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Chris Metzen, former senior VP of story and franchise development at Blizzard has returned to the company after a seven-year hiatus.Metzen announced in 2016 that after almost 23 years at Blizzard, he would be retiring at the age of 42. It seems retirement isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.Blizzard announced Metzen’s return today on X (formerly known as Twitter), stating his role is that of executive creative director of the Warcraft universe. Read more

Upon The Crew Motorfest’s reveal at this year’s (frankly bizarre) Ubisoft Forward in June, I think I had the same dismissive reaction as most people: some variation of “we have Forza Horizon at home”. I’m pleased to say I was hasty, and wrong, in this initial assessment. To be clear, The Crew Motorfest is a fine open-world racer, and in my view is actually better than Microsoft’s flagship driving game in a lot of ways, particularly in terms of its structure, but also because it at no point makes you drive through Edinburgh. Sure, the Horizon inspiration is clear and undeniable. All the bits are there: the glossy Instagram-fresh presentation, the optimistic sunshine, the infinite-budget “motoring festival” that takes over an entire territory for an indefinite amount of time. The boffins at Ivory Tower can forgive us for our healthy scepticism. But you could easily argue that Ivory Tower are actually reclaiming the genre from Forza, given its origins as the team behind Test Drive Unlimited: a seminal open-world racer which people loved because it was a great road trip simulator with interesting life sim elements, despite being a bit of a rubbish racing game with a driving model that left a lot to be desired. That’s a description which, incidentally, applies just as well to The Crew and arguably The Crew 2, games which were very much conceived as spiritual successors to TDU. Read more

Square Enix has announced a PC version of Final Fantasy 7: Ever Crisis is in development.Set to release on Steam at an undetermined date, the game was first developed for iOS and Android. Upon release on PC, you will be able to share your mobile game data with the Steam version (thanks, DSOGaming).Final Fantasy 7: Ever Crisis tells the never-before-told story of a young Sephiroth. The game is a chapter-structured RPG experience that will cover key elements of the Final Fantasy 7 timeline, including the events of the original game, plus new story elements penned by Final Fantasy 7 Remake story and scenario writer Kazushige Nojima. Read more

After an almost three year long wait, the first (and only) expansion for Cyberpunk 2077 is here. Phantom Liberty offers a whole new storyline to explore, one that sees you getting wrapped up in a political spy thriller as you’re tasked with saving the president of the NUSA. It also adds in a whole new area to explore, Dogtown, a cordoned off section of Night City that has its own rules and militia. Dogtown isn’t the biggest area compared to the rest of the game’s locales, but honestly? I think it’s better than the entire rest of the map. Yesterday I wrote about my feelings on how Cyberpunk has changed with its 2.0 update, and how we shouldn’t really be saying “it was always good,” because I do think there are some bigger problems that a skill tree overhaul and various other tweaks can’t fix. One of my problem’s is Night City itself. For a futuristic city, I think big parts of it aren’t all that interesting. As I outlined in yesterday’s piece, there are pockets of interesting places to find in Night City. In particular I like Pacifica, because from its design alone you can quickly garner it’s not quite as affluent as other areas in Night City. But again, spaces like these that I feel genuinely interested in exploring feel few and far between; all the other monolith buildings exist for no other purpose than set decoration. Read more

If you can believe it, the PlayStation Plus Essential headline games have leaked again, but you might not be that fussed. As reported by billbil-kun, who has an incredibly accurate record for leaking PlayStation Plus games, October’s headliners includes one of 2022’s most disappointing titles, The Callisto Protocol, as well as Farming Simulator 22. Upon its release, The Callisto Protocol was met with pretty average reviews, our own review giving it 3/5. Touted as a spiritual successor to Dead Space, and even made by the original creator of the EA published horror series, The Callisto Protocol didn’t quite reach sales targets. The developer of the game Striking Distance Studios unfortunately suffered from layoffs last month, and studio founder/ Dead Space creator Glen Schofield has also left the company. Farming Simulator 22 didn’t have as many ups and downs as The Callisto Protocol did – in fact, oddly enough it had more players than Battlefield 2042 a couple of years ago. Still, though, if it’s not your kind of game, and you think the consensus around The Callisto Protocol sounds pretty accurate, it’s not a great month to be a PlayStation Plus subscriber. Is it just the done thing to put mediocre games on subscription services a year later now? Read more

You’d think that the smarter the video game AI the better, but according to Bethesda’s Todd Howard, enemy ships in Starfield used to be just that bit too smart. Getting AI right in games is a tough balancing act – make an NPC too smart, and it can feel unfair, but make them too stupid and it can feel frustrating or overly easy. Speaking on The AIAS Game Maker’s Notebook Podcast, Starfield director Todd Howard shared some details on the steps Bethesda took to get the balancing act for the game’s enemy ships right in particular (thanks, GameSpot). “Forever we were just jousting,” Howard shared. “It turns out you have to make the AI really stupid. You have to have them fly, they need to turn and basically be like: ‘Hey, player one, you can just shoot me for a while.’ And then you give the AI tools where the player can see: ‘Oh, he’s boosting away, I can do that.'” Read more

One of the many underwhelming things about Starfield is that its version of space travel boils down watching cutscenes to transition to space/surface or to travel between planets. It’s basically a collection of loading screens that never stop reminding you that you’re loading between different levels, and not actually travelling in space.So, of course, there’s a Starfield mod to fix that, though it’s not quite what you might expect.Modder 105gun is reponsible for the clunkily-named Slower Than Light – Fly in a Star System, available to download right now on Nexus Mods. The mod does two things. Read more

If you’re looking for a reason to get back into Diablo 4 ahead of the launch of Season 2 next month – assuming you’ve already finished the battle pass – Prime Gaming is offering members some nice skins for free.This is another major in-game item given to Prime subscribers, and it follows the four free tier skips.The current promo is for the Vermilion Dark Tome, and the Vermilion Bolt Thrower. These are cosmetic variants that can be used by Rogues, Necromancers, and Sorcerers. You get them both if you’re an Amazon Prime member, and all you need to do is claim them. Read more

If you want to see Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty all the way through to the end, you should be careful about which work you say no to. Phantom Liberty is a big expansion, with the main quests taking up to 20 hours to beat on their own, making it the size of its own game. That’s a whole lot of new story to experience, but you do need to mind yourself, as you can miss pretty much all of it. As noted by PC Gamer, there’s a point early on in the DLC where you can opt out of helping a particular set of characters, and if you do so, you’ll be locked out from finishing it. Some early spoilers ahead, but I’ll keep them light! The big decision comes at the end of a mission called Lucretia My Reflection, where you’re talking with the president of the NUSA herself Rosalind Myers, and the new character Idris Elba plays, Solomon Reed. There’s a point during your conversation with the characters where Reed will ask you, “is it worth it?” with three dialogue options. The first two will let you press on with the story, but the bottom option is the one you want to look out for, which reads “You’re right, I’m out.” Read more