unlimited Codes. It's a favourite of mine - a developer willing to throw mass appeal to the wind in favour of truly exciting fighters with absurd combos and luscious depth. Brilliant to play and hilarious to watch, NenXImpact is in the same boat. Eighting has done it again.

A 3v3 team fighter, those familiar with Eighting's history may suspect the game to play like Marvel vs Capcom 3, but it's not as comparable as you might expect. Slower and not as daunting to hop into, the game is more like Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid in terms of feel and pace. You're still rushing around at wild speeds, linking high-flying combos with powerful assists, but from my brief play period it seems more tamed. Though, give it a few months post-release and I'm certain players will be able to push NenXImpact to its limits.

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There's now a premium, extended version of this podcast that you can get as a VG247 paid subscriber - check out our Support Us page for more info. Doing so helps ensure that we can keep making the show! But don't worry if that's not for you, the main show will always be free.

Have you ever been pulled into a meeting, or had an appointment with your doctor, optician or whoever else, that went on for far longer than it should’ve done? We’ve all been there, and while these things are important, there’s no denying that some of these appointments and roundtables would be better off as an email.

In this week’s episode of The Best Games Ever Podcast, we apply this to the one thing that makes our meetings at VG247 as long as they often are: talking about video games (no surprises there). So, this week we ask, “what’s the best game that should have been an email?”

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Even as Ultimate Team in EA Sports FC 25 seems to be making strides towards becoming less frustrating with Duplicate Storage, more casual Friendlies, and stronger rewards, it also continues to get increasingly monetised - this year with a paid premium season pass on top of its packs.

I’ve played Manager Career Mode for almost as long as I can remember, but as the mode has fossilised in recent editions - with bugs that persisted between games and a lack of meaningful gameplay features - I’ve found myself gravitating towards the online modes more out of necessity than choice.

At a recent preview event for EA Sports FC 25, EA spoke a lot about creating more social spaces and less intense competition in their latest football game, but really, I think the best way to relieve pressure in FC 25 would be to have a viable alternative to UT in the form of a satisfying, realistic and compelling Career Mode.

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A few months ago, when Bethesda suddenly announced that the Fallout 4 next-gen update a lot of players had been waiting for would finally be arriving on April 25, there was one question instantly on a lot of people's lips - what does this mean for Fallout: London.

The answer ended up being what the mod's project lead, Dean 'Prilladog' Carter, has since acknowledged to be "a bit of a nightmare in terms of trying to release". There was another lengthy delay, this time without a concrete release date at the end of it, as the team worked to try and quickly update the mod to work with next-gen Fallout 4, before having to switch course to providing prospective players with a means to downgrade their copies of Fallout 4 - a change with unavoidable consequences for the launch.

Though, there has been at least one silver lining that's come in the midst of all those headaches - the emergence of PC storefront GOG.com as a willing host for the massive mod, which found itself unable to release in the traditional fashions mods usually do, simply as a result of its sheer size.

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Evo 2024 has wrapped up, and while thousands of attendees all turned up to play and spectate their favourite fighting game, lines were long to try out the latest build of one not-yet revealed. 2XKO, Riot Games' upcoming fighter turned up at the show in a big way, and with it came new information. But one aspect remains interesting and largely untouched: the tech behind the game and why it matters.

Who better to talk about this than Tony Cannon. Creator for GGPO rollback netcode back in 2009, Tony has been somewhat of a striking figure in the pursuit of better online play in fighting games. These days, he's working as 2XKO's tech lead, and was gracious enough to sit down for a 10-minute chat on the Evo show floor.

First up, for a while now the 2XKO team has been eager to share that server-based rollback will be a major component of 2XKO. But what does that actually mean, and how does it differ from regular rollback?

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The Western animation industry is in a rough state at the moment, pretty much across the board. I constantly see people from a range of specialisations struggling to get work, because the work just isn't there, despite anime being more successful than ever. I've been feeling a bit extra sad about it recently because I've been rewatching Infinity Train, a special little show that only managed to run for four seasons, that really felt like the beginning of the end for animation at Warner Bros.

Now, don't get me wrong, the signs had been there for years beforehand as well. Steven Universe was constantly getting shafted by Cartoon Network, mostly because of its explicit LGBTQ themes, and despite how good it was OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes was cancelled before it had the chance to tell all the stories it wanted to. The writing was on the wall, and only the biggest of hits could survive in the modern era. I think it's what happened to Infinity Train, though, that really highlights how animation would go on to be treated at Warner Bros.

For one, there's how the show was released. The first couple of seasons aired on Cartoon network, in August 2019 and January 2020 respectively. But then, in May of 2020, Warner Bros. finally launched its streaming service, at the time dubbed HBO Max. August 2020 saw the release of the third season of Infinity Train, now moved to HBO Max, probably because its tone was potentially slightly too mature for Cartoon Network's slightly younger-skewing audience (even though shows like Adventure Time had plenty of somewhat adult themes).

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Do you like boybands? Regardless of if you love 'em or hate 'em, the next major Warframe update Warframe 1999 might be for you. This is due to the arrival of an infested boy band, just announced at Tennocon. Not only is the musical group's main star voiced by Nick Apostolides (Leon Kennedy from Resident Evil 4 remake), but they play the part of a major antagonist with unique loot for players to grind.

Specifically, this boy band will take the role as infested liches, summonable and randomly generated archenemies who grant you special lich weapons when eventually track them down and kill them. Speaking to VG247, creative director Rebecca Ford talked about the creation of this boyband, and how the player will ultimately interact with the crew.

VG247: This boyband plays an important role in the new gameplay presentation of Warframe 1999. Why add this kind of poppy musical presence in an otherwise Nine Inch Nails grunge inspired patch?

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The landscape of free-to-play games is competitive - literally. From MOBAs, Hero Shooters and massive gacha RPGs, to Battle Royales and whatever Fall Guys is, there’s no shortage of ways to scratch that PvP itch with no upfront investment outside of your time (and the power to run your console, and the money to buy your TV, and to buy Pickled Onion Monster Munch to snack on…)

With such a crowded landscape, that only gets busier as more new releases add to the pile every month, successful F2P games need to strike a delicate balance to stand out and stay on top. But when something’s “free”, it’s another task entirely to make that something worthwhile, particularly in the long term. So I wanted to find out some of what goes into keeping a free-to-play game relevant and thriving over multiple years.

Naraka: Bladepoint is a game I’ve been interested in for a while, with a fervid fanbase of hundreds of thousands of global players every day on Steam alone. A big portion of its player base is in China, which I found out when I visited the Naraka J Cup World Championships last year to try and understand its appeal more, but its developer, 24 Entertainment, definitely has designs on expanding its reach in different territories too.

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Just now at Tennocon, Digital Extremes revealed a gameplay demo for its next big update: Warframe 1999. This edgy, Y2K-themed demo was bleeding with a very particular grungy vibe. Not only that, but it brought Warframe somewhere totally unfamiliar - a retro European city filled with a modern military enemies and arcade machines rather than the galactic sci-fi we're all used to.

To speak more on how the team arrived at this striking new slice of Warframe's future, I spoke to creative director Rebecca Ford about the inspirations for the design. It turns out, one of the key cornerstones for Warframe 1999 came from one of Digital Extreme's older titles: Dark Sector.

VG247: This new area! It's very European. What were the inspirations for that world in terms of design and identity?

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Spoilers ahead for The Acolyte.

Ever since I started watching The Acolyte, there's been a particular path I hoped it would head down, but wasn't particularly sure Disney would allow, at least not explicitly anyway. You see, in the original Star Wars trilogy, the Jedi weren't really a thing, they were just forgotten history, so mostly the only idea anyone had of them were cool guys that fought the bad guys with glowing swords and magical powers. When the prequels came along, creator George Lucas was able to explore them in more depth though, right down to the political environment surrounding them (a bold move that didn't entirely work out).

But in particular, it raised a question about the Jedi - are they actually good? Right from the first prequel film, The Phantom Menace, seeds are sown to suggest there's something a bit off about them, actually. When Qui-Gon Jinn and co head to Tatooine, they're not there to free any of the slaves that reside there. In fact, the only reason Qui-Gon Jinn saves anyone at all, one Anakin Skywalker, is because he believes the child is a prophesied one who will bring balance to the Force.

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The Concord beta is opening its doors this weekend for everyone, and I can't wait to jump back into it after last weekend's test, which is something I wasn't expecting to say.

I was as baffled as most viewers by the game's confusing reveal in June, which spent a few minutes trying to convince players we were learning about a new AAA, single-player sci-fi adventure only to drop a first-look gameplay on us that looked like every riff on Overwatch that's come and gone without glory for the last eight years or so. After spending five or six hours with the beta, however, I'm really vibing with its identity and firmly believe PlayStation and Firewalk Studios just fumbled the initial marketing push.

Mind you, even a cheeky alternative to Overwatch, now dubbed 'Overwatch 2' and offered as a free-to-play title in hopes of returning the IP to its former glory after several creative missteps, would be half-attractive with a firm, solid playable approach that came across as different enough. That first gameplay reveal, however, felt like a mix of "we have Guardians of the Galaxy at home" meets the Overwatch clones that have struggled to make an impact over and over again. Moreover, the $40 price tag on Concord is scary even if the promise is avoiding shite MTX altogether in the future (press X to doubt).

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The live-service bubble has been bursting for a while. That much is clear. But with how long most triple-A (and even double-AA) video games take to make nowadays and how absurdly huge the possible wins are, it comes as no surprise it's taking a bit of time to partially retreat from a model that's grown increasingly risky in the last three years or so. This summer, a handful of free-to-play titles such as The First Descendant and Zenless Zone Zero are making a splash, but we're still looking at the same big issue.

It's been looking for a while like most players give live-service models and shiny MTX shenanigans a proper beating when they're attached to premium releases, yet free-to-play games are either happily consumed or simply ignored because we've grown accustomed to them. At the end of the day, however, you're more likely to spend money repeatedly on a product that's given you so many hours of well-produced entertainment at no cost.

This has been proven time and again, and it's one of the reasons why Overwatch was sacrificed in favor of a more esports-friendly and streamlined 'sequel' that's ultimately alienated most of the player base the IP originally conjured up. That switcheroo didn't really pay off for Blizzard and Activision, as the title's recent developments have confirmed, but games that are F2P from the get-go get away with the same progression/unlock models all the time.

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The roguelike genre is a type of game that I have, honestly, neglected for most of my life. I know what I I like, after all, and I don’t see a Silent Hill roguelike happening any time soon. Despite having dabbled with The Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon, and Downwell, something failed to click with me when it came to roguelikes. I later tried Hades, which appealed to me because of its vibrant visual style and cast of hot Gods and Goddesses, only to find that I didn’t quite gel with it either.

After the launch of Hades 2 into Early Access, and seeing a feminine protagonist — Melinoe — at the helm, I was all the more keen to give things a go again. I wanted to know what this magical game that my friends kept telling me I’d love was all about ; I really wanted to get it, to enjoy it as much as they did, and understand what it was all about.

I couldn’t start with Hades 2, though. I had 2018’s Hades to get through first if I wanted to know what Zagreus, Melinoe, and co. were all about, and that’s where my brief obsession with the game — and full conversion to being a roguelike lover — began. And it wouldn’t have kicked off at all without one underused mechanic: God Mode.

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The rhetoric around EA Sports football games is, ironically, the same year after year. People who don’t really get it wonder why the seemingly minor modifications couldn’t have been added in an update, while die-hards, importing their tribalistic fan culture from real-life football perhaps, agonise over each new face and feature.

I am definitely one of those people who’s been locked into the peaks and troughs of FIFA and EA Sports FC for more than 20 years (a devastating revelation), but it feels like, through a mix inconsistent and unsatisfying gameplay, an increasing push towards more-and-more expensive Ultimate Team packs and a fossilisation of every other game mode at Ultimate Team’s expense, that anger within the community is turning to apathy - particularly with competition from FIFA and 2K games reportedly on the horizon.

EA Sports FC 25 looks to address this head on by modernising fundamental parts of its gameplay, adding more social and casual spaces to re-emphasise fun instead of a constant grind and by creating a more holistic experience that updates long-underserved modes.

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There's now a premium, extended version of this podcast that you can get as a VG247 paid subscriber - check out our Support Us page for more info. Doing so helps ensure that we can keep making the show! But don't worry if that's not for you, the main show will always be free.

It seems like nothing will convince Biden to step down and let someone else run against Trump., but we don't care about any of that because we're a video game quiz show. Unless...

Stay tuned for a new episode of The Best Games Ever Show every Friday. Subscribe right here on VG247, or wherever you get your podcasts:

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I should have been better. But I’m not, and here I am.

A Tarnished named Timmy sits by the site of grace tucked just inside Nokron, Eternal City. In this cavernous, overwhelming locale, as with all the others he’s passed through to get here, he’s got all the power a fighter could ever hope for coursing through his veins. The problem is, right now, it’s totally useless to him.

This uber-god among demigods – resembling Kurt Russell if he were to lose an eye and suffer from the kind of frostbite you’d only get doing nude snow angels at the north pole – looks mournfully down the trusty medallion he’s just unequipped. The medallion that malign and mocking forces beyond his knowledge have modded so that it makes him totally invincible. The medallion that, so far, has helped him best the likes of Rennala, Godrick, and the mighty Radahn in one go.

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Do you remember when Elden Ring was first announced? That beautiful moment back during E3 2019, when FromSoftware — at that point riding the high of Dark Souls' and Bloodborne's acclaim — presented a fresh spin on its signature hardcore fantasy RPG formula. It was like Dark Souls, but not quite. A new world, with a new spin. That moment before we were able to jump into this new adventure was truly special, and it's a feeling I'd quite like to experience again. And again, and again.

Fast forward to today and not only have we been able to play Elden Ring, but its major expansion in Shadow of the Erdtree. If you're like me, you've gorged yourself on the new lore, and experimented like a mad scientist with new weapons and talismans. Elden Ring is a hit. There's no way around it. But rather than return back to The Lands Between and capitalize on its absurd popularity, I'd rather FromSoftware go back to the kitchen and cook up something new once again.

I will conceed that there are exciting avenues that FromSoftware could walk down with a hypothetical Elden Ring 2. The narrative team has done a great job of teasing the world beyond the shores of Limgrave, and if one leaves the plain entirely, they'll find a whole cosmic stage production of competing forces that are undoubtedly intriguing. The Formless Mother, the sealed god of Scarlet Rot. The very stars themselves have ambition and motives, their path through the sky being a march towards celestial fate. Seeing more of these figures, — as well as the destiny of The Lands Between long after Marika's Golden Order — is tantalizing, but ultimately unnecessary.

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Elden Ring loves its mysteries. Strange gods, forbidden unions, an unknown vow between brothers that changes the fate of the world. At the center of all this, and Elden Ring itself, is the biggest mystery and the game’s most important character: Marika. Despite her significance, she’s the only character you never really meet and who never speaks for herself. It’s a bizarre state of affairs, considering this goddess-queen forced an entire world to submit to her rule and created an entire new religion with herself at the center.

I assumed the Marika mystery was just FromSoftware doing its usual thing of intentionally leaving narrative threads unfinished, but once I finished Shadow of the Erdtree, I realized that wasn’t the case. Marika’s erasure was intentional – and I think it drives Elden Ring’s entire plot.

Once upon a time, Marika was a very corporeal being, a ferocious warrior, and a capable sorceress. She swept into The Lands Between and brought it under her control, launched a crusade against the dragons, the ancient giants, and eventually, the people who stuffed her family into meat-grinder jars. She established herself at the head of a new social order. The important thing to note here is that she did this. Yes, Godfrey, her first lord, tagged along for the ride )and did lots of killing) but Marika was the force behind it all, the one who made contact with gods and brought ancient orders to ruin.

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Suggesting that a Chinese company is trying to copy the success of a major Western competitor by creating its own version of its product is a timeless statement that doesn’t require any context. It’s not that uncommon in the realm of video games – there was a very high-profile case regarding Overwatch and a Chinese clone, for example, as well as more recent takes on Hearthstone and Palworld and Valorant. Yes, this trend has been getting a little more brazen lately.

Tencent, the Chinese conglomerate whose fingers are already in many Western pies, is generally known as one of the biggest tech companies and game publishers in China and the world. In recent years, the company has been investing more and more of its money into Western teams.

It seems like a sensible strategy, though it clearly hasn’t stopped the Chinese financial giant from nurturing its own teams in China for what now looks like developing legally distinct versions of the most popular games in the West.

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If you look back at the anime and manga scene in the 2010s, and the kinds of series that were popular, the vibes would feel quite different than they do now. Manga from Weekly Shonen Jump has always been popular, but the previous decade didn't have anything like the big three (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece) when it started off. It wasn't until towards the end of the decade where My Hero Academia and Jujutsu Kaisen really started to take off as the poster children for WSJ, so popular anime included titles like Konosuba, Psycho Pass, and Assassination Classroom, none of which you really hear about much anymore.

That last one, Assassination Classroom, felt like it was pretty broadly popular back in the day - what's not to love about the concept of a classroom full of teenagers being tasked with killing an anthropomorphic, goofy-as-hell, octopus person? As wacky as its concept is, it managed to deliver some emotional moments too, but the style of writing the manga and its anime adaptation had that felt more prominent in the 2010s seems to have largely been forgotten about. But Assassination Classroom is more than a decade old now, meaning one could arguably be nostalgic for it in the way someone last decade might have been for noughties anime - and if you miss that era of anime, even if it wasn't that long ago, you might want to check out The Elusive Samurai.

Last week saw the arrival of the first episode of The Elusive Samurai, an anime based on the manga of the same name, which just so happens to be from the creator of Assassination Classroom, Yusei Matsui. The manga has been in serialisation since 2021, in Weekly Shonen Jump funnily enough, but for the most part it seems to have slipped under the radar, despite being from a fairly notable artist - in the West, at least. That's probably because it's a historical series, set in 1300s Japan, and Japanese period pieces don't tend to do as well over here when it comes to manga and anime, unless there's some kind of fantasy element.

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I bloody love Command & Conquer. Back in the day I used to play disgusting amounts of Red Alert 2 and Tiberian Sun. A little later, I always enjoy boasting, I spent more time maintaining a rank in the top fifty or so online in Red Alert 3 than I did studying. While I have a great deal of respect for the classics, part of me actually feels that on balance Red Alert 3 is one of the most well-rounded real time strategy packages ever released. It’s one of my favorite games of all time, in one of my favorite series of all time.

Anyway. Command & Conquer is back, baby! A new game has just been released. Command & Conquer Legions is now available in a beta form. I should be ecstatic. In reality, I can feel a piece of my soul being ripped from my body.

I gave Legions a chance. I want to be clear on that; I gave it a fair shake. A few hours of my time was poured into this on my phone. I would’ve been happy with a game that could give me a bite-sized bit of C&C that I could play on the toilet, to be honest. I’m obviously not expecting Red Alert 4. But this… not like this, yeah? Not like this.

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There's now a premium, extended version of this podcast that you can get as a VG247 paid subscriber - check out our Support Us page for more info. Doing so helps ensure that we can keep making the show! But don't worry if that's not for you, the main show will always be free.

You wait years and years for something to finally be over, and once that day comes, you’re left not with a sense of joy, but with a deep-set anxiety about what comes after. Bereft. Unable to enjoy the simple joy of being free, because you’ve been around the block a bit, and you know how these things go. Sigh.

But enough about finishing Morrowind. Recently the UK had an election and kicked out some of the worst people to ever be in charge of anything, replacing them with a default option that nobody actually likes that much. Which is rather like when you finish a video game. Except it isn’t. It’s nothing like that. It’s not remotely like that at all. Forgive the rubbish conceit, and please enjoy The Best Game You Were Glad To See The Back Of, a podcast episode which you can watch or listen to on this very web page and/or app!

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Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster will feature the original soundtrack from the game in all its glory, VG247 can reveal. Yes folks - that includes the licensed music which made up a particularly iconic part of the original game’s audio.

When Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster was announced, fans of the series did the usual for this sort of reveal - rejoice, and then take to putting the reveal under a microscope in the way only hardcore fans can.

Is that a new weapon? Is that some restored cut content we spy? And what have they done to Frank’s hairline? All this analysis and speculation is a fun part of any such remaster being revealed, but one thing that wasn’t clear from any of the footage was the fate of Dead Rising’s iconic soundtrack - which included a range of licensed tracks from real-life bands in addition to original score and mall ambiance composed by Capcom’s Hideki Okugawa and Marika Suzuki.

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Earlier this summer, I had the chance to play Black Myth Wukong, a highly-anticipated indie action game from China that has impressed everyone since its first reveal, and been teasing us all with its unique – and gorgeous – gameplay since 2020.

It’s been cooking for a while now, and all the trailers that developer GameScience has released for it just keep getting better and better. But we don’t really know an awful lot about the game at the moment; there was an assumption that it’s a Soulslike thanks to the combat we’ve seen in videos so far, but after getting my paws on it, I can tell you one thing for certain: it isn’t.

For a start, the devs themselves call the Unreal 5-based game an ‘action-RPG’, more generic than Soulslike, and missing some of the key tenats that FromSoft have baked into the genre since establishing it back with Dark Souls. So what’s the difference, really?

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Hypercharge: Unboxed has been around for a few years now, but its presence was limited to PC, where it had a small but dedicated following of players looking for quick retro blasts of classic FPS/TPS fun. After a timid Nintendo Switch release in 2020, it's finally made its way to Xbox, where it's performed remarkably well and gained a second life thanks to crossplay.

It's not often that we see such comeback stories pan out, especially when it comes to indie releases that focus on multiplayer modes. That's always a risky bet, but for Digital Cybercherries, it ultimately paid off. The secret? Doubling down on what made the game special in the first place.

Hypercharge is a game I've been watching from the sidelines for a while. Modern arena shooters that actually feel like the classics are a rare breed nowadays, as the genre has morphed into something else and has been mixed with MOBA mechanics to hell and back. It's true that Quake Champions continues to exist and have a community, but even the legendary series' latest entry couldn't escape the long shadow of bigger hero-based shooters. DOOM's (2016) competitive multiplayer modes were a solid but underrated take on the formula; as good as it felt, however, people never gave the MP component much attention. And of course, Epic Games' small Unreal Tournament reboot was scrapped once Fortnite took off.

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Once upon a time, there was this little thing called cable. It let you watch many different shows, most of them kind of awful, for an amount of money that didn't really seem all that fair, but hey, what else are you gonna do, read a book? A lot of TV channels' output was mostly just something to have on in the background while you have a cuppa with your nan, but at the very least you had a lot of choice, and a lot to watch too. Seasons would last up to 24 episodes sometimes, and even if a show wasn't perfect, it at least had time to grow, particularly from season to season. Then Netflix happened.

I'm sure you generally know the rest: it was a cheaper alternative to cable that had all your favourite shows, eventually introducing original content you could only get there. One of the issues, however, was that there just wasn't as much of it. Seasons gradually got shorter and shorter, to the point that most of the subscription selling hits run from around 8-10 hour long episodes a pop. And it has hurt television quite broadly, with the most recent victim being the latest addition to the Star Wars universe, The Acolyte (major spoilers ahead for the first five episodes).

Set around 100 years before the events of the original Star Wars films, The Acolyte is set during the High Republic era, a time of general peace, with something sinister going on behind the scenes. Some guy who certainly looks like a Sith (whose identity I won't spoil for you) has been manipulating a young, Force sensitive woman to go around killing Jedi. This is of course complicated by the fact that said young woman has a twin sister, who she was separated from, also Force sensitive and a former Jedi-in-training. There are also a couple of side characters, Yord, a slightly incompetent Jedi Knight, and Jecki, a smart and confident Padawan.

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Back in 2020, when Avowed was first announced, the internet had a pretty specific opinion of what sort of game it was going to be. It was Xbox’s Skyrim, right?

Fans read between the lines of that first, vague cinematic trailer and drew their conclusions. It had an Elder Scrollsy look and feel. And the developer, Obsidian, of course has experience making these sorts of games - including for Bethesda with Fallout New Vegas. But when Avowed resurfaced, it was something quite different. Gamers yammered away online, speculating that the game changed shape after Microsoft, y’know, just straight up purchased the folks who made Skyrim. But Avowed survives, and thrives - and when you sit down and speak to its developers, they’re clearly happy about the game they’ve made and its place in the world.

While Avowed might be set in the world of a sprawling, open-ended and staunchly traditional CRPG (Obsidian IP Pillars of Eternity), it’s a very different game. Focused on tight first-person combat (with a third-person option), driven by melee, and with a scope that’s more like The Outer Worlds than a jaunt through Morrowind, it aims to be something fresh and familiar at once - appealing to a new audience while threading the needle to also draw and and satisfy fans of the Pillars universe.

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If there’s a publisher I trust to get a little bit weird, it’s Capcom. When Capcom experiments, the results are usually deeply interesting at the very least - but it’s also often brilliant. You get things like Devil May Cry springing from the ashes of a rejected Resident Evil 4 prototype, the unexpected brilliance of Ghost Trick, or the mechanical delights of Dead Rising. Basically, when Capcom takes a swing on this stuff, it has a pretty high batting average.

Even knowing that as I do, though, when I sat down to play Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, my expectations were pretty low. I’d seen a trailer; it looked like a cheaper game, a clear bit of developer experimentation. And, well, maybe I just should’ve known better, and remembered my history - because I was bowled over by it. Even off just a short demo, I think I love this game.

Admittedly, the game is a lot like somebody put me into an MRI or something and scanned to figure out exactly what sort of game would appeal to me. It’s part real-time strategy (which I love), tower defense (the greatest ‘hangover game’ genre, I think), with a lick of hack-and-slash action and role-playing style progression as the icing on the cake.

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“I was at a point where I didn't know what game to play and Baldur’s Gate 3 came to mind,” modder Hippp0o tells me.

“I already had more than 500 hours in [its] story mode and didn't really feel like starting a new campaign. I really only wanted to treat it like a turn-based combat simulator with my custom/modded characters. I knew a bit about the possibilities with [the] script extender and Lua isn't new to me. So, I quickly made up and coded the basic concept, which is still used in today's version of ToT - maps, scenarios and enemies. That was the original plan.”

This little bit of early concepting would eventually morph into Trials of Tav - ToT as Hippp0o referred to it there - a pretty huge BG3 mod that adds an entire standalone roguelike mode to the game, aimed squarely at those who, as the modder did, just fancy taking on wave after wave of foes with their party. After all, you can only take in so many deep camp conversations with Gale or head off on a charming little quest with Karlach so many times until you’re overcome with the desire to kill a bunch of stuff - preferably in a fashion that requires a bit less planning than your average dark urge puts in.

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There's now a premium, extended version of this podcast that you can get as a VG247 paid subscriber - check out our Support Us page for more info. Doing so helps ensure that we can keep making the show! But don't worry if that's not for you, the main show will always be free.

What’s the best birthday present you could ask for? Is it a new episode of the Best Games Ever podcast, with a new guest host? Well, if so, you’re in luck.

Most games age like milk in the hot sun. But some are so bold, so brilliant, that they transcend their contemporary era, remaining relevant and highly playable for years or even decades following their release. But which of these has most aged like a fine bottle of fermented grapes, mashed between someone's manky toes? To find out you'll simply have to knock back a tall glass of The Best Games Ever podcast episode 104: The Best Game that has aged like a Fine Wine via the methods handily listed below. Or not, it's up to you, I'm not your mum.

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In case you weren't aware, Warframe has recently released an absolute belter of an update. Titled Jade Shadows, it includes a new quest, a new frame, three new weapons, and a new mission type. It's packed full of delicious content - but even now it's the quest, with its narrative twists and turns, that's stuck in my head. It has caused much debate among the community, super-charged with speculation and emotion.

I wanted to dig into the Jade Shadows quest a bit, which is why I sat down with Warframe creative director Rebecca Ford to speak on how the quest came about, the inspirations for its story beats, some of its key features and a few fun curveballs along the way. It should go without saying but consider this a spoiler warning for Jade Shadows from here on out.

VG247: The Stalker is a legacy character in the game, and as part of this update the team went back and added a lot of characterization to him. How did you approach that task?

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Back in 2002, Iron Maiden released one of their now numerous ‘greatest hits’ albums, Edward the Great. Kicking off with Run to the Hills and ending with the iconic Rock in Rio version of Fear of the Dark, the album was my first taste of Maiden’s extensive back catalogue. It was hypnotic to me, delicious, heady, over-the-top, camp. Believe it or not, I got the exact same feeling from Atlus’ upcoming RPG, Metaphor ReFantazio, when I played it at Gamescom Latam this week. Let me explain.

If you’re not familiar with Atlus’ recent output, the Japanese developer excels at making proper RPGs, and I feel it helps to liken them to music genres. The most recent release, Shin Megami Tensei 5 Vengeance, is like metalcore – edgy and angry and loud – and feels like a proper hardcore PS2 game (complimentary). The Pesona games – with a remake of its moody, emo third entry hitting shelves earlier this year – are a bit poppier than their parent series. The pop punk to MegaTen’s metal edge.

So what does that make Metaphor ReFantazio, the peculiar new IP from Atlus and Sega due to launch later this year? Probably prog rock, to be honest. But hey, hear me out – prog is good now! The way it samples all the best bits of the other genres, groovy bass lines and chugging riffs and clean and harsh vocals melding together to bring you something that sounds kinda familiar… but is wholly its own beast.

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I've made the mistake of underestimating HoYoverse games before. When Honkai: Star Rail launched last year, I approached it very much with the assumption that Genshin Impact had been lightning in a bottle — a one-off banger that I was happy to make the sole exception to the rule that I had no interest in F2P RPGs aimed at a mobile-first market — and that I'd cover HSR for a few weeks around launch and then quietly drop off once the initial surge of interest died down. More fool me, then, when it ended up becoming one of my favourite games of 2023, with around 200 hours on my account to date.

I should've gone into Zenless Zone Zero with my expectations set pretty high. But, I'd also heard rumblings that ZZZ wasn't up to par with HoYo's other recent output. As a result, my expectations going in were… complicated: I was willing to be convinced, but not expecting the world.

Even if you're familiar to HoYoverse games, Zenless Zone Zero has a few surprises up its sleeve for you. Dropped into the preview build with no prior hands-on experience, I found that untold hours spent playing both Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail hadn't prepared me to hit the ground running in Zenless Zone Zero quite as effortlessly as I'd assumed. Knowledge of HoYo's other games came in handy when navigating menus and calculating gacha exchange rates, for instance, but actually interacting with its world is quite a different experience.

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“There’s before 2024, and after 2024”. That’s the main message from Brazil’s first ever Gamescom, Gamescom Latam. The traditionally German show teamed up with BIG – a storied, local festival in Brazil – to really show off what Brazil can do on the global stage. And at the opening night of the show, the organisers were keen to really hammer home how important Brazil is going to become to you, me, and everyone else that plays games across the globe.

Game development, as it stands, is dominated by the global North and West – there’s not a lot of support for game development in the global South or, especially, in Latin America. But Brazil is keen to change that narrative. In May 2024, the country passed a law that did a lot of things that will help make game development in the country an easier concept; the new law makes it easier to get hold of dev kits, for example, and provides monetary relief for grassroots developers, to name just a few elements of the framework.

But why does that matter to you, a gamer assumedly in the US or UK or Europe? Simply speaking, the Brazilian government passed a law that – all at once – recognised games as a vector for innovation, commercial investment, and cultural expression. As it goes, that’s a rare trifecta of things for a national government to understand. Gaming is a young industry compared to its entertainment peers, and needs to be aggressive about getting access to the same cultural and government recognition (and tax relief) that film, TV or music does. Brazil, here, is trailblazing.

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Souls games are excellent at making you want to go forward, to explore that weird ruin and massive castle right in front of you. A lot of this comes down to framing, making it so the moment you step through a doorway a giant landmark is perfectly in view as the music kicks in. This is true for Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree too, with two exceptions. Any time the DLC popped up a text box, the game flipped it. It's one of the best uses of a simple notification I've seen in a video game in recent memory.

This will go into some spoilers, so warning for those who want to go into Shadow of the Erdtree totally blind. The first time this happens is likely when you first go to the Shadow Keep, the massive castle where Messmer resides. Journeying inside, you're prepped for a lengthy climb through this massive mega dungeon, packed full of enemies and secrets. But, just as you reach the elevator, you get a pop up. "Somewhere, a great rune has broken. And so too a powerful charm." This can also happen when you first reach Rauh Base, or pass Bonny Village, so it's targeted at players who are well into their adventure.

The moment you see this, your desire to march ahead immediately shifts into turning around. Miquella's charm, as you may have figured out by this point, has affected all of the companions you journeyed into the Land of Shadow with. Immediately you're inclined to travel back to all the crosses of Miquella, speaking to all the NPCs you've met. It's a sharp and slicing world state change, changing not only your priorities but the actions of your allies. With the spell of Miquella's kindness gone, the DLC gains a darker and more nefarious tone.

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Annapurna Interactive is on a roll. Over the past few years, the publisher has proven itself as the place to look if you’re after innovative, interesting, and slightly irreverent games – curated and presented by developers all over the globe.

Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve probably seen the fawning coverage of games like Donut County, Outer Wilds, Sayonara Wild Hearts, What Remains of Edith Finch, Telling Lies, Neon White and Stray over the last few years. And with good reason.

But one of the best examples of Annapurna’s recent output is 2023’s Thirsty Suitors, a narrative action-adventure game about culture, relationships, family pressures and food. The game feels like a South-Asian spin on Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, by way of Persona (yes, it’s quite unique). Very early on, you get a taste for what Thirsty Suitors is trying to do, wherein you decide your "Thirstsona" via online quiz, eventually landing as a Heartbreaker, Star, or Bohemian. Just like real life.

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Year 2 of Street Fighter 6 will soon be getting underway in earnest, with the competitive pro tour getting back on the road and four new characters set to join the roster over the next twelve months. But this time, something truly different is happening: guest characters.

Crossover shenanigans are nothing new for fighting games, but Street Fighter has always resisted inviting characters from outside its universe to its core numbered entries. With the announcement of Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui, both of Fatal Fury and King of Fighters, that’s all changed. It makes for an exciting twist in the tail at the end of a successful and exciting first year for SF6 - and a sea change for the franchise.

We caught up with Street Fighter 6 director Takayuki Nakayama and producer Shuhei Matsumoto, taking time to talk about the guest characters, the return of M. Bison, the success of the SF6’s bold new modern control scheme, and more besides. Here’s our full chat:

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I’ve got to be honest. When Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition was announced, my response was sort of… a shrug. The package, as originally announced, didn’t speak to me very much at all. I’m the right age, the right target audience. I’m the sort of person who watches speedrunning marathons. But… I dunno. It just felt cheap, to my cynical mind.

Not including the full game ROMs was a red flag to me. The fact that the missions shown when first announced were so simple as to be trivial… I just did not get it at all. But then I played it. Dear reader, I am a convert.

There are caveats to all this, of course. Chief of which is one simple fact: I think this is an absolutely killer same-room, same-screen multiplayer experience. That is where this game shines - and I think it offers a £25 alternative to Mario Party for those who might not get a full-priced game’s worth of play out of one of those board game-alike minigame collections.

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There's now a premium, extended version of this podcast that you can get as a VG247 paid subscriber - check out our Support Us page for more info. Doing so helps ensure that we can keep making the show! But don't worry if that's not for you, the main show will always be free.

Still inspired by last week's topic, we thought we'd flip it on its head an ask perhaps an even more pertinent question in an age of decade-long marketing campaigns: what's the best rubbish game that had a great reveal trailer?

Baffled by the concept of how a rubbish game can be "best"? Listen, don't worry about it. Games media is full of this contradictory rubbish. We often say things like, for example, "a good 7/10 game is better than a bad 9/10 game". And it makes a perverse sort of sense. Except when it doesn't.

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A fifth Shrek movie has supposedly been in the works for a while now, and co-star of the original movies Eddie Murphy has confirmed that it is on the way.

Most of you out there are probably too young to remember, but once upon a time, the Shrek series was the top dog in the world of animation. Hell, to this day it's still the second highest-grossing animated franchise of all time, beating out several Disney film series by a big margin. But outside of 2022's spin-off movie Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (which was honestly really great), there hasn't been a new Shrek movie since 2010, with Shrek Forever After. It's sounding like that's all about to change though, as in a recent interview with Collider, Donkey himself Eddie Murphy shared that he has recorded lines for Shrek 5, and that it's due out next year.

"We started doing Shrek 5 months ago," the actor said. "I did this, I recorded the first act, and we'll be doing it this year, we’ll finish it up." However, this isn't the only Shrek-related news he had to share, as he went on to say "Shrek is coming out, and Donkey's gonna have his own movie. We're gonna do Donkey as well. So we're gonna do a Shrek, and we're doing a Donkey [movie]." That's right, Donkey, a character literally no one has asked to get a solo film, is getting his very own spin-off. It's not entirely surprising, as Murphy did previously say he thinks there should be a Donkey movie, so perhaps it was a push from him.

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I have a lot of time for Terra Nil. I've written about it before and extolled its virtues as a city-builder that doesn't do things by the book. It felt pertinent and relevent in 2023, and even more so as scorching heat waves cause chaos in 2024. It might be one of the most ecologically-aware games I've ever played. So it's nice to have an excuse to get eyes on it again this year.

In case you need a primer, Terra Nil is a chill, meditative twist on the city-builder genre that asks you to repair, rather than build. To use advanced eco-tech to transform a barren, desolate wasteland into a thriving, vibrant ecosystem. You know you've done a good job if you leave no trace you were ever there. It, truly, turns the genre on its head.

The game, dubbed an 'eco-puzzler' by developer Free Lives (who you may know from much less wholesome projects like Broforce or Gorn) and publisher Devolver Digital, is getting a massive expansion that greatly expands the amount of content on offer – and it's completely free to play on Netflix, by the way.

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League of Legends has been around for a long time. In fact, later this year we'll be hitting the game's 15th anniversary, which is sure to make a certain slice of the OG playerbase feel especially ancient. It should go without saying that the video game industry as a whole has shifted quite a bit in that time, with the wants and needs of players also having evolved.

As such, games that have been around the block a bit must adapt and shift in order to match these changing priorities. World of Warcraft has morphed considerably, as have pretty much all the long-lasting franchises still kicking, from Call of Duty to Pokemon. Riot Games' approach to keeping things fresh? New game modes. While summoners rift remains the central pillar for its popular MOBA, the game has seen a growing number of side attractions implimented over the years, with recent times notably marked with a rotating arsenal of limited-time events to help mix things up.

With the announcement of Swarm, a new Vamprie Survivors-esque mode coming this summer as part of an Anima Squad skin line activation, I sat down and spoke with League of Legends game director Pu Liu about the importance of mixing things up, how the team decides which games become permanent and when, and how this affects the bread-and-butter League player content with the rift.

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We all have our favourite creators, be they authors, filmmakers, game directors, whose work we show up for regardless of the subject matter. Ragnar Tørnquist is, for me, one such creator: this article isn’t about the Dreamfall saga, which started an entire quarter century ago (he winced arthritically) with The Longest Journey, but I would urge anyone to seek it out, and dare them not to fall in love with the worlds he deftly conjures.

The Dreamfall saga concluded a decade ago, but you could call Dustborn a spiritual sequel. It’s a big ol’ road trip across a near-future “Divided States”, in which a bunch of super-powered misfits are high-tailing it from Pacifica (California) to Nova Scotia (Nova Scotia) in a big silver bus while undercover as a touring punk band. Like his previous works, there is a blending of science-fiction and fantasy here, this time combining cyberpunk tech with mystic shamanism in a world half inspired by Mad Max, half inspired by Tumblr culture (both a type of wasteland involving leather trousers).

Yes, Dustborn is the sort of game that tells you each character’s pronouns. It’s probably the sort of game that would prefer you ask its consent before booting it up. It’s all very Modern, and though I don’t doubt its sincerity it comes off as inauthentic. I can’t figure out if it’s meant to appeal directly to the genderfluid and the neurodivergent, or if it’s more designed to annoy the exact type of person who thinks pronouns are a threat to civilization while being blithely unconcerned by the rise of fascism or climate change – both of which are strong themes in Dustborn. Before I knew of Ragnar Tørnquist’s involvement, I commented to my wife that the dialogue feels like Gen X writing for Gen Z. There’s a sort of… “how do you do fellow They/Thems” vibe that undermines it all. And though he obviously isn’t the game’s sole writer, it can’t escape one’s notice that he is 53. The penny droppeth.

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Dragon Age: The Veilguard (God, I really dislike that title change) is almost here, finally. After an early scare because of a slightly confusing first trailer, that gameplay demo quelled many of our worries, but can it really escape Baldur's Gate 3's shadow?

I'm of the striking opinion that it already has... kind of. It's hard not to think about Larian's near-flawless RPG whenever the new Dragon Age is brought up (in fact, I already linked the two last year), yet all the in-depth previews and the gameplay presentation released to the public suggest we're looking at an entirely different breed of RPG, one that's doing its own thing.

In our own hands-on preview of the game, Alex already teased that "Dragon Age: The Veilguard is going to be a lot of things to a lot of people." And I think that's sums up the unorthodox series as a whole quite nicely. Anyone who claims Dragon Age hasn't evolved (or devolved) with each new entry is either lying or urgently needs to revisit not only Inquisition, but also Dragon Age 2 and Origins.

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Heads up, League of Legends players and survival game fans! For the first time in history, you'll be able to come together in harmony thanks to the latest summer event coming to the MOBA. For a limited time, you'll be able to try out the Anima Squad PvE swarm mode, a loving send up of Vampire Survivors and other survival games.

Here's how it works. There are four stages in total, and you're given a starting roster of two characters from the Anima Squad (a specific skinline for League of Legends champions that's getting a major expansion alongside this event). Your job is to jump in and survive as long as you can, unlocking permanent upgrades, achivements, and new characters as you go. You can tackle it solo, butI was able to try out the mode earlier this month and I've got to say, it's a wicked fun co-operative side attraction away from the rift.

For those who haven't played Vampire Survivors or games of its ilk, they generally see you go into a top down arena and are tasked with surviving against waves of incoming enemies, each with their own attacks and quirks. Your basic attacks go out automatically, but in the League's swarm mode your champions also have two active abilities: one special attack and an ultimate ability. As you kill enemies and collect XP you level up, providing new upgrades and automatic attacks to help with the increased difficulty of incoming waves. Each stage has an end boss, and each finished run allows you to take coins you collect while playing and spend them on character-wide permanent upgrades that'll push you forward through the content.

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Aurora has just been announced officially as the next big champion release for League of Legends. As an AP carry with a focus on confusing enemies and quickly roaming around the map for skirmishes, she looks to be an absolute powerhouse. I was able to try out the champion earlier this month firsthand, and can earnestly say she'll be a monstrous release.

I'll break down all the abilities below, including what they actually do and interesting tidbits about them! After that, I'll give general impressions and notes I had on her strengths in lane, what she'll be strong against and her weaknesses too!

First up is her passive: Spirit Abjuration. Spirits are drawn to Aurora passively, providing additional movement speed. But how do you get these spirits? When Aurora damages an enemy 3 times with her spells and attacks (who doesn't love a three-strike passive), she will perform an exorcism that deals a percentage of the enemy’s max health as magic damage and frees a spirit. This spirit will empower her healing her every second, and turns on her Spirit Mode. Spirit mode grants additional movement for a few seconds.

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I played a few games of Marvel Rivals at Summer Game Fest 2024 earlier this month, and came away thoroughly disappointed. It's a competent enough team-based third-person shooter, and one with real appeal for Marvel fans, but it's a shadow on the wall compared to other competitors in the same genre.

Let's break down how, and why, it made me feel so disappointed. First, I'll tackle the elephant in the room. Marvel Rivals - created by Netease Games - is an Overwatch-like. It has various differences that help differentiate it; the setting and characters are clearly different, and there are clear gameplay differences, too, such as its third-person approach.

But for the vast majority of players who'll actually touch the game, it is Overwatch's skeleton with a comic book skin draped over it. This is either wonderful news for those who just can't get enough of this particular genre, or boorish sludge for those already fatigued with this kind-of product.

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Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion has a tall legacy to live up to. It is, after all, building on the basis of one of the greatest games of all time. As I said in my preview and James reiterates in his review, ‘more of the same’ isn’t so bad when ‘the same’ is a true all-timer.

The new adventure across the DLC’s Land of Shadow isn’t all entirely ‘the same’, of course. There’s new bosses, new weapons, and a new feeling - the structure of the new map feels a little different, a higher degree of density leading to what certainly feels like it forces the player into more lateral thinking and navigational puzzle solving, particularly to unlock and fully explore all five segments of the shadowy realm that makes up the expansion’s map.

Honestly, it’s pretty close to perfect, as expansions go. And yet… there are elements of it that left me feeling just a tiny bit hollow as I watched the DLC’s final boss fall beneath my blade. In honesty, that might very well be the feeling FromSoftware was going for - if any developer is good at hollowing players out, it’s them - but it’s curious.

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The first thing I did when I jumped into Goat Simulator 3’s big new expansion for the first time during a preview session was get flung up into the stratosphere.

I hadn’t planned to do that, but it happened, and I ran with it in the only way I could fathom. I tried to land right atop the head/snout of the giant talking capybara that lords over the pretty huge new map. Unfortunately, whether due to a lack of velocity or an invisible wall, I didn’t quite make it.

After I’d dredged my Pilgor out of the sea, I was able to head into the three distinct areas that make up the capybara’s domain. There’s Goat City, an slightly retro-styled urban environment where the big twist is that goats and humans have had their stations in life reversed Planet of the Apes style. There’s Toontown, filled - as you’d expect - with cartoony architecture and NPCs that look like they’ve auditioned to play Goofy and gotten rejected. Then, there’s Mount Olympus, which is basically Goat Sim Ancient Greece, complete with togas, mythical figures, and at least one statue you can gravely injure by headbutting in the heel.

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When a Delicious in Dungeon anime was announced way back in 2022, I immediately felt excited. I was a big fan of what I'd read of the manga at the time, and hearing the news that it was being handled by none other than Studio Trigger - the same animation team that's overseen projects like Kill la Kill, Little Witch Academia, and Promare, all of which have an incredible energy to them - did nothing to put me off. Of course, that meant that there were some big expectations for Trigger's adaptation of Delicious in Dungeon to match - those who loved the manga really loved it, so Trigger really couldn't afford to mess it up.

Luckily, I don't think it did! When it started airing way back in January, I will admit that I felt a little nervous about how the series was going to play out. The first couple of episodes were good, but animated conservatively for the most part, which felt strange given Trigger's history of really going out there when it came to sillier stories. It didn't take long for those nerves to be put to bed, thankfully, as along came the third episode, which is probably one of my favourite episodes of the season. It was thanks to this episode, which offered a unique take on a classic fantasy RPG enemy - living armour - that I knew Delicious in Dungeon was in good hands.

The whole episode had such a specific look to it, distinct from the previous two episodes, and one that didn't crop up again throughout the rest of the season, which is partially why it still stands out so much. This isn't to say the rest of the show felt disappointing, far from it. Numerous other episodes had pockets of animation used at exactly the right time to accentuate the 'what the hell is going on' feeling of it all. That's the most surprising thing about Delicious in Dungeon - the places it goes.

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There's now a premium, extended version of this podcast that you can get as a VG247 paid subscriber - check out our Support Us page for more info. Doing so helps ensure that we can keep making the show! But don't worry if that's not for you, the main show will always be free.

Many great games have suffered from poor marketing. Sometimes they’re advertised to entirely the wrong demographic. Other times, they’re partnered with uncool or problematic brands. A lot of the time they’re just hard to explain, and need to be experienced to properly understand, so unless you can get a significant number of people to try a demo you’re going to struggle. This, incidentally, is why our much maligned profession still has value for consumers in the age of YouTube. At least that’s what I tell myself at night when the existential dread kicks in.

But sometimes there are good games that are just hobbled by a botched first impression. A pre-rendered reveal trailer, perhaps, that contains no actual scenes or assets from the game in question and doesn’t even work as a tone piece. The recent reveal trailer for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which inspired the theme of this episode, seemed like one of these. Indeed, some people initially wondered if it was some kind of Fortnite tie-in, given how removed it felt from the Dragon Age they knew. However, a proper twenty minute gameplay reveal the following day has, thankfully, eased a lot of people's concerns. Phew.

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While in the western world we pay more attention to Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest remains one of Japan’s most important video gaming exports. The truth is, we probably wouldn’t have many of today’s modern Japanese-made RPG tropes without Dragon Quest; it is the game that defined the parameters of the genre as we know it today.

That makes Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake a particularly important title. Arguably, the first three Dragon Quests are a trio of the most important games of their kind; of that three, the third entry is actually the narrative first entry, a prequel to its forebears. This is the ideal Dragon Quest entry point - and any remake serves a purpose not just as a fun video game, but as a wonderful slice of history the better part of forty years in the making.

It’s difficult to get a read on exactly how good the full version of something like an RPG will be based on a demo less than an hour in length, of course. But from what I’ve seen so far, Dragon Quest 3’s HD mulligan appears to be the pitch-perfect offering for that stated mission. It wants to retain everything that makes the original great, but modernized. It wants to provide a new-but-retro entry point to the Dragon Quest series. It seems like it’ll do that.

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Let's cut to the chase. Dragon Ball fans, you're going to be eating good with Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero. I was able to sit down and play around an hour of the game at Summer Game Fest 2024 earlier this month and it was a surprise hit for me. A platter of syrup-sweet desserts specially made for the Dragon Ball palate. It is the word hype fully capitalized, and the H is glowing and screaming at you.

I, like everyone else present, was presented with the features before getting to try out the versus mode. As such I can only really write firsthand impressions of the standard battle system, but for what it's worth I feel the full suite of modes looks fantastic. A story mode allowing you to sit down and power through decades of Dragon Ball story arcs is something we've seen done before, but certainly not with this level of graphical fidelity. The game is a stunner, blasting vivid colours and nostalgia at you in a constant stream.

The team responsible could have left it here and people would have probably been content, but the addition of alternate scenario endings - special non-canon story moments that players can either opt into willingly or unlock through their performance in fights - is truly enticing. It's a fun solution to a genuine problem with Dragon Ball games that goes back through the series' history. You can only have fun seeing the Frieza saga so many times. Everyone knows what happens. But, add in a little spice, a little what-if, and suddenly there's a whole new reason to do it.

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Motor racing is just like any other sport.

Its heart beats to the dorky drum of things scribbled across chalkboards before the game has even really kicked off in the eyes of the spectator. There are always fifteen different front wing designs, 150 different ways of setting up your gears, and fifteen thousand different things that can go wrong with an engine, all thrown into a sordid equation that determines if you can win or lose - and often by less than one tenth of a second.

On the other side lies the Mr Hyde that emerges as soon as the tyres hit the tarmac or trail. The reason we all turn up or tune in is for the colourful human coating that gets splashed across the carbon fibre canvas once all of the engine covers have been slammed shut. For better or worse, on Sundays, it’s largely up to the person with their hands on the wheel to steer their clan of car connoisseurs to the promised land.

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The whole thing now, I’m told, is that everybody has a short attention span. Are you still reading? Are you drifting? Focus! The old-man-shouts-at-cloud element blames this on phones, on social media, on whatever else. Whatever the reason, it feels like a real phenomenon - and perhaps that’s why the real time strategy genre has stumbled a bit in recent decades.

I used to be really rather good at certain RTS titles, having been in the high-end percentile for online play in a couple of classics. I still boot stuff like Starcraft 2 and Red Alert 3 from time to time for a nostalgia-stroking skirmish. But one thing I note is: it’s a genre that takes time. A good match is probably half an hour. That’s probably a tall ask if your primary media consumption is reels. Or, if like me, you’re in your thirties, with a family, a work to-do list longer than the firing range of a sniper hero unit, and limited free time.

The solution to that conundrum may very well be Battle Aces, a new RTS from Uncapped Games that I got to play a few matches of.

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Do you fancy more Monster Hunter World? Like, a lot more? If the answer is yes - which it very much should be - Monster Hunter Wilds has you covered.

When you’re talking sequels, ‘more of the same’ can really run the gamut. It can be a pejorative, a suggestion that a developer hasn’t changed or done enough, guilty of taking the easy path with a sequel. But it can also be an expression of joy at a developer bloody well going for it, building on what came before in a way that is iterative, but also quietly revelatory. Having seen a half-hour demonstration of an exhilarating new hunt, Monster Hunter Wilds looks like the latter.

In some sense, this is my favourite sort of sequel. There’s not much point in me covering the basic concepts of the game, nor its broad structure - all of this remains unchanged from Monster Hunter World. If you haven’t played that game, you should - it’s nice and cheap now, and it’s worth every penny.. At a glance, in those first stages of its demo, you could even mistake Wilds for some sort of souped-up, max-settings version of World. “Sure looks like more MH,” I find I’ve scribbled in my notebook. But then, as the mission begins, a suite of exciting changes and additions is slowly revealed, one after another. Very quickly, it goes from feeling like more of the same to an epic evolution on what came before.

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One of the current Next Fest's most pleasant and colorful games - out of the many that are offering a neat little demo - is Amber Isle, which looks like Animal Crossing, except with dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals as villagers instead. It behaves and is designed exactly like you'd expect.

The anticipated end result of Stardew Valley's success over the last eight years and Animal Crossing's rising popularity was always going to be a new wave of cartoony farming and shop sims that took us to small country villages. Such predictions weren't wrong, and we've enjoyed more riffs on the formula than we can count in the last few years, some good and some bland.

Amber Isle comes into the picture during what feels like the tail-end of this current era of cozy life sims, as players are slowly but steadily rejecting new titles which don't bring much new to the table. In the case of this specific game, cute chonky dinos and other prehistoric animals living the peaceful town life might be enough to entice most fans of the genre, but its (seemingly) more focused approach to the gameplay loop might also help differentiate it from the competition.

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How much have you changed over the past couple of years? The passage of time continues, constantly, unremittingly. We're all getting older, and time's arrow marches on. It's... inevitable. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector's lead dev Gareth Damian Martin, after playing some of the upcoming sequel. In case you couldn't tell, and thought I was just being introspective, in Citizen Sleeper 2, the passage of time is important.

Take Bliss, for example. Bliss is a character you can meet in the first Citizen Sleeper, and they're back in the sequel. Those of you that met them in the first game might remember that, at that point in time, they used she/her pronouns. But now, an indeterminate amount of time later, they've realised they are non-binary.

In Citizen Sleeper 2, when you meet Bliss, they offer to help you out. Fans enjoyed their presence, but this resurfacing is about more than simply jingling keys for players of the first game. For Martin, Bliss presented "an opportunity to have this kind-of moment of solidarity, and a fun discussion between a non-binary person and a Sleeper about their experiences; something that I'm trying to bring to the Forefront."

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“I had been playing Skyrim for a long time, and one day the idea just came to me,” YouTuber Sidek tells me. “‘What if I killed Nazeem every day until TES VI was released?’”

“I decided to start as a joke,” they continue, “but I was determined that no matter what, I would go all the way, even if no one was watching, I would finish the challenge.”

Today, Sidek’s killing streak of Whiterun’s most infamous resident - the Redguard nobleman who's long held uber-meme status within the Elder Scrolls community thanks to his condescending demeanour and catchphrase of 'do you get to the Cloud District very often?' - reaches 1000 days, having begun all the way back on September 18, 2021. The Elder Scrolls 6, I probably don’t have to tell you, still isn’t here yet.

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E3 was a horrible, loud, expensive nightmare - but there was doubtlessly a magic about it. Thinking about it gives me a bloody headache, but it’s a nostalgic headache - and I will forever mourn that old, mad format. It ain’t ever coming back - but this week, I think we got a glimmer of what the future could and probably should look like.

I’ve just spent the week in Los Angeles attending ‘Summer Game Fest’, which in this article doesn’t just refer to the event that Geoff Keighley laid on, but all of the broader activities around LA. For the sake of argument, let’s call it ‘new E3’.

Keighley’s event is sort of the tentpole that draws others in, with LA this week a host to the SGF stage show and stream, the ‘Play Days’ campus where many publishers set up shop, a similar offering from our colleagues over at IGN Live, plus separate events spaces from Ubisoft and Xbox. Other publishers camped up in hotel rooms for top-secret hands-ons and the like.

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The first thing that’ll strike you when you make your way over to the new map region of Shenandoah after installing Fallout 76’s Skyline Valley expansion will be the sky.

Thanks to a mysterious and constantly-raging storm, it’s dyed a deep crimson that’s almost reminiscent of the hue cast over Fallout New Vegas’ Sierra Madre by its infamous cloud. While this one didn’t seem to be as deadly, the fact that its epicentre - hanging directly over the ruined manor house at the centre of Shenandoah which helps immediately establish where the expansion’s main story is going - is Vault 63, the door of which you’ll already have found jettisoned near The Wayward.

Most of the events of Skyline Valley revolve around this vault, which is populated entirely by ghouls, with some being of the regular variety and others being a new variant you won’t have seen before. That second group is ‘The Lost’, and they’re essentially infused with electricity, giving them a pretty cool black and blue aesthetic. A bit like Glowing Ones, the majority are feral, but - as is always the case - there’s an exception.

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It’s not often you get a chance to cause damage to a video game executive’s actual stuff in a video game. However, just last month, as you probably heard, Xbox head honcho Phil Spencer’s Fallout 76 CAMP had an entire atomic bomb dropped on it by a player.

While, as its perpetrator soon revealed, the nuking wasn’t - as some had theorised due to the timing - some kind of reaction to Xbox shuttering a group of studios headlined by Redfall developer Arkane Austin and Hi-Fi Rush creator Tango Gameworks, it was still a pretty interesting thing to have happen in a game.

So, with that in mind, during an interview with Bill LaCoste at a preview for the Skyline Valley expansion, I asked the lead producer on Bethesda’s 76 team what the game’s developers had thought watching all of that go down in their creation.

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Time doesn't sit still in the world of Citizen Sleeper. It's a big theme in the first game, really making you aware of the time you do (and sometimes don't) have. Each decision needs to be thought through, as time wasted could cost you. But spending your hours well can also bring a lot of joy and comfort. With its upcoming sequel, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, I was very much hoping that these ideas would carry through, and having spent a bit of time with the game in a recent hands-on preview, I'm happy to say it does. Albeit in entirely new, and sometimes surprising, ways.

For those unfamiliar with the first one, Citizen Sleeper is a tabletop-inspired RPG set in a sci-fi world where you play as an android, known as a "Sleeper", whose consciousness is copied from a real person, all for the purpose of working for a corporation. You spend your days working odd jobs, meeting new people, forming relationships, all while you try to stop your body from failing due to its reliance on something known as 'stabiliser'. Activities can be accomplished by using dice rolls, with stats modifying how successful you are likely (or unlikely) to be, and if you don't manage your health well enough, you can end up with less dice to work with.

Starward Vector works similarly, once again giving you six dice to work with each cycle – though now you play as a different Sleeper, one who is also on the run from the corporation that made them, but is also hiding from a gang that wants to control them. You've managed to alter your android body so you aren't reliant on 'stabiliser', but that comes with a consequence: amnesia. Just like in any decent RPG. Luckily, your friend Serafin is there to help you, as you are to help them.

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You may think it odd, dedicating a festival to live music that isn’t, really, designed to be played live. Video game, film, and TV music, by definition, is designed to be recorded under very strict conditions, and played back at you with even more severe restrictions. You may get to hear a little bit of Borislav Slavov’s score for Baldur’s Gate 3 during a battle that you finish up in seconds, for instance. You may never get to hear some of the tracks made for the game at all, even, depending on your choices. Such is the format, such is the lot of a games composer.

But that’s all part of the fascination for Tommy Pearson, the concert producer and curator of London’s first-ever Soundtrack Festival. “The visceral feeling, the gut feeling you have, when you’re in the same room as an orchestra is so important to what this festival is,” he says in a speech announcing the festival at London’s BFI Southbank. “Even for music that isn’t designed to be played live, you can’t argue with the impact of hearing it performed by exceptional artists.”

And whilst a lot of the festival is dedicated to film and TV (as you’d expect; they’re much more mainstream-focused, after all), it’s encouraging and invigorating to see video game music represented so well as part of this inaugural soundtrack festival.

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There's now a premium, extended version of this podcast that you can get as a VG247 paid subscriber - check out our Support Us page for more info. Doing so helps ensure that we can keep making the show! But don't worry if that's not for you, the main show will always be free.

It won't have escaped your notice, dear viewer or listener, that the last episode - our incredible two-part 100th episode special quickfire edition - featured six contestants instead of the usual three. It may have escaped your notice, however, that 50% of them were not actually VG247 staff. This has caused certain ripples at VG247 Towers. Realising I may have triggered a full-on staff revolt, with its ire pointed squarely in my direction, I felt it wise last week to pretend to be ill and get Tom to host the podcast instead.

Tom, being the great mediator that he is, not only stepped seamlessly into the host role but also managed to get everyone to calm down and thwarted a live mutiny attempt during the recording. With everyone suitably placated, we'll back to normal next week.

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The latest entry in the Dragon Age series was probably the most talked-about game at Summer Games Fest’s hands-on play days event. I’m known as something of an RPG nerd, so I’d have people coming up to me a lot, launching into: “Have you seen it? Dragon Age?”

Because of standard-issue scheduling struggles, I didn’t see it until right towards the end of the show - but that did afford me an interesting opportunity. I was able to flip the question back on each other member of the media or industry that brought it up, and the reaction was fairly universal in a manner that doesn’t happen all that often - and it was fascinating.

It’d be one of those - “Ahh, yeah…” said with a little grimace, and a tip up in the intonation that always suggests the sentence is about to run on longer. And it would. The Veilguard, people always reacted, looked great, but…

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Remasters of games that are a generation or two old are ten-a-penny now, but some go a little further than others. Such is the case for Sonic X Shadow Generations, Sega’s do-over of 2011’s Sonic Generations, a game originally designed to be a wide-ranging celebration of the speedy hedgehog for his 20th birthday. Sonic’s now 33; the game itself is, in a video game sense, a relic.

That isn’t said or meant in a pejorative sense, however. Generations is old, but it remains one of the best modern Sonic efforts outside of the unassailable Sonic Mania. It’s still very good - and its mish-mash of levels from the first twenty years of Sonic adventures split between two distinct gameplay styles still charms.

But if you want to feel really old, check this: Shadow the Hedgehog is now as old as Sonic was when Generations first released. To me, a human being marginally older than Sonic, Shadow is still one of the ‘new’ characters, sitting in a segregated tier from the truly ‘classic’ crew. But to a whole generation of kids and adults he’s now always been there, just like Sonic - and so it only seems right that this new release celebrates him, too.

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At Summer Game Fest 2024, I was able to sit down and play Star Wars Outlaws. In our 90-minute session with the game, I snuck through gang hideouts, tip-toed across a derelict ship in search for scraps, and darted through orbiting debris in daring space combat. Star War's Outlaw's Corellian hound-eat-hound universe is rich with character, deadly fun in short bursts, and (pending a few massive question marks) is frankly one of my most anticipated games this year.

My hands-on preview session was split between three distinct missions, and I'll start with the best and work my way down. But first, I'll begin with Outlaw's bedrock foundation: you, as Kay Vess, are a galaxy-faring gunslinger that scrapes through with wit and agility, mostly alone. You sneak into places uninvited, swiping bits and bobs here and there. When alarms start blaring you whip around corners picking off goons and gangers with your trusty blaster. Controlling Kay Vess is a blast, and it was the glue that kept the whole thing together.

But Vess's kit is basic. You've got a few consumables, two blaster modes for regular shots and anti-electronics, and a stun. That, plus your own aptitude, of course, is it. But with Nix, it became way more interesting. You can use them to mark your surroundings, distract enemies, and even temporarily discombobulate them. On her own the gameplay experience in Outlaws can appear quite vanilla, but with Nix it's genuinely enticing. They're like the eagles in Assassin's Creed games, I suppose, but way more fun to use.

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Here’s how things stand re Xbox: strictly speaking, there’s no longer any such thing as an Xbox exclusive, and that’s been the case for a while now. Its console exclusives are all proudly coming to PC. Xbox is a brand of consumer gaming hardware, yes, the box that sits under your TV, but it’s also a Windows app, an Android app, and it’s part of a much larger game publishing portfolio that Microsoft runs, as much as it makes sense to, as a platform agnostic enterprise. It puts games on Switch and PlayStation. It even funnels games directly to your TV, bypassing the need for a console entirely. Does that mean there’s no longer any reason to own an Xbox? Well, that depends entirely on you. Xbox is the American games platform and the American USP, for better or worse, is choice.

This is to say that we’ve pretty much transcended the old paradigms of which box is best. Every major platform holder has its own proposition, its own image, its own price barrier for entry. And so, it really doesn’t matter if the games showcased on Sunday night are exclusives, console exclusives, or timed exclusives: the point is that they’re Xbox games, wherever they happen to get played. And Xbox games are looking great.

We had major updates on legacy IPs that have until now felt chronically under-leveraged while Spencer & Co were bogged down with lengthy acquisitions, fighting PR fires about whether or not game X would be on competitor Y’s box, or solemnly putting hundreds of people out of work while gleefully spending literal tens of billions on the aforementioned. Fable and Perfect Dark look superb, both sporting new gameplay trailers that suggest a carefully applied sense of what these properties are supposed to look and feel like, while showing no hesitation in updating them for modern tastes.

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Beethoven and Dinosaur’s last game was more a psychedelic prog rock concept album than a game – and that’s absolutely fine. I said it at the time, when I was writing for a rival publication and music magazine. The game, The Artful Escape, is a love-letter to all of us that have ever dreamed of being rock stars. The game speaks, directly, to anyone that’s grown up loving music – and, also, who is A Little Bit Weird.

The developer has been quiet for a while now, but at the big summer Xbox Showcase of 2024, the platform holder gave Beethoven and Dinosaur the stage once again. And what an encore. If the gorgeous art style and fuzzy nostalgic filter didn’t get me, the confirmation that the game will be set to a soundtrack of DEVO, Roxy Music, Lush, The Smashing Pumpkins, Iggy Pop, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Joy Division did.

I was born in 1991, so a lot of this music is actually a little before my time, but I grew up with an old punk dad and a motown-loving mum, and found prog rock and skateboarding myself in my teenage years. It feels like Mixtape is made specifically with me in mind – I couldn’t ask for a game more aligned with what I want if you put a gun to my head.

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“Do you believe in extraterrestrial life?”, an electronically distorted voice bellows at me from somewhere in the blackness beyond the lights shining into my face. “Yes, probably, I mean, statistically,” I think to myself, while my character on screen answers “No.”

This is a non-interactive cutscene that sets the stage for The Operator, which is another one of those games where you are a faceless operative of a clandestine government organisation, whose only interaction with the crime and conspiracy laden world beyond is via a bespoke operating system designed to sift data points out of scraps of evidence that are sent to you from the field.

So you aren’t Dana Scully, you're the guy Dana Scully calls when she wants some telephone records analysed. Which is fine, I hate going outside.

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