šŸ‘¶ Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is coming on 26th June. Hideo Kojima brought the news - along with a new trailer - at a SXSW panel yesterday. The game looks beautiful, with far more varied environments than the first, and while the story remains a mystery there signs are that this will be a more human-focused entry, with Sam joined more frequently by the rest of the cast. And then thereā€™s the matter of the Metal Gear Solid parallelsā€¦

GameDev: I'm finally developing video games again after 20 years

Somewhere in England in the early 2000s, a spotty teenager put a CD into his computer and installed a game maker application. I canā€™t even remember what that program was called at this point, but it let me put together simple games - Pong-esque football, a cricket game that looked...

Sanitised F1 75 launch event was saved by its edgy host Jack Whitehall

You can almost imagine the planning meetings at Formula 1 headquarters ahead of the sportā€™s first live season launch event, held at the O2 Arena in London last night. What would appeal most to broadest possible demographic of new, young fans? Smiling drivers and team principals. ā€œInspirationalā€ brand videos from...

šŸ» Avowed has me conflicted. The main story sounds like a chore and I prefer immersive sim RPGs to its more static world, but I really enjoyed this weekā€™s episode of The Besties, which covered some of the more innovative features Obsidian has brought to the table. These include speech checks more involved than ā€œis X greater than Yā€, and graceful, immersive dialogue when the player stumbles upon quest locations earlier than planned.

Sega and Sports Interactive were right to cancel Football Manager 25

If you read this blog regularly, youā€™ll likely agree that the games industry in 2025 is a Wild West of anti-consumer practices. Developers and publishers seem set on milking as much money from customers as possible, regardless of the damage done to beloved series or the reputations of the companies...

The government won't protect your access to live service games

An attempt to protect gamers against publishersā€™ abrupt shuttering - or ā€œsunsettingā€ - of live service games failed this week, after the government stated that there are ā€œno plans to amend UK consumer law on disabling video gamesā€. A petition that had passed the 10,000-signature threshold for parliamentary discussion was...

āš”ļø Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 looks fantastic. Having watched some of the gameplay circulating online, it strikes me as what I thought a Bethesda RPG might look like by 2025 back when I was playing Oblivion. I donā€™t know when Iā€™ll next have the time to put aside for such a sprawling adventure, but itā€™s certainly earned a place on my backlog for when I do.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Tarantino's novel kills the mystery

As the first Quentin Tarantino film I saw at the cinema, I have a something of a soft spot for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). While I wasnā€™t as keen on the typically violent ending, the picture the director painted of 1960s Los Angeles was captivating, perfectly complemented...

šŸ Forza Horizon 5 is coming to PlayStation 5 this spring. Another Xbox crown jewel landing on Sonyā€™s console raises some interesting questions about the future of the games industry. If all the studios Microsoft bought are too costly to run on Xbox sales alone and their games must be released more widely, what reason will be left to buy an Xbox to begin with?

GTA VI might get away with a $100 price tag, but your game can't

After a decade-long wait and with development costs reportedly stretching into the billions, it has long been rumoured that Rockstar might try to crank up the price of Grand Theft Auto VI when it launches. The standard price for games has already increased from Ā£50 to Ā£60 in recent years,...