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As the assault on Troost begins, Helldivers 2's massive new Quasar Cannon is earning pretty stellar reviews

11 hours 33 minutes ago

Hello there, Helldivers 2 folks. You'll probably be glad to know that the forces of Super Earth are now moving on the automaton-infested Troost, having just wrestled control of Vandalon IV. To be fair, they've had help from two huge new guns, one of which certainly seems like it might be a new fan favourite.

These fresh additions to the arsenal have been a welcome surprise, especially since Arrowhead has temporarily barred players from getting into snowball fights, due to an issue it's busy looking into. While your arc weapons should no longer cause crashes like those snowballs currently are, you'll probably want to give these new firearms a whirl as you push on towards major order victory over the next days or so.

As I write this, there's a force of 140,000-ish helldivers battling to liberate Troost, with it having become the number one target in their crosshairs once Vandalon IV fell into Super Earth's hands just a little bit ago. It's the big final boss of this latest major order, so here's hoping the attack goes well, even if it currently looks like it'll take 20 hours or so of strongly sustained push, since we're currently only at about 4% liberation percentage, according to Helldivers.io.

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Mark Warren

Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, the sequel to DreamWorks and Netflix's Camp Cretaceous, is looking much darker

12 hours 29 minutes ago

Did you know a five-season animated Jurassic World series was released on Netflix? No? Well, if you're a diehard dinosaur fan, you ought to check it out. At least until the end of season 3, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous was pretty sweet and more mature than you'd expect. Now, Chaos Theory aims to be a darker follow-up.

Entertainment Weekly has all the new details about DreamWorks Animation's sequel series, which debuts ten episodes on May 24 on Netflix. Plus, the streaming service has finally released a proper teaser trailer that better sets up the tone and the main premise.

Scott Kreamer, an executive producer and showrunner on Camp Cretaceous, explained why he jumped on the opportunity to helm a sequel series right after ending the previous one's lengthy run. "I would want to tell a more sophisticated story with the older kids, tonally closer to the end of the Harry Potter movies than the beginning of the Harry Potter movies...it kept going from there, and people luckily got on board," he explained.

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Fran Ruiz

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a live-action anime finale in which the two kaijus play Vegeta and Goku

13 hours 23 minutes ago

There are no spoilers ahead for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, beyond what's been revealed in marketing materials.

Adam Wingard's second MonsterVerse movie, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, might feel looser than 2021's Godzilla vs. Kong, but it finally lets its gargantuan protagonists lead the story.

It's loud. It's silly. It's a Showa-era kaiju movie, but made on a beefy Hollywood budget, through and through. We've just enjoyed the finest dramatic Godzilla movie since 1954 in Toho's Godzilla Minus One, so it only makes sense that Legendary Pictures and the bold filmmakers behind the MonsterVerse keep rowing in the opposite direction after having tackled disaster-movie-like Godzilla too in the past.

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Fran Ruiz

Anthony Mackie says the Marvel Cinematic Universe is limited by the source material, but we're not sure that's the problem

13 hours 52 minutes ago

It's no secret that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been having a bit of trouble recently, yet it remains big and profitable enough to keep the spark alive and shift plans around so the upcoming big-screen releases and Disney+ shows are much better. Now, Anthony Mackie is adding his voice to that of the critics', despite, you know, playing the new Captain America.

The actor, who's now shooting Captain America: Brave New World - which arrives on February 14, 2025, after big strike-related delays and rewrites - is currently promoting the international release of 2023's pretty solid Twisted Metal TV adaptation. Of course, he was asked about the Marvel sandbox and had a spicy take about its limitations.

Via Radio Times, the actor explained the decades and decades of source material available to pluck storylines and character arcs from often restrict the narrative possibilities of the movies and series they make for. "I would say the Marvel thing is completely different, just because it's such a space of controlled entertainment," he said, "Like, there's only so much you can do. There's only so much creativity you can bring to the table, because Stan Lee gave us so much content...it's like, you can't really go outside of the lines of those comic books."

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Fran Ruiz

Attention Dragon's Dogma 2 moaners, Capcom's asking for your probably terrible additional DLC pitches

15 hours 24 minutes ago

Oi, you. If you're one of the folks who've had a bit of a moan about Dragon's Dogma 2's DLC, as we're all perfectly entitled to do about any game, now's your chance to tell Capcom what you might like it to do when it comes to additional DLC that could arrive for the game.

Yep, a games company is asking you for input on a game, try not let all of the power go to your head at once. This is actually something Capcom, it its credit, does pretty regularly, having previously asked about the likes of Resident Evil remakes and classic Capcom IPs such as Dead Rising. Whether much ends up coming of your input is another thing, but it's nice to feel heard at least.

You can find the fresh survey about DD2 here, just make sure you've set aside a bit of time first, because it's fairly chunky, although you have got until April 21 to fill it out. The bit you probably care the most about is on the third and fourth pages of it, once you've gotten through answering stuff like how you heard about the game and what you've thought of it so far.

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Mark Warren

Dragon's Dogma 2 meat fest! Hot meat ranked from worst to best! Your doctor hates it...

16 hours 46 minutes ago

There's a lot to love about Dragon's Dogma 2, obviously. The game is a cut above a lot of other games we've seen come out in recent months (yeah I'm including Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth too), and we reckon it's due to some truly unique quirks and charming little features you can find sprinkled all over Capcom's latest action RPG. You want an example? For my money, you've got to love the live action cooking scenes.

That's why I was pleasantly surprised when the good folks over at Eurogamer ranked each of the cooking cutscenes in order of worst to best, which you can watch in the video above! Not only is it packed full of meat puns (as you'd expect), but it'll also help you get a troublesome achievement / trophy if you follow it along yourself.

Obviously the rotten meat goes at the bottom but you may be surprised which ranks near the top. This reminds me of a university story. Did you know one of my old flat mates once ate undercooked sausages in front of four people, and pretended they were cooked? We were making fun of him not being able to cook sausages properly, and instead of admiting he couldn't even over-cook food, he forced his way through three raw sausages to prove a point. He was later ill, obviously. He didn't even get a trophy for it - he flunked out of third year I think. £25,000 down and no trophy...

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Connor Makar

Terrible news, fun-loving Helldivers 2 folks, Arrowhead wants you to avoid having snowball fights for now

17 hours 24 minutes ago

It's defintely not Christmas, but Christmas in Helldivers 2 has basically just been cancelled. Arrowhead's advising that you refrain from lobbing any snowballs at your mates until further notice, until it figures out how to fix your favorite pastime from inadvertently causing crashes.

That's right, you might be safe to use your arc weapons again without fearing any sudden freezes, thanks to the game's latest patch stopping that from being a thing, but now you've got to avoid trying to cover someone in a suspicious patch of yellow snow you've found mid-op and are somewhow okay with picking up. To be fair, you're now supposed to be making sure those pesky bots get driven back now anyway, so you've got plenty to keep you occupied.

Over in the official Helldivers 2 Discord server, Arrowhead community manager Baskinator announced this depressing news, declaring: "Helldivers, avoid having snowball fights". Don't worry though, this isn't some kind of punishment for failing a major order or, er, being a bit too reticent to stop killing Terminids and actually deal with the galaxy's current biggest threat. "We're aware of a crash caused by picking up and throwing snowballs," the developer explained, "We hope to have this fixed in the near future, but until then, we advise against snowball throwing". So, there you go, if you want to make sure you don't get booted out, stop trying to take people's heads off every time you drop onto a frigid planet.

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Mark Warren

Diablo 4 deserves a lot of the flack it gets, but anyone jumping into today's Game Pass launch shouldn’t care

18 hours 20 minutes ago

In recent weeks, it has become somewhat customary to dunk on Diablo 4 for one reason or another. Most of it has been entirely justified, and we’ve certainly partaken in some of that dunking ourselves.

Blizzard just seems to have been speedrunning through unforced errors, which kicked off all the way back at the game’s release last year. But how much of that has any bearing on its impending Game Pass release? The answer is, likely, very little.

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Sherif Saed

Hollywood's insatiable desire for reboots catches Pirates of the Caribbean's sinking ship in its maelstrom

18 hours 25 minutes ago

Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, and Elizabeth Swann's tales are done for good, as Disney and the producers confirm that, to the surprise of no one but the most hopeful Johnny Depp fans, they're looking at other options for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

We'd been hearing chatter about the adventurous movie series looking for fresher waters for a few years now, with talent as big as the writers behind Deadpool or Margot Robbie trying to bring new ideas into the franchise, but it seems like the powers that be at Disney are carefully considering the options before moving forward with another set of pirates and an entirely new storyline.

Via ComicBook.com, and while talking to the site about The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, legendary Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who's been attached to all previous Pirates of the Caribbean flicks (which are available to watch on Disney+ right now), confirmed the current status of the IP at Disney and what they want to do. "It's hard to tell. You don't know, you really don't know... You don't know how they come together. You just don't know," he said, "Because with Top Gun you have an actor who is iconic and brilliant. And how many movies he does before he does Top Gun, I can't tell you. But we're gonna reboot Pirates, so that is easier to put together because you don't have to wait for certain actors."

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Fran Ruiz

SEGA to reportedly lay off 240 staff, as Company of Heroes developer Relic announces plans to go independent

18 hours 50 minutes ago

SEGA is reportedly planning to cut 240 jobs across a number of its studios, with Total War developer Creative Assembly, SEGA Europe, and Sonic Dream Team developer Hardlight being the studios set to be affected by these layoffs. Meanwhile, the publisher has announced that it's sold Company of Heroes developer Relic, which now plans to go independent.

This news is the latest to break in what's been a terrible year for games industry layoffs so far, especially among big publishers, with Microsoft having laid off 1,900 staff from its video game division in late January, and PlayStation having let 900 staff go just last month. While the numbers involved in these cuts aren't as huge, they do also follow SEGA of America laying off 61 people earlier this year, after announcing plans to "phase out" tepmorary workers in controversial fashion late last year.

According to GamesIndustry.biz, most of the layoffs are set to affect staff at Creative Assembly and Sega Europe, while Hardlight will seemigly see a smaller number of cuts. Neither Two Point Hospital studio Two Point Studios or Football Manager developer Sports Interactive, both of which are also owned by SEGA, were mentioned as part of these cuts.

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Mark Warren

The best action RPG you never played is getting a sequel

18 hours 54 minutes ago

Yes this is real. No you're not imagining things. Another Hellgate game is in development, with the original Hellgate London lead Bill Roper at the helm. Hellgate Redemption is coming - built in Unreal Engine 5 for PC and consoles. No release date yet, of course. All we have for now is this mic-drop announcement to scratch our heads over.

In development at Lunacy games, which was only recently founded by a collection of industry vets, is also making a wild west survival RPG alongside their new Hellgate title. However, judging by the official announcement for Hellgate Redemption and Roper's own history with the IP, it's this game that's closest to his heart.

Roper states, "I’ve dreamed of returning to the franchise we created back in 2007 for many, many years, I’ve always felt I had unfinished business with the Hellgate IP, which is why our codename for the project is Hellgate: Redemption."

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Connor Makar

Mission: Impossible 8 is still shooting somehow, adds Love Lies Bleeding star Katy O'Brian to cast

19 hours 25 minutes ago

If you've recently been obsessing over Love Lies Bleeding, especially its two main stars, and also enjoy the incredibly consistent Mission: Impossible saga, you're in luck. Katy O'Brian has joined the cast of the follow-up to last year's Dead Reckoning - Part 1.

But wait! Mission: Impossible 8 is still shooting? Well yeah, apparently. Believe it or not, the two-parter (though Paramount may be considering an entirely different title for the second one, after all that's transpired) started production before the pandemic, so at this point it feels like Tom Cruise, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, and everyone involved have been stuck doing these films forever.

Regardless, the first Dead Reckoning (AKA Mission: Impossible 7) kicked a large amount of butt, despite several production hiccups, and we're not expecting the next one to suddenly suck, so the excitement is still there. After many delays, the eighth installment is set to arrive on May 23, 2025.

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Fran Ruiz

Embracer Group sells Borderlands creator Gearbox to Take Two for 460 million

22 hours 50 minutes ago

Embracer Groups is divesting itself of Gearbox for 460 million dollars, according to an official Embracer Group press release. Gearbox - creator of Borderlands, Risk of Rain, and more video game IPs - will be aquired by Take Two and paid entirely with newly created Take Two shares.

When it comes to exactly what Embracer is selling, this includes Gearbox Software, Gearbox Montréal, Gearbox Studio Quebec and well as various IP like Borderlands, Homeworld, Risk of Rain, Brothers in Arms and Duke Nukem. However, Embracer will be keeping its grip on Gearbox Publisher (soon to be renamed following the sale), Cryptic Studios, (Neverwinter Online and Star Trek Online), Lost Boys Interactive and Captured Dimensions. These developers will be folded into the Embracer company proper following the sale.

Back in 2021, Embracer group bought Gearbox for $1.3 billion. $363 million was upfront, split 50 / 50 between cash and Embracer shares. There was then rougly $1 billion up for grabs if Gearbox hit several targets within six years, though there is no mention on whether these targets were hit by Gearbox since being acquired. Randy Pitchford will remain CEO of Gearbox as the company jiggles under Take Two's umbrella.

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Connor Makar

One of the best roguelike survival games, Don't Starve, is getting its own tabletop adaptation

1 day 4 hours ago

One of the best survival games out there is getting a board game courtesy of Glass Cannon Unplugged, and it’s Klei Entertainment’s roguelike classic Don’t Starve.

Going the crowdfunding route through Kickstarter, Don't Starve: The Board Game takes 1-4 players into the randomly generated world of the Constant, a strange and dangerous realm where magic and science intertwine.

With the elements and plenty of baddies working against you, as one of the video game’s iconic characters, you and your friends will need to use your wits to outsmart fate, find subsistence, and stay alive.

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Stephany Nunneley-Jackson

Microsoft Gaming boss Phil Spencer signals openness to broader store options which could lead to third-party retailers appearing on Xbox

1 day 10 hours ago

Microsoft's Phil Spencer wants players to have more options beyond the first-party stores tied to consoles.

Spencer has always seemed keen on creating a more open and accessible digital environment for players and has often discussed reducing platform fragmentation and providing customers with more options and control over where they play or purchase their games.

Speaking with Polygon at GDC 2024, Microsoft’s CEO of Gaming discussed the idea of providing Xbox users with additional ways to purchase titles by adding third-party stores such as the Epic Games Store, Itch.io, or GOG to the console instead of forcing users to buy from the official Xbox storefront.

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Stephany Nunneley-Jackson

Star Trek 4 is still happening, surprisingly, and it's sounding like the end of the reboot films

1 day 12 hours ago

Despite the third entry having been released eight years ago, Star Trek 4 is still moving ahead, though with a slightly different crew.

Back in 2009, Star Trek was thrust back into the mainstream with the J. J. Abrams directed reboot film of the same name, spawning a couple of sequels including Into Darkness and Beyond. The third entry came out way back in 2016, and a fourth entry was meant to be coming at some point, but things have been quiet on that front until now. As reported by Variety, Star Trek 4 is moving ahead, bringing on Steve Yockey as the new screenwriter for the project. Yockey hasn't helmed too many notable projects, probably best known for the HBO series The Flight Attendant.

Unsurprisingly, story details are still under wraps at this point in time, but Variety says that Paramount and Bad Robot are lining up this as of yet untitled sequel as the final entry in the rebooted series of films. Apparently one of the big issues for the film has been bringing back all of the cast for the project, which isn't exactly massively surprising - Karl Urban has been busy with The Boys, Zoe Saldana is of course Gamora in the Guardians of the Galaxy films, and Chris Pine has appeared in DC's Wonder Woman films amongst others, so wrangling all of the back together and more isn't massively surprising.

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Oisin Kuhnke

Bad news, Baldur's Gate 3 fraudsters, the latest hotfix stops you hoodwinking merchants using container tricks

1 day 13 hours ago

Hello there, Baldur's Gate 3 people. We're doing this dance again. There's a newly released hotfix, and it does things. What things? Well, for one, it fixes a bunch of exploits involving containers that you'd previously been able to use to defraud the game's merchants.

Yep, after the last hotfix helped out the not quite evil Minthara romancers who'd been getting rejected by her in really quite brutal - although to be fair this is Minty we're talking about - fashion, a new one's arrived to save some NPCs from you instead. Though to be fair, you're no longer in danger of getting permananetly trapped in conversation with Lae'zel like she's an in-law you've been seated next to at a wedding, so both sides are benefitting here.

If you take a peek in the full set of notes for hotfix 23 - which has gone live today - Larian's described all the downright sneaky methods folks have been using to save or score some extra gold. The studio's whacked bugs that allowed you to "generate gold by buying multiple items but only paying for one of them if you dragged the items into a container" and acquire "a stack of items for free when dragging the stack into a container and using the item splitter".

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Mark Warren

Look out, Overwatch 2, Marvel Rivals might just steal your audience

1 day 13 hours ago

Overwatch 2? What Overwatch 2? I think you're looking for Marvel Rivals, the upcoming free-to-play hero shooter.

Marvel and NetEase have just revealed the first trailer for Marvel Rivals, a game that is so obviously just meant to be Overwatch but with your favourite comic book characters instead. Much like how Overwatch used to work, Marvel Rivals is a team-based, 6v6 shooter, described as having "thrilling, fast-paced, cooperative gameplay," with a "deep" roster - that includes your classic like Spider-Man, Iron Man, and the Hulk, as well as newer characters like Peni Parker and Magik.

What seems to be the big thing that sets it apart from Overwatch are the team-up abilities. Take Rocket Racoon and Groot for example: they have a unique team-up where Rocket can hop up on Groot's back and cause havoc together. And of course there's a variety of abilities unique to each character, and ultimates for some more explosive power too.

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Oisin Kuhnke

A REAL ARTIST reviews our Dragon's Dogma 2 Character Creations

1 day 14 hours ago

Yeah, get a load of that headline, art people. With your paintbrushes, your easels, and your pointless degrees. We, a group of people with equally expensive degrees that might honestly be a tiny bit more useless have made some art using Dragon's Dogma 2's very nice character creator.

Obviously there's more to DD2 than just trying to recreate your nan, or your cat, or your favorite member of the Bee Gees, but quite frankly, you can get lost in just picking your nose all on its own. So, that's what we've gone and done.

Jim and his friend, er, let me look this up, Owen O'Donnell of The Infinite Review, teamed up to take a look at some of the characters us at VG247 and a couple of other people who either are or have been associated with Gamer Network at some point in time have created in Dragon's Dogma 2. Every character showcased and analysed in the kind of depth you can only expect from a man who actively grimaces whenever he has to reveal his own pick on our podcast - despite the fact he's in control of it - and one of that man's mates was definitely created in Dragon's Dogma 2.

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Mark Warren

Sand Land: A perfect epitaph to Akira Toryiama, I wish I had a game like this when I was growing up – final preview

1 day 14 hours ago

What an honour it is to Akira Toriyama’s legacy that Sand Land is releasing just after his unfortunate passing. The man – creator of Dragon Ball, lead artist on Chrono Trigger, and so much more – always revelled in the joy of innocence, always pushed ideas of naivety and pure-heartedness in his works. Sand Land, a game adapted directly from one of his most under-represented original stories, is a fitting epitaph to the man and his view of the world. I wish I had a game like this when I was growing up.

The RPG follows a mischievous demon imp with a begrudgingly pure heart, a crotchety old man that masks his just nature with gruff sternness, and a comic relief codger that likes to dress as Santa Claus. The three of them are quickly embroiled in a conspiracy that involves much of the world’s natural water – hoarded as it is by an autocratic king, a picture of greed himself.

It’s somehow both predictable and fresh, but the detail and depth of the human heart beating at the middle of this intra-species story is something you’d expect to find in a Pixar film or Becky Chambers book.

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Dom Peppiatt