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Game Reviews

Palia Botanical Bliss update patch notes

by admin August 19, 2025

Screenshot via Singularity 6

Published: Aug 18, 2025 12:30 pm

Palia‘s next big update, Botanical Bliss, is now live on all available platforms, and there’s plenty in-store for the players to enjoy and explore.

The latest update gives us new ways to explore the magical world and deck out our housing plots. Additionally, 1st and 2nd Anniversary Plushies are also available to all as part of a limited-time login campaign.

All major Palia Botanical Bliss features

The new update has plenty of events to engage in. Completing the events will allow us to win special rewards.

Flower Bloom Event

This event will be available to all players at 12pm game time in Palia. You will have to take part in a co-op-focused flower-filled challenge to complete the tasks and unlock the rewards. You can also attempt to go solo, but it could be slightly tricky.

The event will be available to beginners and veterans alike. If you’re just starting in Palia, complete the tutorial to gain access to the event. You might be missing the watering can, but you can still enjoy the remaining content that the event has to offer.

To make matters easier, a new Bulletin Board is available for all. You can use the board to explore seasonal themes, take part in limited-time activities, and win various rewards. You can also find mini narrative-driven objectives to win even more rewards.

New decor items

If you’re looking to add more color and style to your house in Palia, make sure to explore the eight flower-themed nameplates. The nameplates are available from Flower Bloom Event rewards and Bulletin Board quests.

You can find more options in the Premium Store, which also gets new updates. Fresh items like the Beastslayer and Yacht Club outfit collections, Torocat Pet and Glider, and the Beastslayer Tool Skin will be available as part of Botanical Bliss.

You can also find new Plushes like the Floatfish Toadstool, Piksii, and Floatfish Midnight during the event.

New flora

Sticking true to the theme of the event, you will find ten new floras to explore, combined with nine stylish planters.

Here’s the complete list of all flora items/recipes and how to acquire them.

Item How to AcquireGreenhome Clay PotPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventGreenhome BasketPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventGreenhome Wall PotPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventGreenhome Stone UrnPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventGreenhome Wood PotPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventGreenhome Terracotta PotPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventGreenhome Burlap SackPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventGreenhome Metal PotPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventGreenhome Flower BoxPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventFlowering Orange BushPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventFlowering Pink BushPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventFlowering Black BushPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventFlowering Blue BushPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventFlowering Yellow BushPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventFlowering Red BushPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventFlowering Purple BushPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventCoastal BushPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventCypress TreePotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic EventFernPotential Drop from Kilima Dynamic Event

Additionally, the update continues to bring plenty of bug fixes and solutions to some pesky glitches that have been found in Palia so far.

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August 19, 2025 0 comments

Captain America about to smack someone down with his shiled.

Game Reviews

Marvel Rivals May Get Something No One Asked For: Original Heroes

by admin August 19, 2025

The Marvel universe is so vast that games like hero shooter Marvel Rivals and fighting game Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls already have a virtually endless bucket of characters to draw on for their growing rosters. Nevertheless, it sounds like NetEase is at least considering making its own original heroes for Marvel Rivals at some point. You know, if that was something you ever thought about.

MP1st asked Marvel Rivals director Guangyun “Guangguang” Chen if NetEase had considered adding heroes of its own to fight alongside Marvel staples like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four in a future season. After all, other Marvel projects like the MCU movies have created new characters. Would it be out of the question for Rivals to also indulge in making people up to capture an objective or push a payload? Well, Chen says that Marvel has given the team the green light to do that. While he told MP1st the team is “allowed to introduce original characters,” Chen played coy when asked if any are coming down the pipeline, merely saying “stay tuned.”

Maybe my immediate aversion to this is just because Marvel Rivals isn’t even a year old yet, and the thought that someone’s favorite comic book mainstay could get sidelined for some OC cooked up in the NetEase offices feels bad. However, Luna Snow, one of the most popular characters in Marvel Rivals, also started as an original character in the mobile game Marvel Future Fight, which has been a point of contention considering all the attention she gets in terms of cosmetics compared to fan-favorite heroes who originate from the comics. I don’t doubt some interesting heroes might come out of this, but you’re still covering the classics, NetEase, so I hope any original characters you might introduce come after you’ve spent a bit more time filling out the roster with established heroes people are still waiting for.

For more on Marvel Rivals, check out Kotaku’s review.

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August 19, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

18th August video games round-up: Battlefield 6 beta sadness, Shenmue 3, and a Nintendo Direct for Kirby

by admin August 19, 2025

Update: That was the world of video games today on 18th August. A full transcript of everything that occurred today is available below if you wish to digest it all at your leisure.

It’s 18th August, and we’re back with another daily live report. We’ll be running down all the day’s news and events, checking in with what you are up to, and providing some hopefully entertaining commentary on the world of video games.

Today we’ve got some great articles going live on the site, but we’ll also discuss Gamescom, which takes place this week, and look at the games releasing in September that you’ve got your eyes on.

Our live coverage of this event has finished.

Coverage
Comments

08:09 am
UTC

Morning everyone! I hope you’ll join us today as we look ahead to Gamescom, round up the day’s news and events, and think about the games we’re all looking forward to in September.

Tom Orry

08:15 am
UTC

Kane & Lynch 2 – remembering the most miserable game of all time

If you’re looking for something to read on a quiet Monday morning, and you missed what we published over the weekend, here’s a round-up:

Tom Orry

08:31 am
UTC

Tony Hawk on his life and his video games

Image credit: TonyHawk.com

Has a video games series had a bigger impact on people than the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series? Talk to anyone who was playing video games and growing up in the late 90s/early 00s and I bet most of them have fond memories of those early games.

Tom Orry

08:33 am
UTC

rmx87 says: It’s the 18th Tom! Morning!MarcusJ says: Flip your desk calendar over, Tom!

Looking forward to this week’s EG. Should be some good stuff.

Well done you two! Test passed. You both win a day of live reporting. Congratulations!

Tom Orry

09:00 am
UTC

New Pokémon Legends: Z-A trailer shows off Link Battles

If you are keen for every single morsel of Pokémon Legends: Z-A info, as some of the team at Eurogame are, then this new trailer and info released over the weekend will be of interest. This latest game update focuses on the game’s Link Battles.

Watch on YouTube

Tom Orry

09:16 am
UTC

Gamescom ONL, time to get hyped via a trailer?

We reserve the right not to get hyped about Gamescom ONL, the show taking place tomorrow evening (7pm BST in the UK), but that hasn’t stopped Geoff putting out a trailer designed to do just that.

Watch on YouTube

Tom Orry

09:50 am
UTC

2much says: Presumably _this_ is the night we’re gonna see the Bloodborne remaster

Thanks for this, 2much. I needed a good laugh this morning. ONL is tomorrow night, and I will be gobsmacked if anything near this level of game reveal is there.

Tom Orry

10:00 am
UTC

Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War is one of the greatest strategy games of all time

Image credit: Relic Entertainment

Chris is well into Space Marines and that, and he has a special place in his heart for the Dawn of War series. The original game was a little tricky to get running nicely on modern hardware, but the newly released Definitive Edition fixes all that and comes with a bunch of new refinements and tweaks.

To quote Chris, verbatim, from a definitely real conversation I had with him about Dawn of War: “It’s orksome.” What more do you need to be told?

Tom Orry

10:15 am
UTC

On the subject of games people are looking forward to in September (and end of August, if you want):

Danzig85 says: I’ve got my eye on Metal Gear this month and Hell Is Us next month. Plenty to finish before then though.

So many games, so little time.

Both potentially great games. We’ve got a MGS3 Delta review coming later this week, and Hell is Us has impressed at preview.

Tom Orry

11:02 am
UTC

These games are set to leave Xbox Game Pass at the end of August

Image credit: Sabotage / Eurogamer.

Xbox has revealed which games are leaving Xbox Game Pass at the end of August. A few good ones in this list.

Borderlands 3 Ultimate Edition
Sea of Stars
Paw Patrol Mighty Pups Save Adventure Bay
This War of Mine: Final Cut
Ben 10: Power Trip

Tom Orry

11:39 am
UTC

chesterBox says: PS Store added a discount called “Gamescom 2025” and there’s Bloodborne… that must mean something, right? Right?! 😀

(99% it does not mean anything)

Don’t do this to yourself, Chester. It’ll just bring pain.

But… what if?

Tom Orry

11:44 am
UTC

A delve into the Eurogamer archive

Image credit: Valve

My brain can’t always go back far enough to bring out the real classics, but this superb article from Simon Parkin popped into my head this morning, so I’m sharing it with you all now.

At 6am on 7th May 2004, Axel Gembe awoke in the small German town of Schönau im Schwarzwald to find his bed surrounded by police officers. Automatic weapons were pointing at his head and the words, “Get out of bed. Do not touch the keyboard,” were ringing in his ears.

Get this read if you haven’t already, or maybe read it again.

Tom Orry

12:22 pm
UTC

Euro Truck Simulator 2 PS5 and Xbox versions spotted

Cult hit Euro Truck Simulator 2 is seemingly coming to PS5 and Xbox consoles. The news comes via PSN and Xbox store listings for the game, which is yet to be officially announced for the two consoles.

Tom Orry

13:17 pm
UTC

Surprise! Shenmue 3 is back

Image credit: Ys Net

Shenmue 3 is coming back for a second bite at success with the Enhanced Edition. This reworked and improved version of the original release will be available on PC, PS5, Xbox Series consoles, and Nintendo (presumably Switch 2). A full reveal is coming at Gamescom this week.

Tom Orry

13:21 pm
UTC

Kirby Air Riders Direct tomorrow

Tune in tomorrow Tuesday, August 19th at 2pm UK time for a livestreamed Kirby Air Riders Direct featuring about 45 minutes of information about the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 game.

Boom! 45 minutes of Kirby tomorrow? What a treat.

Kirby Air Riders Direct is airing tomorrow at 2pm BST in the UK.

Tom Orry

13:42 pm
UTC

45 minutes of Kirby Air Riders? I love a bit of Kirby as much as the next fan of alien entities that take on the abilities of the objects they consume, but that’s a long time to spend on one game. I’m excited to see what Nintendo has cooked up, though.

Tom Orry

13:47 pm
UTC

Endling – Extinction dev reveals its next game

Image credit: Herobeat

Developer Herobeat has announced its next game, Rewilders: The Lost Spring, which has been inspired by the works of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli films.

Tom Orry

13:54 pm
UTC

Any Shenmue fans in the comments today? I won’t pretend I’m a big fan. I played the original game on the Dreamcast and simply couldn’t get into it. And that is as a huge Sega fan who had grown up as a Sega kid. Just wasn’t for me.

Tom Orry

14:23 pm
UTC

The Battlefield 6 party continues in… Battlefield 2042

Connor has been on the blower to moan about how sad he is that the Battlefield 6 beta has finished. “Don’t worry,” I said in reply, cutting through his tears. “You can just play Battlefield 2042 and earn some stuff to use in Battlefield 6.”

He turned to me (not that I could see as we were on a phone call, not a video call), and he said: “Tom, you are so wise. I will play Battlefield 2042 as I am the exact target audience for this type of marketing campaign. I’ll also write up my thoughts on such an event in a story to publish on Eurogamer.net.”

Thanks, Connor. Here is that story:

Tom Orry

14:46 pm
UTC

Today’s Blast from the Past: Flights, Co-op Tomb Raiding, and more

Image credit: Xbox / Microsoft

Another day presents another opportunity for us to look back at gaming history. Here’s some milestone anniversaries for today, 18th August:

Microsoft Flight Simulator’s grand reboot leads the pack of gaming anniversaries today – the reimagining of the franchise first released five years ago. I recieved the coveted Eurogamer Essential, back when that was the parlance – and it sits alongside Animal Crossing as a perfect game for the then all-consuming pandemic, allowing a sort of digital tourism at a time when we were all trapped inside. It’s a shame that the much more content-rich 2024 edition has run into various troubles, but hopefully that team can eventually recapture the spirit of the 2020 edition over time.
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is fifteen years old today. A cool, well-reviewed spin-off of the franchise inspired by the likes of Diablo and Gauntlet, it first launched for Xbox 360’s Live Arcade and then made its way to PS3, PC, and even mobile. It brings to mind that era when downloadables were always smaller, bite-sized games, which led to interesting spin-offs of big-name brands like this – something we now don’t see as often. A shame.
And here’s a trio of further recent anniversaries: Rogue Legacy 2, Mortal Shell, and Spiritfarer all hit on this day in 2020 – the same day as Flight Simulator! There was clearly something in the water on this day five years ago. I’m also now just realizing I can’t write “on that day five years ago”, or a variation thereof, without hearing this.

Alex Donaldson

15:04 pm
UTC

I actually really liked Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, not that I can remember a single thing about it – although I think you had to push a large ball around at one point?

Tom Orry

15:15 pm
UTC

Crazyreyn says: “Any Shenmue fans in the comments today?” hello

Here he is! The Shenmue fan has logged on.

Tom Orry

15:38 pm
UTC

Sword of the Sea review

Image credit: Giant Squid / Eurogamer

Liked this one quite a bit folks.

It’s the latest from Giant Squid, the developer behind Abzu and The Pathless, with creative director Matt Nava having also worked heavily on Journey as art director back in the day. He teams up again with renowned game composer Austin Wintory here. It’s a game that mixes a bit of light Zelda-ing with serene platforming, ludicrously pretty views and a sense of movement, mindfulness and flow that’s right up there with very best of ’em. Big fat five stars from me.

Chris Tapsell

15:44 pm
UTC

Mortal Kombat movie is 30 years old today

As the clock ticks ever closer to 5pm in the UK and I can see the fajitas I’m about to cook for my dinner drift into view, now is the perfect time to remember the original Mortal Kombat movie which turns 30 today. I know this film has gained a large following in the years since its release, but I never liked it that much. That said, it probably captured the video games better than the recent movie did. You can’t say anything negative about this music, though, which is superb.

Watch on YouTube

Tom Orry

16:03 pm
UTC

That’s your lot for today. Big day tomorrow, everyone, so don’t stay up too late tonight. Chances are there’ll be at least one good game shown during Gamescom ONL, which kicks off at 7pm BST tomorrow – although there is supposedly also a bit of a pre-show before that.

Thanks for joining us today. See you all tomorrow.

Tom Orry

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August 19, 2025 0 comments

The Silksong clown nose meme from Hollow Knight is shown.

Game Reviews

How To Watch Silksong, Fallout Season 2, And More

by admin August 19, 2025

Everyone is waiting for Hollow Knight: Silksong to come out. It’s the most wishlisted game on Steam. You can’t watch a new gaming showcase these days without the chat being flooded with stuff like “Show Silksong? Where is Silksong? Silksong when?” Due out before the end of 2025, time is running out for a release date announcement or even a same-day shadow-drop. With Gamescom 2025 Opening Night Live just around the corner, could this finally be the moment of truth? Host Geoff Keighley is certainly acting like it.

Gaming’s veteran hype man has been sharing images of Gamescom ONL prep, including one of him in front of a mirror wearing a clown nose. It’s a clear wink to the Silksong fanart clown makeup meme about perpetual disappointment. The trend started years ago when developer Team Cherry was MIA, but hit a new fever pitch after Xbox claimed Silksong would arrive in 2022, only for it to never come out. Many gaming showcases have come and gone since, with the Metroidvanaia Soulslike only ever appearing briefly as part of a sizzle reel here and there.

First time? 🤡

See you tomorrow for @gamescom ONL. pic.twitter.com/59ef5sFysJ

— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) August 18, 2025

Keighley is either tipping his hand that big Silksong news is just around the corner or paving the way for the biggest collective letdown ever. Since the game will be playable at multiple booths on the Gamescom show floor, my money’s on the former. It’s coming to Switch but has also been promised to be available day-one on the Xbox Ally PC gaming handheld, rumored to release in October. Plus, the soundtrack was just added to the backend of GOG.

Keighley’s showcase will take place on August 19, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. ET. It will run approximately two hours with a pre-show that starts at 1:30 p.m. ET. You can stream it live on both YouTube and Twitch. The event tends to have new game announcements sprinkled in with trailers and updates on already revealed games coming out in the next few months, plus occasionally brief intros from the developers themselves. This year’s Gamescom ONL will also include a live orchestra performance of music from surprise hit Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and the first footage of Fallout season 2.

What games will be shown at Gamescom ONL?

Beyond the tease for Silksong, Keighley has already confirmed the following nine games will also make an appearance:

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
Resident Evil Requiem
Ghost of Yotei
Ninja Gaiden 4
The Outer Worlds 2
Silent Hill f
World of Warcraft: Midnight
Black Myth: Wukong
Lords of the Fallen 2

Black Ops 7 is expected to reveal the first footage from its updated multiplayer, while Black Myth: Wukong is headed to Xbox this week and could potentially be showing off its long-rumored DLC expansion. With no BlizzCon this year, Microsoft will also be using ONL to debut the next World of Warcraft expansion, though a much bigger deal would be if it ever gets a much-requested console port. And what about Diablo 4‘s recently leaked Paladin subclass, rumored to be part of its next expansion? The Outer Worlds 2 is Microsoft’s other big fall release, but with few updates on its biggest in-development games at its Xbox showcase in June, there are plenty of other big releases that could make surprise appearances at ONL.

We haven’t heard much from Ubisoft this year either. Amid big delays and internal restructurings, the French publisher declined to hold its usual Summer Game Fest-adjacent June showcase. With the next Far Cry, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell remakes all in development, any one of them could get a tease at Gamescom. The developers behind The Division 2 have already teased news on the ongoing loot shooter’s big winter update. Who knows, maybe Gamescom 2025 is when Beyond Good and Evil 2 will finally resurface!

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August 19, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Euro Truck Simulator 2 seemingly coming to PS5 and Xbox Series consoles

by admin August 18, 2025

No release date is on the store listings, but we can probably expect that news soon, presumably tied to an announcement over Gamescom this week. SCS SOFTWARE had a big hit with Euro Truck Simulator 2 on PC, which as of 2024 had sold in excess of 15 million copies.

Travel across Europe as king of the road, a trucker who delivers important cargo across impressive distances! With dozens of cities to explore from the UK, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and many more, your endurance, skill and speed will all be pushed to their limits. If you’ve got what it takes to be part of an elite trucking force, get behind the wheel and prove it!

Key Features:

Transport a vast variety of cargo across more than 60 European cities.
Run your own business which continues to grow even as you complete your freight deliveries.
Build your own fleet of trucks, buy garages, hire drivers, manage your company for maximum profits.
A varied amount of truck tuning that range from performance to cosmetic changes.
Customize your vehicles with optional lights, bars, horns, beacons, smoke exhausts, and more.
Thousands of miles of real road networks with hundreds of famous landmarks and structures.

This is a news-in-brief story. This is part of our vision to bring you all the big news as part of a daily live report.

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August 18, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Battlefield 6’s Open Weapon System Is Good

by admin August 18, 2025

When I first heard about EA and Battlefield Studios’ plan to implement an open weapon system in the upcoming Battlefield 6, I scoffed! And playing the game in Los Angeles for an event last month didn’t sell me on it, either; I still worried it would make classes feel less unique. Now, after playing the open beta for nearly 20 hours, I’m here to say: I was wrong.

Let’s back up for a moment and explain, briefly, open and closed weapon class systems in Battlefield. (I promise this won’t be too boring.) Basically, for nearly as long as the franchise has been around, classes were locked to certain weapons. Recon, for example, had to use a sniper rifle. Over time, developers at Dice tweaked this and added “neutral” weapons that could be picked by multiple classes, or they spread specific types of weapons across a few classes. Battlefield 2042 threw a lot of this out the window when it launched without classes and let players essentially build custom heroes who could use any gadget or gun. It then added classes back in when people got angry. Anyway, Battlefield 6 is trying to find a happy balance between 2042‘s total, unbalanced openness and the classic closed weapon system of the past games. And I think, despite being nervous about the change and all the debate raging online among players on both sides, Battlefield Studios has mostly nailed it.

In Battlefield 6, any class can use any weapon. So you can spawn in as a recon soldier, but instead of a sniper rifle, you could bring an SMG. Engineers, traditionally a class that uses SMGs, can rock snipers and LMGs. At first, this seemed like a bad idea to me. I worried that players would just pick the class with the best abilities and pick the best assault rifle, and you’d lose all the uniqueness that comes from BF’s old-school class system. And in some smaller, more combat-focused modes, this is indeed the case. But in bigger, more Battlefield-y modes, like Conquest and Rush, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how things have worked out.

In my hours with the beta, I found that in many matches players were spread all around the four classes. In some past games (looking at you, Battlefield 3), people would pick whatever class had the best assault rifle, and that was that. During a Q&A with the devs last month in LA, they talked about this and said that the open weapon system was partly designed to combat this. The idea is that now people will pick classes based on what the team needs and their unique abilities and tools, rather than the weapons they can and can’t use.

And yeah, that’s exactly what I saw happening in many BF6 open beta matches. If the enemy team, for example, brought in a bunch of vehicles or tanks, I’d see players swap to engineers to use that class’s RPG to take all those machines out. Likewise, I saw players and friends swap to the support class to help hold a point and revive people, or swap to recon to help pin down a target. It seems now that weapons can be freely equipped on any class, people are far more open to playing different classes and helping out the team. Sure, maybe some of these players have just equipped the same assault rifle on all of the classes, but if it helps my team stop a tank from destroying us, I’m fine with it. That’s a much better scenario than in past BF games, where a whole team might be assault soldiers and you’d be unable to get ammo resupplies or fight back against helis.

Battlefield 6 also rewards players for choosing a weapon that is more aligned with their class. Recon soldiers get a ton of exclusive sniper perks that make it almost silly to use a sniper rifle on any other class. But you can do it, if that makes you happy. And this is where I’d suggest some tweaks.

I think rewarding players who pick class-specific weapons is a smart idea, but I almost feel like the devs could do more to make sure picking an assault rifle on every class isn’t an easy option. Perhaps class-specific weapon punishments could work? An assault class soldier picking a sniper rifle might mean they don’t get the recon benefits, and perhaps they also reload the big rifles more slowly. Or an engineer picking an assault rifle has more kick and can’t carry as much ammo for it. These tweaks would reward people playing classes more traditionally, could be overcome with skill or teamwork, and would still allow for the weapon freedom the devs want in BF6.

But even if Battlefield 6 devs don’t steal my totally-awesome-and-perfect idea, I think the open weapon system is a good change. It lets players enjoy all the classes without forcing them to play with specific guns. This leads to matches in which all the classes are used, and that leads to more enjoyable Battlefield action. And that’s what I’m looking for. Sure, maybe it means that I’ll be killed a lot by a few popular assault rifles, but it might also mean that there will be more medics running around who can heal me. That would be nice. And don’t worry; if you hate the open weapon system, EA is going to offer playlists and modes that feature locked weapons, too. Everyone wins.

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August 18, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Finally, we’re about to get more info on Switch 2 exclusive Kirby Air Riders

by admin August 18, 2025

Nintendo has announced that a Kirby Air Riders Direct will air tomorrow, 19th August. The video presentation will be approximately 45 minutes long and deliver info on the upcoming Switch 2 exclusive.

The news of the Direct was posted on Nintendo Today, the publisher’s mobile app.

Tune in tomorrow Tuesday, August 19th at 2pm UK time for a livestreamed Kirby Air Riders Direct featuring about 45 minutes of information about the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 game.

Very little on the game has been revealed so far, although we got this description on the game’s listing on Nintendo.com.

Kirby Air Riders, a brand new title originated from the Nintendo GameCube classic racing-action game Kirby Air Ride, is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 this year – directed by Masahiro Sakurai.

A trailer for Kirby Air Riders was released back in April. The trailer, which you can watch below, doesn’t give much away, and we’ve had to wait four months to get new info on the game.

Watch on YouTube

This is a news-in-brief story. This is part of our vision to bring you all the big news as part of a daily live report.

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August 18, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Steam Review Scores Are Changing Amid Endless Review-Bombing

by admin August 18, 2025

Valve is overhauling how Steam reviews are displayed in a new update, it announced on Monday. The percentage score usually assigned to games based on the number of positive and negative user reviews will now exclude reviews written in other languages. The change comes as Steam becomes an increasingly popular global PC storefront and routine review-bombing from players in specific regions can torpedo a game’s rating for everyone on the platform.

“Steam’s growth since then into an even larger global presence means customers in different regions of the world may have vastly different experiences from each other for the same game,” Valve explained in a new blog post. “There are a variety of reasons this may happen for a particular game, including translation issues, cultural references, poor network connections, and many others; things that the Overall Review Scores haven’t been able to capture until now. Calculating a language-specific review score means that we can better distill the sentiment of these different groups of customers, and in doing so, better serve potential customers that belong to those groups.”

Not every game will be impacted by the changes. Valve said it will only start calculating “language-specific review scores” for games with at least 2,000 total publicly visible user reviews, and at least 200 written in a particular language. Players can now click through the review score section of a game’s Steam store page to get a breakdown of the scores across different languages. While this will now be the default mode for review scores on Steam, everyone will still have the option to toggle back to the old system.

“We realize that whenever we make changes to User Reviews, we’re inviting some scrutiny into our motivations for making those changes,” Valve wrote. “Maintaining trust in the system is crucial to us, so we’ve erred on the side of being as transparent as possible.”

The move comes just days after one of Steam’s bigger releases of the season, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, implemented controversial changes to the game following apparent pushback from some Chinese fans over historical references in the fictional Soulslike. While it’s unclear if that game factored into this new policy at all, games on Steam increasingly get review-bombed for all sorts of reasons that don’t always necessarily have to do with the underlying functionality or experience, from allegations of using generative AI to complaints of terms of service requirements in places like Europe.

Data from Simon Carless’ Game Discover newsletter earlier this year showed that a plurality of Steam users in 2024 had “simplified Chinese” as their primary language on the platform, followed narrowly by English in second place. Over the summer, Helldivers 2 was briefly review-bombed after an apparent translation error led Chinese players to feel cheated by one of the game’s weekly mission objectives. The latest changes to review scores seem like an attempt by Valve to keep those two audiences separate, at least when it comes to rating new games.

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August 18, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Sword of the Sea Review – Beauty For The Sake Of Beauty

by admin August 18, 2025

Developer Giant Squid was born from members of the team that created 2012’s Journey. Giant Squid founder and Sword of the Sea’s director, Matt Nava, is credited as Journey’s art director, but frankly, you could have guessed that just from looking at the screenshots at the top of this page. This is Giant Squid’s third game, but it is arguably the one that feels the most indebted to Journey – and that’s a compliment. It certainly has its own distinct vibe, story, and, as you progress deeper in the game, art style, but in some ways, it feels like it picks up where that landmark 2012 video game left off.

Sword of the Sea is not a wordless story. Occasionally, you come across stone tablets that offer cryptic prose about what may or may not be happening in this world, but for the most part, your appreciation of the narrative comes strictly from the visuals. You are a swordsperson who prefers to ride your sword like a hoverboard rather than swing it on an adventure to bring aquatic life back to dried out world covered with rolling sand.

The star of the show is the feeling of riding your sword. Gaining speed and leaping from giant sand dunes is fluid and fast. New abilities unlocked over the course of the game only make movement feel better, and different surface types lead to slightly different approaches in how to gain speed and height to hit that next destination. Finding those rhythms on the hills is where Sword of the Sea sings, and the excellent pace of the experience means you are rarely slowing down. I finished my first playthrough in under three hours but immediately started its new game plus mode in order to unlock the final few abilities and see how quickly I could get to the game’s thrilling finale again.

While the ease and speed of movement is Sword of the Sea’s primary highlight, its visuals are a close second. I loved the loop of seeing what’s next and pausing to take in the gorgeous sights. Periodically, the game takes camera control from the player as they are careening down a hill to focus on the landscape in the distance, and I was always eager to hand it over just to make sure I could pay attention to what I was seeing without having to worry about jumping at the right time.

The ocean-themed art direction also leads to unexpected moments that are weird in just the right way. Sword of the Sea likes to play with your expectations, and I was frequently surprised by what I was doing and what was happening.

Perhaps the only shortcoming is that I didn’t find the narrative particularly emotional. It is difficult to create moving moments between characters who don’t speak and exist in an abstract world, and Sword of the Sea doesn’t quite stick the landing. I wouldn’t define my experience with that part of the game as disappointing, but rather that the implications of the narrative didn’t quite keep up with how good the game looks, feels, and sounds. I wanted more.

I appreciate Sword of the Sea’s brevity and visual goals. It never gets close to dragging or overstaying its welcome. It moves at the pace of a magical swordsperson speeding across sand dunes on a floating blade at 170 miles per hour (a speedometer unlocks after you beat the game), and it never gives you a reason to look away. I wanted to feel more from the story, perhaps only because every other element of the experience elevated it so high that my expectations were right up there with them.

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August 18, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Sword of the Sea review – heaven really is a half-pipe

by admin August 18, 2025

Movement, meaning and mindfulness combine in Giant Squid’s latest, a game of free-form expression and flow.

What do we actually mean, when we call a game rewarding? I reckon typically it’s one of two things. First you have games that reward you for playing them well: rewards are given in return for achievement or superlative skill – a new outfit, a Legendary Cuirass, a skill point or two. Then you have the ones where you’re awarded simply for playing the game at all, that kind of external stimulus for engagement. The Skinner box method, basically, where you get daily bonuses for everything from simply logging in to maxing out your battle pass. What Sword of the Sea reminded me, as I lanced my way through desert dunes, 720’d my way across cliff edges, nosedived off a mountain face, or just awkwardly bunny hopped my way along a ledge I wasn’t sure I was actually meant to climb, is that there’s a third way. A game that rewards you neither for just playing nor for playing well, but for playing it right.

Sword of the Sea review

Developer: Giant Squid
Publisher: Giant Squid
Platform: Played on PS5
Availability: Out 19th August on PC (Steam, Epic), PS5

In reality this is really a bit of good old Game Design 101 – and Sword of the Sea feels like such a game designer’s game. What I mean is it’s instructional. Sword of the Sea uses rewards to teach, elegantly and (almost) wordlessly. But before I give you an example I should probably take a beat to explain exactly what it is.

Sword of the Sea is a skateboarding game. It’s also a surfing game. And a snowboarding game. It’s also not really like any of those kinds of games, at least not in the way you might have them in your head. And it’s also, kind of, just Zelda.

In the beginning, like in all good games of exploration and beautiful worlds, you start in a cave. A few quick lessons later – jump, skate a half-pipe, pay the mysterious vendor their toll – and you’re out. Rolling dunes – really waves of sand – invite you onwards, to the archetypal opening-credits cliff edge and a view over all there is to be conquered. And then, yes, a big old ramp. Your goal in Sword of the Sea is to return water to this dried out, ruined world. You carve through it looking for simple clues and following them to logical conclusion, and between those two points, the time between A and B, is all the magic. You jump, flip, grind, skid, spin, and trick your way across the world, a needle with a searing blue thread, weaving life back into the seams of nature.

Here’s a Sword of the Sea trailer to show it in motion.Watch on YouTube

Where Sword of the Sea differs from so many skate-surf-board games before it is in its forgivingness. Typically these kinds of games are hard. Or if not hard, at least a challenge, often with that sense of challenge baked right into it, in fact, delivered via imperative. Get a high score. Chase a combo. Survive. Extreme sports like these are extreme, after all, much of their thrill coming from the closeness with which you can get yourself to death. So it goes in, say, Lonely Mountains: Downhill, a game that tangles mindfulness with downhill sports with supreme skill, but which places great big emphasis on the crunch of failure (which if you’re anything like me happens quite often). With Tony Hawk there’s always a stumble waiting for you if your timing’s off, a trip hazard lurking either side of the beat. SSX Tricky pits you against others as well as yourself, always at the edge of chaos, and where the timer is god.

None of these are complaints! It’s just that Sword of the Sea opts for a different route. What’ll strike you, as you glide across that opening desert, is how forgiving it is. Miss a jump and there’s always a way back, a minor detour to make at most. Fail to land a trick and, well, so what? You keep riding, rhythm effectively unbroken. And those jumps are pretty hard to miss anyway: the sense with Sword of the Sea is that it doesn’t want you to fail. And so jellyfish, which might awaken as makeshift floating jump pads after you release water over a certain area, will actually just slightly drift towards you as you fling yourself towards them. Certain ledges feel almost a little magnetised. Little golden prisms, your only currency for spending with the mysterious vendor, hoover themselves up as you get nearby. The clusters of lamps that you light by surfing over them will trigger when you light up most of them. Imprecision, ultimately, is fine. There’s a minor challenge in just plotting a path and pulling it off, but Sword of the Sea is never truly exacting. It’s about feeling good more than being good. Good vibes and serenity triumph over all.

The simple premise: complete fairly simple platforming puzzles in a given area to restore it to life. | Image credit: Giant Squid / Eurogamer

Where does Zelda come in? Well, there’s the lone, wandering hero, the ruined land, the prophesied sword. There’s pots to be smashed, chests to be opened, a world to be healed, with only a series of vast pseudo dungeons filled with gentle environmental puzzles in the way. The question’s not so much where you find Zelda in Sword of the Sea, as it is where Sword of the Sea would be without it. And from Zelda flows so much of the other inspiration here, of course. There’s a faint whiff of Shadow of the Colossus, for instance, with the game’s wordlessness and its vast, mysterious antagonist.

I want to say there’s a smidge of Sayonara Wild Hearts in here too – nothing to do with Zelda now – if only in the way your occasionally tunnelled movement is carried on a bit of signature score from Austin Wintory, developer Giant Squid’s long-time collaborator on Abzû, The Pathless, and before that with studio head Matt Nava on Journey. It’s tempting to say the whimsy and wonder of a soaring choir and twinkling piano in this type of deeply pretty, makes-you-feel-things indie is a little played out. But it isn’t. Wintory is rarely in the way here; the music lifts and floats, and also subtly drives you on. (As an aside, Sword of the Sea also makes maybe the best use of the DualSense’s speaker and rumble combo that I can remember, at least since Returnal, as it plays the role of dedicated sword-board microphone, playing out all the shimmers, flicks and carves – I’d actually recommend playing without headphones so you can enjoy it.)

Image credit: Giant Squid / Eurogamer

Now, where’s all this instruction-and-reward business, then? Well, imagine you’re approaching a big door, the point very much being that you need to walk through it now to get to the next area. But what if you’re one of those people who, maybe a little compulsively, likes to check they haven’t missed anything, that some ledge way over there, which has just a little more light on it, seems just a little more prominent than the rest of the background wall, might be something you could hop on? What if, next to that big door in the otherwise solid, semi-unremarkable mountainside, there was a miniscule bit of path off to one side – the amount that might seem totally innocuous, accidental even. And what if that path actually went somewhere?

This is the lesson Sword of the Sea has for you, and it almost feels wrong to spoil it: every time you think something might be somewhere, or something might be worth just quickly checking out, quickly trying, the answer is a resounding yes. Sword of the Sea loves hiding things – often these things are very small, borderline pointless beyond the fact they’re hidden, and you’ve found them – and it hides them exactly where you want them to be hidden. And that’s where the lesson comes in. The first time your curiosity strikes, inevitably you’re rewarded, just with a little hat tip, a kind of silent designer’s nod. And so therefore every single time it strikes again, you know it’s worth a look. If you’ve ever had that urge, when you were a kid, to try and leap over the edge of a map, to break the confines of the game, to get on top of the unscalable wall, round the back of the walled-off castle, Sword of the Sea quietly, subtly encourages you to do it.

Image credit: Giant Squid / Eurogamer

There’s a minor snag or two, albeit only minor. A couple of moments where you change what you’re riding, which I won’t spoil, are maybe the only times where Sword of the Sea’s controls feel a tad skew-whiff, an attempt at temporary hyper-responsiveness actually coming back a little too responsive. And its final moments, while stunning and necessary to conclude its story of ageless conflict, maybe don’t hit quite as hard as the sheer joy of open-world movement itself.

But then, ta-da! A final flourish. If you’re wondering if you can just free-roam around this game, go express yourself, play out with a little flair, the answer is yes. The answer to so many questions you might have in Sword of the Sea – will I get to…? Will this eventually…? Is this detour worth it? – is yes, in fact. Where once the world was a place to explore with a bit of pazzazz, sure, it eventually becomes sheer playground, a domain with which you have new means to master, your perspective shifted through a neat mechanical tweak.

Sword of the Sea accessibility options

Remappable controller and controller presets. Invert vertical/horizontal options. Separate Audio toggles for general, music, sound effects, and controller sounds. Settings for camera follow, sensitivity, shake, motion blur and persistent dot.

And gosh is it pretty. As well as that ocean of desert you’ll float through nautical, abandoned city rooftops; scorch a line through ice; xylophone your way up giant, skeletal spines; scream across mountainsides. Sword of the Sea knows the power of putting you at the top of a steep hill and showing you the world. As it does the power of cause and effect. Of the instructional nature of play and the expressive, free-form nature of it too. It’s a game, like all of those others, about the deep, personal connection we’re able to form with the natural world by using it, being in perpetual contact with it, or simply flying through it at speed. The mindfulness of giving over a bit of control to the waves, the powder, the half-pipe’s immaculate curve and letting the world move you for once, instead of you fighting to move it. “It’s really about how movement is a way for you to connect with the world,” as Nava put it to me earlier this year. “You’re going fast down the mountain; you get to see all of the mountain very quickly. It’s the closest you can be to being everywhere at once.” Just how good do you reckon that feels?

A copy of Sword of the Sea was provided for this review by Giant Squid.

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August 18, 2025 0 comments