Terrible news! Santa ignored all my letters asking for 2025 to be a year when no new videogames came out so I could catch up on everything I missed from the past several years. In fact, it seems like maybe someone else might have sent him a letter asking for there to be more big games coming than ever.
]]>If pushed, I’d describe my 2024 gaming habits as eclectic, but that would actually be a lie. All my favourite games for the year are actually very similar: they are all the best. Unfortunately, the realities of sharing website space with several less-correctos means they didn’t all make this year’s advent calender.
]]>Earlier this week we heard rumblings of a new character announcement for Tekken 8, and at the same time a trailer dropped a big unmistakable hint for red-dressed rabble rouser Anna Williams. Turns out that unmistakable hint was mistakable. My mistake. At last night's Game Awards we learned that the next fighter to come to the game will be... Clive? From Final Fantasy XVI? Sure. Why not.
]]>Final Fantasy VII Rebirth launched on console back in February, and if I'd had to guess, I'd say it would arrive on PC about a year later. Hey - guess what! Square Enix just gave Rebirth a PC release date: January 23rd, 2025.
]]>Bulletstorm, Painkiller and Outriders developers People Can Fly are "suspending or parting ways" with over 120 people, shelving one video game project, downsizing another, and "restructuring some of our support teams" in the face of market turmoil.
]]>Developed by Mistwalker, a studio founded by Final Fantasy dad Hironobu Sakaguchi, Fantasian was originally released on Apple Arcade in 2021 and locked within the big fruit's exclusivity cage. Now, though, Mistwalker and Square Enix have come together to re-release the RPG for us PC heads, calling it Fantasian Neo Dimension. It's actually out today, too, if you're interested in an interdimensional journey to reclaim some lost memories.
]]>Good morning, how about a nice big bowl of your favourite breakfast cereal: Corporate Consolidation? Sony are in talks to buy Kadokawa, the parent company of Elden Ring developer From Software. Sony is eyeing up the company as a hefty snack because they want the various manga and anime owned by Kadokawa, according to a report by Reuters. But also because they want all the tasty games owned by them too, such as the Danganronpa series, the Octopath Traveler games, and the biggest corn flake of them all, the Dark Souls series.
]]>Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake's premise is bluntly, delightfully simple. The Archfiend Baramos, as evil as he is mysterious, is up and about. He’s got ill designs on the world. Your Dad tried to stop him, and he died. He fell into a volcano. We absolutely can’t be having that.
This is, more than anything else, a game about Going On An Adventure. Well walked ground, of course, but it’s rare to see it embarked upon with such barefaced delight, or such a wholehearted commitment to going the distance. It is a very big and a very simple RPG that is as wide as an ocean and as deep as a pond; a game to curl up with and play lazily and—with some sour caveats—enjoyably, for an entire winter.
]]>The developers of hero shooter Overwatch 2 must have dropped a box full of old photographs while clearing the attic, spilling old snapshots of Route 66 onto the floor and getting snared in a nostalgic daze. The game is launching a "Classic" mode today that will let you play the first-person payload pusher as it (mostly) was back in 2016 when the first Overwatch launched. That means 6v6 fights, the original abilities of its heroes, and no limits to stop the entire team picking the same character.
]]>If I am ever murdered, please do not ask Max Caulfield to investigate. I've already written our review for Life Is Strange: Double Exposure, in which I celebrated the touching moments of Max's return to the series, and lamented the clunky plot that she finds herself in. In this adventure game, you're looking into the killing of a close friend, shot by an unknown assailant. You hop between two dimensions to solve the case - one world in which your pal still lives and the other in which she's dead. Unfortunately for the murder victim, you play a bona fide hot mess who could not perform a cross examination if she were standing in front of a crucifix with a magnifying glass.
]]>You can feel two ways about something at the same time. The feuding academics of Life Is Strange: Double Exposure might call this "emotional superposition". But the word "ambivalent" already exists. So let's say I'm ambivalent about this new adventure featuring Max Caulfield, the returning hero of Life Is Strange, and time-travelling photographer whose powers have resurfaced after years of off-screen atrophy. I've been deeply moved by individual scenes in this sequel. By the end I was sorry to leave its characters behind. At the same time (please now imagine my face is splitting into a second, colour-washed expression with wobbly VFX) I am relieved it's over, so I don't have to deal with the inconsistent behaviour of those characters, the flimsy plot, and a convoluted approach to murder mystery.
]]>In a climactic scene of the original Final Fantasy VII, hero and amateur snowboarder Cloud Strife stands with his fellow adventurers as they are about to face a final, possibly fatal battle. With the steely glare of a polygonal warrior on the verge of killing god, he turns to them and says: "Let's mosey!" It's an unintentionally comical moment - an easy-going phrase, as if they're all going to the shops and not jumping into a big glowing pit at the end of the world.
It's a result of the RPG's famously rushed translation. But maybe not in the way you think. A fan translation of Final Fantasy VII has now fixed a bunch of mistakes that were present in the original, and "let's mosey" is one of them. The fix? Have Cloud say it way more often.
]]>These apparitions and portents, Crystal Dynamics - what game are you playing now? It turns out the game they are playing is: a remaster of amazeballs vampire odyssey Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver, together with its less amazing but sturdy sequel. Said remaster project was rumoured earlier this year, when Sarafan scouts caught sight of a telltale plaque at San Diego Comic-Con. Consider that rumour strongly trending towards the status of a Real Thing, because Sony are in the habit of publishing Real Things, and they've just (accidentally, I guess) popped a bunch of screens and a trailer with a release date - 10th December 2024 - on the PlayStation website.
]]>I'm reasonably sure Final Fantasy 16 isn't the longest Final Fantasy I've ever played, but it feels that way, for a multitude of reasons. The major one is that a lot of its quests exist to create distance between places and plot beats. They are overwritten errands such as bringing people lunch or fetching herbs or carrying letters - dessicated, MMO-ish fare, thrust into a moderately enjoyable action-RPG for the sake of incremental worldbuilding and scale.
]]>Fifteen months on from its PS5 release, Final Fantasy XVI – that actiony RPG of emo-fringed hack ‘n’ slashing and disquietingly sexy Ralph Ineson characters – is now on PC. Enough time, you’d think, to do a proper job of rejigging it with Windows spanners, especially after Final Fantasy XV’s port got so much stick for its lack of features and performance issues.
FFVXI does make some improvements, adopting a full set of DLSS and FSR upscalers and frame generators, and its mouse and keyboard integration feels generally slicker than XV. Sadly, it’s still no first-rate adaptation, neglecting numerous PC features and giving low-end systems an even deeper kick in the plums. Cutting the quality settings can help, as per the guide down below, but overall performance is so up-and-down than you’ll likely never achieve a perfectly smooth ride.
]]>Having gone to bed last night with Final Fantasy XVI installed yet unplayed on a Steam Deck, I awoke to find Valve have slapped the moody RPG with Unsupported status for the handheld. Its crime: an inability to "run well" on the Steam Deck’s internals, regardless of settings changes. Dammit, Clive.
]]>Please lock your Chocobos to attack position and set your Phoenix Downs to stun: Square Enix have released fresh details of Final Fantasy 16's PC port, which has now been dated for launch on 17th September. They've also shared a little about why it's taken so long to arrive - the (generally decent) action-RPG hit PS5 over a year ago, back when I was still some filthy console-playing freelancer.
According to director Hiroshi Takai, it was "impossible" to create the PC and PS5 versions at the same time, even if Square Enix hadn't been restrained by a timed exclusivity clause. He also thinks that the Final Fantasy series faces no "existential risk" right now, despite lower-than-hoped returns from both Final Fantasy 16 and, going by Square Enix's latest financial reports, the more recent and currently PS5-only Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
]]>Hmmm... it could be nothing, but the technomancers at Nvidia have just updated their graphics drivers, and among the list of game profiles now listed in their control panel tool is Final Fantasy XVI. The blockbuster JRPG isn't out on PC yet, and developers Square Enix have not given a concrete release date for it, but this does seem to be prep work for the inevitable. And with Squeenix in attendance at Gamescom, it's possible we'll know more soon.
]]>As the first Something Of Mana game to come out in 15 years, Visions Of Mana is bound to be exciting some of you out there. Well, funnel all that anticipation into your mouse-clicking finger, because developers Square Enix have just put up a playable demo of the bright JRPG on Steam. I'm not sure how much the demo offers, as we're only told it includes "a section of the story, battles and exploration." But that's better than nothing, and with a full month before release, you have plenty of time to scope it out.
]]>It looks like the Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver games could be getting the remaster treatment. An attendee at San Diego Comic-Con was looking at a set of figures based on characters from the series when they saw that the plaque accompanying the figures was labelled with the words "Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered" alongside the logo for Crystal Dynamics. I suppose if you throw a coin enough times, one day it will land on the side with the head of a jawless vampire on it.
]]>The immersive sim has seen a revival in recent years. Not only from larger studios like Arkane, keeping the faith alive with their time loops and space stations, but also from a bunch of smaller developers bravely exploring a typically ambitious genre. RPS has always had an affinity for these systemically luxuriant simulations, historically lauding the likes of the original Deus Ex as the best game ever made. But given everything that has come since, is that still the case? Only one way to find out: make a big list.
]]>When you dive into the mess of folders on your PC, what do you find? Cobweb-plastered manuscripts for those twelve fantasy novels you started? Mouldy design documents for those nine games you never actually began coding? Perhaps dozens of little motheaten thumbnails of that masterpiece you're planning to someday paint? Relax, I'm not calling you out (I have my own groaning cybercabinet of neglect). Rather, I'm here to say don't worry. Everyone does it. Even famous Final Fantasy character designer and Kingdom Hearts director Tetsuya Nomura, who has a “huge number of game proposals lying dormant” in a mish mash of folders on his PC. You're just like him!
]]>Dawntrail, the latest expansion for Final Fantasy XIV, has officially been out just three days, arriving earlier this week after a brief early access release. Despite its story and extra 10 levels spanning dozens of hours of playtime, that’s apparently been ample time for players to complain loudly enough about one of the expansion’s brand new jobs - so much so that Square Enix have already announced a set of incoming changes planned across the game’s next run of patches.
]]>Can you believe we didn't have a best JRPG list until now? Baffling. To be fair we did once tackle this topic with a preliminary blast of recommendations for those completely new to the genre. We also have a few familiar fantasys in our list of the 50 best RPGs on PC. But until now we haven't addressed the genre in its own right. In an act of contrition, we offer you this: our list of the best JRPGs you can play on PC this year, according to our own tastes.
]]>We’re only a couple of days away from the early access launch of Dawntrail, Final Fantasy XIV’s latest expansion and first in over two years since the climactic Endwalker. As the summery story expansion prepares to drop, Square Enix have run down everything else arriving in the MMO’s 7.0 patch, which notably includes its long-awaited graphical overhaul along with several other nice-to-have improvements whether you’re playing Dawntrail or not.
]]>PowerWash Simulator’s next paid crossover after Warhammer 40,000, Back to the Future and Spongebob Squarepants will sprinkle a little something in its tank of water. That something, of course, is 19th-century literature, as developers FuturLab let us wash our way through their take on the surreal world of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
]]>Fear Effect, a horror action PS1 game from the year 2000 that I have incredibly fond memories of, is getting a Steam release next year, by Limited Run Games in collaboration with Square Enix. The news comes as part of the controversial (more on this in a bit) company’s digital LRG3 event. You can watch the full thing here, and the Fear Effect trailer below.
]]>If you were playing Final Fantasy XIV in December 2021, you will remember the launch of its last expansion Endwalker - though not for all the right reasons. The otherwise fantastic cap to the near-decade-long Hydelyn-Zodiark was beset by a barrage of technical problems at launch, as the MMO’s servers buckled under the weight of record numbers of players, leading to hours-long queues to login that would often end in an error that then kicked you back into the queue. As someone that sat there for literal hours watching the numbers tick down, it wasn’t a great time - even if the wait was, ultimately, worth it.
]]>Classic RPG Dragon Quest 3 is getting a remake in Square Enix's now familiar HD-2D style, which blends high-resolution 2D sprites together with 3D worlds. It'll land on November 14th. "Waitaminute," you might be saying, "Shouldn't they remake the first two games beforehand?" No, you numpty, you nyaff, you roaster; within the internal chronology of Dragon Quest, 3 comes first.
Plus, they are remaking 1 and 2 as well, for release sometime in 2025.
]]>A remaster of Final Fantasy Tactics, the grid-based strategy spin-off from the RPG series that easily ranks as one of the best Final Fantasy games ever made, is reportedly in the works - giving hope of its first official PC release.
]]>The impenetrable wall of crossover fiction known as Kingdom Hearts has come to Steam. The games have been on Epic Games Store since 2021, so they're not new to PC folk. But this does open them up to players who shy away from Epic's storefront. I use the term "open up" loosely, because Kingdom Hearts is popularly regarded as a tangle of criss-crossing JRPG confuse-o-plots that require diagrams and multiple explainer videos to follow. I don't know if that's true, having never followed Alice down this Buster Sword-shaped rabbit hole, but it is the popular joke. And, looking into Goofy's cold, dead eyes, I find I am afraid to question it.
]]>Max Caulfield is back! The time-bending protagonist of the first Life is Strange is returning in a new entry in the series, Life is Strange: Double Exposure. It’s out this October.
]]>It's a new month, which means Microsoft have detailed a new batch of games arriving on Game Pass. Not all of the games themselves are new, mind you: they include Octopath Traveler, the HD-2D RPG released in 2018, and its sequel.
]]>After the climatic end to a decade-long saga in Endwalker, anticipation is high for Final Fantasy XIV’s next expansion, Dawntrail. I got to try out the game and talk to Director Naoki Yoshida (aka Yoshi-P) about new Jobs and the difficulty of incorporating fan feedback (not to mention the reasons the Warrior of Light has such great skin - you'll see). But how can the Square Enix possibly hope to follow the highs of Endwalker, including space travel and a fight against the physical embodiment of sorrow? By taking us on holiday, of course.
]]>Since the death of E3, June has descended into a chaotic clusterfunk of trailers, broadcasts, announcements, and a generalised frenzy of publicity-seeking barking noises. Summer Game Fest has emerged as a hub for a lot of developers seeking eyes. The 2-hour show hosted by marketing man Geoff Keighley will be broadcasting on Friday, blasting you in the ocular nerves with, probably, a lot of games. However, most of these games will not be brand new, exciting reveals, said Keighley himself in a fresh Twitch Q & A. "There will be, definitely, new announcements," he said, "but the show is largely focused on, I think, existing games that have new updates for fans." He's mentioning this ahead of time, he said, to set expectations.
]]>Destructive third-person action game Just Cause is getting made into a movie, produced by the men behind The Fall Guy and Nobody, according to the Hollywood Reporter. This isn't the first time the over-the-top explode 'em up has been in line to get the big screen treatment. Another version spent years in development hell until the rights lapsed. But it's been picked up again by Universal, who are no strangers to turning video games into box office burger bucks (they did The Super Mario Bros. Movie). So, it might result in an actual movie this time.
]]>Well, it’s been a long hard road, but since I vowed to only consume alcohol matured while having game soundtracks forcibly blasted into its molecules, giving up drinking has been a lot easier. Now, to take the final gulp of my Snake Eater-theme-reared IPA, and open up my web browser….
]]>It’s been three years to the day since we learned that Square Enix planned to remake Dragon Quest 3, unveiling a revamping of the seminal 1988 JRPG in Octopath Traveler’s HD-2D engine. Three years have passed since then, but we’ve finally had an update on the remake - and it’s raised a few questions, to say the least.
]]>I could pretend I understand Square Enix's action-RPG series Kingdom Hearts, but I don't need to, 'cos what I do understand is how popular it is. Until fairly recently the nearly 15-game-strong series, where Disney characters cross over with Final Fantasy and go to war alongside a child wielding a key (I said I don't properly understand it), wasn't on PC. After some games arrived on the Epic Games Store in 2021, Squeenix have confirmed that multiple Kingdom Hearts games are coming to Steam next month, on June 13th. Unlucky for some, maybe, but not Donald Duck and Goofy, two of the main characters. Long has Goofy been seen as just a joke character in the minds of people people who didn't watch A Goofy Movie. Hopefully this brings his heroism to a wider audience.
]]>Fans of odd games with multiple endings and themes of identity and oppression, rejoice! Or, maybe, not rejoice. Time will tell. In the latest issue of Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, Yosuke Saito, the series producer for Nier, teased that he might be working on something new with Yoko Taro and Keiichi Okabe, the director and composer for the Nier series, respectively.
Via Gematsu and PCGamer, Saito said, “I’ve been talking about wanting to do something with Yoko and Okabe for some time now. I’ll have something a bit more put-together to say in the not-too-distant future, so please stay tuned. It might be NieR, it might not be NieR. (Laughs.) That’s about all I can say for now.” Thanks for the clarity, Saito.
]]>After rebooting Final Fantasy 7 as the trilogy of Remake, Rebirth and Really, You Went With That? (TBC), Square Enix are now planning to reboot themselves. Among the publishers’ revamped approach to making money - following a recent drop in profits, per their latest financials - is a more “aggressive” approach to bringing their games to more platforms than specific consoles (in other words, PlayStation) as exclusives, with a particular focus on “win[ning] over PC users”.
]]>Square Enix have announced 22.1 billion yen (around £112m) in "content abandonment losses" for the fiscal year ending March 2024. The loss is the result of the publisher being "more selective and focused in the allocation of development resources," suggesting they have cut funding to or cancelled undisclosed projects.
]]>People Can Fly, the developers of Bulletstorm and Outriders, have cancelled development of a co-op action RPG codenamed Project Dagger. The Polish company informed investors of the decision to cancel the game, which was initially to be published by Take-Two, earlier this month.
]]>Ahead of Final Fantasy 14’s next massive expansion, Dawntrail, arriving this summer, Square Enix recently put out a graphical benchmarking tool. Dawntrail’s benchmark is especially noteworthy as it’s the first time we’ve really been able to put the MMO’s much-anticipated graphical update arriving with 7.0 into practice and see what sort of demands it might make on our hardware by overhauling the 10-year-old game’s visuals.
]]>Just Cause developers Avalanche have become home to the latest union in the games industry, with over 500 staff at the Swedish studio set to be covered by a new agreement formed with local labour unions.
]]>As MMORPG Final Fantasy 14's upcoming Dawntrail expansion gets ever closer, Squeenix have released a benchmarking tool that lets you see how your rig might handle its graphical update. Not only that, but it also lets you sample the new female Hrothgar playable race. So far, folks seem to be happy with the tool and the catmoms.
]]>Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 14 boss Naoki Yoshida has told The Gamer that he reckons “It’s probably about time,” for a new Final Fantasy Tactics game.
The hint at some long term wish fulfillment came up during an interview with The Gamer’s Gabrielle Castania, in which Naoki ‘Yoshi-P’ Yoshida spoke about Final Fantasy 16’s upcoming The Rising Tide DLC, alongside DLC director Takeo Kujiraoka and localisation director Michael-Christoper Koji Fox.
]]>Deck Nine, currently responsible for heading up the Life is Strange series having handled spin-off True Colours and remasters of the first two games, have been accused of fostering a toxic workplace home to sexism, mismanagement, crunch and abusive treatment of staff left to linger by the studio’s higher-ups.
]]>The long-serving top producer of legendary RPG series Dragon Quest has stepped down from the role, according to sources that spoke to RPS Maw tribute site Bloomberg. Yu Miyake, who has been involved with numerous DQ games since he joined Enix in 1989 as marketer on DQ books, is moving on to head up Square Enix’s mobile games.
The change comes as part of shake-ups at Squeenix under new President and blockchain enjoyer Takashi Kiryu, who Bloomberg point out has committed to reverse SE’s flagging sales of both big releases (like Final Fantasy 16) and mobile titles (like Final Fantasy 7: Ever Crisis), possibly so he can profit handsomely enough to construct himself an arm-mounted Australian Shepherd launcher (like Final Fantasy 8.)
]]>Final Fantasy 14’s crossover with Final Fantasy 16, as teased last year, arrives tomorrow. The crossover between the MMO and latest single-player entry in the RPG series has the usual selection of goodies up for grabs, including a very cute minion, a not-so-cute (but still kind of cute) mount, some Clive-cleavage armour and more.
]]>Head over to the Epic Games Store on April 4th and you'll be able to grab The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition and Thief (2014) for free and to keep forever. Like a thief!
]]>On top of announcing the release date for Final Fantasy 14's next expansion, Dawntrail, at PAX East over the weekend, producer Yoshi-P set Final Fantasy tongues wagging even further by mentioning the words "Final Fantasy 9" and "secret" in the same sentence. Many of the pre-order and special edition bonus items players can get with the upcoming Dawntrail expansion are suspiciously FF9-themed, you see, but when pointing this out to PAX-goers, Yoshi-P said "the reason is a secret" for now, sparking fresh rumours about Square Enix's supposed Final Fantasy IX remake/remaster.
]]>Final Fantasy 14's next expansion, Dawntrail, will launch in early access on June 28th and then release in full on July 2nd. Producer Yoshi P announced the date onstage at PAX East, while acknowledging the release date's proximity to another RPG: Elden Ring's Shadow Of The Erdtree expansion, which releases on June 21st.
]]>Developers happy to mimic the style of Hollywood blockbusters in their video game soundtracks are stopping video game music from advancing, one of the best to ever do it - Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu - has said.
]]>The Epic Games Store's spring sale is underway, from today until March 28th. That makes it twice as long as Steam's spring sale, which also started today. I'm not sure if that makes it twice as exciting, but here's what does: Deus Ex Mankind Divided is free to keep for the next week.
]]>Fallen behind on Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn’s story? Whether you’re still yet to finish Endwalker or are looking to pick up the MMO for the first time in anticipation of enjoying a lovely summer holiday with your fellow Scions of the Seventh Dawn, you’re going to have to work before your Warrior of Light can kick back in next expansion Dawntrail; there won’t be a free way to simply jump to the latest chapter of the story for free anytime soon.
]]>While we’re yet to get a hard release date for Final Fantasy 16 on PC, it sounds like it won’t be too far off. That’s going by recent comments by producer Naoki Yoshida, who also suggested we can expect a demo before it’s out - which should also be a good chance to test your rig against its apparently hefty hardware requirements.
]]>Akira Toriyama, the mangaka whose work in video games included designing the characters for two of the most influential RPGs ever made, Chrono Trigger and Dragon Quest, on top of creating one of the most influential series across all of pop-culture in Dragon Ball, has passed away.
]]>[audience makes "wohhhhh" controversial noise]
I know, I know! Some might argue that Human Revolution is the best Deus Ex game, but they're wrong, it's clearly Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The last, new Deus Ex game to be made will be free to keep from the Epic Games Store for a week starting March 14th.
]]>The developers behind the Life is Strange remaster, spin-offs Before the Storm and True Colors, and The Expanse: A Telltale Series, Deck Nine, have laid off 20% of the studio’s staff due to “the game industry’s worsening market conditions”. The latest job losses are the second wave of layoffs at the company in the last 12 months.
]]>By this headline, I really don't mean that Warhammer 40k is rubbish. But if you have no idea what it is apart from "thing Henry Cavill got made fun of for enjoying on the Graham Norton Show" or "reason I walk past a bunch of beardy lads taking a vape break outside a small shop with steamed up windows every time I go down Lower Glanmire Road", PowerWash Simulator's latest officially licensed IP tie-in DLC could act like a sort of gateway drug. A first step on the path to buying a bunch of miniatures. It's out now, for £6.50/$8/€8 on Steam, and it's very fun.
]]>Nobuo Uematsu, the celebrated composer behind the iconic soundtracks for much of the Final Fantasy series, has said he probably won’t score a full video game again. While Uematsu didn’t rule out creating the main themes for future games, he said that his days of scoring an entire game are likely over - leaving his last complete soundtrack as the OST for mobile-exclusive RPG Fantasian.
]]>This week on a spotlessly cleansed Electronic Wireless Show podcast: Alice takes the opportunity to make everyone talk and think about PowerWash Simulator, which also means Nate gets to talk about Warhammer 40K bloody loads, because that's the next DLC pack for PowerWash Sim. We also reminisce about our other favourite gaming crossovers, and try to dream up some cross-universe mashups of our own.
Plus! We talk about what we’ve been playing this week, consider whether we would "RoboCop ourselves," and I disgust Alice with a confectionary confession.
]]>My experience with Warhams isn't flat zero - I had some minifigs when I was a teenager and played a few of the Dawn Of War video games - but I haven't actively checked in on it for a while. I know enough to make "[x] for the [x] throne!" jokes, basically. My experience with cleaning-stuff-sim PowerWash Simulator is extensive, though, and I was excited when the crossover with Warhammer 40K was teased a while back. Last night we got a full trailer and release date of Frebruary 27th - next week! - and I'm now earnestly very excited. The trailer is both very funny and shows off massive things to clean. Win win, innit.
]]>Elias Toufexis, voice actor for Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided's cyborg protagonist Adam Jensen, has bid a formal "goodbye, but hopefully not farewell" to the character, expressing hopes that somebody with a lot of money will buy the license and restore poor moody Adam to our screens. Toufexis also shared a few parting speculations about the unannounced Deus Ex sequel from Eidos Montreal that was reported cancelled last week. Toufexis wasn't involved with this one, and according to him, it likely wasn't a continuation of Jensen's story from Mankind Divided.
]]>The director of Final Fantasy 8 has shot down hopes that the next numbered Final Fantasy might see a remake once the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy comes to its conclusion. The reason? Simply that it’s a lot of damn work.
]]>Square Enix showed off 20 more minutes of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth during a special State Of Play stream last night, and holy heck, they sure are bringing it with the mini-games in this one. There's a whole Gwent-like card game called Queen's Blood (watch out Triple Triad), dolphin ride obstacle courses, playing with Mooglets, the return of Intergrade's Fort Condor battles, a strange bit of chicken wrangling, photographing Red XIII, frog jumping... and that's before we even get to all the stuff at Gold Saucer. Honestly, Like A Dragon better watch out, as Rebirth is clearly making a play for its mini-game crown in this second part of Squeenix's Final Fantasy 7 Remake project, and man alive, I'm so very here for it.
]]>Tonight's the night of Sony's latest State of Play gaming showcase, a recurring round-up of PlayStation videogame announcements, trailers, celebrity developer cameos, and assorted high jinks. It kicks off at 2pm PT, 5pm ET and 10pm GMT. The show will be focussed on console games, as you'd expect, but many of the PS5 and PSVR2 projects in question will also be coming to PC, and you can watch the whole event right here.
]]>When Square Enix announced the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection for Final Fantasies 1 through 6 back in 2021, I was overjoyed. For too long had PC folks had to 'make do' with the quite nasty mobile ports of these games, and the Pixel Remasters looked set to finally rectify that with proper versions replete with their original artwork. But one thing was missing. Well, several things were missing it turns out, but chief among them were, of course, its damn fonts - a point of contention that's plagued many a Square Enix PC port in recent years, and one that fans quickly set about trying to fix with mods. Extra salt was then added to the wound when Square Enix said that last year's Switch and PS4 versions of the Pixel Remaster series would have two different font options straight out of the box - and it's only now that the PC versions have finally caught up.
]]>The latest Embracer studio to suffer under the megacorp’s ongoing restructuring efforts are Eidos Montreal, with a new Deus Ex title two years into development reportedly cancelled and dozens of staff confirmed to be laid off.
]]>Final Fantasy 6 is one of the most beloved Final Fantasy games in the series, so much so that even staff at Square Enix keep hassling series producer Yoshinori Kitase about when they're going to remake it and give it the full Final Fantasy 7 treatment. Alas, the prospect of such a project has had fresh water poured over it this weekend, with Kitase explaining that, given it's already taken them ten years to make Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (with a third entry to complete the trilogy yet to come), a Final Fantasy 6 remake would likely take twice as long as that to actually make. And you know what? I'm good, actually. The Final Fantasy 6 Pixel Remaster is good enough for me in this lifetime.
]]>A planned live-action adaptation of MMO Final Fantasy XIV is officially “dead”, according to the TV series’ producers. A combination of the pandemic and the “size and scale needed to do it right” are apparently to blame, with Amazon reportedly coming closest to making it a reality - but to no avail.
]]>The latest IAS Game Maker's Notebook Podcast (embedded in the full article below) is a chat between Sony's head of independent development Shuhei Yoshida and Square Enix producer, designer and director Naoki Yoshida, one of the big fish behind Final Fantasy 14 and Final Fantasy 16. In a lengthy discussion of the latter game, the two Yoshidas chew over the familiar topic of where Final Fantasy should go next. According to Naoki Yoshida, it might be time for an injection of new blood.
]]>Among the slew of reveals for Final Fantasy XIV during Fan Fest Tokyo last weekend was a new town players will visit during upcoming expansion Dawntrail. While a new corner of Eorzea to explore is exciting by itself, the cyberpunk city has added to my hope that the MMO is set to shower a bit more love on the best Final Fantasy game. That’s right: Final Fantasy IX.
]]>Seemingly not content with swallowing up Animal Crossing and spitting out its own farm-and-craft minigame, Final Fantasy 14 has apparently now guzzled down Starfield and is readying to unleash its own way to sink dozens of hours into galactic wandering.
]]>Final Fantasy 14 has revealed the second new job arriving in its upcoming Dawntrail expansion. The Pictomancer is a new-oldie, bringing back the magical artist class from Final Fantasy 6 - albeit with some colourful new powers for magical ranged DPS players to enjoy. Meanwhile, we now know that the MMO's second limited job will be the Beastmaster.
]]>The first week of January is always one of my favourite times of the year. It's a time for making plans, setting goals, thinking about all the cool new games I'll be playing over the next 12 months (while also looking nervously at the pile of games I missed over the last 12 months and placing them very, very gingerly on the teetering and totteringly tall pile of my backlog). And, of course, making some new year's resolutions. Traditionally, I don't often set myself too many resolutions - I always give myself a reading goal (35 books is what I'm aiming for this year), for example, but the rest I usually play pretty fast and loose with - more 'nice to haves' rather than 'musts', I'd say.
This year, though, I do have a few gaming-related resolutions on my list, and in discussing them with the rest of the RPS Treehouse, it turns out we all have some games-themed goals this year. So I thought it would be fun to share them with you all below. And if you've also made some gaming resolutions for 2024, tell us about them in the comments. We can hold ourselves accountable together, like that big curtain of eldritch eyeballs up there in the header from good game Norco.
]]>Every game is Who Framed Roger Rabbit now - or, less charitably, a metaversal hellscape where canonical integrity matters far less than providing a platform through which to sell cosmetics.
Apex Legends is the latest live service game to take the plunge with its first crossover event. It's with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and it'll bring the Buster Sword, Aerith, and other elements from the JRPG to the battle royale on January 9th.
]]>Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy was one of 2021's biggest surprises, succeeding where Square Enix's Avengers game failed by finding an identity beyond its movie counterpart thanks to strong writing. Alas, it didn't meet Square Enix's sales expectations.
Now it's free via the Epic Games Store.
]]>Happy New Year, folks! Have you recovered from the all the 100+ hour RPGs that came out last year? Well, I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that everyone seems to be taking a bit of a breather in 2024, because (at time of writing at least) the official "big'uns" calendar is looking remarkably slim at the moment. There are still some heavy-hitters coming our way this year, such as Avowed, Star Wars Outlaws and Path Of Exile 2, but 2024 looks like another year where it will be the smaller, independent games that shine the brightest. They certainly make up the bulk of our most anticipated games list for 2024, which the RPS Treehouse has been feverishly putting together over the last few days. The bad news is that there are still loads of great games coming out. So come, join us, and see what's on our personal wishlists for 2024.
]]>Square Enix representative director and president Takashi Kiryu has written a new year's letter outlining the Final Fantasy publisher's plans for 2024, while offering a few reflections on the year that was. The topline: they want to do more with generative "AI" machine learning tools, and they're still dead keen on metaversy VR/AR stuff. The blockchain remains a "focus", too, though it gets much less of a billing than in 2023's new year letter from Square Enix’s previous president Yosuke Matsuda.
]]>Cor, there's been a lot of games this year, haven't there? While I've only slapped one Bestest Best badge down in 2023 (woe is me), our lovely freelancers, current RPSers, and former RPSers have done a whole lot more badge-slapping. A grand total of 26 Bestest Bests have graced our monitors this year, which makes it three more than last year's Bestest Best round-up. And I'd say it's a nice mixture of big budget open worlders, puzzle gems, and indie delights that make up our roster for 2023, too.
So yeah, I'd encourage you to have a flick through the list below and see if there's anything you can add to the wishlist. Even as the person with "Reviews" in their job title, I can confirm I literally have loads of these Bestest Bests in my backlog. I will endeavour to play a handful over this Christmas break on my Steam Deck, maybe combining the experience with a nibble on a mince pie. Anyway, enjoy! And Merry Reviewsmas!
]]>Hear ye! This month marked the 25th birthday of Thief: The Dark Project. While not as infinitely mutable as other 90’s icons like Doom (which just turned 30, and can be played on a pregnancy test), stealth gaming’s grandpappy has maintained an enduring appeal and influence, especially for those more inclined to sneaking than slaughter. Buckets of digital ink have already been spilt examining this legacy, so I won’t dive into the weeds of a hagiography. What I want to highlight is a major event that marked the 25th anniversary – one that makes today as great a time as any to explore Thief’s still-thriving mod scene.
Notable: After a quarter-century, stealth fans were gifted a new, 10-mission Thief campaign called The Black Parade. Pitched as a prequel to the first game, it features a new protagonist, new story, and new heists, built by some of the most lauded modders on the scene. More notable still: The team lead is Romain Barrilliot, a fan-turned-pro designer at Arkane, where he, alongside other former Thief acolytes, iterates the immersive sim tenets in their patented im-sim laboratory. Mostest notablest? One of Thief’s original designers, Daniel Thron, joined The Black Parade’s team – and simultaneously released a new Thief short film, featuring the original game’s voice actors.
]]>It’s been a good few months since Final Fantasy 16 was properly confirmed as coming to PC. While we’re yet to get a release date, development of FF16 on PC clearly continues apace, as the game’s producer has teased a few more details - including the fact you’ll need an SSD to play.
]]>Good news, Mana fans. After years of remakes and remasters, Square Enix have announced the first all-new Mana game in 15 years. Visions Of Mana will return to the series action-RPG roots, and pop you into the boots of Val, who - all right, deep breath - is a soul guard chosen to be the Alm Of Fire, and whose job it is to go and revive the mana flow at ye olde Mana Tree. Got it? GOod. Let's watch the reveal trailer.
]]>Eight years after Dontnod’s time-rewinding teen drama made its debut, the original Life is Strange has now been played by over 20 million people.
]]>Videogames are full of loops. Often, the loop isn't just a loop in space but a loop of labour, a loop in time. It's a repeated task with a touch of variation from cycle to cycle, typically associated with a character progression system of some kind. The classic one is the town-dungeon loop in an action-RPG such as Diablo 4. You sally forth into the depths with sword and shield, slaughter a bunch of blameless goblins, then orbit triumphantly back to the village square with its 24/7 forge and bustling adventurer's guild. Then off you go, once again, with a Sword +1 and a shield now bearing a Goblin Magnet. There are straightforward equivalents in multiplayer, especially in the wake of Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - sign in, play a few matches, harvest some XP, unlock a new laser sight, equip it, play a few more matches with +5% to your aim.
]]>If rumour speak true, the next Call of Duty game will be another entry in the Black Ops series. It'll also, allegedly, take place during the first Gulf War across 1990 and 1991, in which a US-led coalition of countries including the UK, Saudi Arabia and Egypt invaded Iraq in response to the Saddam Hussein government's conquest of Kuwait.
]]>Two years after Final Fantasy XIV launched a pizza-eating emote to a surprising amount of controversy, anyone can pop along to the MMO’s in-game shop and buy it for under a fiver.
]]>The Nier series will keep going as long as its mask-headed creator Yoko Taro is breathing, producer Yosuke Saito has said - while tempering expectations for a sequel (or prequel, or something less obvious) to Nier: Automata to arrive anytime soon.
]]>If my calculations are correct, all the buildings in PowerWash Simulator's Back To The Future DLC are covered in some serious shit. It's your job to clean it off, of course - off the Hill Valley clocktower, Doc Brown's van, and of course the Delorean. It's out now.
]]>Final Fantasy XIV’s world of Eorzea is a utopia. Sure, there’s the looming threat of Garlean invasion and/or the possibility of world destruction throughout A Realm Reborn and its expansions - but on the plus side, almost everyone you meet is up for a round of cards.
Over the last quarter-century, Triple Triad has managed to escape its origins as a fun side minigame in Final Fantasy VIII to become a fully-fledged phenomenon in XIV. The Gold Saucer runs regular tournaments, random strangers are happy to be challenged to a match - often throwing in one or more of the game’s many variant rules (though Chaos can do one) - and might even give up one of their prized cards when defeated, with almost 400 to collect as of the game’s latest patches. Emphasis on the “might”: I dread to think of the hours spent replaying NPCs in the hope of a random drop as I filled out my collection.
I headed along to Final Fantasy’s London Fan Fest last month with a fetching deck of Triple Triad cards in hand. (Square Enix provided entrance and accommodation for the event.) Where better to try and live the dream of challenging random strangers to a card game, and learn more about the community that has fallen in love with the MMO in the 10 years since A Realm Reborn released?
]]>"Star Ocean" is a fantastic name, evoking a sense of adventure, 16-bit blue skies, the majesty of space. "The Second Story R" is a terrible subtitle, evoking WhatsApp messages where I accidentally press 'send' too soon. Combined they produce Star Ocean: The Second Story R, a beautiful-seeming 2.5D remake of a Square Enix PlayStation JRPG. It's out on Steam now and there's a demo.
]]>Final Fantasy XIV’s achievements are no joke, as proved by the 10 years it took the first player to earn every achievement in the MMO. But director and producer Naoki Yoshida is up for making even more difficult achievements, if the achievement-hunting pro is game for the challenge.
]]>Final Fantasy XIV’s latest Fan Festival took place in London over the weekend, running two days of panels with the MMO’s development team, its director Naoki ‘Yoshi-P’ Yoshida and legendary series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. In-between announcing a new job for expansion Dawntrail, revealing anecdotes from the early days of Final Fantasy and a whole bunch of crossovers on the way, Yoshi-P and Sakaguchi found time to kick back with some very silly hijinks during the game’s boss battles.
]]>When I was a kid I sort of hated Frasier. It was one of those shows you’d find in the 6pm slot on terrestrial TV, back when you had to show up for TV episodes on time or miss them forever, and as far as 10-year-old me was concerned, 6pm was Simpsons hour. Who was this strutting Seattle intellectual, with his glass of sherry and his call-in psychiatry show and his passion for silverware?
I couldn’t abide Frasier and developed a pathological aversion to headliner (and surprisingly convincing X-Man) Kelsey Grammer – but that was before The Simpsons spoofed Frasier and showed me the error of my ways. I still wouldn’t say I’m an outright Frasier fan - or Frasien, as they prefer to be known. Some of the humour is kind of eeesh, in hindsight. But I’ve experienced and enjoyed enough to find Edward La Barbera’s Fraiser Fantasy pretty funny.
]]>Everybody knows some version of the story around Final Fantasy XIV: it came out, it wasn’t very good, it was remade as A Realm Reborn, and now it’s beloved. Over the decade since A Realm Reborn’s release, its reputation has grown with every single expansion. FFXIV’s producer and director Naoki Yoshida (more commonly known as Yoshi P) is now so synonymous with the game that it’s easy to forget he was only brought onto the project in 2010 - after XIV had been released, to overwhelmingly negative reviews.
]]>Final Fantasy 14 has crossed over with everything from Monster Hunter and Nier to Yokai Watch and Fall Guys. But there’s one video game crossover that remains at the top of director-producer Naoki Yoshida’s list: Diablo.
]]>Final Fantasy 14’s 7.0 update won’t hit the MMO for almost another year, arriving alongside the game’s next expansion Dawntrail in the summer of 2024. Director Naoki Yoshida already has some plans for the next two major updates after that, though - but he’d really rather you didn’t ask about them.
]]>The director of Final Fantasy XIV has said he’d love to channel the chaos and freedom of nineties MMO godparent Ultima Online into his own game - but it couldn’t be FF14 itself, as the unbridled chaos would ‘break’ its players.
]]>
![קודי Blox Fruits [דצמבר 2024]: Free Beli ו](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/roblox-blox-fruits.jpg?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "קודי Blox Fruits [דצמבר 2024]: Free Beli ו")
