Gamescom 2022 opened with the reveal of Everywhere, a new game from Grand Theft Auto producer Leslie Benzies. "We want the community to build this. We want it to be their world. We want them to tell their stories in our game," Benzies said before sharing a trailer that seemed to show off two very different games.
At first, we see an experience that looks similar to Fortnite. There are multiple characters shooting, jumping and driving across different biomes, with an obvious metaverse-like social component built into gameplay. However, in the final third of the trailer, the game's art style changes and we're treated to more photo-realistic graphics. In an interview after the clip played, assistant game designer Adam Whiting didn't provide many other details about the project, but did say developer Build a Robot Boy hopes to release Everywhere sometime next year.
Every August for the past two years, Chinese developer Game Science Studio has released new gameplay footage from its upcoming action RPG Black Myth: Wukong. Not one to miss a beat, it has done the same this year. On Friday, the studio shared a new eight-minute gameplay trailer and six-minute in-game cutscene. Much like last year’s Unreal Engine 5 reveal, the former is partly a showcase for NVIDIA’s DLSS AI-powered upscaling tech, and you can see what a difference it – and a year of additional work – has meant for the game’s framerate. Compared to last year’s trailer, the action is smoother and there are fewer framerate drops.
We also see Game Science Studio iterate on From Software’s Souls formula in a few interesting ways. One of my favorites involves a plant the protagonist goes to pick up about a third of the way through the clip. When they go to pull it from the ground, the plant turns out to be an enemy that can root the player in place, leaving them vulnerable to its hard-hitting sweep attacks. It’s a fun twist on From Software’s mimic chests that should force you always to be on your toes. As for the cinematic trailer, it offers a fresh look at Wukong’s Journey to the West-inspired tale. It’s hard to say how the scene we see will fit into the broader story Game Science hopes to tell, but the studio obviously has a talent for animation.
Unfortunately, neither trailer ends with a release date for the game. Back in 2020, Game Science Studio said it was hoping to bring Black Myth: Wukong to PC and consoles by 2023.
You can play Hideo Kojima's post-apocalyptic delivery simulator/action game Death Stranding with a PC Game Pass membership in a few days' time. 505 Games first released the game for Windows in 2020, but soon you'll also be able access it through the Microsoft subscription service at no additional cost. The developer says the version heading to the service will include the same features the Steam and Epic Games editions have. Those features include a high frame rate, ultrawide mode, photo mode, hard mode and cross over content from popular franchises like Half-Life and Cyberpunk 2077.
The game will also have unlockable content you can get as you progress and complete more of the story. That said, the version coming to PC Game Pass is not the director's cut that was released more recently, but the original one. Death Stranding was published by Sony Interactive for the PS4 back in 2019 and got the director's cut treatment for the PS5 in 2021. When it comes to consoles, it's still a PlayStation exclusive — you can't play it on the Xbox with a Game Pass. But at least you can test it out for free on PC if you haven't given it a shot yet.
Death Stranding will be available on the PC Game Pass starting on August 23rd. 505 Games also promises to reveal more details in a Community Q&A in the next few days.
Do you feel guilty for playing a game's single-player campaign on release day when all your friends are jumping into the multiplayer mode? You won't have that burden with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. Activision has revealed that pre-order customers can play the MW2 story starting October 20th, a week before the game officially debuts on October 28th. You can get the solo content out of the way before you spend all your hours online.
As mentioned before, pre-order purchasers also get two-day early access to MW2's open beta sessions as well as instant use of special character and weapon skins. Splurge on the Vault Edition and you also get a Battle Pass for the first season as well as characters and cosmetics accessible in the open beta, Warzone and even the original Modern Warfare remake.
Activision is promising more details for MW2 and the next Warzone (including its new mobile version) at an hours-long Call of Duty event on September 15th. However, the advance access to single-player gameplay shows the company's priorities. While it's still committed to furthering the series' plot, it sees this latest game as the foundation for a new multiplayer experience.
It’s been more than a month since PlayStation Plus Premium went live, cementing the video game industry’s shift toward cloud gaming and subscriptions. PlayStation’s game-streaming scheme is competing directly with Xbox Game Pass, the service that proved the concept by earning more than 25 million subscribers over the past five years, leveraging Microsoft’s massive cloud network.
As the two main console manufacturers and the owners of huge franchises, Sony and Microsoft set the stage for the rest of the video game marketplace, and the transition to streaming subscriptions is no different. Here we’ll break down what they’re each offering and take a look at the industry from the perspective of the cloud.
PlayStation Plus has three tiers: Essential, Extra and Premium. Essential costs $10 a month or $60 a year, and it’s basically the PlayStation Plus you’re used to, offering three games to download each month, access to online multiplayer features, cloud storage and discounts. PS Plus Extra costs $15 a month or $100 a year, and has everything in the Essential tier plus a library of up to 400 downloadable PS4 and PS5 games.
PS Plus Premium costs $18 a month or $120 a year, and adds up to 340 games from past PlayStation consoles. This is also the tier that unlocks cloud gaming, supporting more than 700 titles and adding the ability to stream or download games from older eras. This tier actually replaces PlayStation Now, Sony’s often-underwhelming cloud gaming service that launched on PS4. With PS Plus Premium, cloud gaming is available on PS4, PS5 and PC, but not on mobile devices.
Sony
That’s one difference between Sony and Microsoft’s approach, as Xbox titles are playable on mobile devices as well as consoles and PC. But the bigger distinction is the type of games that are available on each network. Sony doesn’t plan on adding big exclusive games like Forspoken or God of War Ragnarök to Plus on day one, meaning subscribers will have to buy these titles separately if they want to play right away. On the Xbox side of things, Game Pass Ultimate offers a streaming library of more than 300 titles, and it includes big first-party drops like Halo Infinite on release day. That’s significant, considering Xbox owns influential studios including Bethesda and id Software, and it’s in the process of acquiring Activision Blizzard. Xbox offering the next Doom or Elder Scrolls on day one is a bigger draw than Sony offering Stray, even if Stray is the most adorable game of the year.
Xbox has been the loudest proponent of cloud gaming in the console space, and with the support of a robust network from Microsoft and years of public testing, Game Pass has set the standard when it comes to subscription services. Game Pass has PC-only and console-only tiers providing access to a library of more than 300 downloadable games for $10 a month, while Game Pass Ultimate unlocks cloud play on PC, mobile and Xbox consoles for $15 a month. Assuming you pay for PS Plus Premium up-front, this puts the annual price of Game Pass Ultimate ahead of Premium by $60 – which is roughly what it’ll cost PlayStation subscribers to buy one of those first-party Sony games, so it all shakes out in the end.
Aaron Souppouris/Engadget
Xbox has been steadily building the foundation for an industry that isn’t limited by hardware, relying on cloud gaming rather than console generations, while Sony still seems married to the idea of hardware cycles and more traditional game sales. Despite being there first with PlayStation Now, when it comes to streaming, Sony is playing catch-up to Microsoft, but it still has plenty to offer in the form of classic games and new exclusives. Cloud play is here to stay and it’s possible that other services like Steam and the Epic Games Store will follow Xbox and PlayStation’s lead in the coming years. Nintendo is bringing up the rear in terms of online, cloud, and anything resembling 21st century technology, but it has an unrivaled back catalog and Switch Online unlocks a number of NES, SNES and N64 games.
This isn’t about any one service being better than the others. This is about adjusting to the new normal for video games, where your money won’t be spent on a $60 disc or a discrete download code, but will instead be spread among streaming services with individual purchases on the side. We’re used to this idea when it comes to TV and movies, and streaming technology is almost reliable enough to make it the standard in gaming.
These are the new calculations we'll be running each month: Do I value Game Pass Ultimate over Netflix? Or PS Plus Premium over Spotify? New subscription services pop up almost weekly; something's gotta give.
Many classic fighting game series have a reasonably consistent stream of sequels, but not Fatal Fury — the last title (Garou: Mark of the Wolves) made its appearance on the Neo Geo in 1999. SNK is ready to make amends after 23 years, however. The developer has confirmed work on a new Fatal Fury game. The teaser trailer below reveals nothing about the gameplay, plot, platform support or release date, but the company claimed the sequel would represent a "new turning point" in fighters — don't expect much humility, then.
The franchise played an important role in SNK's history, and by extension fighting games as a whole. The first game, 1991's Fatal Fury: King of Fighters, made a splash at a time when Street Fighter II dominated the genre. It was designed by the original Street Fighter's Takashi Nishiyama, and focused more on story and special moves than SF2's combos. It showed that there was room for multiple games in the upper pantheon of fighting games, and ultimately spawned the still-active King of Fighters series.
The challenge, of course, is persuading gamers to revisit Fatal Fury. The fighting game world has evolved considerably in the past two decades, ranging from 3D series like Tekken through to many-character extravaganzas like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. It's a crowded arena, and there's no certainty that nostalgia will give SNK an edge.
There's a mod in the works for Nintendo 64 classic GoldenEye 007 that turns another James Bond film into a full game. Fans are building a playable version of The Spy Who Loved Me, Roger Moore's third, and some would argue best, Bond movie.
As spotted by EuroGamer, YouTuber Graslu00 posted a playthrough video showing 11 levels of The Spy Who Loved Me 64. The mod depicts the key events and locations of the film, taking Bond from the Alps to the pyramids of Egypt and a supertanker in the Atlantic Ocean. It includes Moore's likeness, as well as characters such as Anya Amasova (aka Agent XXX) and villain Karl Stromberg. It's possible to run the mod on an emulator in 4K at 60 frames per second, though you can also play it on an N64 console.
It's a work in progress, as Graslu00 notes. The build of The Spy Who Loved Me 64 that's available on N64 Vault is a demo of the first three levels with a peek at a planned four-player multiplayer mode. It looks like there's quite a way for the fans working on the game to go, though. The stage select screen shows 20 levels including, curiously, Bond's childhood home of Skyfall — that seems to be one of the multiplayer maps.
Meanwhile, there's an official James Bond title in the works. It emerged in late 2020 that Hitman studio IO Interactive is developing a game that delves into the superspy's origins. It's expected to be the first official Bond game since 2012's 007 Legends.
Among Usis about to enter the realm of virtual reality. If you're lucky, you might even be able to try Among Us VRbefore it's officially released later this year. Signups are now open for the spin-off's beta.
As you might expect, Among Us VR shifts the action from a top-down perspective to a first-person view. That ups the ante a bit, since you may not be able to tell if a potential impostor is just behind you. There's also proximity voice chat and the option to accuse other players of being an imposter with literal finger pointing.
Schell Games, which is behind puzzle game series I Expect You To Die, worked with original Among Us developer Innersloth on the virtual reality version. Among Us VR will be available on Meta Quest 2, Steam VR, PlayStation VR and, when it's available, PSVR 2.
do you own a VR headset? do you have an internet connection? do you want to try Among Us VR early?
Arclight Rumble wasn't going to be the only upcoming Warcraft mobile game, according to a report. Bloombergsources claim Blizzard and NetEase have canceled a World of Warcraft spinoff mobile title that had been in development for three years. Nicknamed Neptune, it would have been a massively multiplayer game set in a different era of the fantasy universe. It wouldn't simply have been a WoW phone port, to put it another way.
While the exact reasons for the cancelation weren't mentioned, one of the insiders said Blizzard and NetEase "disagreed over terms" and ultimately decided to scrap the unannounced game. NetEase supposedly had over 100 developers attached to the project. The two were rumored to have previously canceled another Warcraft mobile release, a Pokémon Go-style augmented reality game, after four years of effort.
Spokespeople from both companies declined to comment. If the rumor is accurate, it suggests Blizzard is struggling to adapt to the rise of mobile gaming. While Diablo Immortal appears to be a success and is joining the well-established Hearthstone, the developers will still have sunk massive resources into other games that never reached players.
There are strong incentives to take these risks, however. Mobile games can be highly lucrative, particularly in countries like China — Genshin Impact has pulled in $3 billion since release, according to Sensor Tower estimates. A hit could easily boost Blizzard's bottom line, not to mention spur demand for its existing computer- and console-bound games.
Just five years ago, Nintendo was at a crossroads. The Wii U was languishing well in third place in the console wars and, after considerable pressure, the company was making its first tentative steps into mobile gaming with Miitomo and Super Mario Run. Fast-forward to today: The Switch is likely on the way to becoming the company’s best-selling “home console” ever, and seven Switch games have outsold the Wii U console. Everything’s coming up Nintendo, then, thanks to the Switch’s unique hybrid format and an ever-growing game library with uncharacteristically strong third-party support.
However, the Switch's online store isn't the easiest to navigate, so this guide aims to help the uninitiated start their journey on the right foot. These are the games you should own — for now. We regularly revise and add to the list as appropriate. Oh, and if you've got a Switch Lite, don't worry: Every game on the list is fully supported by the portable-only console.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Nintendo
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the best game in the series yet. It streamlines many of the clunky aspects from earlier games and gives players plenty of motivation to keep shaping their island community. As you'd expect, it also looks better than any previous entry, giving you even more motivation to fill up your virtual home and closet. The sound design reaches ASMR levels of brain-tingling comfort. And yes, it certainly helps that New Horizons is an incredibly soothing escape from reality when we're all stuck at home in the midst of a global pandemic.
I was on the fence about Astral Chain from the day the first trailer came out until a good few hours into my playthrough. It all felt a little too generic, almost a paint-by-numbers rendition of an action game. I needn't have been so worried, as it's one of the more original titles to come from PlatinumGames, the developer behind the Bayonetta series, in recent years.
In a future where the world is under constant attack from creatures that exist on another plane of existence, you play as an officer in a special force that deals with this threat. The game's gimmick is that you can tame these creatures to become Legions that you use in combat. Encounters play out with you controlling both your character and the Legion simultaneously to deal with waves of mobs and larger, more challenging enemies. As well as for combat, you'll use your Legion(s) to solve crimes and traverse environments.
Astral Chain sticks closely to a loop of detective work, platforming puzzles and combat — a little too closely, if I'm being critical — with the game split into cases that serve as chapters. The story starts off well enough but quickly devolves into a mashup of various anime tropes, including twists and arcs ripped straight from some very famous shows and films. However, the minute-to-minute gameplay is enough to keep you engaged through the 20-hour or so main campaign and into the fairly significant end-game content.
Does Astral Chain reach the heights of Nier: Automata? No, not at all, but its combat and environments can often surpass that game, which all-told is probably my favorite of this generation. Often available for under $50 these days, it's well worth your time.
Celeste is a lot of things. It's a great platformer, but it's also a puzzle game. It's extremely punishing, but it's also very accessible. It puts gameplay above everything, but it has a great story. It's a beautiful, moving and memorable contradiction of a game, created by MattMakesGames, the indie studio behind the excellent Towerfall. So, Celeste is worth picking up no matter what platform you own, but its room-based levels and clear 2D artwork make it a fantastic game to play on the Switch when on the go.
Dragon Quest XI is an unashamedly traditional Japanese role-playing game. Most of the characters are established RPG tropes: mute protagonist-who’s-actually-a-legendary-hero, sister mages, mysterious rogue and the rest. Then there’s the battle system, which has rarely changed in the decades of the series. (There’s a reason that this special edition features a 16-bit styled version of the game: The mechanics and story work just as well in more... graphically constrained surroundings.) While the story hits a lot of familiar RPG beats, everything takes an interesting turn later on. And through it, the game demands completion. RPGs require compelling stories, and this has one. It just doesn’t quite kick in until later.
This eleventh iteration of the series also serves as a celebration of all things Dragon Quest. Without getting too deep into the story, the game heavily references the first game, taking place in the same narrative universe, just hundreds of years later.
The Switch edition doesn’t offer the most polished take on the game — it’s available on rival consoles — but the characters, designed by Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball fame, move around fluidly, in plenty of detail despite the limits of the hybrid console. And while it’s hard to explain, There’s also something just plain right about playing a traditional JRPG on a Nintendo console.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses is one hell of a game. Developer Intelligent Systems made a lot of tweaks to its formula for the series' first outing on the Nintendo Switch, and the result of those changes is a game that marries Fire Emblem's dual personalities in a meaningful and satisfying way. You'll spend half your time as a master tactician, commanding troops around varied and enjoyable battlefields. The other half? You'll be teaching students and building relationships as a professor at the finest school in the land.
Hades was the first early access title to ever make our best PC game list, and the final game is a perfect fit for Nintendo’s Switch. It's an action-RPG developed by the team behind Bastion, Transistor and Pyre. You play Zagreus, son of Hades, who's having a little spat with his dad, and wants to escape from the underworld. To do so, Zagreus has to fight his way through the various levels of the underworld and up to the surface. Along the way, you’ll pick up “boons” from a wide range of ancient deities like Zeus, Ares and Aphrodite, which stack additional effects on your various attacks. Each level is divided into rooms full of demons, items and the occasional miniboss.
As Hades is a “roguelike” game, you start at the same place every time, with the levels rearranged. With that said, the items you collect can be used to access and upgrade new weapons and abilities that stick between sessions. Hades initially caught our attention just for its gameplay: You can jump in for 30 minutes and have a blast, or find yourself playing for hours. As the game neared its final release, the storytelling, world-building and its general character really started to take shape — there’s so much to do, so many people to meet and even some romance stuffed in there. You could play for hundreds of hours and still have fun.
This was a real sleeper hit, and one of very few Kickstarter games to not only live up to but exceed expectations. Hollow Knightis a 2D action-adventure game in the Metroidvania style, but it's also just a mood. Set in a vast, decrepit land, which you'll explore gradually as you unlock new movement and attack skills for your character, a Burtonesque bug-like creature. Short on both dialogue and narrative, the developers instead convey a story through environment and atmosphere, and it absolutely nails it.
You'll start out feeling fairly powerless, but Hollow Knight has a perfect difficulty curve, always allowing you to progress but never making it easy. For example, it borrows the Dark Souls mechanic where you'll need to travel back to your corpse upon death to retrieve your "Geo" (the game's stand-in for Souls), which is always a tense time. Throughout it all, though, the enemies and NPCs will never fail to delight. For a moody game, it has a nice sense of humor and levity imbued mostly through the beautifully animated and voiced folks you meet. Given its low cost and extremely high quality, there's really no reason not to get this game. Trust us, it'll win you over.
When is a turn-based strategy game not a turn-based strategy game? Into the Breach, an indie roguelike game where you control mechs to stem an alien attack, defies conventions, and is all the better for it. While its core mechanics are very much in the XCOM (or Fire Emblem, for that matter) mold, it's what it does with those mechanics that's so interesting. A traditional turn-based strategy game plays out like a game of chess — you plan a move, while predicting what your opponent will do in return, and thinking ahead to what you'll do next, and so on, with the eventual goal of forcing them into a corner and winning. At the start of every Into the Breach turn, the game politely tells you exactly what each enemy character is going to do, down the exact square they'll end on and how much damage they'll inflict. There are no hit percentages, no random events, no luck; each turn is a puzzle, with definitive answers to how exactly you're going to come out on top.
Into the Breach battles are short, and being a roguelike, designed to be very replayable. Once you've mastered the basics and reached the end, there are numerous different mechs with new attack and defense mechanics to learn and master as you mix-and-match to build your favorite team. If you're a fan of either puzzle or turn-based strategy games, this is a must-have.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild signals the biggest shift in the series since the Nintendo 64's Ocarina of Time, and it might well be one of the best games of the past decade. It pulls the long-running series into modern gaming, with a perfectly pitched difficulty curve and an incredible open world to play with. There's crafting, weapons that degrade, almost too much to collect and do and a gentle story hidden away for players to discover for themselves. Even without the entertaining DLC add-ons, there's simply so much to do here and challenges for every level of gamer.
Disco Elysium is a special game. The first release from Estonian studio ZA/UM, it's a sprawling science-fiction RPG that takes more inspiration from D&D and Baldur's Gate than modern combat-focused games. In fact, there is no combat to speak of, instead, you'll be creating your character, choosing what their strengths and weaknesses are, and then passing D&D-style skill checks to make your way through the story. You'll, of course, be leveling up your abilities and boosting stats with items, but really the game's systems fall away in place of a truly engaging story, featuring some of the finest writing to ever grace a video game.
With the Final Cut, released 18 months after the original, this extremely dialogue-heavy game now has full voice acting, which brings the unique world more to life than ever before. After debuting on PC, PS5 and Stadia, Final Cut is now available for all extant home consoles – including Nintendo’s Switch. Loading times are a little slower than on other systems, so it might not be the absolute best platform to play it on, but Disco Elysium is an experience unlike the rest of the Switch library, which is why it makes it on this list.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's vibrancy and attention to detail prove it's a valid upgrade to the Wii U original. Characters are animated and endearing as they race around, and Nintendo's made bigger, wider tracks to accommodate up to 12 racers. This edition of Mario Kart included gravity-defying hover tires and automatic gliders for when you soar off ramps, making races even more visually thrilling, but at its core, it's Mario Kart — simple, pure gaming fun. It's also a great showcase for the multitude of playing modes that the Switch is capable of: Two-player split-screen anywhere is possible, as are online races or Switch-on-Switch chaos. For now, this is the definitive edition.
OlliOlli and its sequel, OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood, were notoriously difficult to master. They were infuriating, but also extremely satisfying when you pulled off just the right combo of tricks and grinds needed for a big score.
I was worried that OlliOlli World’s colorful and welcoming new direction for the series was going to dispense with that level of challenge, but I shouldn’t have been concerned. Developer Roll7 made a game that’s significantly more approachable than the original titles — but one that keeps the twitch-response gameplay and score-chasing highs intact for those who crave them.
It’s hard to sum up exactly what makes OlliOlli World so compelling, but the game mixes serious challenges with moments that let you really get into that elusive flow state, where you’re just pulling off tricks, riding rails and generally tearing through a course without thinking too much about what you’re doing. The music, sound effects, art style, level design and variety of moves you can pull off all contribute to this vibe — and even though the game looks entirely different from its predecessors, the end result is the same: skateboarding bliss.
Super Mario 3D Worldwas unfairly slept on when it originally launched in 2013, mostly due to the fact very few people had a Wii U. It's a superb translation of old-school Mario mechanics into 3D (Mario 64 is a masterpiece, yes, but unless you're a speed-runner it doesn't quite have the pace of the NES and SNES games). It's also a great multiplayer game, as you can play simultaneously with three other players and race through levels — the winner of each level gets to wear a crown in the next.
With the move to the Switch, and Nintendo finally starting to figure out online gaming, you can now do that remotely, which is a huge plus. The bigger addition is Bowser's Fury, an all-new game of sorts that plays more like a blend of Super Mario Odyssey and 3D World. There are some really creative challenges that feel right out of Odyssey, blended with the lightness and speed of the Wii U game. (It should be noted that Bowser's Fury is also only good for one or two players, unlike the main game.) We'd recommend 3D World just on its own, but as a package with Bowser's Fury, it becomes a much better deal.
Super Mario Odyssey might not represent the major change that Breath of the Wild was for the Zelda series, but it’s a great Mario game that's been refined across the last two decades. Yes, we got some important modern improvements, like maps and fast travel, and the power-stealing Cappy is a truly fun addition to Mario's usual tricks. But that core joy of Mario, figuring out the puzzles, racing to collect items and exploring landmarks, is here in abundance.
This is the ultimate distillation of Nintendo's multiplayer fighting game. The series' debut on Switch brings even more characters from beyond Nintendo's stable. If you're sick of Mario, Pikachu and Metroid's Samus, perhaps Final Fantasy VII's Cloud, Solid Snake or Bayonetta will be your new go-to character. There are about 80 characters to test out here (although 10 of them are locked behind DLC).
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate features a divisive new single-player mode where you augment characters with stickers, battling through special conditions to unlock more characters and, yes, more stickers. At its core, Smash Bros. games combine fast-paced, chaotic fights with an incredibly beginner-friendly learning curve. Yes, some items are confusing or overpowered, but your special moves are only a two-button combination away. Turning the tables is built into the DNA of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, ensuring thrilling battles (once you've sorted handicaps) for everyone involved.
