Gaming - Page 174

Former Call of Duty zombies director Jason Blundell is leading a mysterious new first-party game studio for Sony's PlayStation division.

Sony has a new unannounced first-party game studio that's working behind the scenes on a enigmatic project. The studio is called Dark Outlaw Games, and it's being led by Treyarch and Call of Duty veteran developer Jason Blundell, who is serving as studio head and director of the game. Blundell's past experience gives an indication that Dark Outlaw could be working on a shooter game.

The news was confirmed by Blundell himself in a recent interview with former Giant Bomb member Jeff Gerstmann. What makes the news even more interesting is that Sony has been cancelling games and closing down studios left and right, and that Jason Blundell had previous experience working with Sony on a PlayStation project outside of Treyarch. Years ago, Blundell worked at Deviation Games, a studio that was contracted for a PlayStation project. Blundell left in 2022, and Deviation shut down in 2024 amid blistering layoffs and rising costs.

Assassin's Creed: Shadows is catching some flak for its performance levels on PC in reviews - and feedback online in general - but not everything is negative in this regard.

While a lot of the controversy is disappointment around how the game (which is released tomorrow) runs on beefy gaming PCs (often at weighty 4K settings), it seems that Assassin's Creed: Shadows fares much better on more modest hardware, namely gaming handhelds.

TechRadar was on the case here, spotting several YouTubers putting Shadows through its paces on the Steam Deck and the ASUS ROG Ally, finding that it can generally hold a solid 30 FPS on low and medium details. Although as you'd expect, upscaling trickery has a hand in making the gameplay smoother.

Windows 11 is about to get a new Gamepad keyboard layout that'll facilitate typing on your PC using an Xbox controller.

This is a feature which has been in testing for some time, but it has now arrived in the latest preview build of Windows 11 in the Release Preview channel (build 26100.3613).

That is, of course, the final testing stage before features hit the finished version of Windows 11, so we should be getting the new Gamepad keyboard soon enough.

Pocketpair, the developer of the hit game Palworld has released the much awaited update that adds cross-play across all platforms.

The new update, which has already been rolled out, is v0.5.0 and enables players to store their data in what is called a Global Palbox that can be used to transfer between worlds. Notably, the update also has a Dimensional Pal Storage, which has 10x the capacity of a regular Palbox and can also be used for personal storage with private settings. The new update also enables players to change the appearance of their armor without affecting any stats, which, for those who are familiar with MMORPG/RPG titles, is essentially transmog.

Additionally, Pocketpair has added a Photo Mode, which players can access from the Pal Command Wheel. When activated, it will hide the UI, and players will be able to move the camera around to their desired location to snap a screenshot. The update also includes a Drafting Table that enables players to combine low-rarity blueprints to create higher-rarity ones.

It's been over 15 years since the original Plants vs. Zombies released back in 2009. Since then, we've seen nearly a dozen variations - from pinball games to third-person shooters and mobile card games. It looks like another entry might be added to the list, with Plants vs. Zombies Reloaded spotted in Brazil's federal classification records.

As reported by Gematsu, Plants vs. Zombies Reloaded has been rated for PS5, Xbox Series, Switch, PC, iOS, and Android in Brazil. The record lists the "year of manufacture" as 2009, and the alternate title suggests that the listing is likely for a remaster of the original game.

There's also a possibility that it could be a remaster of Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare - the casual third-person shooter often described as a mix between Battlefield, Overwatch, and Team Fortress 2. However, with no official announcement, the classification is all we have to go off at this stage.

Snail Games has unlisted the trailer for ARK: Aquatica, the latest Ark: Survival Evolved DLC, following a wave of backlash over its heavy use of AI-generated content. While still viewable through a direct link, the trailer has been pulled from the studio's channel and can no longer be found on YouTube's broader platform.

Originally showcased at GDC 2025, the trailer was meant to highlight the aquatic expansion, bringing new underwater creatures, biomes, and mechanics to the game. Instead, it's quickly become a subject of controversy, as viewers pointed out that nearly every aspect of the trailer appeared AI-generated - from the voiceover narration to the CGI-style visuals.

Commenters wasted no time calling out Snail Games for low-effort marketing and cutting corners. One user wrote, "This is disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourselves." Others were more direct, urging the studio to, "Please sell the Ark franchise to literally anyone else."

In a recent episode of The Fourth Curtain podcast, author Alex Irvine and former Bungie president Alex Seropian sat down to discuss some 'storytelling secrets' from Marvel Rivals and beyond.

Throughout the discussion, Irvine touched on the challenges of establishing worldbuilding in a fast-paced multiplayer shooter like Marvel Rivals. However, he also revealed some interesting details about early plans for Marvel's gaming presence - specifically, the attempt to create a Marvel Gaming Universe (MGU).

The idea never took off, however. Seropian, who worked at Disney between 2009 and 2012, explained that there was an early push to make the idea work, but ultimately, it never made it through.

Bethesda has just released the Ghoul Within update for Fallout 76, introducing the ability for players to become ghouls, complete with new perks and gameplay mechanics. However, in a divisive move from the Bethesda team, an item included in the update has weighed in strongly on an eternal household debate.

Among the new C.A.M.P. items added to the game-decorative objects for player bases - Bethesda has included two toilet paper holders. One dispenses paper from the wall (the correct way, in my opinion), while the other, labeled "Correct Toilet Paper Holder," which rolls it outward.

The items quickly made it over to Reddit, where Xbox's official account weighed in.

Given the reign of free-to-play battle royale titles, and existing MMO players like RuneScape and World of Warcraft - the MMORPG space is a tough one to break into in 2025. This isn't stopping Raph Koster from making the game he's dreamed of making for 30 years.

The former creative director of Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima Online, Koster is widely recognised as a legend in the MMORPG world. His next title, Stars Reach, he describes as a 'spiritual sequel to Ultima Online and to Star Wars Galaxies' - featuring a living galaxy sandbox, and vast landscapes that are somewhat reminiscent of No Man's Sky mixed with an old Zelda game.

The game was originally privately funded, raising $40 million over five years through private investment - and has since taken to Kickstarter, raising an addition $600,000 through community outreach. Currently in its alpha stage, the game promises a return to the roots of classic MMORPGs. Particularly, something for those players looking to scratch the itch left by the void of Star Wars: Galaxies.

Half-Life 2 RTX is a remaster and remake project from Orbifold Studios, a team of 100 modders, built with NVIDIA's impressive RTX Remix platform. In a nutshell, RTX Remix takes every scene and location from Valve's original Half-Life 2, transforms every material and surface into modern physically-based rendered (PBR) objects, and adds a suite of RTX technologies and AI tools to draw from, with the result being a fully ray-traced or path-traced version of a classic game that is now twenty years old.

Half-Life 2 RTX is a project we've been following closely for a few years, with early looks showcasing stunning and transformative results. With a fully playable demo now available for all GeForce RTX owners that includes two fully playable chapters from the game (Ravenholm and Nova Prospekt), we were given early access to the demo to get our first proper hands-on look at Half-Life 2 RTX.

Running on the GeForce RTX 5080, it's as impressive as we hoped it would be. Like all the best remasters and remakes that aim to stay faithful to the source material, Half-Life 2 RTX is like your fondest memories of the game brought to life with some of the most cutting-edge visuals ever seen in an interactive experience. It's like how you remember Half-Life 2 but with new assets and stunning ray-traced effects that only amplify and enhance what is still an all-timer.

Baldur's Gate 3 director Swen Vincke has taken to X, formerly Twitter, to share his thoughts on the claims that single-player titles are "dead". He doesn't think that's the case.

According to Vincke, single-player games aren't dying the slow death that many studio executives are declaring they are, and for a single-player game to be successful, it first needs to be good. If there is any example of single-player games not being dead, it is Baldur's Gate 3, which, following its release, went on to win Game of the Year and retain a solid, consistent player base that's still extremely alive today, two years after its release. At the time of reporting Baldur's Gate 3 has 36,000 concurrent players on Steam, with its 24-hour player peak on Valve's platform being 68,000.

It appears not only gamers are with Vincke's take on single-player games, but so are some industry developers, with David Goldfarb, a known developer behind Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and PayDay 2, commenting on Vincke's post saying, "Can I bring you to all my meetings, Swen? F**king exhausted." Other indicators that single-player games aren't dying are titles such as Black Myth: Wukong, God of War: Ragnarok, STALKER 2, and what will be Grand Theft Auto VI when it releases at the end of this year.

Assassin's Creed Shadows has been one of the most controversial launches for the franchise in recent memory, and now it appears reviews for the title are leaking ahead of when they should be posted.

Screenshots have been posted on subreddits showing review scores from OpenCritic and IGN Brasil, with both of the sources giving the contentious titles a respectable 8/10 and 9/10. Notably, reviews for the title are scheduled to drop on March 18, which at the time of reporting is today, but the specific time remains unclear. As for the reviews that leaked early, they have since been removed from their respective sources.

The ConsoleCreatures review for the title sourced on OpenCritic states the title gives players a lot of freedom and "takes you on a journey of exploration and history of one of Japan's most famous periods". As for the IGN Brasil, the short review was translated from Portuguese and states Shadows is "one of the most iconic titles in the franchise," with the reviewer going on to mention it successfully juggles combat and stealth mechanics against a Japense backdrop that's been previously untouched by Ubisoft.

As announced in 2022, Ubisoft Toronto is leading development on a Splinter Cell remake, built from the ground up using Ubisoft's Snowdrop engine.

The original Splinter Cell (2002) calls back to a time when Ubisoft was positioned at the forefront of innovation in games - and as evidenced by the team's commitment to return to what made the game great, it's shaping to be a pleasant departure from the publisher's open-world formula.

As reported by Videogamer, former Ubisoft tools support specialist Wesley Chartrand shared some behind-the-scenes hints on LinkedIn, detailing his role as a scrum master and his focus on project efficiency. More notably, Chartrand spent two years "organizing and running retrospectives for the Splinter Cell DevOps team" - a sign that the studio is actively studying the DNA of classic Splinter Cell rather than simply modernizing it.

Intel XeSS 2 is the company's significant overhaul and update to its AI-powered upscaling solution, including XeSS Super Resolution, XeSS Frame Generation, and XeLL Low Latency. Providing feature parity with NVIDIA's DLSS suite of AI rendering tools, at GDC 2025, Intel has announced that the XeSS 2 SDK is now available to download.

The XeSS SDK is available on GitHub and is open to all developers. It gives them the tools to integrate the full range of XeSS 2 features into their games. Intel also offers developer guides for enabling XeSS Super Resolution, Frame Generation, and its Reflex-like XeLL Low Latency solution, alongside the XeSS Inspector Tool for "verifying, debugging, and tuning XeSS 2."

Plus, plugins for Unreal Engine and Unity, two of the most popular engines and platforms used by game developers today. Intel's XeSS 2 is optimized for Intel graphics hardware and covers a range of mobile and desktop products.

Xbox 360-era MMO shooter Defiance is coming back, and the new operator of Last Chaos is leading the charge.

Arkhunters rejoice! Both Defiance games are being revived, starting with the first game released by Trion Worlds in 2013. This version of Defiance is coming back on April 18, 2025 as a free-to-play game through Fawkes Games, a group that has licensed both the development and publishing rights for Defiance 2013 and Defiance 2050 from Gamigo (Fawkes also operates Last Chaos, an MMO that was popular in the mid-aughts).

Fawkes is making big commitments to preserving the authentic community-driven experience that the original MMO third-person shooter had to offer, and as someone who actually played the original Defiance way back on Xbox 360, I can say I'm intrigued to see how this goes. Sadly, all previous account data has been lost...so don't expect to dig up any of your old characters and loot along the way.

Obsidian's latest patch notes for Avowed contains a hint at future content for the RPG.

The not-Skyrim RPG Avowed released last month, and Obsidian has been rolling out patch updates to make various QoL tweaks to the game. So far, these updates haven't added any new content to the game, instead opting for additions like dedicated HUD-off keybinds or third-person button toggles.

While neither Xbox nor Obsidian have officially confirmed DLC for Avowed, it's possible that something like a paid expansion could be on the way or maybe some smaller-scale content drops like more quests and loot. If not, we at least know Obsidian will keep balancing the game over time.

The sequel to 2019's Metro Exodus was briefly revealed to be in existence in 2023, but since then, not much has been shown about the highly anticipated title. However, we have now learned the game will be much darker than its predecessors.

Accoding to a new blog post that pays tribute to 16 years of Metro, the developers at 4A Games have teased the contents of the upcoming game by saying where they have drawn inspiration from. The blog post states the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has influenced the development of the title, even going as far as to changing how the team "wanted to tell the story of the next Metro game."

4A Games explains, "As art became life for many of our developers in Ukraine, we drew from that lived experience to create an even darker story, those themes already present in Metro becoming ever-more apparent and important."

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has yet again revealed some unannounced details about the Nintendo Switch 2. This time, the inclusion of what appears to be upscaling technology.

It was only recently that filing with the FCC revealed the Nintendo Switch 2 will have two USB-C ports and the support for Wi-Fi 6. Now, another filing has been discovered and has seemingly revealed the inclusion of AI upscaling technology, with the above image showcasing a process of taking a low-resolution image through a render pipeline that increases the output resolution of the image seen on screen. It should be noted that this technology may not be used for Nintendo's newly released games but instead, it's old games from previous console generations, as the image depicts a 540p image being bumped up to 1080p.

There are very few new games on the original Switch that launch with a 540p resolution, and most are extremely graphically intensive and only briefly drop down to this resolution when in handheld mode. Regardless of where the technology is used, it appears the Switch 2 will feature some kind of AI upscaling technology, which, if true, isn't totally surprising since NVIDIA is slated to power the upcoming console with an SoC from the Ampere generation of GPUs, specifically the NVIDIA Tegra T239 SoC. This SoC is capable of AI upscaling.

The voice actor behind Aloy, the main character from Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West, has commented on the recently leaked video that shows an AI-generated Aloy.

The voice behind the iconic PlayStation character Ashly Burch took to TikTok to comment on the AI-generated video that leaked last week, with Burch explaining the developer of the Horizon games contacted her shortly after the video leaked and informed her that none of her personal data or voice acting was used in the creation of the AI-generated Aloy. Gorilla also said to the voice actor the demo didn't reflect "anything that was actively in development".

After the disclaimers, Burch went on to say how the AI-generated content made her feel as whole, with the voice actor going on to mention how this video emerged during an ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, where actors are protesting against the use of AI in the video game industry as a means of replacing them. These strikes are extremely similar to the SAG-AFTRA strikes in the film and TV industry that occurred in 2023, where actors pushed studios for protections against AI generating their likenesses without permission and ultimately replacing them.

Starfield has been rumored to be coming to PlayStation for quite some time, but now those rumors are picking up some significant steam as the PlayStation logo has been spotted on Starfield's creation club website.

The logo was spotted by X user Okami12_, who shared an image of the PlayStation logo on the listing for a mod on the Starfield Creation Club website, which appears alongside the Xbox and PC Game logos. For those who don't know, these logos represent which platform the mod is compatible with, making the appearance of the PlayStation logo that much more confusing, considering Starfield hasn't been officially announced for Sony's platform.

The mod itself, WIP-Ship Decals, was created by ValleysEdge and published on March 12. It adds "work in progress" decals to a ship. The last official thing we heard about Starfield coming to PlayStation was Xbox head Phil Spencer saying that no Xbox title is off the table when it comes to cross-platform release, meaning major first-party titles such as DOOM: The Dark Ages, Gears of War, and Starfield are all eligible for a release on PlayStation.