Here are some quick thoughts on this situation and broader layoffs across the gaming industry. If I’ve missed or misunderstood something, please let me know. I’m happy to be wrong.

• Rocksteady is a studio known for its single-player games.
• They were pushed by management (or higher?) to make a live-service Suicide Squad game to compete with Destiny and LoL.
• The development process suffered from a lack of experience by devs in making live-service games (see above), mismanagement, and shifting priorities by execs at WB
• SS was delayed several times before being released due to mixed critic reviews and poor reception from fans of the company’s previous games.
• Due to low sales for Suicide Squad, Rocksteady team members were let go.

When are we going to acknowledge that shit like this is the fault of people disconnected from the creative process and have them face the consequences? I’m sick of hearing about companies “realigning for success” or whatever word salad they’re using to justify it this week while keeping these executives on the payroll.

Fire whichever overpaid SVP decided an award-winning single-player studio should build a multiplayer live-service game and let the talented people creating the games keep their jobs.

Graham Smith for RPS:

The player-voted Steam Awards have reached their conclusion, and the results are about as weird as the nominees. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the weirdest game possible won in several categories, such as Red Dead Redemption 2 for the Labor Of Love award and Starfield for “Most Innovative Gameplay”.

Back in the day, GameFAQs would run polls for the greatest characters in gaming (or something equally ridiculous). The users of the Something Awful forums would, en masse, vote for the characters nobody liked expected, breaking the entire thing and upsetting many teenagers who couldn’t bear to see Sephiroth lose to Bub and Bob.

This has that same energy.

This was a year of change. I leaned really hard into console gaming this year, specifically Xbox, after being pretty focused on PC and tried playing a handful of games on mobile too. Here are my favourites from a variety of categories.

Game of the year

Alan Wake II. I love what Remedy is doing with their connected universe and can’t wait to see where they go in the Night Springs and Lake House DLC.

Best DLC

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty added so much to the vanilla Cyberpunk experience and totally flipped the theme of the original game on its head.

Best remake

Dead Space was really good but I’ve got to hand it to Nintendo for Super Mario RPG. The nostalgia in that one hits real hard.

Game I need more time with

This one’s a toss up between Sea of Stars, which I loved but dove into on a whim just before a bunch of other games came out. Also, Baldur’s Gate 3, which was only released on Xbox at the beginning of December.

Weirdest game

Wanted: Dead. Seriously, what the fuck?

Most anticipated game

I think I’m equally excited to see where Square goes with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and I can’t resist anything by HoYoverse so Zenless Zone Zero is up there too. I also can’t wait for Dragon’s Dogma II. I can’t explain why but the original is a favourite of mine.

Gita Jackson for Aftermath:

In many ways I don’t think Control works without McCaffrey’s performance. His Trench gives the whole game an emotional depth that anchors it to reality, especially as the game becomes increasingly surreal.

Control was also the first game I thought of when hearing about McCaffrey’s passing. I’ve played all the titles he’s known for but his performance as Trench really stuck with me.

First, Lance Reddick, and now McCaffrey. Remedy’s connected universe won’t be the same without them.

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell for Rock Paper Shotgun:

[Lake] himself has difficulty setting aside hours for longer games. “[It’s] just struggling with finding time and you know, being interested in a story, wanting to see it through,” he said. “So it can even be daunting at times to start playing a game that you know is really, really long.”

I can definitely relate to this.

On numerous occasions while booting up Starfield I’ve felt that, while the game is good, it’s almost too massive for me to really dig into. I know I won’t get around to many side missions because I’ll be burnt out from the main quest and wanting to move on to something else in my backlog.

Comments like Lake’s are interesting coming from Remedy as they’re an example of a studio that produces tightly written, well-paced games that never overstay their welcome. I’m hoping that doesn’t change with Alan Wake 2, despite the noted 20-hour-plus playtime.

Jennifer Young for Windows Central:

People have been expressing outrage over the $50 price tag for a 13-year-old port that’s not even coming to PC, and one person on Reddit even shows it’s cheaper to buy the game and an Xbox console than pay for the re-release.

Instead of complaining about Red Read Remaster’s price on PS4 and then buying it anyway, I’d ask that you consider not buying the game. Take-Two needs to understand that people won’t put up with this anymore.

Kelsey Lewin for the Video Game History Foundation:

For accessing nearly 9 in 10 classic games, there are few options: seek out and maintain vintage collectible games and hardware, travel across the country to visit a library, or… piracy.

That Nintendo continues to crack down especially hard on emulators and ROMs while simultaneously shutting down legacy storefronts without a replacement for modern consoles makes this news particularly frustrating.

Chris Moyse for Destructoid:

Zenless Zone Zero, (or “ZZZ“), is set in the aftermath of a global cataclysm, where seemingly random anomalies known as “Hollows” have been swallowing up huge chunks of civilization, dispersing monstrous creatures known as “The Ethereal”.

Zenless Zone Zero looks interesting and has a style that reminds me of Persona 5. I like the fantasy of Genshin and the sci-fi of Honkai, so I'm curious what miHoYo's vision of a more "modern" game would look like.

Rachel Watts for Rock Paper Shotgun:

Every time you start a new game, a random NPC will be selected to become a serial killer. You can grow crops, fish, raise cattle, and also help save your fellow townsfolk from a rampaging murderer. Cute!

Matt Cook for Destructoid:

I feel like we’ve collectively lost something from that as a community. The electric atmosphere of the wait outside the local game store, the excitement of everyone around you being hyped for the same game. Without that, it feels like we’ve lost the social aspect of a big release.

I only went to a handful myself (and worked some) but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss them a little bit.

CJ Wheeler for Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

None of the developers who spoke out about being omitted from the credits felt that the situation was normal practice, and some claimed they’d been working under crunch conditions on the project.

Sounds like a great studio run by great people.

Rich Stanton for PC Gamer:

While I enjoy a good grisly death animation, [The Callisto Protocol’s] protagonist here really does get ripped apart in horrifically detailed and gory fashion. You couldn’t skip past these and some of them genuinely make you wince.

A new patch has streamlined some elements of the game’s combat system, and added the ability to skip the death animations (seriously: some of these things feel like they take minutes).

The approach taken by Striking Distance and promoted during Callisto’s development always seemed antiquated or entirely incorrect to me, that the biggest reason people played Dead Space or games like it was to see their character or those around them be excessively, graphically ripped to shreds every couple of minutes.

For what it’s worth, here’s my take from when the game was shown back at Summer Game Fest earlier this year:

I thought I’d be more interested in Callisto Protocol but the aggressive focus on gore has turned me off from the game entirely.

To me, Dead Space was never about the blood and guts. The world you explored and the atmosphere of it all, the tension and dread, combined with an interesting (albeit repetitive) combat mechanic was what made it special. It really is one of the greatest atmospheric horror games ever made and the violence has little to do with it.

The fact that they’re adding the ability to skip through these scenes so soon after Callisto’s launch and that the game’s received lukewarm reception from players proves to me that, like Dead Space, violence was never what people wanted.

Graham Smith for Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

[Activision Blizzard] employees say that impossible deadlines, managerial indecision, and disturbing script revisions have led to employee dissatisfaction and high turnover.

What happened to releasing a game “when it’s ready”?

Nic Reuben for Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

If you’ve got any affection for PS1 survival horror, queer android love stories, cold war paranoia aesthetics, retrofuturism, or cosmic horror when people who aren’t Lovecraft do far more interesting stuff with it, Signalis is a must play.

I haven’t finished a lot of the games I’ve started this year but Signalis might be the best thing I’ve played in 2022.

Jordan Devore for Destructoid:

It’s hard to adapt a perfect movie into a video game, but they’re going for it. In line with the 1987 movie, OmniCorp has taken control of the Detroit Police Department, and it’s now on RoboCop to clean up the streets by popping scumbags’ heads.

Ignoring the movie for a moment, the perfect RoboCop game already exists. Here’s a snippet of a review for RoboCop versus The Terminator on Sega Genesis (not Super Nintendo) from 1994:

RoboCop vs. the Terminator is 100 percent unapologetically violent. When you blow away an enemy, he rips apart and his blood gushes like water, and running around blowing away Terminators and such is just about all you do.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to play Rogue City and, judging by the trailer, the new game looks cool but anyone that thinks they’re going to come in and make a better game than Virgin did in the mid-90s is out of their minds.

Good luck, Teyon, you’re going to need it.

I found this weekend of gaming showcases hard to follow and more of a time commitment than I cared to make.

That said, digging through the news from these events, I found a handful of games that got me excited like horror anthology The Fridge is Red, survival game Arctic Awakening that’s being compared to John Carpenter’s The Thing, and a metroidvania-soulslike game called The Last Faith.

Xbox’s big Starfield gameplay reveal left me disappointed. Between noticeable issues with the demo’s frame rate, to the familiar clunkiness of the Creation Engine (even as a 2.0), I wasn’t super sold as Todd Howard described features that games like No Man’s Sky and Elite: Dangerous have had for years.

I enjoyed the presentation overall but I was a little turned off by the sheer number of sci-fi horror games, though it’s hard to fault the studios for that. Maybe it could have been staggered better during the presentation itself?

I’m excited we got to see more Zenless Zone Zero and I’m pleased it’s shaping up to be similar in gameplay to Genshin. Having enjoyed Golf Club: Wasteland, I think Highwater could be fun. I’m disheartened but not surprised that Keighley didn’t take a harder stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and was disappointed we couldn’t see Replaced because of it.

I thought I’d be more interested in Callisto Protocol but the aggressive focus on gore and its uncanny similarity to Dead Space has actually turned me off from the game entirely.

Maybe I’m just getting old.

Kazuma Hashimoto for Siliconera

The website states that the Resident Evil 4 remake will see a reimagined storyline, it will also feature more modernized gameplay elements. However, Capcom has yet to reveal how any of this will manifest.

RE4 wasn’t a bad game, but it’s certainly not my favourite. If they’re reworking the story, maybe some of the goofier aspects will get tossed to keep all the recent remakes a little more consistent.

Bradley Shankar for MobileSyrup:

Should Shepard really be alive in the new game, that would make that one Mass Effect 3 ending canon, which would, ostensibly, run counter to the choice-driven ethos of the series.

Not to get too sweaty here but that doesn’t make sense.

If your character dies, there’s no logical way to “canonically” play the subsequent game. For example, if your Shepard was lost at the end of Mass Effect 2′s suicide mission, then Mass Effect 3 is unplayable for you unless you create a new one.

The “choice-driven ethos” is just fine.

Ubisoft VP Nicolas Pouard via Finder:

“It’s really beneficial. But they don’t get it for now. Also, this is part of a paradigm shift in gaming. Moving from one economic system to another is not easy to handle.”

Players don’t like existing “economic systems” in games like microtransactions. They want less of that, not a convoluted way to spend more money on a game they paid full price for.

It’s not that we don’t get it, it’s that we do not want it.

Noelle Warner for Destructoid:

I just find it ironic that it’s like “we’re here to celebrate what we love most about gaming” and then it’s all advertisements. Because that’s everyone’s favorite part of games, right? The part where they get you to buy stuff?

Like we saw with the Spike Video Game Awards years ago, given enough time, even the best ideas can fall apart.

Chance Miller for 9to5Mac:

Apple’s legal team wrote in a notice that Apple will not allow Fortnite back on the App Store until the judge’s ruling is final. That is, until the exhaustion of all court appeals, which could be as long as five years from now.

This makes sense to me. Epic fucked around, and now they're finding out. This does nothing but harm their players, who Sweeney claims to care so much about but then uses as leverage in fights like this.

Tom Ivan for VGC:

Fans will experience an improved story, characters, gameplay mechanics and more as they fight to survive a living nightmare aboard the desolate mining starship, the USG Ishimura, all while uncovering the dreadful mystery of what happened to the slaughtered crew and ship.

Dead Space will always have a special place in my heart. It’s one of the few games I’ve ever bought on a whim, having heard nothing about the development or release, based simply on the title and box art, that ended up being one of my favourite games ever.

The original Dead Space is nothing short of a masterpiece in survival horror, UI design, and character development. I’m hopeful that Motive will be able to recapture many of those aspects as the later games, specifically DS3, lacked them entirely.

GG on Twitter:

In recent months the mod team has found that our community has grown too large for Discord’s functionality, and have been looking for the best course of action to stay organized.

The number of members in the GG Discord, as of this writing, is 970 with roughly 250 users online at any given time. For comparison sake, the Minecraft Discord server has 700k members, the maximum that the app allows for, with around 150k online. Discord is built to support communities considerably larger than GG.

This is a bad move and one that worries me when considering how future decisions and changes are made within GG itself. Rather than uprooting the entire community and forcing users to switch apps, add a couple more mods to Discord and tidy up the existing channels to keep things under control.

Patrick O’Rourke for MobileSyrup:

Following a Twitter brand competition that saw Xbox take top honours, Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg, the company’s Xbox game marketing general manager, says that Microsoft will “move forward” with releasing an Xbox Series X mini fridge.

The fridge thing was good for a laugh at first, especially with how well the Xbox team embraced the memes that were going around, but it’s getting a bit tired. Do people still find it funny?

Luke Winkie for IGN:

Most people today regard the Mako as one of the hilariously botched eccentricities in the Mass Effect series. At the time, BioWare was still working out the vehicle’s design kinks, and the Mako seemed to handle like it was simultaneously 1,000 tons of futuristic steel but also as light as a feather. Even the mildest of intergalactic speed bumps were enough to send it flying.

I’ve never understood the hate people have for the Mako. I can say with complete sincerity that I enjoyed driving it in the original Mass Effect. Seriously.

Is the experience perfect? Not even close. Is it passable? Sure. Other, more iconic vehicles suffer from similar issues and aren’t ever held to the same standard. I mean, have you driven the Warthog from the original Halo?

Sam Machkovech for Ars Technica:

RE8 will launch on May 7 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC. All platforms will eventually receive a free-download version of its playable demo, named "Maiden," but only PlayStation 5 owners have gotten a release date for said demo: Today.

I’m not sure what to think about Resident Evil Village. On one hand, the game looks beautiful, Lady Dimitrescu is a fascinating, strange new villain, and, if my time with the Maiden demo for PS5 was any indication, it’ll be scary as hell. On the other hand, aside from the mansion and another Chris Redfield, it doesn’t look like Resident Evil. None of the hallmarks of the old games are even slightly apparent anymore.

Does that mean it’ll be a bad game? Not at all. I really enjoyed 7 for what it was and the previously mentioned Maiden demo was genuinely creepy. It’s just that, as a fan of the original games who was generally disappointed in the direction of the series after Zero, I’m conflicted.

Assuming I can get my backlog under control by then, I’ll likely give Resident Evil 8 a spin when it’s available in May.

Chris Moyse for Destructoid:

Given the tense, stealth-action gameplay, deep comic-book lore, and decadent, globe-trotting opulence featured in the studio’s string of excellent Hitman titles, the partnership of IOI and Bond is an absolute no-brainer. Given IOI’s pedigree, Project 007 could well turn out to be the title the studio was born to make, one that will leave fans shaken and stirred.

As Chris alludes to in his article, I can’t think of a better studio to take the on the Bond franchise, given IO’s work on the Hitman games. The last few Bond games, while not bad by any means, weren’t overly original or memorable. The care and craft that IO’s demonstrated with their work over the last 20 years should give both Bond and video game fans a sense of relief.

It’s an interesting turn, considering IO’s split from Square Enix in 2017 looked like it could put the future of the studio in jeopardy. Now, they’re self-publishing the next Hitman and working on a brand as prestigious as James Bond. The future looks like it’s never been brighter for them.

Final Fantasy IX turns 20 years old today and still stands for me as the best entry in the series. The scale of the game, the fascinating characters and their backstories, the music, it all adds up to an experience I’m not sure Square Enix will, at least for me, ever be able to top.

While the game holds up relatively well after all these years, it isn’t without its visual and technical issues. This is where Moguri Mod comes in:

Moguri Mod is a faithful revamp of the PC version of Final Fantasy IX helped by deep learning techniques (ESRGAN). The most important changes are in the background arts, that are now cleaner, more detailed and higher resolution.

The mod looks very impressive. Here are a few of the features:

• HD backgrounds (aided by AI and polished by hand)
• Manual redraw of all 11k layer edges and area names
• Features from Memoria Mod (16:9 widescreen, original font, analog support)
• HD textures (worldmap, NPC, battles)
• Many bugfixes

The team have put an immense amount of time and effort into Moguri. Since the project is fair use, there isn’t any way to support the team financially but — as the team mentions — sharing the project is highly encouraged and helps everyone involved get the recognition they deserve.

I haven’t played Final Fantasy IX in a long time but I’m going to install Moguri Mod and give the game another spin. It’ll be nice to return to Gaia after all these years away.

Chaim Gartenberg for The Verge:

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is almost here, but Nintendo isn’t resting on its laurels. On the eve of the game’s launch the company announced the first of five DLC characters for the fighting game: Joker from Persona 5.

I can’t be the only one wondering why a character from Persona 5 – a game that’s only available on PlayStation – would appear in Smash Bros.

I had initially thought this could be the first step to bringing P5 out on the Switch but it seems like a strange order to do that. Why not announce the port and then offer the new character in Smash to tide fans over?

We’ll just have to wait and see.

Andy Kelly for PC Gamer:

According to a tweet by Remedy Entertainment, Finnish creator of Alan Wake, its atmospheric horror game will be “removed from stores” (including Steam) on May 15 because of “expiring music licenses.”

If you don’t own Alan Wake, you should. It’s a gem.

While the footage is light on action, graphically, it looks incredible and definitely feels like a Mass Effect game. I can’t wait to (hopefully) see more of Andromeda in the next few months leading up to the game’s release sometime next year.

Davey Nieves for The Beat:

Last month Telltale Games made a huge splash with the debut of their new Batman inspired series. It was a ballsy shake up of the established Dark Knight mythos while still retaining the essence of what makes the character great. Today the studio unveil the gripping new trailer for BATMAN – The Telltale Series – Episode 2: Children of Arkham.

I played through the first episode right after release in August and loved it. I might even go so far as to say it’s the best game Telltale has made so far, including the original Walking Dead, but we’ll have to wait to see how it all wraps up. They’ve more than lived up to the legacy of Batman and have been able to put their own spin on the world too.

Jenni Lada for Siliconera:

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has issued a “Mature” rating for Resident Evil VII and, in so doing, has put together a rating summary that tells us more about the game’s hero and plot. We will be following a man named Ethan who happens to be looking for his wife. This description notes that his search takes him to a mansion filled with mutant creatures, not zombies, which he’ll have to defeat to survive.

I’m interpreting this as somewhat of a reimagining of the original game, in which the members of a special forces team take refuge inside a mansion to find their friend and partner. The mansion, located somewhere close to the middle of nowhere, was littered with zombies and other horrors, much like this house that Ethan seems to find himself in looking for his wife.

Maybe it’s just me but, after reading the synopsis, I wish even more that they would have simply called this game Resident Evil, dropping the VII from the title, much like Konami was planning on doing with Silent Hills. Firstly, because this sounds nothing like a proper sequel to 6. Secondly, because there’s an eye-roll associated with almost double digit sequels that I’d like to see this series avoid. Not to name names or anything.

Alice O’Connor for Rock Paper Shotgun:

Fancy space games are certainly more common now than when Star Citizen was announced but Cloud Imperium’s space ’em up is still the flashiest. The devs are still working on its core elements and pulling them together into a concrete whole, but that’s starting to look pretty dang swish all right. During Gamescom last week they showed off an hour-long gameplay preview of alpha 3.0, with two players in a ship flying down from space, through a planet’s atmosphere, to land at a settlement, wander around, and pick up a contract from a proper voice-acted NPC.

Every time I get around to checking out the latest news from Star Citizen’s development, I’m blown away by what they’ve done since the last time I checked in. Previously, many of the game’s elements were broken into bite-sized chunks but wouldn’t exactly connect to form the game that was initially pitched. Now, we finally have a cohesive experience that gives a much better idea of what the game will look like when it ships.

Andrew Kim via Paul Thurrott:

“We also wanted to simplify the hardware to align with the new Windows 10 design language that was being developed in unison,” he continues. “This simplification started with implementing a unibody construction that reduces the external shell count to just three parts. We also dramatically reduced the size of the device and removed the bulky external power supply. The final design is architectural, logical and easily accessible thanks to its surprisingly low price point.”

I’ve never been a fan of the Xbox but this thing is gorgeous. To be honest, I actually really liked the design of the original One as well, sort of reminded me of an old VCR, but this takes it to a whole other level.

Mike Futter for Game Informer:

In our conversation at EA’s Gamescom welcome event, Soderlund stopped short of confirming the remasters are coming, but he strongly hinted that they might be in the offing when we asked about BioWare’s sci-fi trilogy specifically.

I’ve always found it strange that EA didn’t explore this avenue at all, what with almost every other game company tossing recycled versions of their games onto store shelves. It seems to run completely counter to the previous “business first, fun second” model EA followed only a handful of years ago, given the cost in updating many older titles is lower, compared to developing an entirely new game, and can offer a pretty large return.

That said, it’s nice to see them really take their time on this and not exploit the fans in any way. I’ve always insisted that this pattern of just rereleasing games isn’t particularly healthy for the industry… but if you hand me a remastered copy of the Mass Effect Trilogy on PS4, i’ll hand you whatever amount of money you want, just please make it happen.

Chris Carter for Destructoid:

The gist is that it seems like canon, following the story of the soldiers left at Mother Base after it was attacked at the end of Ground Zeroes — who then get sucked through a wormhole into an alternate dimension filled with zombies.

There’s another Metal Gear game on the way, and it of course won’t feature the talents of Hideo Kojima. No, Konami is developing a “co-op stealth game” with “familiar Metal Gear themes,” set for a 2017 release on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

As insane as the stories of the previous Metal Gear games got, there was always a sophistication and grace to the series that feels completely lost now. The whole idea of this game feels lazy and exploitative of the Metal Gear name. It’s 2016, why are game companies still shamelessly trying to follow in Call of Duty’s footsteps? This is an insult to everything Kojima built.

Austin Walker for VICE:

So, you connect and head to one landmark, you wait for it to load in. It fails to load in, but hey, there’s a Pidgey! You click on the Pidgey, the game crashes. When you boot it back up, the Pidgey is gone. You start to walk a bit further but in game but you’ve been locked in place, so you stand around and wait for it to catch up. You’re stationary and locked to your phone in a way that makes you look like a tourist in your own neighborhood. There’s no flow here, no rhythm to disappear into.

The strangest thing is none of that may matter. Because it’s Pokémon and it’s communal and every now and then you turn the corner and see a man slouching over a mailbox and there at is feet is an Ekans and you think hah, yea, okay, this works.

In my time with the game, I experienced an incredible amount of bugs and issues including constant logging out when the app was apparently still running in the background, numerous crashes, and a massive drain on my phone’s battery. To be honest, it also just wasn’t very fun to play.

People are clearly having a blast with the game, which is great, it’s just too much of a technical mess for me to spend any more time with.

Dehorvie on Tumblr:

Elza Walker in Resident Evil 1.5 (バイオハザード 1.5) – The first footage of the game was shown at the V Jump Festival ‘96 in July

When I was a kid, I wrote into Gamepro magazine asking them who the heck Elza Walker was and why she wasn’t in the version of Resident Evil 2 I’d been playing. They printed my letter and explained the whole thing.

I’d love to see a brand new entry to the series with her involved in some way.

Samit Sarkar for Polygon:

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt developer CD Projekt Red is planning to release a Game of the Year Edition of the open-world action game, the studio confirmed today in a statement to Polygon.

A great value for an amazing game. Without question, the best game I played last year and — counting the Blood & Wine DLC — probably this year too.

Ironically, this news comes from Polygon of all places, which did not include The Witcher 3 in their Games of the Year list for 2015.

Sam Byford for The Verge:

Not to take anything away from Resident Evil 4, which is one of the best and most influential action games of all time, but there’s a case to be made that it set the series on a path to irrelevance. Subsequent entries learned all the wrong lessons, unsuccessfully attempting to go toe-to-toe with action genre heavyweights while forgetting what made the series what it was back in the day: a relentless, foreboding sense of horror.

If a playable teaser released on the PlayStation Network shortly after Sony’s E3 press conference last night is anything to go by, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard represents a major course correction.

This looks great. A change this drastic is a breath of fresh air for a stale franchise. I can’t wait to see more and I hope they don’t change too much for the final release or, you know, cancel it entirely.

Adam Smith for Rock Paper Shotgun:

Just as DOOM is not Doom 4, Prey is no longer Prey 2. That makes sense, given that it doesn’t appear to be a sequel to its ten year old predecessor in any way. The only real similarity appears to be in the basics of the setup – there are aliens and they want to kill you.

While I’m interested to see what comes of this new game, this announcement disappointed me a little. The game (what little we saw) that was shown five years ago seems to have all but vanished. In its place, a game that closely resembles a cross between Dead Space and Deus Ex.

In Prey, you awaken aboard Talos I, a space station orbiting the moon in the year 2032. You are the key subject of an experiment meant to alter humanity forever – but things have gone terribly wrong. The space station has been overrun by hostile aliens and you are now being hunted. As you dig into the dark secrets of Talos I and your own past, you must survive using the tools found on the station, your wits, weapons, and mind-bending abilities.

The game hardly sounds bad, and Arkane’s last game, Dishonored, was fantastic. There was just something about that first teaser that really had me intrigued, like something out of The Twilight Zone. This new game just feels a little too familiar. We don’t have much to go on yet, so I’m hoping that elements from that first teaser trailer are kept in some way or form.

Robert Zak for Rock Paper Shotgun:

Where before the Souls games were only cryptically connected with each other, leaving the community to thread the lore together, Dark Souls 3 not only threads the narratives together but then wraps them up with a bow and some confetti. Familiar faces return, old locations are revisited and items you pick up tighten those threads.

When I was playing through Dark Souls 2, I could never really find a thread that connected the first and second games. I’m sure it’s there if I were willing to dig deep enough but I would have appreciated a little more connectivity between the two titles. This is likely a reason why I wasn’t nearly as fond of the second game as I was the first. Alternatively, Dark Souls 3 reintroduces characters, places, and so much more from mostly the original game bit also a little bit of the second game as well in a very smart, elegant way that doesn’t come anywhere close to feeling lazy or repetitive.

Dark Souls 3 is a veritable mishmash of Souls tropes. Each area has the satisfyingly interwoven design of the original game (while the overarching structure is more like one long, epic path). The stunning views and wide-open spaces of the sequel are inspired by Dark Souls 2, while the more pacey combat borrows from Bloodborne. It’s the perfect amalgamation of all that’s come before, and yet it doesn’t feel greater than the sum of all those parts. Instead, it feels precisely like the sum of those parts, content to look back and say ‘Hasn’t it been a blast?’ in a way that suggests it’s aware of its own finality.

[…]

Remember that Citadel DLC for Mass Effect 3, which gave closure to fans who felt betrayed by the main game’s conclusion? Dark Souls 3 is the equivalent, minus the orgiastic atmosphere, but with a similarly self-aware sense of humour. So many little details and lore tidbits from previous games are brought together in Dark Souls 3 that it takes on an almost reflective tone, looking back on the series’ ‘Best Bits’ and presenting them to us in a satisfying closing chapter.

The subtle continuity of the Souls series is something I’ve really appreciated in my time with the games. Much like the story and lore, it’s quite deep if you dig hard enough and pay close attention to the world and characters around you but it hardly hampers the experience you’ll have.

Dark Souls as a series is likely one of the most infuriating, rewarding, gems I’ll ever play and while I don’t know if Dark Souls 3 is the best of the series, it’s certainly one of the best games of this generation. It should be an example for games to follow and learn from. It never once made a strange change or weird choice because the fans demanded it. People never had to “demand” for anything and FromSoftware likely wouldn’t have done it anyway. The truth is, it was already a near-perfect game from the beginning and never relented, not even in the final hours.

If you’ve never played a Souls game, I’d encourage you to give it a shot. It’s not for everyone but the people who do like it, love it.

Jordan Devore for Destructoid:

I know people who are anticipating the next Witcher 3 expansion, Blood & Wine, more than just about anything else on the docket for this year (which is exactly how I am with Souls add-ons, so, I get it). Sometimes, it’s easy to forget how good DLC can be when it isn’t rushed out.

Still no confirmed release date, but we do have several new screenshots today. Pretty as usual.

I can’t think of a game I’ve stick with so intently as I have The Witcher 3. I’ll often buy season passes for games long before I complete them (if I even do), assuming that i’ll likely get to the extra content once I’ve completed the main game but that rarely happens. By the end, I’m so exhausted by the idea of the game or have something new to play that I forget I even have access to the DLC and move on to the next one.

The Witcher 3 is different. It was by far the best thing I played last year and I know i’ll have no issue putting off other games to play through the Blood & Wine DLC, whenever it finally arrives.

Mike Diver for VICE:

Fallout 4 didn’t win in any other category at the BAFTAs. Audio and Music awards went to Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (it does have a most amazing score). The Game Innovation gong was handed to Her Story. Story, to Life is Strange. Artistic Achievement was won by Ori and the Blind Forest. Design, as previously mentioned, went to Bloodborne. So, Fallout 4 doesn’t play the best of the available nominees; it doesn’t have the greatest story, or sound, and it’s nothing much to look at against a bunch of other games. What did it win for, exactly?

An absolutely mind-boggling decision in my opinion given the number of really incredible games that were released last year. This article covers a couple of things that kept Fallout 4 off my personal list of top games from 2015. While pretty much every online publication seems to think that Bethesda’s latest is a standout from the rest for all the right reasons, it’s refreshing to see a different opinion and one I tend to agree with in a number of ways.

Also, it’s nice to see Bethesda being taken to task on just how buggy their games actually are. People should care about that, no?

So, you need to constantly save your progress, just in case the game breaks on you? See, to me, that doesn’t sound like the kind of quality you’d expect from any sort of “best game.” The game locks you into inescapable situations that essentially loop your demise for an eternity, unless you go back to a previous save? Characters get stuck in walls? Now, real talk, let’s have it. I know that there’s something briefly appealing about a massive-money video game having the same amusing visual quirks you find in productions running on an eighth of such a budget, and less, but after a while this shit becomes tiresome.

Michael McWhertor for Polygon:

Fear Effect: Sedna will be the third official game in the franchise, if it meets its crowdfunding goal. Sushee is taking its Fear Effect game to Kickstarter in the coming days and is doing so with the permission of Square Enix Collective, the division of publisher Square Enix that launched in 2013 to help foster and promote indie games. (Square Enix Collective was originally born of a partnership with another crowdfunding site, Indiegogo.)

Sushi describes Fear Effect: Sedna as a “brand new adventure, from the streets of Hong Kong to the cold world of Greenland” that features the series four mercenary protagonists Hana, Rain, Glas and Deke.

I played through the original Fear Effect games back when they first arrived on the PlayStation and really dug the Resident Evil-esque gameplay and cel shaded animation. While the games lacked the polish that the RE titles had, both Fear Effect titles were still really enjoyable.

The third game in the series, Fear Effect: Inferno, was in development on the PS2 for years before finally getting axed sometime in the mid-2000s. At that point, I think everyone was pretty sure the series was finished, which makes this announcement a bit of a shocker.

The gameplay looks to have changed from a third-person, fixed-camera shooter to an isometric view point-and-click but at this point, i’ll take what I can get. The team at Sushee plans to launch the game via a crowdfunding effort on Kickstarter in the coming days.

Owen S. Good for Polygon:

In a blunt interview with Game Informer’s podcast, David Hayter, the longtime voice of Solid Snake until 2014’s Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes and last year’s Phantom Pain, indicated that Konami and Kojima Productions had tried to get rid of him before.

Hayter told Game Informer he had to re-audition for his role in 2004’s Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

While I understand the disappointment, his handling of this whole thing has been a little discouraging to see as a longtime fan. Hayter is a successful screenwriter and has voiced numerous video game characters including the various Snakes since 1998. He has had and will continue to have a great career, with or without Metal Gear and Konami. Just take the high road.

Owen S. Good for Polygon:

Panic, the publisher who partnered with developing studio Campo Santo, announced the sales total in a retrospective post on its blog yesterday. Firewatch had been the top-selling downloadable game on PlayStation Store in February (its only console presence). But at 500,000 copies sold, “Firewatch can be considered a sales success,” wrote Cabel Sasser, Panic’s co-founder.

I played through this shortly after release in February and fell totally in love with it. I can already say with certainty that it’ll be on my list of must-play games for the year. It’s really exciting to see the studio achieve this level of success so far. The game is entirely deserving of the praise.

Brian Crecente for Polygon:

This week doesn’t mark just the launch of Ubisoft’s latest new franchise with the release of Tom Clancy’s The Division, the leadership at Ubisoft tell us. It’s also the dividing line between the Ubisoft of old and what the future holds for the game publisher responsible for Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed, The Crew and Watch Dogs.

“Internally, I’ve heard people saying that for Ubisoft there will be a ‘before The Division’ and an ‘after The Division,’” Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot told Polygon in a recent interview. “That signifies how incredible we think the game is and how much we think it has to offer to players.

“The Division is a reference point for our future, and we certainly hope it is a game players will love.”

This is a really great piece.

While I haven’t had a ton of time with the game yet, minimal technical issues aside, The Division is pretty much exactly what I had hoped it would be. In the future, I’d like to see some modifications made to the groups/parties to allow for easier task management but for now, I’m pretty pleased with what Ubisoft and Massive have shipped. Apparently, a lot of other people are too.

Rollin Bishop for Motherboard:

Well, the days when Nintendo can count on its portable business may very well be coming to an end. The company’s recently released a modified financial forecast that includes a drop to 6.6 million units in expected hardware sales for the Nintendo 3DS family from April 2015 to March 2016. That from the previously forecasted 7.6 million, making it an approximately 13-percent drop—or 1 million flat difference—in expected sales.

Having just recently gotten back into Nintendo’s handheld ecosystem, it’s pretty apparent that they’re not in the best place right now. Whenever I’m browsing the shelves of local game stores looking for something to play, it’s essentially a wasteland. Often the games I want to play aren’t in print anymore or simply don’t exist because of a complete lack of third-party support.

Sure, there’s some stuff on the horizon but, overall, the outlook for the 3DS isn’t very good. Not to mention, with the NX apparently coming soon*-ish*, why would people want to invest in a 3DS for the long haul?

Nick Summers for Engadget:

A trademark application for “Alan Wake’s Return” was spotted by a user on the gaming forum Neogaf, pointing to another instalment of the Twin Peaks-style thriller. Remedy’s creative director Sam Lake has always said that he would like to return to the franchise, going so far as to release prototype footage. Alan Wake 2 was eventually scrapped in favour of Quantum Break, although some of the team’s ideas eventually wound up in Alan Wake’s American Nightmare.

Oh yes please. Without question the best game I played on the Xbox 360, it’s a crime there hasn’t been more interest in a sequel.

Andrew Webster for The Verge:

A trio of Resident Evil games is on its way to modern consoles. Today Capcom announced that Resident Evil 4, 5, and 6, will all be coming to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One later this year. The games appear to be largely straight ports without much in the way of improvements for the newer hardware.

While I can appreciate bringing RE4 to a new generation of gamers, given how much it changed the series and third-person shooters in general, RE5 should never be allowed to see the light of day. It is, in my opinion, the lowest point of the series.

When will we be getting an entirely new instalment? Maybe a complete reboot? An anniversary seems like a pretty great time for an announcement if you ask me.

Ben Kuchera for Polygon:

The anger seems to be directed at the idea that platform exclusives should stay exclusive, even at the expense of the PC community. There is also the idea that PC gamers are somehow paying less for the experience, since you don’t have to pay for online play on that platform.

[…]

Microsoft is not punishing you for buying Xbox One by giving you a copy of the game on PC. It shouldn’t take an editorial to point out how ridiculous that sounds.

Edgar Alvareza for Engadget:

If you didn’t participate in The Division’s recent closed beta, don’t worry – you’re going to have another chance to play the game soon. Ubisoft has announced open beta dates for its new Tom Clancy title, which will be available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.

I took part in the closed beta for The Division a couple weeks back and really enjoyed it. It’s a game that grabbed my attention back when it was revealed in 2013 and hasn’t really let go. It’s got a large, gorgeous world, solid third-person combat, and an addictive scavenging component akin to something like DayZ or H1Z1.

I’m looking forward to jumping back in and spending more time with it before the official release in March.

Sam Machkovech for Ars Technica:

Far Cry Primal will take players to a prehistoric era that, according to today’s new teaser trailer, will be inhabited by saber-tooth tigers and wooly mammoths.

The teaser showed off rudimentary, handmade weapons like spears and bows, and the game’s announcement mentioned the need to craft other tools, make use of fire for protection, and guard fellow tribespeople.

The parts of Far Cry 4 that I really disliked were the strange, drug-fuelled shangri-la sequences, which disallowed the use of firearms and other forms of combat. Primal seems like it’ll largely lean into that style of game so I’ll be happily sitting this one out.

Owen Good for Polygon:

Shuhei Yoshida, the worldwide studios chief for Sony Computer Entertainment, told a panel this weekend that “the climate is not healthy” for a successor to the PlayStation handheld, thanks to the saturation of mobile gaming-ready devices and the nature of the games they play.

Not totally surprising but sad nonetheless. Sony was never really able to find their footing in the mobile space within North America.

I’d argue that the company could have certainly competed with the growing number of mobile devices on the market had they taken the necessary steps. What those might be, I’m not a 100% sure and, clearly, Sony isn’t either.

Andrew Webster for The Verge:

The best horror movie of the year might just be a video game. Though it’s available on the PlayStation 4, and you play it with a controller, Until Dawn is really as much a film as it is a game; borrowing from some of the biggest horror franchises around, like Saw to Evil Dead, it combines the tropes into a terrifying experience that’s both familiar and unique.

It’s really been too long since we’ve had a decent, truly scary horror game so I’m really excited to fire this one up. In many ways, it’s starting to remind me of Obscure, a game that originally came out on the PS2. In Obscure, you play as a group of teenagers who are locked inside their school overnight and have to unravel a series of strange events.

Not many people played the game but I really enjoyed the mystery of it and the fact that any character you selected had the potential to be killed without impacting your progression of the story. It simply effected your ending.

I’d love to see Until Dawn defy the odds and become a classic, much like the movies it’s influenced by. While it’s tough to see that happening with such a small marketing push, you never know. Stranger things have happened.

John Walker for Rock Paper Shotgun:

I stuck with CoH longer than any other MMO, even World Of Warcraft. I’ve never liked an MMO more than it. It felt so fun, so immediate, and I never had a moment where I felt I needed to grind. It had sidekicking to let you play with people of any level. It had a constantly growing roster of super powers. It felt like an MMO that gave, rather than took away.

An incredible game and the first MMO I played that really hooked for longer than just a couple of weeks. Not sure if it was genuinely a great game or that I just associate it with a certain point in my life but i’ll never forget the late nights with friends taking down supervillains.

Ben Kuchera for Polygon:

Any two images from a Mass Effect game look like they came from not only the same game, but the same world; there is a sort of visual coherence that most games lack, or even worse, that most games simply share with each other instead of coming up with their own.

So how did the artists at BioWare pull that off? As it turns out, the secret lies in large, graceful arcs. Curved lines. It’s something Bioware used to get away from the known designs of the Star Wars series after the company’s last game, and it worked in spectacular fashion.

Great piece on one of the little design tricks the team behind Mass Effect series used to create a distinctive look for the games. It’s so interesting to me that with such a small little detail like adding curves to everything they were able to bring about an aesthetic that felt original, distinct and, most importantly, completely invisible.

It’s something I feel a lot of people who would play through the games and keep an eye on the details would notice but never were quite able to pin down just how often it repeated itself.

Chris Plante for The Verge:

“It was Duke [Nukem] replaced with [the character] Bombshell.” The heroine, a former explosives expert named Shelley Harrison, was to play a supporting role in the original Duke Nuke game; when the lawsuit stymied development, the team cut Duke and bumped Bombshell into the lead role.

It’s clear Interceptor wanted to make a Duke Nukem game, but perhaps the best thing about Bombshell is that Duke Nukem isn’t in it. The most interesting thing about Bombshell may just be Bombshell.

For the sake of clarification, this was definitely meant to be the next Duke Nukem game. After some (still ongoing) legal issues between the company who created him and the company who now owns him, that game was put on hold and them modified into a new title that starred the Bombshell character.

The game was previewed in May of 2014 and met with a sea of criticism because of the lacklustre graphics, ankle deep character development and gratuitous shots of the scantly clad main character. Since then, the team at 3D Realms and Interceptor have overhauled the entire game adding more depth, a respectable protagonist — by way of more clothes and a personality — and a story worth playing through.