A year down the road, the plan has changed again: CD Projekt said during a financial results conference that the mode has “evolved” into a standalone RPG called Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales. It will not be a full-on Witcher-style RPG, as CD Projekt president and CEO Adam Kicinski said that most of the action will be resolved by playing Gwent. Kicinski said that Thronebreaker will be released as a standalone game, but unfortunately gave no indication as to when that might happen, or what it w

Psyonix has rolled out a major “Progression Update” for Rocket League that completely revamps the game’s progression system (hence the title) and eliminates the level cap. The update also adds a new “Clubs System,” new achievements and trophies, and makes numerous “quality of life” improvements as well. Existing levels will be converted to the new system based on factors including the total number of online matches played and total XP earned. The Rocket Pass, a secondary progression system that

For this week’s topic, we polled the team on our favorite and least favorite moments from the Cyberpunk 2077 demo. With many, many months to go before Cyberpunk 2077 is released, there’s no telling just how much the game will change. Lease favorite:The dialogue—but specifically, your character’s dialogue options, which look limited in the demo. But what I saw of the player’s dialogue options didn’t seem to offer much room for roleplaying. I’ve always wanted to see a cyberpunk city of that scale

And SCUM is already our biggest launch ever. Congrats to @Gamepires!August 29, 2018Early Access survival game Scum only just launched at 9 AM this morning, but it’s already become Devolver Digitial’s biggest launch to date. While Devolver wouldn’t share any numbers with me (not a surprise), a peek at the Steam Stats page shows Scum is already in the top 10 games by concurrent playercount. I’ve been playing too, exploring the crafting, zombies, cannibalism, and extremely gross bodily functions of

The Destiny 2: Forsaken pre-week festivities kicked off yesterday, and in predictably fine form it has not gone entirely smoothly. As noted in this Reddit thread, weapons and armor from the expansion have already begun to drop, almost a full week before they were supposed to. It’s apparently quite easy to get your hands on Forsaken equipment: According to this Houndish video, the stuff is dropping as a reward for completing the Flashpoint milestone reward on Mars. There’s also information on how

In the days, weeks, months, years to come, we’re going to make Riot a place we can all be proud of,” the studio said. “Trainings that had been specific to managers are being expanded to all Rioters, including interview training and anti-harassment training. We’re also investing in anti-bias training to encourage behaviors that foster a fair and inclusive work environment,” Riot said. In the wake of Kotaku’s report, former Riot community programs specialist Meagan Marie wrote that “an unacceptabl

Fallout 76 has a lot to prove as it leaves Steam behind—and Bethesda’s head of marketing Pete Hines reckons its launch is unlikely to be straightforward. “It’s interesting and exciting, but I’m also going into this having done this enough to know this is definitely not going to go perfectly,” Hines tells IGN. Hines says at present, Bethesda is as prepared as it can possibly be, but that “no battle plan survives contact with the enemy”. Elsewhere, Hines says he jokingly banned the word ‘replayabl

Last week at Gamescom, Nvidia briefed us on its upcoming RTX 2080 / 2080 Ti, the Turing architecture, and what to expect from the next generation of graphics cards. As part of the event, we were also shown demos of multiple games running with RTX enabled effects. RTX and ray tracing enables reflections not just of what’s present on the screen, but of objects that would not otherwise be visible. Even while current hardware may only manage 60fps (or less) at 1080p with ray tracing, it’s easy to im

Perhaps trying to nudge us closer to that day, AU Optronics is teasing a giant 85-inch TV with a 7680×4320 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate, among other features. We don’t anticipate gaming on 8K displays any time soon, that’s for sure. It’s also the world’s largest 8K TV with a bezel-less design, according to AUO. It’s not clear if the 120Hz refresh rate is a native rating or an inflated rating based on post processing techniques. AUO didn’t say when it plans to ship its 85-inch TV, or how muc

One of the many things I love about Shenmue is the feeling that the world exists without you. Your loyal live-in housekeeper Ine-san prays each night at the altar in the Hazuki residence before retiring to her bedroom. These are simple routines, but give each area of Yokosuka a palpable feeling of being aliveBut there’s more. There are hundreds of NPCs in Shenmue, and I love that someone decided to give them all backstories—including the animals. There’s something comforting about seeing these p

It’s not without its critics, but Denuvo itself now says “there is no uncrackable product”. Last year, the anti-piracy firm admitted its anti-piracy tech is not “uncrackable” after Resident Evil 7 was cracked in less than seven days. To this end, Fischer says Denuvo’s anti-tamper tech is far from impenetrable, and that its goal is to conserve early sales. “Games will be cracked at certain points; there is no uncrackable product,” Fischer tells GI.biz. “But what we do is protect the initial sales

Just a few months ago, we highlighted a deal for Lenovo’s Y27g, a 27-inch curved gaming monitor with a 1920×1080 resolution, 144Hz refresh rate, and G-Sync support, for $300. If you missed out on that deal, no worries—it’s even cheaper today, selling for $249.99 on Newegg. At $249.99, it’s $350 below its list price, and also a good chunk below its street price (CamelCamelCamel shows it averaging $448.76 on Amazon). It has a 3,000:1 contrast ratio, 350 nits brightness, and 178-degree viewing angl

A gameplay trailer for Spelunky 2, the sequel to our 2013 game of the year, has finally debuted over on the PlayStation Blog, along with an interview with the creator Derek Yu. If it looks a lot like Spelunky, that’s on purpose, according to Yu. Part of that continuation is the ability to play through the entire game with friends via online multiplayer, and with unique characters. Besides the new characters and innumerable new gadgets, enemies, and environments, Spelunky 2 will also feature liqu

Acer thought of a better way—its new (and oddly named) OJO 500 mixed reality headset sports a detachable design that makes it easier to clean in between uses. The new headset is available with either a hard or soft head strap. The hard strap has extra large padding, and the soft strap is machine washable. For customers that require more privacy and deeper immersion, they can use the built-in earphones that come with the hard head strap, or an earphone of their own choice with the soft head strap

We got our first glimpse of 4K gaming monitors combining a fast 144Hz refresh rate with G-Sync and HDR support all the way back at CES in January 2017. Those displays only recently (and finally) became available, one from Acer (Predator X27) and one from Asus (ROG Swift PG27UQ), both priced at around $2,000. That’s not exactly affordable, and neither is Acer’s new Predator XB273K with a similar set of features, but it does lower the cost of entry. It offers a native 4K resolution, 144Hz refresh

It’s not all disgusting: there’s some pretty cool stuff I’ve also come across playing it this week. I’ll try to alternate between the gross stuff and the cool stuff I’ve seen below. You can, uh… you can really chop up a human body in Scum, for sure, so if you’ve been looking for that in a game then maybe this is the game for you. (Note: the part where the second zombie tries to avenge his chopped-up pal: that’s not the game freezing, that’s my recording program freezing.) Zombies got some move

Land, spin, reload, kick a fuel can into the air, detonate for a big multikill. In My Friend Pedro you play a balletic gunman on a mission to dispatch phalanxes of thugs with maximum style. There’s a button that will package up moments into gifs for you, because My Friend Pedro knows what it is. The kick button lets you knock over tables for cover, kick goons through panes of glass, or even kick bits of goon at other goons. My Friend Pedro is due out in 2019, but there’s a chance you’ve played i

In his 80-scored review, Chris praised Sunless Sea’s “wonderful writing” but struggled with its “especially weak” combat. With this in mind, developer Failbetter Games has now overhauled fight mechanics in its Fallen London series follow-up, Sunless Skies. By “tweaking a lot of AI mechanics”, Failbetter aims to make enemy behaviour “more nuanced and layered,” the developer explains in this Kickstarter update. Tells, for example, are visual and auditory indicators that alert players an enemy plan

The Lord of the Rings Living Card Game is a singleplayer (and forthcoming cooperative) card game that pits you against the computer, challenging you to build decks of cards to take down narrative quests that are part story, part puzzle, and part challenge. In many ways it’s a standard digital card game, with characters that attack, life pools, and battlefield-manipulating special powers. As you finish missions in a quest, you unlock the ability to purchase successive missions or unlock them with

Steel Division 2 keeps the WWII RTS battles of the previous game, but wraps them in a much bigger turn-based wargame on the Eastern Front. Its latest trailer shows off some of that in practice. Cue tanks, fighter jets, soldiers pegging it through long grass and, of course, a fair amount of explosions:More specifically, the above takes a closer look at Steel Division 2’s Armoury and new turn-based ‘Dynamic Strategic Campaigns’. There, players will control over 600 historically-accurate army units