Gaming - Page 173

Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Shadows is not available on PC and consoles, and based on reviews and feedback, the game is a lot better than the negative press surrounding it for months would have you believe. Our own Jak Connor is currently playing it (check out his impressions on the first few hours), and although it's not perfect, it does sound like a worthy follow-up to previous entries like Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

And with a million people playing the game on its first day of release, odds are that quite a few PC gamers jumping into the Japanese action and stealth will be rocking AMD Radeon GPUs - including the new Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT. If that's you, you'll probably want to grab the latest AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 25.3.2 Optional Update driver, which adds support for the game, alongside The Last of Us Part II Remastered.

As a beta release, you won't get an official "update your driver notification," so be sure to go through the following Release Notes to see if it fixes any issues you've been encountering. There are fixes for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Counter-Strike 2, and other titles. Plus, fixes for crashes relating to high-refresh-rate displays and pressing Alt-Tab during gameplay.

God of War fans should mark their calendars as a new DLC is arriving for God of War Ragnarok on March 20, which has been announced in celebration of the franchise turning 20 years old.

The first God of War game was released in 2005, and since then, it has become a staple franchise in PlayStation's portfolio of titles. However, the franchise really locked itself in when Kratos was rebooted in 2018 with the release of the God of War, which went on to win Game of the Year. In 2022, the rebooted character received a sequel, God of War Ragnarok, which won Best Narrative, Best Action/Adventure, but fell short of Game of the Year to Elden Ring.

In celebration of how far the franchise has come, PlayStation and developer Santa Monica Studios are releasing a new DLC for Ragnarok - the Dark Odyssey Collection. The new DLC will be released on March 20 and will be free for all players who own a copy of God of War Ragnarok. The DLC contains Dark Odyssey Armor and an appearance change for Kratos, along with companion armor to match.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II was the second best-earning game of February 2025 in the United States, new reports from analyst firm Circana show.

Another month has gone by, and that means a new update on the US games market. Circana analyst Mat Piscatella recently shared the latest findings on Bluesky and confirmed some breakout software hits for February 2025. Capcom's astronomical Monster Hunter: Wilds led the charge as the #1 best-seller for February, which makes sense as the game broke 8 million sales in 3 days. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II also had incredible success in the United States, especially when compared to the first game.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was the second best-selling premium game on all platforms in the United States, and was also the #2 best-seller on both PlayStation and Xbox, respectively.

Remedy's latest game FBC: Firebreak is an interesting breath of fresh air from the developer, taking on a multiplayer co-op design centered around Control's outrageous and unhinged cursed relics and items.

Ask anyone who's played Control and they'll tell you that Twilight Zone-y/Needful Things-esque cursed items are one of the best parts of the game. These objects are called Altered Items, and are often innocuous, innocent-looking things like refrigerators, jukeboxes, and even a rubber duck. Everything is cursed and does something radical, volatile, and unpredictable, often bending reality to comedic effect.

Remedy built an entire co-op shooter around this premise. It's called FBC: Firebreak, and it's something that should be on your radar if you like Control. In Firebreak, gamers play as a kind of supernatural MIB-meets-X-Files cleanup force that wipes out hordes of enemies in bouts of co-op survival. The big selling point is the chaos that ensues during gameplay. You can attach those cursed Altered Items to your guns to create goofy makeshift weapons straight out of Dead Island, including attaching haunted piggy banks to giant poles that create a "paranatural coin tornado" on striking, or a garden gnome that "summons lightning storms."

Epic Games makes good on its promise to expand its freebies lineup to its mobile storefront.

On the heels of a landmark ruling against Google, and favorable outcomes from the European Union's Digital Markets Act, the Epic Games Store on mobile continues to grow and expand throughout 2025. The store was introduced in 2024 and has expanded slowly over time as Epic adds new content to library. The games lineup now includes 47 titles on Android and 31 games on iOS, Epic notes.

The next major update was about the free mobile games that the EGS will offer. Epic has confirmed they will give out free mobile games on the Epic Games Store every week, and users can check in every Thursday for the lineup. With such a slim offering of games, this implies that Epic will either subsidize most of the content library or add new content over time (perhaps also while subsidizing costs through freebies).

PlayStation's indie liaison believes that Grand Theft Auto 6's theoretical megaton success will help the entire video games industry grow, and that GTA 6 will not necessarily compete with indie games--there's room for both on the market.

For all intents and purposes, it's been half-joked that GTA 6 will save the games industry. The mantra "survive till '25" had been thrown around internally among game developers for a reason--it was believed GTA 6 would spark platform sales of all kinds, and new users would be keen to buy a bunch of new games to fill out their libraries. If you could hold on until GTA 6 launched, you might have a better shot in absorbing some earnings from GTA 6's staggering industry-spanning network effects.

Industry analysts have made their predictions on GTA 6's success, but now we've heard some quick words from someone who works inside PlayStation's indie department. At GDC 2025, PlayStation's head of creators Greg Rice told GamesRadar that GTA 6's launch offers an opportunity to developers to attract spending from a new wave of users who bought in to play Rockstar's latest game.

The Last of Us Part II Remastered is coming to the PC with its system requirements revealed: you'll need a GeForce RTX 4080 or Radeon RX 7900 XT for 4K 60FPS goodness.

At a bare minimum for 720p at 30FPS, Naughty Dog recommends an Intel Core i3-8100 or AMD Ryzen 3 1300X processor, as well as an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT. 16GB of RAM and 150GB of SSD are required across the board from minimum to very high PC requirements.

The Last of Us Part II Remastered at 1080p 60FPS on the Medium preset has a recommended Core i5-8600 or Ryzen 5 3600 processor, with the GPU requirements increasing to an RTX 3060 or RX 5700. For 1440p 60FPS on the High preset, you're looking at a Core i7-9700 or Ryzen 7 3700X for the CPU, and the RTX 3070 or RX 6800 for the GPU.

Microsoft shared an image of a new Xbox UI in a GDC 2025 blog post, then removed it. The interface in question had a Steam tab.

What's going on with Xbox? Microsoft will still make consoles. That's been confirmed. There's also plans to make a universal storefront that combines consoles, Windows, and mobile gaming in one. One critical part of this store idea, an easy-to-use way to actually browse, buy, and curate games across three different platforms--is now starting to take shape.

So what is Microsoft up to exactly? This time, it's nothing super dramatic. Don't expect Steam games to start showing up on your Xbox console any time soon. The image looks to be an internal mock-up and not a finalized design (the "console" UI is just a bigger version of the mobile UI, and the "action-adventure" genre is listed twice).

Assassin's Creed Shadows appears to off to a good start on launch day despite pressure and controversy.

It looks like Ubisoft may have pulled it off: AC Shadows is showing signs of being a hit release. The new Feudal Japan-set mainline Assassin's Creed game is the #1 top-seller on Steam right now, and it's also #4 on the PlayStation Store. Now today Ubisoft celebrates the game's official launch with a new milestone: Shadows has already been played by over 1 million people on all platforms.

"It's not even 4PM here in Canada and Assassin's Creed Shadows has already passed 1 million players! Thank YOU from the bottom of our hearts for joining this adventure in Feudal Japan. We are beyond excited to start this journey with you!" Ubisoft wrote on Twitter.

The release of Assassin's Creed Shadows has reached the Japanese government, which expressed deep concerns about its contents and how it may translate to events in real life.

Members of Japan's government brought up Ubisoft's recently released Assassin's Creed Shadows in parliament, saying some of the game's contents are disrespectful to Japan's culture and heritage. Officials specifically pointed out how players can destroy sacred religious shrines within the game and how villagers within these shrines can be slaughtered by players.

Additionally, officials pointed out how Ubisoft didn't obtain permission from the organizations and relevant regulatory bodies to put the shrines/landmarks in the game, claiming Ubisoft took them without permission. Ubisoft has now addressed some of these concerns by Japan's government in a day-one update, which now makes the relevant religious items within sacred shrines totally indestructible.

NVIDIA has revealed the latest batch of games which are supported on GeForce Now, and the big hitter here is Assassin's Creed Shadows.

As you're likely aware, today is the day Assassin's Creed Shadows has been released on PC, Mac, Xbox and PS5, with the game also arriving on NVIDIA's streaming service, too.

You can't fail to have noticed the controversy around performance and how smoothly Assassin's Creed Shadows runs (or it doesn't) on PC, particularly with higher-end rigs looking at cranking up details at 4K resolution (which may be ambitious, let's put it that way).

Balatro likely needs no introduction at this point - it's a roguelike deck builder that takes poker and runs in a very different direction than the traditional card game - and we've just discovered that it initially got off to a seriously stumbling start.

As PC Gamer reports, the first Balatro demo (which emerged back in 2023) had an embarrassing hole in the code that meant the entire game could be unlocked using Notepad.

Wout Van Halderen, who is communications director at Playstack, the game's publisher, admitted this in a talk at GDC. Apparently, it really was the case that editing a game file in Windows Notepad could get you access to the full version, rather than the limited 50 rounds of play that the demo was restricted to.

Ahead of Nintendo's official deep dive into the highly anticipated Nintendo Switch 2, we have a new rumor from a user who was almost on the money when it came to leaking the console's GPU performance.

Here's what has happened. Famiboards user Secretboy called the Nintendo Switch 2 would have 3 TFLOPS in docked mode and 1.4/1.5 TFLOPS in handheld. Ten days later, it was leaked the Switch 2 will have 3.1 TFLOPS docked and 1.72 TFLOPS in handheld - pretty damn close for a guess. Secretboy also claimed in January the Switch 2 would feature a 120Hz LCD screen, and would come with HDR/VRR support.

Secretboy has now reiterated those claims, saying he has heard confirmation the next generation console will have a 120Hz refresh rate in handheld with an LCD screen, and support both HDR and VRR (Variable Refresh Rate).

PlayStation fans from the classic era of consoles will be glad to know a classic from Disney Pixar is making its way over to the modern consoles.

That classic is the Disney game WALL-E, which was actually previously leaked about a month ago by the Taiwanese Ratings Board and picked up by Gematsu. However, the original leak didn't reveal what version of WALL-E would be coming to the PS4/PS5, but now we have a better idea, thanks to True Trophies, which revealed the platinum trophy list for both PS4 and PS5. The now-published trophy list has confirmed the WALL-E game is the classic PS2 title, which we can assume will be remastered before it releases on modern consoles.

What confirms this WALL-E game is the PS2 title and not the PSP version is the trophies related to the title's multiplayer mode, "Head-to-Head," and those trophies are: "That's One Green Machine" and "Victory for Wall-E". These trophies refer to the Plant Collection and WALL-E Race modes, respectively. Both of these modes weren't included in the PSP version of the game. By extension, the trophies do confirm the inclusion of a local multiplayer mode. You can check out the full trophy list below.

Assassin's Creed Shadows has finally been released, and the game has been received quite positively by both reviewers and the small number of users who have rated the game. While it's still very early to gauge the total perception of the title, preliminary results look quite promising for Ubisoft.

Above is the first hour of Shadows, and the following will be an explanation of my experience, quick takeaways, and overall thoughts. It should be noted these thoughts are after just an hour of playing the game, and aren't indicative of a full review of the title.

Let's start with the positives. This is the best-looking Assassin's Creed game Ubisoft has ever released, with environments and locations being particular graphical highlights. Character graphics are also great, with only some parts of the cinematics looking a little worse than others.

MSI recently launched its second-generation PC gaming handhelds with the MSI Claw 8 AI+ and Claw 7 AI+, powered by the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor with integrated Arc 'Battlemage' graphics. The most significant difference between the two is screen size, with the Claw 8 offering an 8-inch 1080p 120 Hz VRR IPS display and the Claw 7 offering a 7-inch 120 Hz VRR IPS display.

Intel's second-generation Battlemage Arc graphics improve game performance compared to the original first-generation Arc Claw handheld. MSI's latest PC gaming handhelds also sport 32GB of memory and ample battery capacity. Hardware-wise, these are impressive-sounding options that stand out in the increasingly crowded Windows-based gaming handheld space.

With support for everything from Steam, Xbox, and Battle.net, MSI notes that the Claw 8 AI+ and Claw 7 AI+ also feature upgrades based directly on feedback it has gained from the PC gaming community based on the original Claw and PC gaming handhelds as a whole. Covering everything from quality-of-life stuff to richer sound, here's the breakdown.

GeForce Game Ready Driver 572.83 is available now, and it's a big one. In addition to providing optimized day-one support for the Half-Life 2 RTX Demo (check out our hands-on here), Assassin's Creed Shadows, The Last of Us Part II Remastered, and Control's recent surprise updates, it also adds support for a trio of new GPUs.

GeForce Game Ready Driver 572.83 supports the new GeForce RTX 5090, 5080, and 5070 Ti laptops powered by RTX Blackwell hardware. Pre-orders for GeForce RTX 50 Series laptops with these GPUs have been open for a few weeks now, with stock expected to hit retail in the coming weeks or sometime in April 2025. With better battery life, efficiency, faster video editing, and support for new tech like Multi Frame Generation, these laptops will probably be in as high demand as the desktop GeForce RTX 50 GPUs we've seen this year.

For those rocking a new GeForce RTX 50 Series GPU, the latest driver fixes the "black screen" issue gamers have reported. Plus, it adds DLSS 4 support to 61 games via the DLSS 'Override' settings in the NVIDIA App.

Assassins Creed Shadows reviews are out, and so far, the title is being praised not only for its exciting gameplay, but its push towards visual fidelity - particularly on the PS5 Pro.

In a recent X post, Ubisoft Montreal technical architect Nicolas Lopez, responded to the praise, reiterating the team's commitment to delivering meaningful improvements on the PS5 Pro Hardware.

As per Digital Foundry, Assassins Creed Shadows on the PS5 Pro delivers 'one of the most substantial upgrades' seen on Sony's enhanced consoles. An analysis from ElAnalistaDeBits also determined it to be 'the best optimized open world Ubisoft has created in years'.

Ahead of the release of Assassin's Creed Shadows, Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, has discussed the contents of the title in parliament, raising the question with other top government officials on how to respond to some of the contents seen within the title.

For those who don't know, Assassin's Creed Shadows is based in fueduel Japan, and leading up to the release of the title, the game has been put under the microscope following Ubisoft officials saying it was based on historical fact.

The depictions of real-world locations and what players can do within those locations have now made their way to Japan's government, with Japan's Prime Minister now responding to a question posed by a member of the House of Councillors of Japan, Hiroyuki Kada, who pointed to the segment of the game where players can attack and destroy the contents of religious sites such as the Itatehyouzu Shrine.

Despite its release onto Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft's new first-party RPG Avowed managed to break into the top 20 best-earning games of February 2025 by revenue.

The latest market research report from analyst firm Newzoo outlines the trends and developments made during last month, including estimated revenue for new and existing game releases. The list contains your usual live service suspects like Fortnite, Call of Duty, and Minecraft. New breakout hits like Monster Hunter Wilds, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, and Avowed.

We've heard publishers talk about the success of these previous games--Capcom confirmed Monster Hunter Wilds sold 8 million copies in 3 days, whereas Warhorse confirmed 2 million copies sold of KCD2 shortly after launch. But what about Avowed? Neither Xbox nor Obsidian have really spoken about the game's success, although Obsidian did confirm a roadmap of sorts was on the way.