Update: That was the world of video games today on 28th August. A full transcript of everything that occurred is available below if you wish to digest it at your leisure.
The week rolls on, like the wheels of a skateboard, and we’re back with another daily report, gathering today’s news and features in one place. A place we can talk together, like a community, in real-time. Imagine!
What’s on the board today? We’ve had an evening with the new Skate now – I refuse to accept the game’s horrible name formatting – so we’ve had time to formulate our thoughts. We also awake to news of more layoffs in the industry, sadly, at Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics, which cites “evolving business difficulties” as the reason why. Beyond that, we continue to plough through our Gamescom backlog to share impressions of the games we saw.
But more to the point, I was just asked a very good question by my partner who said – she mercilessly interrupted my typing – which games am I still looking forward to this year. I’m horrendous at answering questions like this because my mind clears like a flock of pigeons chased by children every time anyone asks – games, what are games? – but I thought you’d know. So allow me to steal your excitement for a moment; which games are you still looking forward to?
The day begins.
Our live coverage of this event has finished.
Coverage
Comments
08:47 am
UTC
Konami acknowledges Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater issues
It’s launch day for Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater, and Konami has acknowledged some teething issues.
These include crashes while wearing the crocodile cap, but sadly nothing on general performance issues noted in some reviews – especially the PS5 Pro version.
If you’ve been thinking of grabbing the remake, check out Connor’s five star review of Metal Gear Solid Delta first!
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater Review – A MUD-SLICK CLASSIC REBORNWatch on YouTube
Ed Nightingale
08:55 am
UTC
Donlan digs into Skate and interviews the team about it
Image credit: EA
Donlan’s been kickflipping around Skate’s new urban playground of San Vansterdam for us, and once he adjusted to – and ignored – the live-service onslaught, he warmed to it. Much of this has to do with the game’s playful Flick-It system of control, which he talked to the Skate team about.
Flick-It is still effortless fun, allowing you to make even the quietest moment into a few seconds of something cool happening at board level. It’s great for practicing and it’s great for showing off to other players. But, speaking of other players, it’s interesting to me that I’ve spent my most memorable moments so far in this busy game on my own.
Robert Purchese
09:13 am
UTC
Perfect Dark cancellation results in layoffs at Crystal Dynamics
Crystal Dynamics has announced the “difficult decision” to lay off more staff, citing “evolving business conditions”. It added the decision was not made lightly, but was necessary to “ensure the long-term health of our studio and core creative priorities in a continually shifting market”.
This week’s layoffs follow the cancellation of Perfect Dark earlier this year by Microsoft. While the reboot was being helmed by The Initiative, Crystal Dynamics was supporting the project. Tomb Raider remains unaffected.
Crystal Dynamics subject to more layoffs following Perfect Dark cancellation
Victoria Phillips Kennedy
09:14 am
UTC
Gravitas says: I am idly interested in Ghost of Yotei and Outer Worlds 2 but I’m not particularly excited for any games this year. This is partly because of my circumstances and lack of free time for gaming, partly because I have a fully stocked library of games to choose from without buying anything new and partly because the games and IPs that I adore most seem to have withered on the vine. (Deus Ex, Dragon Age, Arkham Batman). I might still be surprised but the last game that came out that really wowed me and felt like it could have been made just for me was Sifu.
Ghost of Yotei and Outer Worlds 2 are good picks! I’m still interested in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. My attention is fang-locked on it at the moment. My hunch is it won’t turn out well but I’m still keen to play. Beyond that… That’s where my mind blanks.
Robert Purchese
09:14 am
UTC
Epic CEO blames Unreal Engine 5 issues on developers
Speaking at the Unreal Fest in South Korea recently, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has blamed performance issues with Unreal Engine 5 on developers.
Plenty of games using the engine have shipped with stuttering and poor frame rates, but Sweeney stated it’s due to the order of development, with studios too focused on high-end tech, rather than the engine itself.
Still, Epic is working on better education, which will certainly help out indies struggling to optimise their games.
Ed Nightingale
09:18 am
UTC
Call of Duty’s U-turn on wacky cosmetics is probably due to Battlefield 6, and that’s a good thing
Yesterday evening we posted an article on Call of Duty’s U-Turn away from wacky cosmetics in the upcoming Black Ops 7, why it’s very likely a response to Battlefield 6 coming in hot, and why that’s ultimately a great thing for regular ‘ol people who just like playing FPS games.
Competition remains a good thing, and being the only horse at the races tends to lead to slopping running. Is that a real saying people use, or just 10AM verbal slop? You decide!
Image credit: Activision
Connor Makar
10:22 am
UTC
Bethesda teases a Starfield space travel update following leaks
Image credit: Eurogamer/Bethesda Softworks
In a recent dev spotlight, Bethesda (via producer Tim Lamb) teased an upcoming update to space travel, which should apparently “make the journeys more rewarding”.
This comes after members of the community mined up some code related to a “cruise mode”, which was quickly patched out by Bethesda after being discovered. Looks like Starfield fans can expect something big in the near future.
Connor Makar
11:20 am
UTC
Final Fantasy 14’s Naoki Yoshida addresses mod usage in the MMORPG
Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki Yoshida has addressed the use of mods in the MMORPG, which has been a contentious issue for a long time.
He’s previously released statements against mod use, but has now given a refresher in a new statement on the game’s Lodestone blog.
Square Enix has asked for media to link to the blog post in full, so check out the link below for a lengthy statement on what is and isn’t allowed.
Ed Nightingale
11:36 am
UTC
How real and unreal collide in Metal Gear Solid
Image credit: Eurogamer
Something has been on Donlan’s mind while playing the recent Metal Gear Solid 3 remaster, and it’s the constant push and pull between what’s real and what’s unreal in the game. In one moment, Kojima’s games seem to show painstaking deference to real life, with detailed injury systems or an intricate animations. But at another moment they’ll delight in the absurd and far fetched. The duality always seems to be there.
The thing that’s so exciting to me about this collision in Metal Gear Solid 3 is that you see it most clearly in the places where the game is possibly trying to play it straight. When it’s not playing it straight, Metal Gear Solid 3 is a riot of unrealism, of course. There’s a boss that controls hornets, if I remember correctly. You fight a boss that controls hornets!
But it’s when the game’s seemingly trying to be real that things get truly odd…
Robert Purchese
11:39 am
UTC
Zombie-Hamster says: Morning all!
Still quite a few games I’m interested in before the end of this year, too many really!
- Silent Hill F
- Hotel Barcelona
- Ghost of Yotei
- Little Nightmares 3
- Metroid Prime 4
- Mouse: P.I. For Hire
That’s a nice list.
Robert Purchese
11:41 am
UTC
2much says: Games I’m still looking forward to this year:
- Ninja Gaiden 4
- Sonic Racing CrossWorlds
- Ghost of Yotei
Plus I’ve got Lost Soul Aside arriving tomorrow
2much adds: Completely forgot about Silent Hill and Metroid when compiling my list! Also Kirby Air Riders I’m fairly interested in, although I’ll certainly be prioritising Sonic. Pretty wild to be getting three AAA kart racers in one year
It is wild to be getting three kart racers this year!
Robert Purchese
11:45 am
UTC
2much says: I’m a bit torn on the technical performance affecting the review thing. Eurogamer reviews tend to be primarily about the reviewer’s experience, wider conversation be damned, and if the performance issues didn’t bother the reviewer then it feels disingenuous to mark it down for that.
There are plenty of all time classics that had or have bad performance, Dark Souls being the one that immediately comes to mind mostly because it’s always on my mind, and if that had gotten a 7/10 for is poor performance, it would have stood out over time as Eurogamer getting it dead wrong.
Metal Gear Solid is a *little* different because it’s a remake, mind.
It’s a tricky one, isn’t it? And I’m not the person to formally answer this by the way – reviews boss Chris Tapsell is but he’s away at the moment. I expect he’ll say something like if a performance issue is significant enough to impact and detract from your experience of the game, then it’s worth talking about. With the caveat of course that a day-one patch might fix it (see Rogueywon’s comment).
On the flip side, I’d personally feel inclined to also mention performance if it was brilliant – if the technical accomplishment of a game was so good it signficantly impacted my experience in a positive way. But that’s just me.
Robert Purchese
11:50 am
UTC
H1ppyDave says: I’m still all in for:
- MGSD (arriving tomorrow, boo!)
- Silksong
- Sonic Crossworld
- Borderlands 4
- Silent Hill F
- Hell is Us
- Little Nightmares 3
Going to be a busy few weeks…
Indeed! Good to see some love here for Little Nightmares 3 by the way. That’s a good series, though it’ll be interesting to see how it feels without Tarsier at the helm.
Robert Purchese
12:16 pm
UTC
Ken Levine spills the beans about Judas
Ken Levine has stepped forward out of the shadows to talk a bit about Juadas, the first-person adventure game reveald by Ghost Story Games back in 2022. This comes after a period of radio silence – the game is still alive!
The blog post written by Levien and the team goes into the Villany system at length, with the Bioshock creator writing loving words about the Nemesis system in the Shadow of Mordor games. Still no release date, unfortunately.
Image credit: Ghost Story Games
Connor Makar
13:53 pm
UTC
Pragmata is wonderfully weird and it took time to get right
Image credit: Eurogamer
Pragmata has had a tricky development. Originally announced in 2020 for a 2022 release, Capcom’s game was delayed once before being delayed indefinitely. But now, it’s back. So what’s taken so long?
Alex Donaldson tried to broach the topic with producer Naoto Oyama at Gamescom, but had mixed success. The team didn’t want to dwell on the past, he was told, though he caught the occasional glimpse or allusion to a complicated development as the interview progressed. Snapshots like this: “We’ve worked hard, long years to get something here that people enjoy. And we’re just really glad to see that people are enjoying the game that we put so much time and so much effort into.”
One thing’s for sure, though. Pragmata is back, Pragmata is weird, and it’s shaping up very well indeed.
Robert Purchese
14:40 pm
UTC
If you play one Vampire Survivors clone let it be…
I unashamedly love Vampire Survivors so I’m somewhat protective of it. I don’t like cheap copies. But Karate Survivor, despite the name, is not one of them. It’s based on the same concept of running around while auto-attacking and dodging hordes of enemies, and levelling up and choosing new powers, but it has ideas of its own as well.
It’s based on Kung Fu rather than vampires, and it has a novel sequencing idea whereby you chain together acrobatic kung fu moves in ways that can greatly augment them. All while tumbling around the scenery, kicking the scenery, and smashing bottles and baseball bats on baddies’ heads. It’s good. I wrote about Karate Survivor a while ago when I played it on PC.
I’m writing about it now because it’s released on consoles today – on PlayStation, Switch and Xbox. It’s $6.
Watch on YouTube
Robert Purchese
14:52 pm
UTC
Is Honor’s glitzy new foldable phone any good?
In the market for a new phone? Got £1700 to spare (or pretend you can spare)? Then why not take a look at Honor’s glitzy new foldable phone. Reece has our comprehensive review.
For the £1699.99 asking price, the Honor Magic V5 is an undeniably premium handset that offers some serious competition to both Samsung and Google and continues Honor’s upwards trajectory in providing genuinely compelling phones from a brand you may not have considered before.
Robert Purchese
14:58 pm
UTC
Victoria tries the Yooka-Laylee remaster
Image credit: Playtonic Games
I still can’t spell this game’s name. Youka Laylee. No. Yooka Laylee. No – it has a hyphen. Yooka-Laylee. Got it!
Unfortunately for me and my keyboard, Yooka-Laylee is back – with an even harder to type name. Yooka-Replayee. God. It’s being remastered for current console machines. So is it worth a revisit? Victoria took a look at Gamescom.
The question now is has Playtonic done enough to entice players back to the world of Yooka-Laylee? The team has added more pagies to collect, refined animations and of course made adjustments to its controls, and all of these make for a pleasing package. However, in a time when the likes of Nintendo has just released its bombastic, earth-shattering (quite literally) Donkey Kong Bananza, I am still unsure there is quite enough fresh meat here to allow Yooka-Replaylee to fully stand out from the platforming crowd.
Robert Purchese
15:01 pm
UTC
2much says: Have their been phone reviews on this site before? I would really recommend against buying a folding screen phone. Mine broke within two months and I know several other people who have had similar experiences.
I can’t believe how expensive foldable phones are. However, I won’t deny being interested in them. They’re like futuristic books. But you could buy a computer for that money!
Robert Purchese
15:07 pm
UTC
Archive delve: today’s memory is pure Gamescom
I haven’t got a written article from the archive for you today but a piece of pure magic from Ian instead (Chris Bratt was also involved behind the camera). It comes from Gamescom 2015, a show I was also at, sharing an Airbnb with Chris, Ian and Martin. I loved that Airbnb – so many happy memories! I was wearing a rug like a cape at one point. We had fun.
Anyway. This particular archived memory involves Hideo Kojima’s name being controversially removed from the credits of Metal Gears Solid 5: The Phantom Pain – around the time Kojima left Konami. This seemed like a gross injustice to us so we decided to fix it. One game-stand at a time.
Watch on YouTube
Robert Purchese
15:08 pm
UTC
SomethingOriginal says: If we’re recommending VS clones, can I take this opportunity to point at Deep Rock Galactic Survivors, the Deep Rock series’ take on the genre, which is despicably moreish, and, if you fancy a different slant, Vampire Hunters, which is a FPS approach to the swarm’em up bullet hell thing. Both great, in my humble opinion.
Ooh good shouts! No one has ever described Deep Rock Galactic to me that way, and it’s made me infinitely more interested in it. If only I had some friends to play it with.
Robert Purchese
15:19 pm
UTC
SomethingOriginal says: Hi Bertie, thanks for the highlight – Just to be clear, Deep Rock Galactic Survivors is a top-down, single player game from the same team, not a squad based shooter like its eponymous namesake, so you don’t need any friends for it!
Oh that makes more sense now!
Robert Purchese
15:25 pm
UTC
“The fact is I wish we didn’t have to do things like Secure Boot”
Image credit: Eurogamer
Battlefield 6 is big news at the moment. The open beta seems to have been really popular, and it’s nice for Call of Duty to have some meaningful competition again. But one thing players – myself included – didn’t like about Battlefield 6 was how invasive its anti-cheat solution was. It required you to give kernel-level access to EA Dice in order for the game to recognise any deep-level tampering on your machine.
Connor’s been talking to EA Dice about it.
“The fact is I wish we didn’t have to do things like Secure Boot” Buhl admits. “It does prevent some players from playing the game. Some people’s PCs can’t handle it and they can’t play: that really sucks. I wish everyone could play the game with low friction and not have to do these sorts of things.”
Robert Purchese
15:55 pm
UTC
Dark Pictures apparently needed a merch store
I’ll admit to finding the Dark Pictures games a guilty pleasure, but I’m not sure they warranted having a merch store. Neverthelesss, they’ve got one. There are uninspiring T-shirts and hoodies there, and an awful-looking pillow [it’s not a pillow, Bertie, it’s a sticker collection], but also some appealing merchandisables too. That’s a word, right?
The slasher-style horror posters for each of the Dark Pictures games look great. And look at this diorama of the creepy Curator chap who’s in every Dark Pictures game: I’d buy that! How much is it? £89. Maybe not.
Image credit: Dark Pictures Store
Robert Purchese
16:09 pm
UTC
Even a crap Bond film has something about it
Image credit: Warner / Amazon MGM
They’re not my words but Alex Donaldson’s! He who has been writing about James Bond again. He accidentally bumped into Never Say Never Again while flicking through the channels on TV – something no one ever does any more, apart from Alex. And there was Connery. Alex was sucked in.
It’s an incredible time capsule. I think it represents a few different moments in time. Never Say Never Again released in the wake of Star Wars and just a year after Tron. Gaming was enormous, even though the great industry crash was imminent. At the time this was made science fiction and video games were in vogue. It also obviously serves a purpose in transforming Thunderball too, as these scenes take on a completely different vibe despite serving an identical story purpose.
Robert Purchese
16:22 pm
UTC
Elden Ring Nightreign is getting a high-difficulty mode
Image credit: FromSoft
Just in case Elden Ring Nightreign wasn’t challening enough for you, or you’ve played it so much you’ve worn all of its jagged edges smooth, like the sea does a stone, then Bandai Namco and FromSoftware have just the update for you: a high-difficulty mode.
It’s known as Deep of Night and it’s due 11th September.
Robert Purchese
16:25 pm
UTC
MarcusJ says: Re: Bond films. We recently watched the full run here from Dr. No to whatever the most recent one was, and enjoyed them, by and large. There’s something not quite right about watching a Bond film without nine commercial breaks and a half hour intermission for the news though.
Haha! The news intermission: I’d totally forgotten about that. Isn’t it weird how watching things on streaming services, particularly those linked to traditional broadcasters like BBC or ITV, now pipe-in advert breaks in the same way? It’s a full-circle moment. I noticed it recently while watching… No, I won’t say. You can’t make me.
Love Island. There, I’ve said it. I hope you’re happy.
Robert Purchese
16:27 pm
UTC
That’s it for today folks! Thanks for joining us. See you tomorrow? I’ll bring snacks. Mikado chocolate sticks, if you’re asking.
Robert Purchese
