https://www.thegamer.com Here’s where you’ll find all our extremely correct opinions on all things gaming. We publish in-depth reports, critical analysis, reactions to the news, and lots of thoughts about Pokemon. Wed, 31 May 2023 18:00:18 GMT en-US hourly 60 I’m in an incredibly privileged position, I know that. Sure, I was born in a country that speaks English, I have two parents who love me, I’m white, all that usual stuff. But also, I’m a games journalist. Video games are one of the most expensive pieces of media to buy regularly, and publishers email me every day with free games. Some big, some small, some medium sized. Good, bad, indie, triple-A, VR, RPG, FPS, TRPG, JRPG, CRPG, ARPG, all the letters. So I’m well placed to say to you - go find a game.

]]> Wed, 31 May 2023 18:00:18 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/game-recommendations-find-new-releases/ Tears of the Kingdom’s Tulin is a little sweetie. The young Rito is spunky, determined, and ready to take on the world for the good of his fellow bird people. He has a cute scream/warble that he lets out every time you ask him to gust. And his presence makes me want to deactivate his summoning seal every time I shoot a bird for its precious drumsticks, like an adulterous movie character turning their spouse’s picture down during an illicit tryst. Immersion! So, you know, I like the kid. But he’s no Revali.

]]> Wed, 31 May 2023 17:30:15 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/revalis-gale-missing-tears-of-the-kingdom-tulin/ For all intents and purposes, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an open-world RPG. Link grows from a shirtless scrub to a many-hearted, heavily armored battlebot and mech master over the course of the game. You pursue an overarching main quest while completing side quests along the way, and there are many characters to meet, mysteries to uncover, and villages to visit along the way. It’s a better version of the same framework we’ve seen in countless games like Horizon Forbidden West, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and — dare I say it — The Witcher 3.

]]> Wed, 31 May 2023 16:30:27 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-xp-rpg-finishing-quest/ In theory, each year is a better time to start gaming than the last - it’s not like games from the past get deleted, and… wait. I’m hearing they do in fact get deleted all the time as we move from console to console and fail to account for backwards compatibility or availability in an all-digital world. It’s for that reason that remakes have become so common, and why this year really is the best time to get into gaming.

]]> Wed, 31 May 2023 16:15:26 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/2023-best-year-new-gamer-system-shock-resident-evil-totk/ Magic: The Gathering has always been a mystery to me. I knew the word ‘planeswalker’ and that cards could fetch exorbitant prices even before the Logan Paul-infused Pokemon TCG boom, and that was about it. A flatmate’s boyfriend once tried to teach me the rules of the game in university and it went over my head. I didn’t even really get the mana system, let alone all the colours. Perhaps it’s not that complicated, but I’m used to Pokemon, one of the simplest TCGs around.

]]> Wed, 31 May 2023 16:00:26 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/magic-the-gathering-lord-of-the-rings-tales-of-middle-earth-learning-arena/ I have played over 130 hours of Tears of the Kingdom and don’t plan on stopping anytime soon, so it’s fair to say that I’ve done my fair share of adventuring in this newly torn asunder Hyrule. But despite all of the time I have put into the game, I’ve played it relatively safe when it comes to constructing convoluted contraptions. I have built a few things, but once I find something that works, I just keep building that same thing over and over again. One small quest, however - a task so menial and straightforward - finally brought out the mindset of what this game wants me to do.

]]> Wed, 31 May 2023 15:30:22 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-lurelin-village-log-quest-gone-wrong/ Between Star Wars Jedi and Spider-Man, ‘non-canon’ endings feel like an increasing rarity in the world of licensed games. We don’t get much choice in how stories unfold anymore, since so many developers are striving for a definitive cinematic experience. You don’t go to the theatre and take a vote to make Captain America side with Thanos. But games aren’t movies, and letting the player take control is a key part of how we experience them.

]]> Wed, 31 May 2023 15:00:20 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/spider-man-2-web-of-shadows-symbiote-morality/ I had grand plans this weekend. Strictly speaking, I had absolutely no plans, but that was the exciting part. There was no pile of washing to do, no lawn to mow, no annoying chores to eat into any spare minutes you get to yourself. What’s more, my fiance had made solo plans with our daughter, so I wouldn’t be reading the same two books over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, I love The Very Hungry Caterpillar as much as the next guy, but on your sixteenth read of the day it loses its charm a little.

]]> Wed, 31 May 2023 14:28:51 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/sometimes-the-grind-isnt-worth-it/ Magic: The Gathering has finally shown off one of its biggest crossovers so far, with the debut of Lord Of The Rings: Tales Of Middle-earth. First revealed back in 2021, we’ve been waiting a long time to see Frodo, Gandalf, Boromir, and more show up in-game, and Wizards has now fully shown off what that entails.

]]> Tue, 30 May 2023 19:12:10 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/magic-the-gathering-mtg-lord-of-rings-tales-middle-earth-debut-preview-reveals/ Sony showed off Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 last week and there was a lot to be excited about. The game has an expanded map, a story with interesting angles on Kraven, Lizard, and the Symbiote that I can’t wait to see play out, and cool new powers for Peter. But what has me the most stoked is the ability to swap between its two heroes.

]]> Tue, 30 May 2023 19:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/gta-5s-protagonist-swapping-system-lives-on-spider-man-2/ Last week’s PlayStation Showcase set off a wave of discourse, as everyone watched it quickly found out that nobody else on the internet agreed whether the show was good, bad, or a secret third thing. I’m pretty firmly in the last category, but not because there weren’t any games I wanted to play.

]]> Tue, 30 May 2023 18:00:18 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/playstation-showcase-less-exciting-aging/ To say Magic: The Gathering's Lord of the Rings: Tales Of Middle-earth is one of its most anticipated sets ever would be an understatement. From Aragorn to Sauron, and Tom Bombadil to Bill the Pony, there are dozens of characters from the Middle-earth canon in this set, grabbing the attention of both veteran MTG players and Tolkien fans alike.

]]> Tue, 30 May 2023 17:34:13 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/magic-the-gathering-mtg-lord-of-the-rings-tales-of-middle-earth-preview-spoilers/ Back when God of War: Ragnarok launched, I wrote about how certain elements of its design and technology refused to play nicely with my neurodivergent brain. My mind was convinced it needed to keep fiddling with specific graphical and mechanical configurations until it nailed that perfect sweet spot. This established an awkward stop-and-start momentum which never felt befitting of a narrative blockbuster that required my constant attention.

]]> Tue, 30 May 2023 17:00:19 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/tears-of-the-kingdom-adhd-ocd-neurodivergence/ Blizzard Entertainment can’t catch a break these days, but it’s hard to feel sympathy for this company that seems determined to step on every single rake spread across a garden of its own making. Overwatch 2’s cancellation of PvE made the already languishing shooter even more enemies, while the extended production cycle of Diablo 4, alongside a noticeable lack of other projects, has players losing faith. Let’s not forget high profile scandals involving sexual harassment and systemic toxicity that has turned the once untouchable studio into a shadow of its former self. Blizzard is far from a golden child anymore, it’s a tatty statue of rust and decay with few redeeming qualities. Knowing this, why keep digging deeper holes?

]]> Tue, 30 May 2023 16:45:15 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/diablo-4-fan-interview-questions-future-games-show/ When Tears of the Kingdom is blown up on a big screen, hills are stretched, models are fuzzy, and the environments lack the usual obsession with minor details we see in modern games. Most people don’t care because its art direction is stellar, the sandbox tools are like nothing we’ve seen before, and it runs incredibly well despite seamlessly juggling three distinct worlds. For some reason, gamers aren’t okay with prioritising gameplay over visual fidelity unless it’s on a Nintendo console, as Spider-Man 2’s new trailer was immediately met with controversy for not looking current-gen enough. I have no idea what that means other than gamers wanting a generational leap like PS1 to PS2, but when you’re at the top of the mountain, how much higher can you go?

]]> Tue, 30 May 2023 16:30:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/spider-man-2-god-of-war-ragnarok-ratchet-and-clank-rift-apart-generational-sequels-unrealistic/ Street Fighter 5 was a valuable lesson for Capcom. It was the last game before the publisher entered a period that many consider its renaissance. Resident Evil 7, Monster Hunter World, and Devil May Cry 5 all sold millions and were subject to critical acclaim, reversing the fortunes of a developer who for an entire console generation was falling behind the competition. Slowly but surely, things started to change. Looking back, Street Fighter 5 was an outright failure.

]]> Tue, 30 May 2023 15:30:18 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/street-fighter-6-fighting-game-tutorials-newcomers-capcom/ Everyone is excited for Spider-Man 2. Everyone apart from the losers lying about the water, at least. There’s been a lot of talk over how the Symbiote factors into the story, as well as into the gameplay, alongside speculation around Kraven, Lizard, Venom, and Wraith. One villain conspicuous by her absence though was Screwball, and some seem to see this as a cause for celebration. If she really is gone though, the game will always feel like it’s missing something.

]]> Tue, 30 May 2023 15:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/screwball-return-spider-man-2-villain/ Despite her literal mask of confidence, Mileena is the most insecure and tragic character in Mortal Kombat. Her entire reason for being revolves around Kitana, who she will always be compared to and never be greater than. Worst yet, Kitana is the closest Mileena has to family, but also the furthest from what she could ever be.

]]> Tue, 30 May 2023 14:28:36 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/mortal-kombat-1-mileena-story-kitana-sisters-happy-ending/ Assassin’s Creed Mirage looks good. After three gigantic games that transformed the series into sprawling action RPGs, Mirage is taking AC back to its stealth-action roots. I've enjoyed the new direction, but I’m stoked to see a major release scaling down for what appears to be a more focused game. But Ubisoft’s boring house style is preventing me from getting too excited for Mirage, even if everything else about it seems right up my alley.

]]> Mon, 29 May 2023 20:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/assassins-creed-mirage-ubisoft-house-style-graphics-aesthetic/ As Nintendo showed off more of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in the run-up to release, a contingent of gamers whined about how it wasn’t a ‘real sequel’ because it was reusing the map from Breath of the Wild. I never agreed with this idea. Wonderful possibilities open up when developers are willing to reuse assets, and Tears of the Kingdom’s wells are a great example.

]]> Mon, 29 May 2023 19:00:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/wells-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-builds-on-breath-of-the-wild/ Oh look, it’s another season of Gaming Discourse! The topic this time? Asset reuse. According to people who have never given actual game development a more fully-formed thought than ‘if I won the lottery, I’d make the game of my dreams’, a developer reusing assets that they already have access to is pure laziness. The current victims of this discourse are the big open world titles du jour, Tears of the Kingdom and Spider-Man 2. These are small voices amplified by Twitter’s baffling algorithm, but it’s a debate that’s been bandied around the internet for years.

]]> Mon, 29 May 2023 18:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/asset-reuse-confidence-not-laziness/ Another year, another Lord of the Rings adaptation under fire. The same week as Ismael Cruz Córdova revealed that Amazon hired an on-set therapist to help actors fight against racist backlash while filming The Rings of Power’s second season (abuse which racists then denied and demanded receipts for), people are angry that Magic: The Gathering’s Aragorn is black.

]]> Mon, 29 May 2023 17:30:15 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/magic-the-gathering-aragorn-backlash-another-racist-trap/ It’s endearing how self-sustaining fandoms have become. Even after years have passed with no sequels, spin-offs, or even acknowledgment their favourite media exists, hardened creatives keep a collective passion alive with new art, fiction, discussions, drama, and love for shows, films, games, and books that mean the world to them. She-Ra is the epitome of such dedication.

]]> Mon, 29 May 2023 16:45:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/she-ra-spop-caps-twitter-catradora-kiss-fandom/ Hot Tip: Do not develop feelings for a fictional fishman through years of fanfiction, fanart, and headcanons. Hot Tip 2: Do not then jump into Tears of the Kingdom with the expectation that your homosexual aquatic fantasies will soon come true after returning to Zora’s Domain with unrequited love on your mind. Hot Tip 3: Do not then plot to murder his fiancée in revenge.

]]> Mon, 29 May 2023 16:15:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/tears-of-the-kingdom-sidon-link-yona-engagement-gay-zora/ Naughty Dog could make a credible claim at being the best video game studio in the world. The Last of Us Parts 1 and 2 are some of the most revered games of all time, and unlike other beloved masterpieces like Tears of the Kingdom and Elden Ring, TLOU is also noted for its moving characters and deeply thematic narrative. In between those two legendary games, the studio casually pumped out Uncharted 4, maybe the best action game ever made, and has a storied history through Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter. I hope Factions 2 and its multiplayer ambitions don't throw that reputation away.

]]> Mon, 29 May 2023 16:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/multiplayer-live-service-factions-last-of-us-naughty-dog-delay/ The Little Mermaid is a pretty accurate live-action recreation of the original film. If you like the 1989 cartoon, you’ll probably like this one. Of course, that in itself can be controversial - if it’s so safe, what does this version offer that hasn’t been done before? The realistic animals, though well voiced (Daveed Diggs’ Sebastian a particular standout) are naturally less expressive than their animated counterparts, and this new version seems to have very little of substance to say about that source material. I expected that, so it didn’t really bother me. What I was struck by though was how much it wasted Halle Bailey’s voice.

]]> Mon, 29 May 2023 15:30:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/the-little-mermaid-halle-bailey-voice-disney-remake/ Assassin’s Creed Mirage looks great. Somehow I think I’m in the minority by saying this, but it’s exactly what I want for the series. It’s a return to its stealthy roots, with plenty of parkour and assassinations galore. It doesn’t look like it’s got a skill tree, and there’s certainly no open warfare on display in the early trailers, so consider me happy. This is exactly what I wanted for the series, and I thought it was what everyone else wanted, too.

]]> Mon, 29 May 2023 15:00:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/assassins-creed-cant-do-anything-right/ Tears of the Kingdom is somehow everything we all wanted, nothing like we expected, and still weighed down with the biggest controversy New Zelda has wrought. It's a wonderful conundrum. I remain mostly an outsider to the world of Tears of the Kingdom, untouched by its magic, so I can watch from afar with no real personal stakes. I like to think this helps me see the bigger picture, and it's remarkable that a game made under so much pressure has consistently managed to make exactly the right choice at every turn.

]]> Mon, 29 May 2023 14:30:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/tears-of-the-kingdom-perfect-balance-listening-ignoring-fans-totk-zelda/ The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a shoo-in for my Game of the Year. I just can’t stop playing the open world sequel even after finishing an 80 hour playthrough for my review. There is so much I missed, from game-changing abilities to cute little discoveries waiting off the beaten path. Nintendo has done it again, altering the world of video games with ideas that will blaze yet another trail others will follow.

]]> Mon, 29 May 2023 14:00:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/nintendo-friend-codes-virtual-console-legacy-switch/ The digital age is upon us. We have PlayStation and Xbox consoles with no disc drives, and the need for each platform to have a robust library of games for their respective subscription services is at an all-time high. Digital sales numbers far exceed physical ones, and the convenience of being able to visit a digital storefront and buy a game will always be more appealing to most people than pulling a game off the shelf. Despite all that, I can’t see a single good reason for Remedy Entertainment and Epic Games to decide against a physical release for Alan Wake 2.

]]> Mon, 29 May 2023 10:32:56 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/alan-wake-2-digital-only-game-bad-no-right/ The Writer’s Guild of America went on strike three weeks ago and is still going strong. There’s speculation that things have gotten so bad in Hollywood that SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and the DGA (Directors Guild of America) may soon follow. And the studios seem bizarrely hellbent on making sure that happens.

]]> Sun, 28 May 2023 18:00:18 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/wga-strike-max-credits-dga-sag-aftra/ Just by virtue of being brightly coloured and fun instead of grimy and serious, Foamstars was one of the most memorable games in this week’s PlayStation Showcase. It has stayed lodged in our brains long after the memories of the shadowy shooters have faded, but it’s also catching some heat. Foamstars is just a Splatoon rip-off, comes the cry from the gallery. But is that really a bad thing?

]]> Sun, 28 May 2023 17:30:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/foamstars-what-splatoon-needs-rip-off-genre/ Daedalic Entertainment’s The Lords of the Rings: Gollum didn’t look good when it was first revealed, with its entire concept failing to excite thanks to a confusing take on the character and yet another game in this franchise bound to the smouldering grey dunes of Mordor. We held out hope regardless that this puzzle platformer would somehow deliver on its ideas.

]]> Sun, 28 May 2023 17:00:15 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/gollum-reviews-bugs-glitches-lord-of-the-rings-bad/ Tears of the Kingdom is a nearly perfect game. Its puzzles? Brilliant. Its physics? Incredible. Its story? One of the best Zelda games, if not the best Zelda game. The game is an amazing achievement, and not just because it found a way to overshadow its predecessor, which itself is considered one of the greatest games of all time. Actually, that probably is why it’s an amazing achievement. But Tears of the Kingdom has one major problem.

]]> Sun, 28 May 2023 16:30:14 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/the-legend-of-zelda-addison-sign-holder-screw-himself/ Technology is supposed to improve with each new generation, though purists will often hold onto what came before. In music, we have moved from vinyl to tape to CD to MP3 to streaming, and while some cling to the magic crackle of vinyl, few today will tell you that CDs are the best way to listen to music. Film too has its different film stock and cameras, right up to our modern day 4K IMAX 3D.

]]> Sun, 28 May 2023 16:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/file-size-too-big-mortal-kombat-1-100gb/ If seven-year-old me could have played The Lord of the Rings: Gollum back in 2001 the fear I felt of its title character might have dissipated. When I was a kid, there was nothing I was more afraid of than Gollum. Later on in adolescence, I would develop more rational fears, like ‘heights’ and ‘the meaninglessness of life,' but from the first moment I saw the lantern-eyed leech in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, I was fascinated and terrified in equal measure.

]]> Sun, 28 May 2023 15:31:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/the-lord-of-the-rings-gollum-game-childhood-fear/ One of the main takeaways from Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s gameplay debut during this week’s PlayStation Showcase was how much it looked like the original from 2007. We’re praising this game as a bold return to form, instead of a smaller title in a sea of leviathans that harkens back to the past out of desperation. All before the series moves on with its vision of bloated, live-service worlds wrought with content that doesn’t mean anything in Assassin’s Creed Infinity. Mirage is a side project, and is playing us like a damn fiddle.

]]> Sun, 28 May 2023 15:01:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/assassins-creed-mirage-classic-gameplay-history-past-ubisoft/ The best thing about Red Dead Redemption 2 was how ridiculously slow-paced it was. With its massive map, byzantine fast travel system, and epic runtime, it took forever to finish, and every little thing I did while playing it also took forever. With Take-Two Interactive's projected earnings for next year pointing to a Grand Theft Auto 6-sized release, my only hope is that Rockstar's follow-up to RDR2 is even slower.

]]> Sun, 28 May 2023 14:30:15 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/grand-theft-auto-gta-6-routine-rdr2-totk/ You’d struggle to make me sit down to watch a two-hour film at short notice, but throw on an obtuse video essay about a Doom mod I’ve never heard of and I’ll eat that sucker up without delay. This is precisely what happened over the past weekend. A new video from Power Pak delves deep into an unsettling experience known simply as MyHouse.WAD. Uploaded by an unknown user several months ago, what many assumed was nothing more than a recreation of a player’s house turned out to be a horrifying foray into liminal spaces, repressed trauma, and a surprisingly touching exploration of grief. It’s a triumph expressed through the eyes of a shooter that came out over three decades ago, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

]]> Sun, 28 May 2023 14:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/my-house-doom-mod-story-gameplay-mystery/ As much as I hate the tremendously toxic waste of time that is the Console War, I don’t mind a bit of friendly rivalry between the Big Two. After this week’s PlayStation Showcase, Microsoft took a playful shot at Sony on Twitter. Xbox shared an image of all 12 games shown during the PlayStation Showcase that are also coming to Xbox, with the caption “What a good looking group” and a cool guy sunglasses emoji that I can’t recreate, but you know the one I’m talking about. In a cheeky way, Xbox is pointing out how few exclusives Sony was able to show during its own showcase, while also flipping the current narrative that Xbox doesn’t have any games.

]]> Sat, 27 May 2023 20:34:18 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/playstation-showcase-xbox-cross-platform-marathon-snake-eater-immortals-alan-wake/ If you’re a Metal Gear Solid fan, it’s probably best to remain skeptical about the recently announced Snake Eater remake, at least until we see the game in action. The trailer didn’t do much to capture the vibe of the original (especially compared to the tonal masterpiece that is the original Snake Eater trailer), and if the rumors are true, the studio developing it, Virtuous, is relatively unproven.

]]> Sat, 27 May 2023 19:39:44 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/snake-eater-remake-metal-gear-solid-delta-kojima-confusing/ We all have games that we love, but we know aren't all that great. Those solid, dependable 7/10 games that we love despite their flaws, maybe even because of them. My favourite Saints Row is 4, sue me. X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Fable 3, Tomb Raider: Underworld, Mad Max, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex... none of them are classics, but they are beloved by me and, quite possibly, me alone. I understand that these misfits aren't for everyone, and I can see where they're janky, shallow, derivative, and even bland. I'm perfectly fine with liking something that I know isn't all that great. But many Days Gone fans seem incapable of this understanding, and as talk of a sequel yet again rears its head, it's time to dig into why.

]]> Sat, 27 May 2023 17:30:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/days-gone-2-sequel-not-coming/ Over the years, triple-A development cycles have gotten painfully long. Rockstar launched three generation-defining Grand Theft Auto games in three years on the PlayStation 2, but if GTA 6 arrives in 2024, it will have been 11 years since the series' last game. Similarly, Naughty Dog's Jak & Daxter trilogy all hit the PS2 over the span of three years, while The Last of Us Part 2 was seven years in the making. Of the developers that were around at that time and still operating today, Insomniac is one of the few that can still pump games out at a steady rate.

]]> Sat, 27 May 2023 17:00:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/insomniac-triple-a-spider-man-ratchet-clank-rift-apart/ Tears of the Kingdom has a thousand systems that all interact with each other in myriad different ways. I dread to think what is going on under the hood in order to make it all happen, what horrors we’d see if allowed a peek behind the curtain. Recall alone is magic in action, but giving Ultrahanded contraptions accurate physics no matter what creations players make is nothing short of spectacular. When players are building phallic mechs and functioning engines, you see the power behind this Zelda game.

]]> Sat, 27 May 2023 16:31:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/tears-of-the-kingdom-underground-fight-club-brutal-trial-of-strength/ Final Fantasy 14 deals with some heavy topics and themes, the narrative becoming darker and more emotional with each passing expansion. Endwalker hit hard for me in particular, and I’ve written before about how it offers the perfect depiction of depression. After experiencing such a poignant conclusion to the Hydaelyn and Zodiark story, Warriors of Light have since enjoyed lighter content updates in a much deserved break after saving the entire universe.

]]> Sat, 27 May 2023 16:01:15 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/final-fantasy-14-xiv-best-content-often-silliest/ Spider-Man 2's gameplay reveal has taken the world by storm since it closed the PlayStation Showcase earlier this week, but nothing in life is perfect. If you were looking to find fault with the trailer, you will have found plenty. Kraven, despite a cool design that sticks to his comic origins, has an inescapably silly motivation. The decision to give Peter the symbiote suit, possibly at the cost of a true Venom character, could be seen as controversial or played out. The suits have new looks, which seem a little overdesigned. Peter's symbiote voice feels forced, although that may be the point. Some of Miles 'non-lethal' takedowns seem like false advertising. Those excited for the game will point out that these are minor criticisms, and they're right - but at least they're real criticisms. Complaints about the water are not, and they're extremely tiresome.

]]> Sat, 27 May 2023 15:31:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/spider-man-2-water-puddlegate-miles-morales/ Final Fantasy 16 is drawing closer, and as part of the final round of previews and interviews we’ve seen producer Naoki Yoshida whip out some takes. Known as the saviour of once maligned MMORPG Final Fantasy 14, Yoshida taking the wheel on a single player entry was viewed with ample excitement from fans, representing both a return to the series’ roots and a much-needed departure after a decade of mixed results by Square Enix.

]]> Sat, 27 May 2023 15:00:15 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/final-fantasy-getting-rid-of-numbers-naoki-yoshida/ I'll always love games with character creators that little bit more. There are some iconic bodies I have inhabited over the years, feeling the plight and the victories of Cloud Strife, Arthur Morgan, Lara Croft, and Bayonetta Nolastnamegiven. But nothing quite compares to building your own character from scratch.

]]> Sat, 27 May 2023 14:30:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/dungeons-dragons-character-creator-stressful-rewarding/ At the end of 2022, I started a replay of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, my first full replay since devouring the game on Wii U back in 2017. This run was fairly thorough. I did all the Divine Beasts again, sought out some secrets, like the King of the Mountain, that I hadn’t seen in my first playthrough, and generally played the hell out of it. Now, Tears of the Kingdom is here and I’m wishing I hadn’t.

]]> Sat, 27 May 2023 14:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/tloz-breath-of-the-wild-totk-2023-too-recent-replay/ Videos of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom have been going viral every day over on Twitter, and the things that impress me as a player are never the same things that impress actual game developers.

]]> Fri, 26 May 2023 18:00:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-game-dev-players-dont-understand/ The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, out this week, is the third console game in the past nine years to be primarily set in Mordor. Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel, Shadow of War, also set their action on Sauron’s doorstep. I haven’t played enough of Gollum to determine how well it uses the setting, but it’s a shame that so many Lord of the Rings games are dead set on using Tolkien’s grimmest region as their primary environment.

]]> Fri, 26 May 2023 17:00:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/lord-of-the-rings-games-mordor-gollum-middle-earth-shadow-war/ Any sports fan will tell you of the highs and lows of following their team through thick and thin. Last minute winners, heartbreaking losses, and skillful legends are carved into their memories. Right now, my team is pretty good, and for a long time it was very, very bad. Before that, we were tragically good, winning nothing despite our greatness. I understand the high of winning, and the gut-punch of just missing out. I know what it's like to think you just need one more player, one lucky break, one big bounce, and it's all sorted. You can't leave your team, so all you can do is hope the chips fall. But your games console is not a sports team. Stop treating it like one.

]]> Fri, 26 May 2023 16:45:15 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/sony-xbox-acquisitions-fanboys-celebration/ When I first watched the PlayStation Showcase, I came away thinking we hadn't been treated to very much game footage. Then as I listed all the games we had seen, I realised that most of them did come armed with some sort of gameplay, even if they were not the 12-minute spectacular we received from Spider-Man 2. I think part of the reason I didn't feel like I'd seen very much gameplay footage was because there wasn't much that impressed me. I don't mean that as a criticism of the games themselves, more the industry.

]]> Fri, 26 May 2023 16:15:15 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/neva-gameplay-gris-playstation/ The best thing, by far, about the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy is the wealth of behind the scenes features that accompany the special edition. To this day, there is no better documentary of how films are made and the work that goes into them from legions of people in every possible department. 26 hours of footage cover everything from props workers delicately slicing rubber hosing to make chainmail, to the actual forge used to make weapons, to the room-filling ‘bigatures’ of Minas Tirith and Isengard, to the cutting-edge CGI technology used to create the Balrog and other beasties too big for Weta’s incredible workshop.

]]> Fri, 26 May 2023 16:01:18 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/the-lord-of-the-rings-gollum-digital-art-exhibition-better-than-the-game/ A friend of mine wrote that Project Q feels like a fake leak from a ‘00s E3 press conference, a fan-designed peripheral that was never prototyped but got everyone all riled up in excitement anyway. Many have speculated that it looks like the Switch OLED has been given official DualSense Joy-Con, but I’d like to point out that Project Q doesn’t even have an OLED screen, just LCD, and that it’s not even bloody portable.

]]> Fri, 26 May 2023 15:30:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/playstation-project-q-wii-u/ Nintendo invites you to play The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom however you like. It doesn’t present any right or wrong answers for puzzles or combat encounters. The design philosophy is built around providing you with a few tools and limitless possibilities for how to use them. Gameplay is weakest when it takes this freedom away and forces you down a binary path of progression, like temple puzzles or shrines that tear away rampant experimentation in favour of traditional design the series will benefit from leaving behind. In a way, it invites you to break the game.

]]> Fri, 26 May 2023 15:22:13 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/tears-of-the-kingdom-patching-out-duplication-glitches-is-a-massive-bummer/ Our expectations are too high. I can’t blame the gamers for having them, especially with a company like PlayStation spending the previous console generation defining itself as an industry leader with untouchable exclusives like The Last of Us Part 2, Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn, and God of War. The majority of its exclusives are blockbuster slam dunks, and after years of them it’s natural to expect more at a similar cadence. But realistically, it will never happen again.

]]> Fri, 26 May 2023 15:00:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/playstation-showcase-ps5-exclusives-indies-third-party-expectations/ It’s always the characters who draw me in. Whether it’s a video game, movie, book, or TV show, the characters come first. Plot, action, themes, visuals, all come second to who the story is about. Not what, not when, not why. Who. Most of my favourite games are driven by character work. Mass Effect 2 is all about delving into individual arcs. Red Dead Redemption 2 is the best character study I’ve seen committed to polygons. Life is Strange is full of characters I can’t help but connect to. But nothing made me feel for characters more than The Walking Dead.

]]> Fri, 26 May 2023 14:00:15 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/the-walking-dead-best-cast-characters-lee-clementine/ I rate this week’s PlayStation showcase moderately high. It wasn’t packed with surprises, since most of the big reveals were things we already knew about (sorry, Snake Eater), but there were a fair few games shown that I’m looking forward to. The reason I’m not over the moon about the presentation, despite how cool Spider-Man 2 looked and the fact that I’m now tempted to shell out $550 for a PSVR2 for Resident Evil 4 alone, is the noticeable lack of Sony first-party games. This showcase didn’t give me a good sense of what Sony’s main studios other than Bungie have planned for the future, and I can’t help thinking about the games that weren’t revealed more than the games that were. Chief among them, the previously announced multiplayer The Last of Us game. If this wasn’t the right time to finally unveil that, then when is?

]]> Fri, 26 May 2023 00:11:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/where-is-the-last-of-us-factions-2/ The most shocking moment of this week’s PlayStation Showcase was, without a doubt, the resurrection of Destiny’s long-deceased Hunter Vanguard, Cayde-6. In a teaser trailer for next year’s Destiny 2 expansion, The Final Shape, it was revealed that Ikora will reunite with Cayde on the other side of the portal that the Witness carved into The Traveler at the end of the Lightfall campaign. Cayde’s mysterious return more than five years after his execution at the hands of Uldren Sov is a huge surprise, and one that Destiny fans will surely have mixed feelings about. I never wanted Cayde to come back from the dead, but I’m so happy that he did.

]]> Thu, 25 May 2023 23:08:50 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/destiny-2-cayde-6-alive-the-final-shape-trailer/ Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 looks pretty cool. Insomniac Games finally broke cover during this week’s PlayStation Showcase to unveil an extensive gameplay presentation alongside a menacing introduction to Kraven the Hunter. As far as sequels go, it seems to incorporate everything we loved about the first game and Miles Morales into a more ambitiously grand superhero adventure filled with action, drama, and all of our favourite characters. Our hero also dons the Venom symbiote suit now, which means he is super-duper tough and grumpy.

]]> Thu, 25 May 2023 19:00:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/spider-man-2-symbiote-suit-puddlegate-all-venom-insomniac/ Spider-Man 2 got an extended look at the PlayStation Showcase last night and it looks like what we, in the biz, call a ‘true sequel’. There’s been a lot of talk recently about what exactly a game needs to do to earn the 2 in the title, culminating in some players claiming that Tears of the Kingdom didn’t look like a real sequel in the run-up to its release because it reused assets from Breath of the Wild.

]]> Thu, 25 May 2023 18:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/spider-man-2-true-sequel-totk-miles-morales/ There were a lot of reveals in Spider-Man 2's PlayStation Showcase trailer. Most notably, we saw Peter Parker don the symbiote suit, which brings with it new powers, but also new challenges. Presumably new responsibilities are in there somewhere too. Peter has all new attacks with this suit, but also seems to be affected emotionally, which would make sense given its parasitic nature. It has been confirmed that Venom will be in the game, voiced by Tony Todd, but it could yet be that Venom is Peter, rather than taking over Eddie Brock. We also saw Lizard, gameplay in the water, new web abilities, the confirmation of the likes of Black Cat returning, and our first look at Kraven the Hunter. But the most important reveal was for Wraith.

]]> Thu, 25 May 2023 16:31:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/spider-man-2-wraith-biggest-reveal/ Players aren’t happy with today’s PlayStation Showcase, and while some degree of bitching is always to be expected, I am astounded at what gamers have to say. There are some valid criticisms of the stream – there weren’t enough first-party games, barely any PlayStation exclusives, and too few gameplay trailers. There were some noted absences too, like Factions 2. But many comments have said that this year’s showcase was particularly bad because there were too many games that nobody cared about, like indies and new IPs. Complaining about the games not being established or big enough is mind-boggling to me.

]]> Thu, 25 May 2023 16:15:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/weird-playstation-showcase-2023-indie-games/ As an avid podcast listener, I’ve heard a lot of advertisements for Hunt A Killer in the last year, and I’ve always been intrigued by its core concept. Hunt A Killer’s main product is a subscription box that lets you unfold a single mystery over several sessions, but I had been hesitant to commit my time or money to a six-month subscription to a game I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy. These two standalone games, however, are much easier to get into, with session lengths of two hours or less.

]]> Thu, 25 May 2023 16:00:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/hunt-a-killer-new-standalone-game-homicide-heist-rip-rodeo/ Yet another big studio has announced it’ll be using artificial intelligence on its games in the future, despite the potential impact on the quality of its products and the real-world impacts the technology has on its employees. It was recently revealed that Blizzard will soon have an AI art-generating tool called Blizzard Diffusion, which is trained on Blizzard’s art to replicate Blizzard’s specific style. This comes in the wake of yet another round of game industry layoffs, which have affected studios both big and small.

]]> Thu, 25 May 2023 15:30:14 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/blizzard-diffusion-ai-art-tool-death-knell-creativity/ Okay, I take it back. I’ve long said that Assassin’s Creed is over, dead, and buried, and that it has departed so far from the essence of the original games that the series is barely about Assassins anymore. Mirage, however, has proved that Ubisoft is prepared to return to its roots, finally giving us a game where an Assassin acts like an Assassin. But I was immediately struck by a thought while watching the Mirage gameplay trailer streamed during the PlayStation Showcase – isn’t this just the original Assassin’s Creed?

]]> Thu, 25 May 2023 15:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/assassins-creed-mirage-2007-similarities-ubisoft/ PlayStation’s Showcase is getting mixed responses, and that alone is unheard of for a company so used to taking the world by storm and blowing its competition out of the water. As ever, your mileage may vary. Dragon’s Dogma 2, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, and Metal Gear Solid Delta/Triangle/Whatever were all warmly received, and we also saw a lot of Spider-Man 2. There was a decent amount of gameplay footage, but that meant little when we had a lack of games to begin with. PlayStation, what gives?

]]> Thu, 25 May 2023 14:30:15 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/does-playstation-have-any-games-showcase-disappointment-upcoming/ In news that shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point, the launch of Destiny 2’s Season of the Deep wasn’t the smoothest. The scheduled maintenance window, which was meant to end at 10am on Tuesday, was extended by an hour. Then it was extended another hour, then it was extended again until it finally launched sometime around 12:30pm. Once players could get into the game, many found themselves disconnecting from servers and getting kicked back into orbit. As if on cue, complaints started to fill up the replies of the Bungie Help Twitter account.

]]> Thu, 25 May 2023 02:07:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/i-cant-hear-the-destiny-players-complaining-because-im-too-busy-fishing/ Last year’s Witch Queen expansion ended with Season of the Seraph, which is probably my favorite season of Destiny ever. Everything about it was exceptional. Season of the Seraph had an exciting and unpredictable story that had us working with sworn enemies to rebuild an AI that can destroy worlds, only to have the rug pulled out from under us in the 11th hour - and I was absorbed by every second of it.

]]> Thu, 25 May 2023 00:59:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/destiny-season-of-the-deep-expecting-too-much/ Telly, a California-based start-up led by Pluto TV creator Ilya Pozin, wants to give you a TV for free. If you visit your company’s website, fill out a questionnaire, and provide it with some personal details, you can get one of 500,000 TVs it’s shipping out later this year, completely for free. Telly describes the free 55-inch 4K HDR display as “the biggest thing to happen to TV since color”. How can a start-up company afford to give away hundreds of thousands of TVs for free? If this whole thing sounds sketchy to you, congratulations, you’re smarter than the 100,000 people who have already signed up for this ad-driven, dystopian nightmare of a TV.

]]> Wed, 24 May 2023 23:52:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/telly-free-tv-user-data-privacy/ We are living in an historic era for video games. When you ask someone what the best year for games was, they’ll often point to 2004, which gave us Halo 2, Half-Life 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, World of Warcraft, and GTA: San Andreas, among others; or 2017, which gave us Fortnite, Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Resident Evil 7, and many more. But when we look back at 2023 years from now, it will be hard to deny that this wasn’t one of, if not the greatest years for video games ever - and it’s not even halfway over yet.

]]> Wed, 24 May 2023 23:39:50 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/game-awards-2023-nominees-spider-man-street-fighter-diablo-tears-of-the-kingdom/ In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I sprinted to upgrade my stamina as soon as I possibly could. Hyrule was big, and riding a horse sucked. At any given time you might run into a mountain that needed scaling, and the options at your disposal were limited. If you wanted to see all the game had to offer, you needed to get some green.

]]> Wed, 24 May 2023 19:01:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/stamina-less-important-botw-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom/ Where are the Divine Beasts in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom? I haven’t reached the end of the game yet, I’m not even close, but it seems like they’ve just disappeared off the face of Hyrule. After being created as imposing guardians of the land and then lying dormant for a century before performing a crucial role in Link’s defeat of Calamity Ganon in Breath of the Wild, you’re telling me that they just… Left? Well, good riddance.

]]> Wed, 24 May 2023 16:26:57 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-temples-pinnacle-of-design/ Spoiler warning for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

]]> Wed, 24 May 2023 16:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/tears-of-the-kingdom-zelda-memories-playable-geoglyphs/ Gamers threaten to boycott all the time. Pokemon Unite players are currently boycotting the game because a dog is too powerful. Battlefield players were enraged when women were added to the game. Pokemon Go players are leaving en masse because of anti-consumer price changes. Many of these are empty threats, more players either return after a short period or just play a different game. But for professional League of Legends players there’s far more at stake, and they’re currently willing to put their livelihoods on the line to protest changes to Riot’s game that are systematically dismantling the esport as they know it.

]]> Wed, 24 May 2023 15:31:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/league-of-legends-lcs-player-walkout-is-gaming-history-in-the-making/ Earlier today, Twitch sent a tweet that confused and annoyed Asians everywhere, in which it asked “If you could live a new adventure by being reincarnated as one of your favorite characters, who would you choose?”, complete with the hashtag AAPI and an image of nine different characters. They are, deservedly, getting roasted, with general disbelief that this was posted by an official account. In celebrating AAPI Month, Twitch has made it ever more apparent that it is run by out-of-touch white people.

]]> Wed, 24 May 2023 15:00:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/twitch-bad-tweet-aapi-month-racist-asian/ Decarnation feels like bait made specifically for me. Its pixel art style reminds me of a higher-definition version of old Pokemon games, with its big heads and lovingly shaded characters, which makes you think it might be a wholesome story. It’s far from that. This story-rich horror game utilises its retro aesthetics expertly to take you off guard, creating an unsettling atmosphere that left the hairs on my arms raised. Its story is compelling, even thrilling, and I was rooting for its protagonist to survive, but the game’s art and music really carry it through to the end.

]]> Wed, 24 May 2023 14:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/decarnation-review/ There's a shrine in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom that had me solidly stumped for about 30 minutes. It presented two rails moving up toward the finish line, and provided planks and fans to build a car to travel up it. The problem was that about halfway up, the two rails ended and were replaced by one central rail between them. To make it the rest of the way, I had to figure out how to get my rail car onto the central rail without falling off and having to start again. Eventually, I found a solution, but that process of tinkering towards it is where Tears of the Kingdom is at its most electric.

]]> Tue, 23 May 2023 19:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/zelda-totk-shrines-open-world-design-levels/ Microsoft still hasn’t recovered from the Xbox One reveal. It was a paradigm shifting moment in the gaming industry that turned what was once a leader in overblown console wars into a laughing stock. High on television, Kinect, and its own misguided view of a connected future, Xbox stumbled out of the event with over a decade of lost ground to recover. We still love to crack jokes about Don Mattrick’s awkward rambling of buzzwords associated with sports and TV, all while trying to sell us an overpriced console with not enough games and far too much baggage. Years later and Phil Spencer is still struggling to pick up all the pieces.

]]> Tue, 23 May 2023 17:00:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/xbox-one-reveal-anniversary-don-mattrick-kinect-tv-sports/ Yesterday was a head spinner for Spider-Man fans. After being starved of information on the game for months and anticipation ratcheting up ahead of what is likely to be a bulky deep dive into its features in this week’s PlayStation Showcase, the game finally sprung a leak - Miles Morales actor Nadji Jeter ‘confirmed’ the game had co-op. It was an exciting time. A few hours later, Insomniac slapped some tape over it like a salesman on the shopping channels, and the leak was unsprung. Despite the initial excitement at hearing something - anything - from the game, in the cold light of day the truth is clear. It’s great news that Spider-Man 2 has no co-op.

]]> Tue, 23 May 2023 17:00:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/good-thing-spider-man-2-no-co-op/ Earlier this week, Forever Voices AI announced the addition of Kaitlin “Amouranth” Siragusa as an AI companion on its Forever Companion platform, an artificial intelligence ‘companion’ that is available 24/7 for fans. The self-proclaimed ‘global leaders in turning influencers into AIs’ have previously launched the first ‘influencer turned AI girlfriend’, and now the popular streamer will be available for ‘virtual dates’ and ‘profound discussions’ through the two-way voice app.

]]> Tue, 23 May 2023 16:45:15 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/amouranths-new-ai-app-creepy-influencers-parasocial/ I was first introduced to the Final Fantasy series at a friend’s house when I was just a kid. The only thing that really stuck with me was, ‘teehee, you put the guy in a dress’, and I didn’t think much of it until I played my cousin’s copy of Final Fantasy 8 sometime later and fell utterly in love with it. To be fair to FF7, my friend didn’t exactly showcase its selling points in the brief time he kept showing me Cloud in a dress.

]]> Tue, 23 May 2023 16:15:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/final-fantasy-16-xiv-understands-the-importance-of-fan-service/ Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was a good game, but it wasn’t great. I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I enjoyed its successor, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, which improved on the game’s existing formula while keeping the spirit of what people loved about it. On top of letting you keep all the skills you’d unlocked in Fallen Order, it gave you more traversal abilities, added a variety of different stances to spice up gameplay, and provided quality of life improvements like fast travel. It’s more fun overall, and expanded on a story and character that finally absorbed me after the first game failed to capture my attention.

]]> Tue, 23 May 2023 16:00:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/spider-man-2-star-wars-jedi-survivor/ In the belly of the Wind Temple, on your way to one of the hidden locks that disables the central air vent, you’ll find a treasure chest in a sealed room. The chest is the only thing in the room, which is surrounded by walls on each side. Between you and the chest is a gate with a square hole in the center. That hole is the only way in or out of the room, but you can’t climb the gate or jump to reach it. The chest is too far away to simply grab it with Ultrahand and pull it out through the hole. Without some other tool, there’s no way to reach the chest. The entire puzzle is just figuring out how to get through a hole that's just a few feet out of reach.

]]> Mon, 22 May 2023 22:31:24 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/tears-of-the-kingdom-zelda-wind-temple-puzzle-hole-gate/ In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, finding Koroks was rarely all that hard. You’d lift up a rock, and one was there, waiting. You’d push a stone into a gap in a circle, and wow, a Korok. Sometimes they’d give you a little task, like following a white flower as it teleported from place to place, or shooting a balloon with an arrow. Of these tiny tasks, my favorite were the little block puzzles you needed to use Link’s Magnesis power to solve.

]]> Mon, 22 May 2023 17:30:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/tears-of-the-kingdom-reference-botw-korok-magnesis-puzzle/ One of my favorite birthday parties as a kid was an evening of revelry I dubbed “NintendoFest.” It wasn't much of a festival: three of my friends came over and we played games all night. Some multiplayer, but mostly we worked our way through the first few dungeons of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, passing the controller back and forth until the sun rose in the morning.

]]> Mon, 22 May 2023 17:00:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/too-tired-to-stay-up-playing-tloz-tears-of-the-kingdom/ Ghost of Tsushima was fine. Some people loved it, and that's also fine. But the ripple effects it caused were very strange, and I'm not sure we'll feel the full impact of them until the sequel launches in a few years. Ghost of Tsushima was a gorgeous game, possibly one of Sony's best looking, and was somehow a precursor for the PS5's fast loading times, despite releasing on the PS4 and, as I mentioned, looking gorgeous. Its gameplay, while a little simplistic and standard for its genre, was fluid and entertaining, and scratched that 'just one more' serotonin sensation. But the weird culture war that swirled around it puts the sequel under undue pressure.

]]> Mon, 22 May 2023 16:46:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/ghost-of-tsushima-2-pressure-showcase-playstation-ps5/ I’m not doing the weapon degradation discourse again. I simply refuse. I do find it funny, however, that Nintendo decided to make 99 percent of weapons in Tears of the Kingdom physically degraded from the moment you pick them up (the only weapons that aren’t are weapons found in The Depths and makeshift weapons like Sticks and, um, Long Sticks). If this isn’t a message to Zelda players saying, “Suck it up, this is the direction we’re going in,” then I don’t know what is.

]]> Mon, 22 May 2023 16:30:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/hylian-pine-cones-secretly-tears-of-the-kingdom-best-weapon/ When I was a kid, I would often play half a game, whether that was experiencing the wonders of Bionicle through an unintentional roguelite perspective thanks to serial renting, or just passing the pad between my friends as we each tried to beat levels of whatever PlayStation platformer they had bought last. I often experienced the same levels over and over, and missed others entirely. I couldn’t always play an entire game myself, so watching someone else play was the next best thing.

]]> Mon, 22 May 2023 16:15:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/voiceless-youtube-lets-plays-are-sometimes-the-best-way-to-play-games/ Whether you love, hate, or are fairly indifferent to Zelda, you’ll no doubt have seen hundreds of clips circling on social media since the game launched. Tears of the Kingdom is a game where you really can do anything, and the variety of clips highlights that. Whether players are coming up with bizarre ways to punish Koroks, constructing creative solutions to all of their problems, or just thirsting over the characters, whatever you want TOTK to be, it is. And I’m not complaining - if anything, we need more Purah positing. But I don’t think I’ve seen a single clip of combat, and that tells you everything you need to know.

]]> Mon, 22 May 2023 15:30:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/tears-of-the-kingdom-zelda-totk-better-without-combat/ I liked Star Wars Jedi: Survivor a lot. I’ve written about how it improved on Fallen Order in all the right ways, especially in its character development, and the major plot twist left my jaw on the floor. But there was one particular part of the game that felt vastly different by design, and I didn’t like it at all. Spoilers ahead, obviously.

]]> Mon, 22 May 2023 15:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/playing-cere-junda-star-wars-jedi-survivor-pacing/ The big joy of the Nintendo Switch comes from its portability. While I do play some games docked, on the TV like I would with the PlayStation or the Xbox, most of the time I play it handheld. I don't necessarily need to go anywhere with it. I might play it in bed before I go to sleep, at my kitchen table on my lunch break, or even just sitting on my sofa while my wife watches TV or while the football is on. The Champions League has been very dull this year, so something needs to distract me. It's supposed to be convenient, but that's making it feel like a fringe console I just can't find the time for.

]]> Mon, 22 May 2023 14:31:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/nintendo-switch-games-too-easy-ignore-dredge-zelda-space-unbound/ Summons have long been a staple of the Final Fantasy series, but in Final Fantasy 16, they become a stronger focal point than ever before. I spoke with producer Naoki Yoshida, art director Hiroshi Minagawa, and localisation lead Michael Christopher Koji Fox about it, and Yoshida-san explained that the idea came to him at the 2014 Tokyo Game Show, long before he had even been told he would be working on FF16.

]]> Mon, 22 May 2023 13:30:15 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/final-fantasy-16-xiv-interview-naoki-yoshida-michael-christopher-koji-fox-hiroshi-minagawa/ Final Fantasy openings have long held a special place in my heart. I always feel a mixture of excitement for what’s to come alongside waves of nostalgia as I recall all the times I’ve gone through this saccharine ritual over the years. You normally go into mainline FF games with high expectations, opening hours setting the bar for tone, narrative, character, and the memories we’re bound to make along the way. There’s a reason they stuck with us.

]]> Mon, 22 May 2023 13:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/final-fantasy-16-xvi-preview/ A fateful meteor shower sees strange robots collecting villagers in their basket-like bellies and carrying them away into the night sky. People scream as they are abducted, larger machines stalk the waters behind your village, while smaller robots prowl the area to uncover any survivors that may be hiding. It’s easy to draw parallels between Planet of Lana and HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds, so much so that I was dreading the idea of later discovering that the collected humans were being squelched into some form of goo.

]]> Mon, 22 May 2023 12:00:16 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/planet-of-lana-review/ The Pokemon Unite community, at least the vocally online portion of it, is in the middle of a revolt. Many months of frustration and mounting resentment, players are now calling for a boycott on all in-game purchases until their demands are met. Co-opting the The Asian American Foundation’s anti-racism slogan, Pokemon Unite fans are using the hashtag #UniteForChange to bring attention to the ongoing issues they desperately want TiMi Studio Group to address.

]]> Sun, 21 May 2023 19:23:20 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/pokemon-unite-boycott-zacian-uniteforchange/ PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan was interviewed by Famitsu recently, where he was asked about the company's strategy around porting exclusives to PC. After launching Horizon Zero Dawn on Steam in 2020, Sony has since ported eight other PlayStation’s exclusive to PC, including Returnal, God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Uncharted 4, and Day’s Gone. Each of these games were ported to PC two to three years after their PlayStation debut, a gap Ryan says Sony plans to maintain with future ports.

]]> Sun, 21 May 2023 19:06:57 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/jim-ryan-clearly-didnt-ask-the-right-game-fans-about-playstations-delayed-pc-ports/ Part of what makes Tears of the Kingdom such an incredible and groundbreaking game is the way that it defies all genre labels. It’s open-world, but that’s more of a structure than a genre, and it doesn’t really tell you anything about what the game is. Tears of the Kingdom, Forza Horizon 5, and Cyberpunk 2077 are all open-world games, and they have almost nothing in common. It’s also an immersive sim, but that’s like describing a movie as film noir; ImSim speaks to Tears of the Kingdom’s design ethos, but it doesn’t define what type of game it is. TotK is part RPG, part survival/crafting, part action-adventure, and part sandbox game, but what interests me the most about it is the way it intersects disparate genres to create new ones. You could come up with any number of hybrid genres that TOTK represents, but the one that excites me the most is something I’m calling the survival platformer.

]]> Sun, 21 May 2023 18:53:46 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/tears-of-the-kingdom-has-invented-a-new-genre-called-survival-platformer/ The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an immersive sim. Strange as it is to see Link and Ganondorf lumped in with the likes of Corvo Attano and Andrew Ryan, the new Zelda shares design principles with all things 0451. Tears of the Kingdom rewards player experimentation and lateral thinking. It encourages multiple playstyles; if there’s a problem to solve in Tears of the Kingdom, there are roughly one million ways to proceed. Breath of the Wild already incorporated this design, but TotK doubles down on the kind of creativity that makes games like Dishonored and Prey sing.

]]> Sun, 21 May 2023 18:00:17 GMT https://www.thegamer.com/tears-of-the-kingdom-weird-games-redfall/