In the 26 years since Revolution Software released Beneath A Steel Sky, the adventure game has come full circle. After the genre struggled to adapt into 3D and was briefly declared dead by pundits, the genre's resurgence occurred on two main fronts--the simplified, story-driven 3D games of Telltale, which focused on choice and consequence over puzzles, and retro-styled 2D games released like Unavowed, Kathy Rain, and Broken Age, which included a lot of the esoteric puzzle-solving the genre used to be known for. Beyond A Steel Sky, the long-awaited sequel to the 1994 original, is an attempt to bridge the gap between those two styles--but unfortunately, it ends up feeling like some of the messier 3D adventure games from 20 years ago rather than another classic like its predecessor.Beyond A Steel Sky brings back Robert Foster, the protagonist of the first game, and picks up 10 years after his escape from Union City and LINC, the half-mechanical, half-organic being that runs it. Robert has returned to the "gaplands" surrounding the city, where he lives a happy, earnest life within a small society. However, he's soon forced to return to Union City after a young friend, Milo, is kidnapped by a huge robot and taken somewhere in the sprawling metropolis. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic Australia, but references to the country are unfortunately fleeting, despite the game's aesthetic invocation of the British colonization of the country--the gaplanders are largely people of colour, and Union City is predominantly white.At first, it's great to be back in the world of Steel Sky. The nods to the first game start flowing in from the first moments--like the original game, the opening is made up of comic panels drawn by Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons, whose most famous work receives a few fun nods and Easter eggs throughout the game. Joey, Robert's robotic sidekick, also returns, and seeing these two characters reunited is one of the game's highlights. The city, which is rendered in glorious 3D is lovely, too--the skyline stretches far into the background, and the cel-shaded aesthetic suits it.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

For more than a decade, Crossfire has been a powerhouse in PC first-person shooters outside the US, especially in Asia. The free-to-play title is primed to make the leap to Xbox One and Xbox Series X later this year as CrossfireX, and with it will come a new addition: a single-player campaign created by Remedy Entertainment, the studio behind Control, Alan Wake, and Max Payne.During Microsoft's recent Xbox Games Showcase, we got a closer look at what Remedy has planned for CrossfireX, although the details were still pretty vague. After the show, Remedy gave a more thorough presentation to media that provided more insight on what CrossfireX's campaign will be like. The presentation also provided a sense of what Remedy is adding to the Crossfire formula and how the studio will boil down more than a decade of growth, adaptations, and alterations into a coherent story.The hands-off gameplay demo we saw expanded on the CrossfireX trailer that appeared during the showcase, focusing on Luis Torres, a "skilled thief" and civilian in the game's world. The mission we saw started with Luis handcuffed on a prison bus, where a guard speaks with him in a brief character-building moment--before a drone flies beneath the bus and explodes, flipping it. It seems that Global Risk, one of the two factions at the heart of Crossfire, and its leader, General Maddox, are after Luis. Luckily, he escapes the crash and absconds into a hospital, where the player takes control of him to shoot their way through Global Risk goons and meets up with Black List operatives hoping to extract him.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Death positivity--a movement that encourages people to openly acknowledge and normalize the traditionally taboo topics of dying and grief--is a relatively new subject for video game narratives, though it has been popularized through indie titles like A Mortician's Tale and What Remains of Edith Finch. Necrobarista joins that conversation but with a more hands-off approach, telling the player a story that revolves around the themes of death as opposed to letting players be a part of the narrative. Ultimately, this is to the game's detriment, but Necrobarista still manages to deliver a genuinely moving character-driven narrative about coming to terms with death, whether it's that of a loved one or our own.As it's a visual novel, there's not much in terms of gameplay when it comes to Necrobarista. Your primary means of understanding its world is by reading its story, which is told in a slice-of-life format that provides a quick snippet of the daily goings-on inside a Melbourne-based cafe called Terminal over the course of several days. Terminal exists on an in-between plane (it's technically a part of the living world but it exists as a potential stopping point before the afterlife), allowing both the living and the dead to wander through its doors. The dead are only permitted to stay 24 hours before Terminal staff must encourage them to move on to the afterlife--whether that's heaven, hell, or something else entirely is unknown as no one has ever come back from it. The dead who stay longer than 24 hours begin upsetting the balance of the universe, which runs up a tab that the cafe has to then pay off. At the start of Necrobarista, the cafe has recently been passed down from immortal necromancer Chay to his protege, Maddy, along with several centuries' worth of debt.An assertive, sarcastic, and loud-mouthed necromancer with no patience for customers who want extravagant coffee orders, Maddy is the immediate star of Necrobarista's story. Necrobarista ditches the traditional 2D-style of most visual novels for a 3D cinematic presentation with clear anime aesthetics, allowing the visual novel to instill a great deal of nuance into each character's movements and facial expressions. Even without any spoken dialogue, you get a good sense of who a person is and how they would sound within seconds of meeting them, and Maddy is the best example--she pulls off a variety of expressions that convey a mixture of snark, disdain, and coy playfulness. This is clearly a young woman who's very intelligent and driven and doesn't enjoy suffering some of the idiots she's forced to serve.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Grand Theft Auto V Online will have exclusive content on next-generation platforms. It was previously announced at the PS5 reveal event that GTA V and a standalone version of GTA Online will be coming to next-gen, sometime in the second half of 2021.During the latest financial earnings call for Take Two, Rockstar's parent company, the company said that the next generation version of GTA Online will have "additional content exclusive to the new consoles and PC." No further details were given about the content during the call, but the new content coming in 2021 shows Rockstar's commitment to GTA V and GTA Online.The next-gen versions of GTA V and the standalone GTA Online will feature a slew of technical improvements, visual upgrades, and performance enhancements that will take advantage of the new consoles. Take-Two president Karl Slatoff said that the improvements will include making a "more responsive" version of the game. All of this information was a reiteration of the company's previous announcement about the next-gen version of GTA V and GTA Online.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

It seems cars are finally arriving in Fortnite this week. The game's "Joy Ride" update will roll out on Wednesday, August 5, developer Epic announced on Twitter, and it appears the patch will introduce the long-absent vehicles to the battle royale shooter.Epic hasn't shared any other details about the Joy Ride update beyond its release date, although the announcement was accompanied by an image showing off a blue and red car. "It's not just a name. It's a warning," the tweet reads, effectively confirming that cars will be the focal point of the update.It’s not just a name. It’s a warning. Experience the #FortniteJoyRide Update on 8.5.2020 pic.twitter.com/fxgCgAMpYk — Fortnite (@FortniteGame) August 3, 2020We've known that cars were coming to Fortnite since Season 3 kicked off back in June, but up until now, the vehicles weren't actually available in the game. Epic had previously said that more areas and features would begin appearing as the water that flooded Season 3's map gradually receded, but it wasn't clear exactly when cars would be added; back on July 23, Epic said the vehicles still wouldn't be ready for "a few weeks."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Rock of Ages 3: Make & Break is a carefree hop, skip, and jump through world history, art, and absurdist meme culture. One moment it's 800 BC and the set is dressed in the myths of ancient Greece, the next it's 1500 AD and the sun god gazes down on Tenochtitlan, then a bit later it's the very beginning of time and everything is spaghetti and meatballs. It never dwells, never stops to make sense of it all. Historical figures pop their cartoonish heads into view for a brief visual gag before disappearing, bit players tossed aside in a bygone round of whack-a-mole.Fittingly, Rock of Ages 3 is best enjoyed with the same restless approach in mind. Structured as a series of discrete challenges, each hectic bout of arcade action lasting no more than a couple of frantic minutes, it feels designed to be experienced in short, sharp bursts. Don't linger. Dip in and, when you feel the frustration levels rising, dip out, move on to a new challenge, or simply come back later.The core conceit revolves around the idea that all war, throughout all history, is essentially fought by lobbing rocks at each other. The Rock of Ages series has so far focused on one very specific interpretation of this idea: You have to roll a rock through a trap-laden obstacle course to attack the enemy castle at the end. Controlling the roll takes some adjustment. The initial temptation is to embrace the top speed of your chosen boulder and should be resisted. Move too fast and you won't have the handling to steer through the crowded tracks, let alone slow down in time to make the next corner. Rocks don't have brakes as such, and it took me some time to get used to easing off the accelerator when required and knowing when my built-up momentum was optimal to negotiate what lay ahead.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Take-Two reported its earnings on Monday, and the Grand Theft Auto company is flying high. Take-Two pulled in $831.3 million for its fiscal first quarter, the highest ever amount of money it's made in a Q1 in the company's 26-year history. The uptick in sales was driven by the pandemic--people are staying at home, playing more games, and spending more money on them.Take-Two's microtransaction business, which is called "recurrent consumer spending," rose by a whopping 52 percent during the quarter to $482,153,999, led by GTA Online, NBA 2K20, Red Dead Online, and Borderlands 3."With more people staying at home, we have experienced, and are continuing to experience, heightened levels of engagement and net bookings growth-to-date," Take-Two said. "The full extent of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to our business, operations, and financial results will depend on numerous evolving factors that we are not able to predict."Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

As you're slinking around air ducts and planning a surprise attack on a helpless scientist, it's difficult not to feel empowered by Carrion's approach to horror. Here you aren't the one slowly peeking around each corner to make sure you're safe--you're the one doing the hunting, leaving a gory trail of devastation as you pick apart an underground laboratory one department at a time. When Carrion gives you the tools to be the best betentacled killing machine you can be, it's a satisfying monster simulator with engaging puzzles and clever combat, but it falters in moments where you don't feel as in control as you should be.Carrion's star is undoubtedly the gooey red monster you play as. Simply moving around is immensely satisfying. It feels as though you're constantly floating, with extending appendages latching onto surfaces around you to feed into the illusion of chaotic but calculated traversal. By making movement effortless, Carrion lets you appreciate how good it looks in motion, from squeezing your red mass into a narrow air duct to transforming into a school of parasitic worms to swim through grates. There are a handful of instances where your size makes orienting yourself slightly challenging, but they're small teething issues as you learn to navigate around.When you consume humans, you gain life and grow, while the reverse happens when you take damage. As you progress through each level, you unlock new abilities which are directly tied to your current size. When you're at your largest, you can cause devastating damage by sending a flurry of tentacles forward and viciously pulling anything in their way towards you. At a medium size, you can encase yourself in spikes and roll around a room dealing damage in all directions, while your smallest sizes offer more utility-style abilities like stealth and a handy stun attack. Tying abilities to your size makes combat dynamic, where you're constantly watching the damage you take and adjusting your strategy as you go. It takes a bit to get comfortable with the sudden ability shifts in the heat of the moment, but getting access to movesets that let you dominate or flee a fight when you need them feels great.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition is available now on Steam, bringing the strange and wonderful Frog Fractions to Steam for the first time. And, lo-and-behold, it secretly contains a whole other game within it--albeit one you'll have to pay real money for.Frog Fractions, which famously hides its real intentions behind the veneer of a frog-centric maths game, comes with a piece of DLC on Steam--Hop's Iconic Hat, which adds a funky new hat to the game's frog. The $8 hat is priced just high enough to turn people away--but check under the brim and you'll find a new game.PC Gamer is reporting that the hat awakens something new in the game. From the menu screen, there is a toggle for whether or not you want Hop to wear the hat. Put it on, and you'll get a whole new experience--one that PC Gamer doesn't spoil, and we'll do the same. Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

I love two types of sci-fi stories: the ones that are very dark and heavy with themes about humanity's failures, and the ones that are corny and feel like the product of someone who thinks space is a playground for fun. Destroy All Humans is firmly in the second category, embracing its cheesy story and dialogue, creating an entertaining sandbox for destruction that's still satisfying 15 years after its first release, even if it's bogged down by poor audio quality and shallow stealth mechanics.The story plays out as a B-grade sci-fi movie set in the late '50s/early '60s. Over the six hours of campaign missions you'll laugh (or groan) at the majority of jokes and bad one-liners, making for an overall enjoyable experience. The premise of two aliens completely taking over America because humans are wildly incompetent is too ridiculous to take seriously, and the game embraces the absurdity well.The voice work from the original release helps up the camp level, but the reused dialogue raises a few issues. The audio quality is flat-out bad by modern standards; its low-fidelity really sticks out when paired with the updated graphics. The characters don't have very many lines, either, resulting in annoying repetition very early on. Be prepared to hear about communists hundreds of times before you're done.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Paul Thomas Anderson's next film, which is currently gearing up to enter production, may have found a leading man. The Hollywood Reporter has heard that Bradley Cooper is currently in talks to star in the director's next film.The film, which will center around a child actor in the San Fernando Valley in the 1970s, is still very much under wraps. It is not known what role Cooper is circling, but the film is reportedly planning to begin shooting in the fall.Anderson's previous film, Phantom Thread, was a huge critical success when it released in 2017. Other previous credits include Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood.Bradley Cooper is has been nominated for eight Oscars since 2013, including Best Actor, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, and Picture (as a producer), but is yet to win. Last year, Cooper was a producer on Joker. The star of that film, Joaquin Phoenix, previously starred in two films by Anderson: The Master and Inherent Vice.Anderson's eight films have earned a total of nine acting Oscar nominations and one win (Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood). Hopefully more details about this film--including a name--will emerge soon.Info from Gamespot.com

Maid of Sker begins in earnest as you walk under a burgundy banner advertising the Sker Hotel's grand reopening. The ivy-covered building looks more castle than inn, with gray stone walls and a central spire flanked by turrets. It's an imposing piece of architecture, starkly distinct from the sun-bleached wilderness that surrounds it. Passing under that banner and into the dark and secluded inn is the playable version of that moment in a horror flick when things in idyllic suburbia go sideways, or when a shark shows up to wreck a perfectly nice day at the beach. The banner is the dividing line between Maid of Sker's "before" and "after." Unfortunately, much of the evocative promise of the before disappears the moment you enter the after.We move through this story as Thomas Evans, a composer who has traveled to Sker Point, a rocky peninsula on the southern coast of Wales, to rescue his lover Elisabeth. She grew up here, the daughter of renowned singer Prudence Williams--the titular Maid of Sker. Her father, owner of the reopening hotel on the Point, intends for Elisabeth to take up the mantle now that her famous mother has passed and to become the star attraction, drawing visitors to the isolated land. She tells Thomas that she has refused and that, as a result, her father has locked her up until she acquiesces.But as Thomas arrives at Sker's abandoned train station, it becomes clear that Sker Point has descended into supernatural chaos. Elisabeth has sent Thomas her mother's locket and asked him to compose a song that serves as a musical counterpart to the melody within. This will, in some way that remains unclear for much of the game, help defeat the "darkness gathering here." In his quest, Thomas needs to explore the hotel and surrounding grounds to collect four brass cylinders scattered throughout, then plug them into her father's harmonium, a massive pipe organ that dominates the hotel's central hall.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

EA Sports has published a new blog post about what's coming to Madden NFL 22. That is not a typo. Even before the release of Madden NFL 21, the developer has begun to discuss some its plans for next year's game as part of a new level of transparency at the studio.Producer Seann Graddy said in the blog post that, while it's "still very early" for Madden NFL 22, the development team is already planning for areas they would like to focus on.With the caveat that Madden NFL 22 is only in pre-production, Graddy outlined some of the areas that EA Sports may address, but isn't committing to definitively just yet.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

The Xbox team has lost one of its most veteran staffers. William Stillwell, who joined Microsoft all the way back in 2000, has announced that he has resigned to take on a new role somewhere else."For the first time in two decades, I am a free agent. Look out world!" he wrote on Twitter. "Going to miss all the great people I had the honor of working with over the years, but I'm excited to start the next chapter in my career. Stay tuned..."Stillwell did not share any further details about where he's headed next or if he will stay in games.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com

Nowhere Prophet recently released on Switch, PS4, and Xbox One, following the deck-building its 2019 release on PC, and it marks the first time that publisher No More Robots has released a game for Sony's system. The publisher also has Descenders coming to PS4 on August 25--but if sales of their first release are an indicator of what to expect, the publisher might withdraw from releasing on Sony systems completely.Kotaku Australia picked up on tweets from Mike Rose, the owner of No More Robots, indicating that sales for Nowhere Prophet on PS4 have been terrible. Although he does not provide specific figures, sales were much, much higher on Switch than PS4--20 times higher, in fact.Finally had our first PS4 launch last week!If you're wondering whether smaller games sell on PS4 right nowOur opening weekend sales on PS4 were 5% of our Nintendo Switch opening weekend sales hahaaka we barely sold anything at all on PS4 — Mike Rose (@RaveofRavendale) August 3, 2020In another tweet, Rose said that the Xbox One and Switch ports made enough money to cover the cost of porting within hours of release, but the PS4 version has struggled so much that Rose can't see the publisher releasing more games on the system in the future.Continue Reading at GameSpotInfo from Gamespot.com