games news

• After a string of poorly-received patches, Helldivers 2 dev confirms test servers are being planned

  15-05-2024 13:40 via gamesradar.com
  
  A Helldivers 2 dev has revealed there's talks of a "test server" for the shooter, in the wake of several panned updates to the game.It's been a bit of rocky road for Helldivers 2 of late. Earlier this month saw the widely-hated PSN account linking mandate, which came with a boatload of negative review scores from players and Helldivers 2 being delisted from 170 digital storefronts around the world. Then Helldivers 2's own director admitted balance patches have gone too far in some instances, and
  
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• 6 days before launch, Xbox breaks Hellblade 2's long marketing silence with a 5-minute recap of the first game

  16-05-2024 02:01 via gamesradar.com
  
  Six days from launch, Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 has a new promotional video out that breaks down the story from the first game.Ninja Theory's silence in recent weeks around one of the biggest upcoming Xbox Series X games of the year was starting to raise some concerns, but fear not, the dam has broken and we now have a big old... story recap. You know, so you're up to speed on what's going on before the sequel comes out. I mean, it's something.Despite chatter online, it's not as if Ninja Theory
  
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• Assassin's Creed Shadows has a grappling hook to let its shinobi character reach places its samurai can't

  15-05-2024 23:45 via gamesradar.com
  
  Assassin's Creed Shadows has the one tool every video game needs: a grappling hook. But only one of its two protagonists can make use of the item to reach new areas.The game's two protagonists each have some "clear advantages" - samurai Yasuke is great at fighting, while shinobi Naoe is better at stealth and parkour. "We developed quite a bit of new tools for Naoe and stealth, and one of them is the grappling hook," creative director Jonathan Dumont explains in a breakdown of the new cinematic t
  
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• Peter Jackson says The Lord of the Rings Gollum movie explores territory "we didn't have time to cover" in the original trilogy

  15-05-2024 23:40 via gamesradar.com
  
  The recently announced Lord of the Rings Gollum movie will cover parts of the titular former hobbit's backstory that the filmmakers didn't have time to delve into in the original trilogy.Speaking to Deadline, Peter Jackson, director of the original Lord of the Rings trilogy and producer on the Gollum adapt, said the upcoming movie will give fans a look at Sméagol's backstory and other parts of his story that the filmmakers only now have the time to explore."The Gollum/Sméagol chara
  
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• A John Wick 4 spin-off movie starring Donnie Yen's Caine is in the works

  15-05-2024 23:40 via gamesradar.com
  
  Another John Wick spin-off is in the works, this time centered on Donnie Yen's blind assassin.No plot details have been announced, nor does the film have a title, though the film will likely follow Caine's new life now that he has been freed from his obligations to the High Table. Robert Askins (The Umbrella Academy) is set to pen the script. No direct has been attached to the project as of yet.Caine is the secondary antagonist of John Wick: Chapter 4, having been sent to kill John by Vince Biss
  
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• The X-Men's mutant pop star Dazzler is embarking on a big world tour in her own solo series this fall

  15-05-2024 23:31 via gamesradar.com
  
  Dazzler is returning in her own solo limited series this September as part of Marvel's big 'From the Ashes' X-Men line relaunch. Sentry writer Jason Loo and freshman Marvel artist Rafael Loureiro will take Alison Blaire/Dazzler out on tour in a four-issue limited series that will even include some actual Dazzler songs.Dazzler's big tour comes just as mutantkind is once again "hated and feared" by humans, meaning she'll be dealing with some serious obstacles along the way. But to have her back, s
  
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• Rockstar co-founder and former GTA lead Dan Houser is making an "open-world action-adventure game" of his own at his new studio

  15-05-2024 23:00 via gamesradar.com
  
  Dan Houser, one of Rockstar's co-founders and the former lead writer (among other roles) on both Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, announced a new studio called Absurd Ventures last year. We now know at least one concrete thing that the studio, proudly dedicated to making "weird shit from desperate people," is working on, and yes, it's a game that sounds a bit like GTA on paper.Recent job listings at Absurd Ventures, like this lead gameplay designer position, specify "an open world actio
  
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• Ubisoft CEO says "I expect a lot from gen AI in our games" and thinks it'll make them feel "more alive and richer"

  15-05-2024 22:55 via gamesradar.com
  
  Ubisoft is doubling down on its plans to integrate generative AI in its games, and CEO Yves Guillemot also believes it might be used to "automatize" parts of certain jobs at the company.Back at the Game Developers Conference in March, Ubisoft unveiled what it called Project NEO NPC, an effort to build NPCs driven by generative AI. That only sounded kinda weird until we got to the "soul" and a female character that was reprogrammed for being too "flirtatious and seductive," and in an online world
  
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• Assassin's Creed Shadows is making a big change to the series' iconic towers to encourage you to explore its open-world Japan

  15-05-2024 21:55 via gamesradar.com
  
  After last year's Mirage returned to series roots with a linear design, Assassin's Creed Shadows reverts to the series' modern open-world format, but it's making a significant change to a series mainstay: the climbable synchronization towers.New and longtime Assassin's Creed fans - and even just Ubisoft fans generally - will be well familiar with these towers. They serve slightly different functions from game to game, but generally they act as a means to fill out the map with specific points of
  
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• Poker Face star Natasha Lyonne joins Marvel's Fantastic Four reboot in mystery role

  15-05-2024 21:35 via gamesradar.com
  
  Marvel Studios is filling out the cast for its upcoming Fantastic Four MCU reboot film, with Russian Doll and Poker Face star Natasha Lyonne as the latest actor to tag in for the currently filming movie in an unnamed role, as reported by Deadline. Lyonne's casting is the third such mystery addition in recent weeks, following the castings of Paul Walker Hauser, and John Malkovich, whose roles also remain unrevealed. Speculation on their castings has run rampant, with Hauser recently confirmi
  
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• Meet the new hero of Helldivers 2: Dremskiy, a player kicked despite insisting "Im frend," who now has a full Steam friends list after even PlayStation shared the love

  15-05-2024 21:09 via gamesradar.com
  
  A rocky run of balance patches and technical issues hasn't stopped the Helldivers 2 community from being wholesome as hell, as evidenced by the recent outpouring of support for a sad-looking player named Dremskiy, who is now every Helldiver's friend. The Dremskiy saga, as future historians will call it, started on May 13 when, as many memes have documented, screenshots emerged of a text chat conversation between Dremskiy and another player named Tolga. It's a tale as old as time: Dremskiy j
  
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• Ubisoft has canceled The Division Heartland and "redeployed resources to bigger opportunities" like its Call of Duty-style FPS XDefiant

  15-05-2024 20:13 via gamesradar.com
  
  The Division Heartland, which was set to be a free-to-play take on the third-person shooter series, has been canceled.In its financial report today, Ubisoft said that "in line with the increased selectivity of its investments, Ubisoft has decided to stop development on The Division Heartland and has redeployed resources to bigger opportunities such as XDefiant and Rainbow Six." XDefiant is finally due to launch this month, and Rainbow Six Mobile is in development alongside the continued success
  
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• Assassin's Creed Shadows' dual protagonists each have their own "clear advantages" in stealth and combat, "even if they can do a bit of both"

  15-05-2024 19:38 via gamesradar.com
  
  Assassin's Creed Shadows' dual protagonists Naoe and Yasuke are each purpose-built for different functions, letting you switch between stealth and combat-oriented gameplay depending on the situation and your playstyle.Following the big reveal of Ubisoft's new open-world game Assassin's Creed Shadows, which is based in feudal Japan, the studio released a dedicated video showcasing the game's dual protagonists and their unique talents. Yasuke is a samurai who uses his big frame and martial skills
  
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• X-Men ’97 resolves a decades-long Spider-Man: The Animated series cliffhanger

  15-05-2024 19:35 via gamesradar.com
  
  Warning: Spoilers for X-Men '97 episode 10 below!X-Men '97 season 1 has come to a close, and the epic finale contains a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment that confirms what we've always thought to be true: Peter and Mary Jane would find each other in any universe.Spider-Man: The Animated Series ended in 1998 on an all but satisfying cliffhanger. In season 5, Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson finally get married – but it isn't the happy ending that Peter hoped for. In season 5 episode 8, Spid
  
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• Ubisoft wants to "return to leadership in the open-world" genre, and its CEO says the company is already "back on track" after some rough years

  15-05-2024 18:44 via gamesradar.com
  
  Ubisoft has historically been known for some of the best open-world games - and, depending on who you ask, for running that genre into the ground. Now, with the impending launches of Assassin's Creed Shadows and Star Wars Outlaws, the company aims to get back on top with the style of game it's long been known for.In its latest financial report, Ubisoft says that its first objective for the coming fiscal year "is to return to leadership in the Open World Adventure segment, which are immersive wor
  
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• The Assassin's Creed Shadows open-world map is about the same size as Origin's Egypt, but exists on a more realistic scale because Ubisoft "really wanted the mountains to feel like mountains"

  15-05-2024 18:36 via gamesradar.com
  
  Assassin's Creed Shadows will have an open world roughly the size of Egypt from 2017's Assassin's Creed Origins.In an interview with IGN, creative director Jonathan Dumont offered a little extra about the Assassin's Creed Shadows map, which takes up a chunk of 16th-century Japan. According to that interview, the region is about the same size as Origins' chunk of ancient Egypt, but it's based on a more realistic scale.Dumont explains that "the environments feel wider" in Shadows when compared to
  
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• Lord of the Rings' corporate owners know that you "have to respect" the books, but after Gollum, says that "not everything is going to hit it out of the park"

  15-05-2024 18:21 via gamesradar.com
  
  Embracer Group, the company that bought the entirety of Middle-Earth, has a strategy for licensed Lord of the Rings games but reckons "not everything is going to hit it out of the park."Embracer seeks to expand the already expansive Middle-Earth universe with more haste than the Nazgul search for Hobbits, with plans set for more live-action films starting with a standalone Hunt For Gollum flick, following the failed Gollum game.  With the Lord of the Rings's big screen renaissance on t
  
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• Assassin's Creed Shadows trailer unveils dual protagonists - one the first Black Samurai in Japanese history, the other a Shinobi

  15-05-2024 18:10 via gamesradar.com
  
  Assassin's Creed Shadows' debut reveal trailer is here, and it shows off two main characters including the first Black Samurai in Japanese history, a Kansai-based map, and a November 15 release date.You can catch the full reveal trailer for Shadows, until recently known as Assassin's Creed Red, just below. Yasuke, Japan's first recorded Black Samurai in history, and retainer to Oda Nobunaga, will feature as one of the game's two chief characters, while the other will be the more tradit
  
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• Yes, Black Widow still has her symbiote - and that means she must choose a side when Venom War breaks out

  15-05-2024 18:03 via gamesradar.com
  
  Marvel is launching a new symbiote saga this August with Venom War by writer Al Ewing and artist Iban Coello, which sees Eddie Brock and his son Dylan face off to finally determine who will be the "one true Venom". A number of additional comics will be spinning out of this epic focusing on different characters caught up in the conflict - and we've got the first look at one of them right here.Venom War: Venomous from writer Erica Schultz and artist Luciano Vecchio is a new three-issue limited ser
  
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• The Strangers: Chapter 1 might "deal with the same premise" as the original, but its sequels shed light on some unanswered questions from the 2008 horror movie

  15-05-2024 18:00 via gamesradar.com
  
  Bringing back classic horror franchises seems to be all the rage nowadays, and the next filmmaker to do so with The Strangers: Chapter 1, a riff on the 2008 slasher fave, is director Renny Harlin. With it set to be the first of a new trilogy, though, he sees it more of an expansion than a straight-up remake."It's one huge movie that takes place [across] approximately five days. The objective was to show what happens to somebody if they survive this kind of horror," Harlin says of the three-part
  
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• The Stranger: Chapter 1 might "deal with the same premise" as the original, but its sequels shed light on some unanswered questions from the 2008 horror movie

  15-05-2024 18:00 via gamesradar.com
  
  Bringing back classic horror franchises seems to be all the rage nowadays, and the next filmmaker to do so with The Strangers: Chapter 1, a riff on the 2008 slasher fave, is director Renny Harlin. With it set to be the first of a new trilogy, though, he sees it more of an expansion than a straight-up remake."It's one huge movie that takes place [across] approximately five days. The objective was to show what happens to somebody if they survive this kind of horror," Harlin says of the three-part
  
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• RGG Studio Talks Designing Super Monkey Ball In 2024

  15-05-2024 17:51 via gameinformer.com
  
  Platform:Switch
  Publisher:Sega
  Developer:Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios
  Release: June 25, 2024
  Rating:Everyone Last month, I had a chance to play Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble, the first all-new entry in the Super Monkey Ball (SMB) franchise in more than a decade. While I went into the demo skeptical that the series, which experienced its best years in the early-to-mid 2000s, could feel like a modern experience in 2024, I emerged from the demo impressed by the gameplay improvements, single-player leve
  
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• In a first for dying consoles, Microsoft is giving Xbox 360 games deep discounts before digital purchases end for good

  15-05-2024 17:44 via gamesradar.com
  
  Earlier this week, players began to notice that a selection of Xbox 360 games had suddenly gotten deep discounts on the console Marketplace, and now Microsoft has confirmed that these are last-chance price drops intended to give players one final shot at these games before the store shuts down."To celebrate the legacy of Xbox 360, we’re working with our amazing publishing partners to bring you as many price reductions from our online store or from the Xbox 360 Store on the console," the co
  
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• Dune prequel series set 10,000 years before Denis Villeneuve’s epic gets its first trailer

  15-05-2024 17:42 via gamesradar.com
  
  Streaming service Max has released the first trailer for its upcoming Dune TV series, titled Dune: Prophecy, which is set 10,000 years before the birth of Paul Atreides and Denis Villeneuve’s two movies.The trailer opens with a vast look at the universe before honing in on a group of women all dressed in black sat in occult fashion in a circle. The narrator begins: "10,000 years before the birth of Paul Atreides before the universe would know us as the Bene Gesserit, we founded a sisterhoo
  
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• XDefiant is ditching skill-based matchmaking because Ubisoft thinks it's not good for fun or variety, and it "means every casual game is repetitive"

  15-05-2024 17:33 via gamesradar.com
  
  XDefiant, Ubisoft's long-gestating new shooter, won't feature skill-based matchmaking, or SBMM, whatsoever when it launches this month.Three years after its initial reveal, XDefiant is finally launching for real later this month on May 21 across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S platforms. As first reported by PC Gamer, a new blog post on XDefiant's website reveals that SBMM won't be in the new shooter at all, as Ubisoft believes "no SBMM is paramount to a fun and varied game experience in the long-t
  
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• Helldivers 2 dev threatens to make the hardest difficulties even harder: "I think we might have some things in store for the players who coast through everything"

  15-05-2024 17:31 via gamesradar.com
  
  An offhand comment from one of Helldivers 2's no-doubt exhausted community managers has struck fear into the hearts of players who are already struggling with the game's highest difficulties (read: me). It sounds like the game may crank things even higher for the truly masochistic divers out there.Ironically, this discussion was kickstarted by chatter over the bugged, updated, and now soon-to-be-reverted spawn rates for enemy patrols. As developer Arrowhead moves to revert a change that accident
  
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• New Wicked trailer takes us back to the Emerald City as Cynthia Erivo's Elphaba goes up against Jeff Goldblum's Wizard of Oz

  15-05-2024 17:05 via gamesradar.com
  
  The first full-length trailer for Wicked is here, promising an emotional roller coaster through the world of Oz. A short teaser was released back in February, but this new clip gives us a much better look at director Jon M. Chu's big-screen take on the hit Broadway and West End musical (which is in turn based on the novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire).In the trailer, outcast Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and popular Glinda (Ariana Grande) meet for the f
  
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• The Assassin's Creed Shadows map might have already been teased, with codebreakers solving a cipher to reveal a potential link to Kyoto and Osaka

  15-05-2024 17:04 via gamesradar.com
  
  Assassin's Creed Shadows might have already revealed its world map, via ciphered numbers posted on Twitter.Just earlier this week, Ubisoft announced Assassin's Creed Red had been renamed to Assassin's Creed Shadows, and a full reveal for the game is coming later today, May 15. Since then, the main Assassin's Creed Twitter account has been having a bit of fun with its followers, inputting a series of numbers that have been continually expanding and updating over the past two days.Twitter sleuth A
  
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• Hi-Fi Rush receives a "final patch" after Xbox closed the studio while physical editions are still incoming

  15-05-2024 17:04 via gamesradar.com
  
  Hi-Fi Rush has received one "final patch" to address some lingering issues.Microsoft shut down developer Tango Gameworks alongside three other studios last week, but the team's beloved rhythm action still got another patch earlier today, presumably from a skeleton crew left over from Tango's staff. "Thank you for your continued support," an announcement tweet reads. "We're working to release the physical edition of Hi-Fi Rush with our partners at Limited Run Games, as well as
  
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• The Acolyte will be a gateway to Star Wars – and you "don’t need to know anything" about the franchise to watch it

  15-05-2024 17:00 via gamesradar.com
  
  You don't need to know anything about Star Wars to watch the new TV show The Acolyte, at least according to its producers Rayne Roberts and Simon Emanuel.Speaking to SFX magazine in the new issue, which features Doctor Who on the cover, the pair opened up about making an interplanetary detective drama. Set in the High Republic, it marks the furthest back in time Star Wars live-action has ever gone on screen. However, you don't need to be familiar with all the details of that era from the Extende
  
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