Xbox

No, your ears were not deceiving you. That was definitely Geralt voice actor Doug Cockle popping up at the end of the Witcher 4's reveal trailer last night, and yes, the white-haired monster hunter will absolutely feature in some way in the upcoming game.

How did she drink a witcher potion doe???

Astro Bot has won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2024.

Beating off competition from other wonderful games like Balatro, Black Myth: Wukong, and Elden Ring's The Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, Team Asobi swept up the top prize, along with awards for best game direction, best action/adventure game, and best family game.

LocalThunk's stellar Balatro also secured several awards, including best mobile game, best debut indie game, and best independent game.

The full list of winners is as follows:

Game of the Year: Astro Bot (Team Asobi/SIE)

Best Game Direction: Astro Bot (Team Asobi/SIE)

Best Narrative: Metaphor: ReFantanzio (Studio Zero/Atlus/Sega)

Best Art Direction: Metaphor: ReFantazio (Studio Zero/Atlus/Sega)

Best Score and Music: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth (Square Enix)

Best Audio Design: Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 (Ninja Theory/Xbox Game Studios)

Best Performance: Melina Juergens, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2

Innovation in Accessibility: Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (Ubisoft)

Games for Impact: Neva (Nomada Studio/Devolver)

Best Ongoing Game: Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead Game Studios/SIE)

Best Community Support: Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios)

Best Independent Game: Balatro (LocalThunk)

Best Debut Indie Game: Balatro (LocalThunk)

Best Mobile Game: Balatro (LocalThunk)

Best VR/AR Game: Batman: Arkham Shadow (Camouflaj/Oculus Studios)

Best Action Game: Black Myth: Wukong (Game Science)

Best Action/Adventure Game: Astro Bot (Team Asobi/SIE)

Best RPG: Metaphor: ReFantazio (Studio Zero/Atlus/Sega)

Best Fighting Game: Tekken 8 (Bandai Namco)

Best Family Game: Astro Bot (Team Asobi/SIE)

Best Sim/Strategy Game: Frostpunk 2 (11 Bit Studios)

Best Sports/Racing Game: EA Sports FC 25 (EA Sports)

Best Multiplayer Game: Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead Game Studios/SIE)

Best Adaptation: Fallout (Bethesda/Kilter Films/Amazon MGM Studios)

Most Anticipated Game: Grand Theft Auto 6 (Rockstar Games)

Content Creator of the Year: CaseOh

Best Esports Game: League of Legends (Riot Games)

Rocksteady is pulling the plug on new content for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League after Season 4, with the developer announcing its plans to end support for the troubled online game in January 2025.

Rocksteady revealed the news in an official blog detailing Suicide Squad's final season, which will include the release of an offline mode and a new playable character in Deathstroke. While Rocksteady doesn't plan to release any new content, Suicide Squad's story will remain playable via offline mode and it will be possible to play co-op with friends. Previous seasonal content will also continue to be available.

Elsewhere, Rocksteady said Suicide Squad will remain available for purchase and that its in-game store will continue to function after Season 4 along with its in-game LutherCoin currency. Rocksteady didn't indicate how long it plans to keep Suicide Squad online after it finishes releasing new content.

A difficult release for Suicide Squad Suicide Squad Season 4 will mark the end of what has been a fraught release for Rocksteady. It struggled with mixed reviews when it came out back in February and never really recovered its momentum. We wrote in at the time, "Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a thoroughly frustrating game to play. There are things to enjoy here, with combat that’s snappy enough to carry it through a genuinely good DC comics story artfully dressed in high production values. But everything else just falls down around it."

Suicide Squad ended up struggling on the sales front, spurring a double-digit decline in revenue for Warner Bros. gaming. It joins several other online games that have struggled in 2024, including Concord and XDefiant.

Suicide Squad's final season will begin with the release of Episode 7 on December 10 and will conclude with the release of Episode 8 next month. For more, check out our full explanation of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's endgame.

CD Projekt Red has released a new update for Cyberpunk 2077, and like previous patches, this one makes some significant changes to several features in the game. Focused on player expression through cars, photography, and character customization, Update 2.2--which has been developed alongside French support studio Virtuos--is now available for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S versions of the game.

Full Patch Notes

Outriders developer People Can Fly has announced its second round of layoffs in less than a year, this time affecting "more than 120" people. The move accompanies the cancellation or downsizing of several projects, with the studio blaming "external market pressures".

Shame, I actually enjoyed that game.

Sony has confirmed its interest in aquiring FromSoftware parent company Kadokawa.

The PlayStation manufacturer cleared the air regarding reports that it was looking to pick up the gaming and anime mega company in a recent interview with Yahoo Japan. It’s acknowledgement of what could be a bombshell moment for entertainment fans everywhere, but until a deal is finalized, it is probably best to keep expectations for a potential buyout at a minimum.

“It is true that we have made an initial statement of intent,” Sony said regarding its interest in Kadokawa (translated via DeepL). “We would appreciate it if you would allow us to refrain from further comment.”

Rumors that Sony may soon acquire Kadokawa first emerged from a Reuters report last month. It stated that talks between the two companies were ongoing, with one of its sources adding that, should negotiations proceed in a positive direction, a deal could be signed soon. Today’s confirmation from Sony suggests that talks remain active, though it’s unclear where things sit now.

Kadokawa oversees a number of entities that could no doubt benefit Sony in the long run. One that many gaming fans have their eye on is FromSoftware, which helped launch gaming into the 2010s with its critically acclaimed Dark Souls series. The developer also found tremendous success with 2022’s George R. R. Martin collaboration project, Elden Ring, with its follow-up DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, launching earlier this year. Kadokawa also owns other gaming studios such as Spike Chunsoft (Danganronpa), Acquire (Octopath Traveler), Gotcha Gotcha Games (RPG Maker), and more.

While some experts believe that bringing the media company under Sony’s wing may prove to be difficult, Ampere Analysis research director Piers Harding-Rolls previously explained to IGN that news of the company’s interest shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. It already owns about 14% of FromSoftware thanks to a deal made in 2022.

“At the time, Sony mentioned a broader interest in cross-media development of anime and games IP to support its other media businesses,” Harding-Rolls said. “So, in that sense any deal for the parent company Kadokawa, which also operates extensively in manga and anime, is a natural extension of this earlier deal. These other areas align nicely with Sony’s anime businesses.”

There’s no telling when or if the deal will proceed for now. While we wait for any updates, you can read about why FromSoftware isn’t currently interested in making Elden Ring 2. You can also learn about the ransomware attack that hit the game developer earlier this year.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Launches January 29, 2025

Pretty hilarious and depressing all at the same time.

In 2024, there has rarely been a game announced without a small but tiresomely vocal group of grifters attempting to whip up a controversy for their social media followers. No matter what the title, and no matter who the developer, every announcement is meticulously scrutinized for any faint sign of a thoughtcrime, an element that could be construed by these charlatans as proof of “wokeness,” something they can decry as “a DEI initiative,” and then this speculative notion is spun out to followers as the latest attempt to TAKE AWAY YOUR GAMES! The latest target is Avowed, but in picking on it, those running the grift have rather shown their hand.

Like any online scam of any note, it’s so brazen that it’s only more depressing that it works so well. As much as it might infuriate you that someone you know would fall for a cold caller telling them they need to send gift certificates to fix an issue with their Windows operating system, it should equally upset you that these legions of people fall for the same woke gaming grift over and over and over. But with Avowed, the forthcoming Obsidian role-playing game set in the world of Pillars of Eternity, the con is so brazenly laid bare. Yes of course it still works, but it’s so much easier to see how.

The schtick works like this: A game is announced, and because it’s 2024, that game may not exclusively focus on a white dude saving the world for the lady in a bikini, (or a sexy lady playing dress-up in various bikinis while saving the world). I mean, some still do, but this is an industry that creates games that feature a broad range of characters. The grifters recognize this as a useful target for their grift, making claims that the game is artificially altered from what should have been, based on a desire to be perceived as progressive. They then use this to convince large numbers of disaffected young men that the world is trying to take away from them their last vestige of entertainment, the only place left where they feel represented and prioritized. The only hope is to rise up and fight, fight for what’s rightfully theirs—and if they like, give some money to the grifter for a project that never sees daylight.

Except, with Avowed, those behind the grift forgot to include a couple of vital stages. They forgot to develop the spurious claims on which to condemn the project, failing to identify something that had been artificially included or an element that had been censored in the name of wokeness. And in doing so, they made incredibly clear what it is that’s really at the bottom of all of this: bigotry.

Around the time of Gamescom this year, the usual people started loudly condemning Avowed as the next piece of woke mind virus-addled DEI. Why? What sin had it committed? Had a mission leaked in which you’re forced to help a gay polycule adopt a cat-identifying trans child at an abortion clinic? Nope, it was this image:

See it? See the intolerable act of evil? No? Goodness me, don’t tell me the woke mind virus has got to you, too!

There’s no white man. That’s right, this violently racist piece of marketing includes a black woman, a white elf-like woman, a blue man, and an ambiguous-race dwarf. How more clearly could the developer be saying that it wants this game to be exclusively played during drag queen story hour at your local library?

Honestly, to even notice the fact feels kinda weird. I’m a white guy living in a country that’s 90 percent white, in an area of the country that’s 95 percent white, and as such, I’m fairly used to seeing people who look like me everywhere I go. But the thought didn’t cross my inherently racist mind. I’m the last person who can deliver that ghastly, “I don’t even SEE race!” bullshit people like to say instead of thinking. Yet, I saw…some people. People in a fantasy world. Fantasy game people. I’ll give them this, though: I noticed one of them had blue skin. That stood out. Fucking typical DEI inclusion initiative. If I see a blue person flying a plane, I’m getting off there and then! Etc.

And in this, in this alone, the entire scam was shown for what it really is: just unabashed racism, homophobia, and misogyny.

That’s it. It’s so boring, but it’s all it is. Racism, homophobia, and misogyny are profitable, so they’re the focus. But don’t worry, they’ll prove how not-racist they are by pointing to their furious ongoing (although mostly forgotten) campaign against Ubisoft for including a black man in an Assassin’s Creed game set in Japan.

That first Avowed fuss came and went in the summer, the game permanently marked to be condemned. When I wrote about my excellent hour with the game on Kotaku in August, the replies on X were bilious complaints about how the game was going to promote a woke agenda. Based on, you know, that picture. And then everyone forgot they were so outraged about that, and moved on to the next topic.

But oh boy, what bigger gift could the grifters have received when November’s Avowed previews came around? Because, when a bunch of journalists (boo! hiss!) were given access to the opening few hours of the game, it was revealed that the game’s character creator had the option for “they/them” pronouns. SOUND THE KLAXONS!

I was one of those SJW lamestream media “journalists.” I spent six hours playing the game and had an absolutely brilliant time with it, and that’s despite there not being a single mission in which I had to paint rainbow flags on the walls of a church, nor any plotline in which I helped a blur-haired immigrant gain access to free healthcare. Instead, I was…I was fighting spiders and shit.

Because this is the third game set in the Pillars of Eternity canon, which is a world primarily focused on matters of the misuse of dark magic and the questionable nature of its deities. Avowed is a game about a disease called the Dreamscourge causing people to grow mushrooms all over their bodies and go insane. Your character, who can be the whitest man you ever fucking saw in your life, if you’d like, is an envoy for a wannabe-colonial nation, and you can choose to be as pro- or anti-that as you want with the game’s broad choices of dialogue. As much as I tried, I couldn’t find a single woke thing to do! I even chose boring old “she/her” pronouns in the character creator, because my character was a woman with excellent fungal madness growing out of her face.

But oh boy, are the grifters on fire about Avowed. They saw the previews about how you could hit spiders with swords, and they saw the few that mentioned the pronouns (it didn’t seem particularly exciting to me, so I didn’t think to mention it), and that was it. They were proven right! That earlier picture failing to feature Jeff from accounting was all the evidence they’d needed, and they’d been proven correct to declare the game would cause their DEI detectors to start shrieking. In the last week, they have been sending out absolutely deranged messages about how the game is “doomed” because one of its art directors tweeted something about Elon Musk. “Avowed is in deep trouble,” they post to each other on X, their brows furrowed in concern over the severity of it all.

Because, yes, horrendously, the world’s richest bigot has been posting about Avowed too, condemning its use of pronouns, and deliberately re-interpreting the art director’s mocking sarcasm to be a statement of intent to be “racist” against “white guys.”

It’s the exact same playbook described above, of taking something incredibly minor entirely out of context (the guy is laughing at those who think the game is negative toward white people, given that’s not even vaguely something the game’s about), reframing it as something serious (“It should not be acceptable for any company in the gaming industry to be racist & sexist against ‘white guys’,” wrote Musk), and then acting entirely on that reframed, imaginary version, declaring that the game is already doomed to fail based on this fictional enormity.

Hot off the back of their success in destroying another RPG, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which utterly flopped thanks to their efforts with a miserable million sales in its first two weeks, they refer back to that extraordinary win as proof that Avowed is doomed to the same terrible fate. “We’re winning,” they endlessly message their gullible followers, and then that’s true too.

It’s just boring racism, homophobia, and misogyny, folks. That’s it. That’s the entire grift. You play to the venal nature of the disaffected, you feed latent bigotry and resentment, and you drop in a way to give you money. Cha-ching. But a quiet “cha-ching,” because it’s only so effective, such that you have to exhaustingly maintain the loop until eventually someone with a louder voice usurps you.

Avowed reveals this for what it truly is. The game hasn’t “replaced” anyone with a minority-representing character, it hasn’t changed the length of a schoolgirl’s dress, it hasn’t removed a reference to something unpleasant that got through in a version from the 1990s. None of the usual massive crimes. It just had a picture of some people, an entirely ignorable tickbox on the character creator screen, and a sarcastic art director who thinks toolbag Elon Musk is a toolbag. But they’re going after it too, because, more than anything else, it hasn’t made any special effort to center a straight, white man in its marketing. Because, when it’s all stripped away, that’s all this is about. Pure bigotry.

Ubisoft’s share price skyrocketed today amid intensifying rumors that Chinese megacorp Tencent is engaged in buyout talks.

The company behind Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six Siege has suffered a torrid year, with multiple studio closures, mass layoffs, and game shutdowns. The company’s next big game, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, was delayed into 2025, and Star Wars Outlaws failed to meet sales expectations.

According to Reuters, Ubisoft shareholders are “considering” how to structure a possible buyout of the French company without reducing the founding Guillemot family’s control. The Guillemot family is the largest shareholder in Ubisoft and is reportedly in talks with Tencent and “other investors” as it seeks funding a management buyout. Tencent is the second-largest shareholder in Ubisoft with 10% and, according to Reuters, has yet to decide whether to fund the buyout.

Reuters said Tencent’s indecision is “partly because it has asked for a greater say on future board decisions including cash flow distribution in return for financing the deal.” Apparently the Guillemot family has yet to agree to those terms, but Tencent is willing to wait for them to come around.

Tencent declined to comment when contacted by Reuters, with a Guillemot family rep failing to respond. But a Ubisoft spokesperson did comment, saying: "We remain committed to making decisions in the best interests of all of our stakeholders. In this context, as we have already indicated, the Company is also reviewing all its strategic options."

Ubisoft’s shares fell to their lowest level in the last decade in September after it made a series of dramatic announcements around the performance of its games. As well as delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Ubisoft announced a return to Steam after a period of PC launch exclusivity on the Epic Games Store, with Star Wars Outlaws recently releasing on Valve’s platform.

This latest news comes hot on the heels of Ubisoft's announcement that it plans to shut down Call of Duty competitor XDefiant and its production studios in San Francisco and Osaka while ramping down its site in Sydney, with up to 277 employees losing their jobs. Roughly half of the XDefiant team will be assigned roles elsewhere.

Shares in Ubisoft are up 12.52% today, December 6, following the Tencent buyout reports.

It’s been over 30 years since I wore out my VHS copy of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Since then the film franchise has been in a state of escalation. Where do you go after uncovering the literal Holy Grail? Aliens, then time machines, apparently. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is the perfect antidote to all of this; one that uses its own figurative Dial of Destiny to propel us back in time to Indy’s prime. The result is easily one of the best Indy stories across both the games and the movies, with painstakingly detailed environments, wonderfully atmospheric tomb raiding and puzzle solving, a pitch-perfect score, and quite possibly the greatest punch sound effect in the business. While it does stumble occasionally as a stealth-focused sneak ’em up, The Great Circle is an otherwise grand and gorgeous globe-trotting adventure that left me giddy as a schoolboy. Yes, it’s true that bringing Indiana Jones back to the big screen (twice) after he literally rode off into the sunset was probably a poor choice. But having MachineGames craft an Indy experience inspired by all the best games in that development team’s past?

Bethesda chose wisely.

MachineGames’ most immediate legacy is the modern Wolfenstein series, and there’s certainly some of that on show in The Great Circle. Like The New Order and its excellent prequel and sequel, The Great Circle is first-person and highly story-driven, and I’d wager if there’s anyone who hates Nazis as much as Indy, it’s the Gestapo-gutting, SS-slaying BJ Blazkowicz. The Great Circle is not, however, a bloodthirsty exercise in double-fisted, lead-flinging fury. Unlike Wolfenstein, The Great Circle’s focus is patient and slower-paced exploration and stealth – where guns are rarely (and barely) a viable option.

That said, with the founding members of MachineGames all hailing from fellow Swedish studio Starbreeze, MachineGames’ DNA admittedly runs much deeper than Wolfenstein. For many of the team, it dates back to 2004’s outstanding and highly acclaimed The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Riddick’s first-person fisticuffs and adventure elements appear to have been a huge inspiration on The Great Circle, and it’s refreshing to be playing a game like Butcher Bay again – particularly when it’s done with this much verve and commitment to a storied franchise.

For clarity, I doubt anybody would’ve been shocked to see an Indiana Jones game in 2024 arrive as a clone of the blockbuster Uncharted series. It certainly wouldn’t have been unprecedented. After all, both 1999’s Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine and 2003’s Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb both followed a fairly strict Tomb Raider template. Pivoting to pay tribute to the man who usurped Lara as the premier grave-robbing vagabond of modern video games would hardly have been surprising – particularly as games today have become increasingly homogenised overall.

The Great Circle isn’t an Uncharted clone, and it’s all the better for it. But The Great Circle isn’t an Uncharted clone, and it’s all the better for it. It’s an Indiana Jones game I didn’t even know I wanted, and sometimes that’s the best surprise. I like highly cinematic, quality third-person shooters as much as the next man, but not every game needs to be one. And besides, you can do a lot worse than taking notes from Butcher Bay – another licensed tie-in with the extremely rare distinction of being even better than the film upon which it was based.

Genius of the Restoration The first-person perspective blesses The Great Circle with a fantastic sense of scale. Looking up in awe of the Great Pyramid – or staring out at a giant Nazi battleship perched atop a mountain in the Himalayas – simply has a more pronounced effect at eye-level. It also does wonders for immediacy, with puzzle solving in particular benefitting greatly. Picking up and poring over documents and clues, directly manipulating and placing objects, and watching the results unfold in front of your eyes makes it feel like you’re personally inside some of the world’s most expensive escape rooms. Puzzles come regularly, and they’re mostly light lifting, but I’ve encountered at least a couple of slightly curlier ones that left me smugly satisfied that I wasn’t stumped. If you do hit a roadblock, there’s a baked-in hint system that will only interject if you take an extra photo of the offending puzzle with your in-game camera. It’s a smart and courteous way of offering aid only when asked that will keep players off their phones and in the game.

On top of this, it’s really the best showcase for the incredible amount of granular detail MachineGames has stuffed into seemingly every surface in The Great Circle. From streak marks on freshly wiped glass to the slow trickle of wax from a candle lighting your way down an ancient stairwell, these are things that wouldn’t be noticed from any other viewpoint. Are they entirely necessary to make The Great Circle a great game? Maybe not, but they do paint a picture of a project where no flourish is too small if they make the world look and feel even a fraction more authentic.

After beginning with a short flashback to Raiders of the Lost Ark as a tutorial – one that might’ve been a tad indulgent had it not been so utterly well done – The Great Circle’s second level is a wonderful (and equally nostalgic) trip through Connecticut’s Marshall College. It’s a magnificent rendition and draped in layers upon layers of bespoke details that distracted me constantly on my way to the objective. Busts and other paraphernalia related to the history of the school. Cabinets full of exotic items. Notice boards cluttered with handmade signs. If you’d shown this version of Indy’s famous school to the eight-year-old version of me who cut his teeth aimlessly point-and-clicking his way around Marshall College in 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure, I might have had you burnt at the stake. Or at least lowered into a sacrificial lava pit without a heart.

The eye-catching environments keep coming: The ornate Italian architecture and crusty catacombs of Vatican City; An ancient town and multiple Nazi dig sites in the shadow of the Egyptian pyramids and the Great Sphinx; Sukhothai’s winding waterways and flooded temples, which are being reclaimed by the jungle. It’s all excellent stuff, and bolstered by exemplary ray-traced lighting to boot. I love the huge contrasts between the levels, and “the great circle” as a fanciful archaeological concept is an admirably effective premise to justify Indy hopping all over the globe during a single story.

David Shaughnessy's unerring version of Marcus Brody may go criminally unnoticed in Baker’s shadow. The strength of that story here is one of The Great Circle’s true assets, and it’s been brought to life with some very impressive performances. For the most part, Troy Baker’s Harrison Ford impersonation is close to spot-on, and Baker’s otherwise distinct voice disappears in the role. Credit too must go to voice actor David Shaughnessy, whose unerring version of Denholm Elliot’s Marcus Brody may go criminally unnoticed in Baker’s shadow. This could have very much felt like a gimmick considering Elliot passed away back in 1992, but Brody’s small role feels meaningful and respectful, and not like a stunt. Marios Gavrilis also kills it as the slimy and sinister Nazi archaeologist Emmerich Voss; he spits his dialogue with such venom I imagine his microphone may have required a tiny umbrella. Most of the meaningful conversations occur in well-directed cutscenes, which are on par with those in modern Wolfenstein, albeit punctuated with an appropriate amount of slightly slapstick Indiana Jones humour when the fists start flying. There are basically two movies worth of cutscenes here, but it never felt like too much. This is Indy in his prime, and I’m on board for every extra minute of it.

As a rule, the Indiana Jones series is always at its best when it involves a desperate race to track down an artifact before the Nazis can nab it for what they believe will be an unbeatable, world-conquering advantage. Those movies were video game fetch quests before video game fetch quests, and The Great Circle naturally embraces it, immediately beginning on the right foot by setting its action in 1937 – directly between the events of Raiders and The Last Crusade, as the world simmers towards the Second World War.

It’s honestly quite remarkable how convincingly The Great Circle fits into the hole between those two impeccable films, successfully exploiting the odd chronology of the original Indy trilogy. That goes far beyond just providing a little extra context on Indy’s separation from Marion Ravenwood, too. In fact, one of the greatest compliments I can pay The Great Circle is that it may well be the best Indiana Jones movie you’ve never seen. The music, too, is a victory on all fronts, and I love how in sync it feels with Raiders and The Last Crusade. I was especially thrilled to see The Great Circle crescendo to a showdown that follows tightly in the footsteps of both of those films – yet still managed to knock me out with a brilliantly unexpected twist.

Aid our own resuscitation On the topic of knockouts, combat in The Great Circle is satisfyingly brutal without being gratuitously violent, which is in keeping with its family-friendly, swashbuckling adventure serial roots. I love the deeply impressive sound design, which makes every strike sound like a golf club being slammed into a huge bunch of celery, and I love how visceral the fighting is in first-person. You block and parry blows with the correct timing, and deliver quick jabs and loaded up power punches. On top of that, Indy’s bullwhip can be used to quickly disarm enemies, and stun them long enough to either wade in and whack them or scoop up their dropped weapon and bludgeon them with it.

I enjoy how Butcher Bay-adjacent the fighting is but I’m a little unconvinced by the stamina system that rules over it, which depletes as Indy exerts himself climbing, sprinting, and throwing hands. It just creates pauses throughout the action where you’ll be compelled to wait for a beat, or jog backwards as a gaggle of goose-stepping morons march towards you with their dukes up. I can’t really detect what it adds other than something to be arbitrarily upgraded to the point where it’s no longer an inconvenience.

Combat escalates with your actions so, if you do grab a gun and start blasting, expect all armed enemies in your vicinity to respond with hot lead of their own. Indy can’t survive this kind of barrage so, for the most part, the best thing to do is forget the firearms. This does, admittedly, create a bit of silliness if you stir up a large enemy response and park yourself anywhere your attackers need to climb to reach. You can, for instance, stand at the top of a ladder and clobber the crap out of everyone who climbs it for some time, and no one will figure out that they have guns and can simply shoot at you (on regular difficulty, at least). But you’d be colouring outside the lines here, playing like this. Indy doesn’t mind leaving bodies in his wake when necessary, but he’s not some moustache-twirling mass murderer. You can always fire up Wolfenstein if you need to get some of that out of your system.

Indy doesn’t mind leaving bodies in his wake, but he’s not some mass murderer.

On the topic of guns, though, Indy’s personal revolver is sadly a big disappointment. I used it all of twice, but both were still total anticlimaxes. The first was an early boss battle where Indy’s pistol really should’ve been written out of the fight before the showdown began. After placing several bullets into a man’s unarmored head, it became clear that shooting this bloke wasn’t the way MachineGames intended me to clear this encounter. The second was late in the story, where I thought, ‘There’s no point rolling credits with revolver rounds in the cylinder!’ and figured I’d quickly plug two Nazis that suddenly appeared ahead of me in an open elevator. They simply took too many shots to go down. It seems like a weird fumble, when the scene of Indy actually using his pistol and taking out the Raiders swordsman in a single shot is one of the most memorable moments in the whole film franchise. Revolver rounds should absolutely remain exceedingly rare, but the pistol itself really should have shipped with the consistent stopping power of its cinematic counterpart.

It also rarely feels logical that high-ranking enemies within the levels can automatically see through disguises, particularly in Vatican City. It is a mechanic I’m accustomed to thanks to the likes of Hitman, which I’ll be clear is another game I love, but it’s definitely a little sillier here. It really is total nonsense that a random Italian officer would physically attack a stranger who is, for all intents and purposes, a visiting priest.

This is only a mild annoyance though and, to be fair, The Great Circle actually has a very smart approach to difficulty overall. There’s a lot more fiddling you can do than just adjust a single setting from easy to very hard. Enemy attributes are split into several categories, meaning you can tweak it so that there are tougher enemies, but fewer of them. Maybe you want to pump up their awareness, but make them weaker than wet newspapers. (This is something I think I may try for a second run.) It’s good that these options are here because, on regular difficulty, the stealth is quite basic; enemies have pretty limited vision and they’re easier to sneak past than I first assumed. I definitely became progressively less cautious once I realised I could sneak across seemingly dangerously open places as long as I did it fast enough.

That said, The Great Circle does allow us to return to previously visited locations to complete all the extra side missions, even after the main adventure is complete, so I may focus on that instead of starting over. I suspect I have many more hours of auxiliary objectives to keep me busy; I only got around to ticking off a handful of them on my first run through the story, which took me about 17 hours.

This Henry guy just can't seem to catch a break. When we last left the blacksmith's son-turned-knight at the end of the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance, things were finally starting to look up for him. But the sequel, in true video game sequel fashion, starts by knocking him down a peg or two and dumping him into a new, larger open world to regain his dignity, one side quest at a time. And to be honest, that's refreshing.

The story of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II picks up almost immediately where the first one left off, but it's certainly not essential to have played it to follow what's going on, thanks to an extended intro that brings you up to speed on the broader strokes. The year is 1403. Henry is a village boy from Bohemia (modern day Czech Republic) who saw his home burned to the ground due to a civil war for the crown taking place between two half-brothers. He ended up in the service of the frustratingly good-looking nepo baby Sir Hans Capon to try and help out the supporters of the royal brother who isn't going around burning down villages, and that plan got… a little sidetracked.

It's not exactly a start back from square one, though. Henry began the first game as that kind of old-school RPG protagonist who is really just some random guy with no skills to speak of. He could barely hold a sword, and the unforgiving combat really made you feel that until you put in the time to master it. But Henry's a seasoned adventurer now. He knows how to read, which is practically a superpower in medieval Europe. And while you were out partying, he studied the blade.

Taste My Blade

This is reflected in the changes to combat in KCD2, which the developers described as lowering both the skill floor required to play competently and raising the skill ceiling for the most devoted warriors. There are only four attack directions now instead of five. Thrust attacks are no longer a separate attack button, and have instead been folded into the combo system for weapons that make sense with them only. Parries are a bit easier to pull off, and much to my delight, blocking can now defend you from multiple attackers – as long as they're all in front of you.

Basically, whether you mastered KCD1's combat or not, the lower skill requirement at the very beginning models the fact that Henry is simply a better fighter by now. But careful stamina management is still the core of every scrap, and button-mashing is one of the quickest ways to die. I came across plenty of challenging encounters even as someone with more than 100 hours across two playthroughs in KCD1, and it's not as easy to spam your way through them by getting a couple of powerful combo moves down to muscle memory.

Hill and Dale

The world of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is quite a bit larger as well, with two distinct maps about the size of the first game's that you can travel back and forth between once both are unlocked. The terrain feels fairly familiar, for the most part. We're still in the Central Bohemian woodlands, basically just over the hill from where KCD1 left off. But the level of detail on the terrain and vegetation is a noticeable step up. And better yet, it's way more optimized. My RTX 4070 Super still can't run KCD1 – a six-year-old game – on max settings. But what I played of KCD2 rarely had any performance problems.

The centerpiece of this new world is the city of Kuttenberg, which is quite a bit larger, denser, and more vibrant than anything we saw in KCD1. It's certainly no Paris or Prague, but navigating its crowded streets and markets, taking shortcuts through back gardens, and admiring its grand Gothic architecture is a complete change of pace from wandering around muddy woodland trails. It's big enough to get lost in, built on a realistic scale that makes towns in a lot of other RPGs feel like tiny dioramas.

Tricks of the Trade

The side quests I got to play were also very open-ended and complex. The most notable example of this was an arc involving two rival sword schools in Kuttenberg, with the older and more established one (who just happened to support the wrong king) trying to force out the newcomers (who were loyal to our boy, the rightful heir). It fell on my shoulders to steal a ceremonial sword from the established school and display it on the walls of the town hall, which would be seen as an open call for challengers.

The quest doesn't much care how you get the sword. I took a sneaky approach, picking a lock to the guild's side entrance. But often you'll be able to choose violence, or even diplomacy to solve your problems. What it does care about is whether or not you get caught carrying out this little false flag operation, as it can affect how the tournament between the two schools plays out. I, of course, maintained plausible deniability and won the competition for my school. But there are a variety of other ways it could have progressed, some of which having long-term consequences. Another quest gave me the option of killing or talking my way past some "bandits," and I was told that if I didn't kill them, they might show up later and present me with new opportunities.

Almost everything in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II has to offer feels like a careful refinement of its predecessor. Skills and perks have also been expanded upon, and the perks themselves are generally more powerful. Some of the ones in the first game offered a boon and a penalty, which made them feel more like side-grades. Perks in KCD2 are more straightforward upgrades – which they should be, if I'm going to spend my scarce, hard-won progression points on them.

Sharp and Shiny

Almost everything else Kingdom Come: Deliverance II has to offer feels like a careful refinement of its predecessor. Warhorse isn't reinventing the wagon wheel here. Diplomacy still takes into account factors like what clothing you have on and how clean you are – with a new system of saved favorite outfits so you can quickly switch between combat gear and something more suited to a soiree. But this time, there's more emphasis on picking the right thing to say for the situation, instead of just the option you have the best stats for.

Alchemy is back, allowing you to craft various potions and concoctions, and it's been made less fiddly. There's a new blacksmithing minigame for forging your own gear and making a bit of coin, following in Henry's father's footsteps. The reading skill has been replaced by Scholarship, which is gained by reading books and can provide boons like opening up new dialogue options. Henry's still crap at reading Latin, though, and I'm not sure if that can be fixed.

And in addition to new, more diverse move sets for all kinds of melee fighting, Henry can finally get his hands on some guns. This is the early 1400s, so we're talking about extremely primitive firearms. The kind that had the tendency to blow up in your hands. So don't expect to be medieval John Wick. But if you point them the right direction from close enough range, there's really no amount of armor that will save your foes from the blast. Then you probably want to grab a sword, because the remaining foes will not stand there and wait for the subjective eternity it takes you to reload.

On the Road Again

In just about every sense, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is shaping up as simply a smoother, prettier, more refined continuation of the things I liked about the original. The core mechanics are mostly the same, but sharper and with deeper progression. The world looks familiar, but broader and more grandiose. I had two whole days to play it and it felt like far too little. When I was first turned loose from the stocks to pick my own path to glory, I felt that tingly feeling you get the first time you play Skyrim or The Witcher 3, of a massive world full of diverse adventures that aren't just clearing icons off of a map. I look forward to spending dozens of hours exploring, gearing up with authentic medieval weapons and armor, and progressing through the improved perk system. Maybe Hans will stop being a huge bag of dicks, too! You know, anything is theoretically possible. I'm just glad I won't have to wait much longer.

A month and a half after denying reports it was poised to pull the plug on its free-to-play live-service shooter XDefiant - which launched back in May - Ubisoft has confirmed it's doing just that, resulting in the closure of three production studios and 277 employees losing their jobs.

Ubisoft's chief Studios and portfolio officer Marie-Sophie de Waubert announced the end of XDefiant's development in a post on the company's website. "Despite an encouraging start," de Waubert explained, "the team's passionate work, and a committed fan base, we've not been able to attract and retain enough players in the long run to compete at the level we aim for in the very demanding free-to-play FPS market."

"The game is too far away from reaching the results required to enable further significant investment," de Waubert continued, "and we are announcing that we will be sunsetting it." As such, new downloads, player registrations, and purchases will no longer be available from today, but Season 3 will launch as planned and servers will remain online until 3rd June, 2025.

Unfortunately, the news doesn't end with XDefiant's cancellation. Ubisoft has also confirmed it's closing its San Francisco and Osaka production studios, and will "ramp down" its Sydney production site. As a result, 277 employees across all three units will lose their jobs. This equates to a little over half of the XDefiant team worldwide, with Ubisoft noting other employees working on the project will transition elsewhere within the company.

"To those team members leaving Ubisoft," de Waubert continued in her statement. "I want to express my deepest gratitude for your work and contributions. Please know that we are committed to supporting you during this transition."

In a message to the XDefiant community, executive producer Mark Rubin - who in October insisted there were "no plans" to shut down the game - wrote, "Free-to-play, in particular, is a long journey. Many free-to-play games take a long time to find their footing and become profitable. It's a long journey that Ubisoft and the teams working on the game were prepared to make until very recently. But unfortunately, the journey became too much to sensibly continue.

The announcement comes at a turbulent time for Ubisoft, which has been dogged by underperforming titles, delays, and project cancellations over the last few years. In an emergency investor call held at the start of 2023, Ubisoft announced considerably lower-than-expected earnings, leading to the cancellation of three unannounced projects and a programme of "targeted restructuring" that resulted in a series of layoffs.

Since then, the publisher has cancelled The Division: Heartland after more than three years of work, and has delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows' release into next year following a "softer than expected launch" for Star Wars Outlaws.

Everything you need to know for launch.

Xbox is about to close out 2024 with an absolutely massive release - Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is almost here! Yep, as early as next week, Xbox players can go hands on with this brand-new Indiana Jones adventure.

Before this swings onto Xbox and PC, we're going to detail everything you need to know about the game's upcoming launch - including how to get early access if you'd like to experience Indiana Jones and the Great Circle ASAP!

Read the full article on purexbox.com

Possibly as soon as next week.

We've been very intrigued by The Thing: Remastered ever since it was announced for Xbox back in the summer, and considering it's always been planned for a 2024 release, we assume we'll be getting it very soon indeed.

There might actually be a date set in stone as well. Xbox Wire is reporting today that Thursday, December 5th is the release date for The Thing: Remastered, even though a date hasn't been announced by the publisher as of yet.

Read the full article on purexbox.com

ORIGINAL STORY 11am UK: Microsoft says its plans to let users buy and play games directly via the Xbox app on Android are being held up by a new legal issue.

Writing on social media, Xbox chief Sarah Bond blamed the hold-up on "a temporary administrative stay recently granted by the courts".

Microsoft had previously said it would launch the functionality before the end of the month.

"At Xbox, we want to offer players more choice on how and where they play, including being able to play and buy games directly from the Xbox app," Bond wrote. "I recently shared our ambition to unlock these features first with the Google Play Store on Android devices in the US while other app stores adapt to meet consumer demand.

"Due to a temporary administrative stay recently granted by the courts, we are currently unable to launch these features as planned. Our team has the functionality built and ready to go live as soon as the court makes a final decision. We are eager to launch and give more choice and flexibility to players."

The legal issue in question appears to be Google's 16th October appeal against changes to Android and its Google Play store ordered as a result of the Google vs Epic Games lawsuit.

Epic Games successfully argued that Google operated an illegal monopoly via its smartphone app store. Last month, a judge ruled that Google would now have to allow third-party storefront apps in the US next year other than the Google Play Store, and that Android users be able to pay via alternate means, rather than just Google Play Billing.

Google said it would appeal the decision as it appeared to contradict the ruling of Epic's less-successful Apple trial, that because Apple existed it did not have a monopoly, and because the changes would make Android less safe and secure for users.

Eurogamer has contacted Google for more.

Separately, Microsoft is also working on its own web-based Xbox mobile game store, which was set to launch in the summer. In August the company stated testing had begun, but it's still unclear when it will properly launch.

UPDATE 4.30pm UK: Google has issued a response to Microsoft's suggestion it is being blocked from giving users more choice by offering games to buy and play within its Xbox app - and Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney has subsequently chipped in to call that statement "deceitful".

In a statement sent to Eurogamer, a Google spokesperson said:

"Microsoft has always been able to offer their Android users the ability to play and purchase Xbox games directly from their app - they've simply chosen not to. The Court's order, and rush to force its implementation, threaten Google Play's ability to provide a safe and secure experience. Microsoft, like Epic, are ignoring these very real security concerns. We remain focused on supporting an ecosystem that works for everyone, not just two of the largest game companies."

That mention of Epic Games brought Sweeney to social media to respond:

"Google's statement is deceitful. Shame on them. They well know that the 30 percent cut they demand is far more than all of the profit from game streaming. They know this because they blew hundreds of millions of dollars building the failed Stadia game business themselves."

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/19551744

Grab your sword and shield as we dive into another Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Livestream on November 19th at 9am PT. Knowing that we have a little more time to dig into the title before it launches, the team is looking to update fans on more information about the game launching in 2025. If you can’t wait that long to get into battle, this stream is for you.

You can grab right now ahead of release.

You might consider the biggest Xbox releases this week to be Stalker 2 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, but don't forget the other massive one - free-to-play sensation Genshin Impact arrives on Wednesday, November 20th.

If you want to be ready to go on Wednesday, you can actually preload Genshin Impact on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S right now, and you might be surprised to learn that it's over 100GB! Here's what some Xbox fans have been saying...

The big day is almost here!

After a bunch of delays, Stalker 2 is turning out to be one of the most anticipated Xbox Game Pass titles for the end of 2024 - and the good news is that its release date is right around the corner!

So, ahead of that launch, we're going to tell you everything you need to know about Stalker 2 and its Xbox Game Pass release. This is going to be a huge experience on Xbox and PC, so it's probably worth clearing your calendar — and a big chunk of SSD space — before getting stuck in.

I've been having some trouble unlocking achievements in 360 games, and having achievements say they are unlocked already if I haven't played the game. But the achievements don't actually count towards my gamerscore or achievements unlocked. I talked to Xbox support chat and this is what they told me. Anyone else having this issue? It's been going on about a year now for me.

Oftentimes, video games are delayed because the project hasn't fully come together, riddled with performance issues or game-breaking bugs. But that's not the case with Avowed, according to Xbox head honcho Phil Spencer. He pushed back Obsidian's upcoming RPG because this holiday season was too crowded for the company.

Speaking with Game File (via VGC), Spencer discussed Avowed's delay to February, noting Xbox currently has the benefit of a packed holiday season with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Diablo 4: Vessel of Hate, and next month's Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (not to mention Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024). This allowed Xbox to space out releases and give Avowed its own time to shine next year.

"We didn't move it because Obsidian needed the time," Spencer said. "They'll use the time."

Ahead of the holiday season, and presumably to help drive sign-ups to Game Pass, Microsoft has rolled out a new ad campaign called "This Is An Xbox." The basic takeaway is that, as Microsoft has been saying for years, you don't have to buy an Xbox to play Xbox. That's because Xbox games are available across a variety of devices these days as part of Microsoft's new strategy to gain marketshare. Microsoft is, of course, is in third place against PlayStation and Nintendo.

Microsoft is going big for this ad campaign, with visuals set to appear in places like San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, London, New York, and Berlin. Microsoft also commissioned a live-action trailer featuring the song "The Choice Is Yours" by Black Sheep, which is rather fitting.

Additionally, Microsoft partnered with companies like Samsung, Crocs, Porsche, and The Happy Egg for branding takeovers. The ads first display a product, say, a pair of Crocs, with the message "This is a pair of Crocs," and the next page shows an Xbox and says, "This is an Xbox."

Staff who are members of ZeniMax Workers United-CWA are on a one-day strike to call out Microsoft for an alleged lack of progress at the bargaining table over remote work and for allegedly unilaterally outsourcing quality assurance work without bargaining with the union.

In January 2023, ZeniMax Workers United-CWA formed the first video game studio union at Microsoft, representing over 300 quality assurance workers in Maryland and Texas. Today's strike takes place at four ZeniMax locations across Maryland and Texas, with workers set to return to their desks tomorrow, November 14.

A Microsoft spokesperson told IGN, "We respect our employees’ rights to express their point of view as they have done today. We will continue to listen and address their concerns at the bargaining table."

ZeniMax is the umbrella organization that includes The Elder Scrolls and Fallout maker Bethesda and Doom developer id Software, among other studios. It also owns Indiana Jones and the Great Circle developer MachineGames and Marvel's Blade developer Arkane Lyon.

Last month, Communications Workers of America Union (CWA) filed an unfair labor practice charge against ZeniMax for contracting out work without notification. ZeniMax Workers United-CWA members have raised concerns that ZeniMax’s recent unilateral decision to outsource quality assurance work threatens job security amid record layoffs across the video game industry.

The strike comes hot on the heels of Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer's insistence that “the Xbox business has never been more healthy.”

After splashing out $69 billion on Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard last year, Microsoft has cut more than 2,500 jobs from its gaming business and closed three ZeniMax studios. Sales of Xbox Series X and S continue to plummet, and Game Pass subscriber numbers are flat, although Microsoft said it enjoyed a record bump from the recent day one launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Spencer said 2025 is looking brighter for Microsoft’s gaming effort. “The Xbox business has never been more healthy,” he said, citing growth in cloud and PC gaming as well as console usage. “The business is performing right now, and I think that means a more healthy future for hardware and the games we build.”

Spencer is even optimistic about the growth of mobile games, despite cutting staff from the teams behind the underperforming Call of Duty Warzone Mobile and Warcraft Rumble. “I feel pretty good about where this industry is going,’’ he said. “To reach new players, we need to be creative and adaptive of new business models, new devices, new ways of access. We’re not going to grow the market with $1,000 consoles.”

Spencer is of course under pressure to deliver following the Activision Blizzard acquisition, and is in the middle of a big multiplatform push that may end up seeing Halo launch on PlayStation.

“We run a business,” Spencer said in August. “It’s definitely true inside of Microsoft the bar is high for us in terms of the delivery we have to give back to the company. Because we get a level of support from the company that’s just amazing and what we’re able to go do.

“So I look at this, how can we make our games as strong as possible? Our platform continues to grow, on console, on PC, and on cloud. It’s just going to be a strategy that works for us.”

Update: This story has been updated with a statement from Microsoft.