“What morbid force is calling you deeper into the heart of the caves?” asks the Steam page for The Cave Diver. It ain’t calling me, developer Ovsko. I read the opening words of your description and immediately started running away from my laptop. I’m still running, in fact. This article is being breathlessly dictated to Oisin over the phone. I’m somewhere in the vicinity of Luton, now, and hope to make it all the way to Scotland by the weekend.
After that, there’ll be the problem of securing naval travel as I continue my headlong flight. Then I’ll have to worry about frostbite as I gallop past the North Pole and begin my long traversal of the Pacific. At some point I will reach New Zealand, which – according to this handy antipodal mapping site – is approximately as far away from The Cave Diver Steam page currently loaded on my laptop as I can get without venturing into outer space. I do not rule out venturing into outer space, which is notable for its complete and categorical deficit of caves.
Nintendo always seems to renew its trademarks at the juiciest of times. While these renewals are rarely anything to get excited about, a little bit of speculation never hurts. Especially with a new console looming.
As brought to our attention on BlueSky by @Stealth40k, Nintendo has today renewed the trademarks for the Wii’s Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and the DS’ Metroid Prime: Hunters. With Prime Remastered making a surprise appearance on Switch back in 2023 and Prime 4 set to land on Switch 2 at some point this year, it’s only natural to let a little bit of excitement take hold when two more series additions are mentioned in the same breath, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.
Despite the best efforts of all concerned, there are once again new PC games this week. See how they frolic among the days ahead, trampling all over our life commitments and need for tranquility like boisterous, fugitive oxen. Please equip yourself with a broom, weighted net and klaxon and help me herd them back into the pens, for proper disassembly. Here are a few I’ve rounded up already.
While there’s still no formal explanation on why sales have been blocked in over 100 countries around the world, it’s thought the list broadly matches that of places where PlayStation Network is not available — although neither PlayStation nor Shift Up has explicitly confirmed that. Instead, the developer insisted it was “doing our BEST to resolve most of it as soon as possible.”
“PSN connecting [is] entirely optional and NEVER required,” the studio added.
“As shown in the test chart below, the DRM has been hard tuned to maintain the same average frame rate, with even higher minimum frames in some cases,” the studio explained, adding modding is also “fully supported without any restrictions.”
🔸️We are closely discussing the region lock issue with the publisher and are doing our BEST to resolve most of it as soon as possible. 🔸️As shown in the test chart below, the DRM has been hard tuned to maintain the same average frame rate, with even higher minimum frames in… pic.twitter.com/JDimvKiKte
At the time of writing (Monday, May 19), there has been no further update on the issue.
The PC version of Stellar Blade launches via Steam on June 11 along with a raft of PC-specific features, including AI upscaling via Nvidia DLSS 4 and AMD FSR 3, an unlocked framerate, Japanese and Chinese voiceover, ultrawide display support, higher resolution environment textures, and DualSense support for haptic feedback and trigger effects.
IGN’s Stellar Blade review returned a 7/10. We said: “Stellar Blade is great in all of the most important ways for an action game, but dull characters, a lackluster story, and several frustrating elements of its RPG mechanics prevent it from soaring along with the best of the genre.”
Vikki Blake is a reporter, critic, columnist, and consultant. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
If internet videos with titles like “Supersonic Golf Ball to the Forehead” have taught us anything, it’s that a slow motion chthonic mace to the dome is a weighty chthonic mace to the dome. So goes the thinking being Doom: The Dark Ages liberal dolloping of slow motion effects all over its melee attacks and parries. The FPS does away with the series’ canned glory kills, so it’s nice to take a split second of mud time to catch your bearings where you can. Still, the game isn’t exactly shy about its application.
I was watching a Doom 3 retrospective last night that talked about how the original copies of the game came with a note explaining that “Doom 3 is not for cowards!”. By contrast, the amount of accessibility options and sliders in The Dark Ages, alongside Id saying that it was ” a game for all Slayers!” is, you know, at least one nice reminder that games are far less twattish than they used to be. In some ways, at least. One thing those sliders don’t allow for, however, is removing the abundance of slow motion effects. Once again, modders have our backs. Thank you, modders. That’s my favourite back and I’d strongly dislike having to replace it.
A month after launch, a small percentage of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered players have completed the main questline. But for a game like this, that’s not particularly surprising — fans are saying they’re way too busy doing other stuff.
I’m one of those fans! I’ve been playing and enjoying Oblivion Remastered since it shadow-dropped on April 22, and upon leaving the sewers and handing over the Amulet of Kings to Jauffre at Weynon Priory, I’ve done everything BUT the main questline. I’ve joined the Fighters Guild, explored Cyrodiil, and completed loads of side quests. I’ve even tried to brute force my way out of the map, as one player managed to do.
Why? Well, the side quests in Oblivion are brilliant fun (I won’t spoil any story stuff here), but I’m also trying to avoid the main quest (and potentially difficult parts of it like Kvatch) for the time being while keeping leveling up to a minimum.
So, I’ve decided to enjoy Oblivion until I get bored enough to play the game properly. Although there is no properly with a Bethesda game like this one, is there? That’s why they’re brilliant. You do what you want whenever you want, and the game still works.
“I spend 160 hours in already and Kvatch is still waiting for me,” added Roffear. “I’m one of those weirdos who actually likes the Oblivion gates so I purposefully don’t finish the main quest until I’ve found all 60 gates in my world and closed them,” said Ellert0. “44 hours and an actual in-game year, and I haven’t even been to Weynon Priory,” said PlayaHatinIG-88. “Those poor Kvatch city guards never stood a chance.”
At the time of this article’s publication, a paltry 2.97% had completed Oblivion Remastered’s main questline on Xbox and a slightly better 4.4% had on Steam. Why the difference? I presume that’s because Xbox factors in Game Pass, which will have seen a number of players dip their toe into Oblivion Remastered before bouncing. Steam players are all in, of course, because they actually bought the game outright.
Either way, it’s still a low percentage for Oblivion Remastered, which has so far seen over 4 million players. But in truth most video games have a surprisingly low campaign completion rate, whether it’s an epic, 100-hour open-world fantasy role-playing game like Oblivion Remastered or a five-hour story like Call of Duty. Indeed, a lot of games have a surprisingly low percentage of players who stick around after an hour or so or continue playing after the tutorial. Such is the fickle nature of the gamer.
For Oblivion Remastered, the stats may be skewed further because it’s a remaster of a beloved game many of its players finished back in the day. If you completed Oblivion’s main quest 20 years ago, perhaps you’re less inclined to do it again now, and would rather focus on all the pretty new visuals and upgraded bits and bobs. Or, as one player has done, spend seven hours lining up books to get a Dominoes chain reaction just right.
Thaddeus122 said they were almost 100 hours in and hadn’t even completed three of the main quests. They have, however, completed the Arena and the Mages Guild. And the rest of the time? “Leveling, getting money for homes, closing all the Oblivion gates, the Nirnroot quest, a bunch of little quests. To be fair, also don’t fast travel anywhere.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
“It doesn’t take itself too seriously… the inspiration is basically my life”.
At PAX East, we had a chance to sit down with the lively Nico Papalia and Top Hat Studios – developer of Athenian Rhapsody, and its newly-announced prequel, Tales of Tuscany (releasing on “whatever you play games on,” including Switch, in 2026).
We wanted to learn a bit more about what inspired such a mad-cap universe, and where the WarioWare / EarthBound / Pokémon-esque ideas all stemmed from. While it was a bit of a challenge to talk over the raucous laughter coming from the crowd gathered at the demo booth, we managed to get an inside glimpse at Papalia’s surprising backstory and his work on both games.
Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! No cool industry person this week (I’d like requests though. No Classical Gas), but I want to get back into the habit of posting the column regularly regardless, since the comments are always a medium good time, which is the maximum amount of good time allowed on a Sunday.
Assuming the postie doesn’t deprive us on launch day, we’re less than three weeks away from having a brand new Nintendo console in our hands! This 24th edition of the Nintendo Life Mailbox will be the final spread with the original Switch as Nintendo’s flagship console!
Yes, we’ve been rifling through our inbox and publishing select contents in our monthly letters page for a whole two years now, and we’ll be back next month with an entirely different console sitting on the desk. And, presumably, a whole pile of Switch 2-related correspondence to sort through.
There’s been a lot of conversation about Nintendo making Mario Kart World its main launch title for the Switch 2 ahead of certain other key franchises.
Nintendo of America’s Nate Bihldorff provided an official response about this to Inverse last month, mentioning how it’s “one of the most broadly accessible games possible” with a high skill ceiling as well as an easy entry level for all ages.
