Category: Video Games

State of Play returns this Thursday

State of Play is back! Tune in live for updates on PS5 and PS VR2 titles, plus a look at PlayStation Studios games arriving later this year.

The 30+ minute show features 14 titles, and begins May 30 at 3pm PT / 6pm ET | May 31 12am CEST / 7am JST on YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok. See you then!

Regarding Co-streaming and Video-On-Demand (VOD)

Please note that this broadcast may include copyrighted content (e.g. licensed music) that PlayStation does not control. We welcome and celebrate our amazing co-streamers and creators, but licensing agreements outside our control could interfere with co-streams or VOD archives of this broadcast. If you’re planning to save this broadcast as a VOD to create recap videos, or to repost clips or segments from the show, we advise omitting any copyrighted music.

Gayming Awards 2024 Set for June 25

The Gayming Awards 2024 date has been set for June 25, where it will once again showcase the best in LGBTQ gaming on the occasion of Pride Month.

This year’s show will highlight the best games with LGBTQ themes from 2023. It will also award the Gayming Icon 2024 award to designer Jeremy Crawford, who is best-known for his work as lead designer on Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, while inducting five LGBTQ streamers into the LGBTQ Streamer Rising Star Class.

The Gayming Awards 2024’s major nominees include Baldur’s Gate 3, which has swept numerous major awards shows including the BAFTAs and The Game Awards, as well as Final Fantasy XVI, Thirsty Suitors, and Stray Gods. The full list of nominees can be found below.

Game of the Year Award

  • Baldur’s Gate 3 – Larian Studios
  • Final Fantasy XVI – Square Enix
  • Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Nintendo
  • Thirsty Suitors – Outer Loop Games / Annapurna Interactive
  • Spider-Man 2 – Insomniac Studios / Sony Interactive Entertainment
  • Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical – Humble Games / Summerfall Studios

Gayming Magazine Readers’ Award

  • Baldur’s Gate 3 – Larian Studios
  • Final Fantasy XVI – Square Enix
  • Goodbye Volcano High – KO_OP
  • Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Nintendo
  • Tchia – Awaceb / Kepler Interactive
  • This Bed We Made – Lowbirth Games

Industry Diversity Award

  • Humble Games
  • Larian Studios
  • Latinx In Gaming
  • Qweerty Gamers
  • Roll7
  • Women in Games International

Authentic Representation Award

  • Baldur’s Gate 3 – Larian Studios
  • Coral Island – Stairway Games / Humble Games
  • Sims 4 – Maxis / EA Games
  • The Expanse: A Telltale Games – Telltale Games / Deck 9
  • Thirsty Suitors – Outer Loop Games / Annapurna Interactive
  • This Bed We Made – Lowbirth Games

Best LGBTQ+ Character Award

  • Aloy – Horizon: Forbidden West – Guerilla / Playstation Studios
  • Dame Aylin – Baldur’s Gate 3 – Larian Studios
  • Deon Lesange – Final Fantasy XVI – Square Enix
  • Jala – Thirsty Suitors – Outer Loop Games / Annapurna Interactive
  • Shadowheart – Baldur’s Gate 3 – Larian Studios
  • Tchia – Tchia – Awaceb / Kepler Interactive

Best LGBTQ+ Indie Game Award – powered by TikTok

  • Coral Island – Stairway Games / Humble Games
  • In Stars and Time – insertdisc5
  • Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical – Humble Games / Summerfall
  • Studios
  • Tchia – Awaceb / Kepler Interactive
  • Thirsty Suitors – Outer Loop Games / Annapurna Interactive
  • This Bed We Made – Lowbirth Games

LGBTQ+ Streamer of the Year Award

  • Apothicdecay
  • Eevoh
  • Elix
  • EspeSymone
  • Halfmoonjoe
  • Maisy
  • Sheilur
  • SpringSims

Best LGBTQ+ Contribution to Esports Award

  • Bailey McCann
  • Bethany "Indyburgh" Pyles
  • Cora Kennedy
  • Emma "Emzii" Rose
  • Slaypex / Kylie Gabor

LGBTQ+ Geek Entertainment Moment of the Year

  • Doctor Who: The Star Beast – Bad Wolf & BBC Studios
  • Harley Quinn – DC Studios & Warner Bros Animation
  • Nimona – Netflix & Annapurna Pictures
  • Scott Pilgrim Takes Off – Netflix
  • The Last of Us: Long, Long Time – HBO in association with Sony
  • Pictures Television Studios, PlayStation Productions, Word Games,
  • The Mighty Mint, and Naughty Dog
  • The Legend of Vox Machina – Season 2 – Amazon Studios, Critical Role & Titmouse

Last year’s awards saw Cult of the Lamb take home the Game of the Year Award, with games including Stray and Wylde Flowers also honored. The Gayming Awards 2024 will stream on IGN as part of our celebration of the Summer of Gaming, which also includes IGN Live and more.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Ex-Forza Horizon devs and Skins co-creator want you to ‘fall in love with’ the characters in their story-led open-world driving game

It’s been a little while since we last heard about the untitled open-world driving game from Maverick Games, the studio opened a couple of years back by ex-Playground Games veterans including former Forza Horizon 5 creative director Mike Brown. We still don’t know what the team’s new game is called or when it might hit the road, but we have been given a few more snippets of what to expect and news on who’ll be helping pump up its tires and fill it with fuel as publisher.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Will Get FSR3 Support at Some Point

Cyberpunk 2077 will get the long promised FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR3) support at some point, developer CD Projekt Red has confirmed.

Speaking to IGN, the developer confirmed FSR3 — the latest iteration of AMD’s supersampling technology which increases the frame rate of a game — would still be released despite announcing it no longer had a dedicated Cyberpunk 2077 team.

“We are still working on the FSR3 support for Cyberpunk 2077, but I do not have an update on its availability just yet,” a CD Projekt Red spokesperson told IGN.

“We are still working on the FSR3 support for Cyberpunk 2077.

Fans were left questioning whether the promised update would ever arrive after the developer told investors its Cyberpunk 2077 team had been migrated elsewhere following the release of what was assumed to be the final update in version 2.12.

“AMD’s FSR3 was supposed to be coming to Cyberpunk 2077, but it seems like that was cancelled given that no developers are working on Cyberpunk 2077,” one Reddit user commented in a post discussing the development shift.

Some internet sleuths spotted a change to the game’s backend on PC platform Steam, however, which indicates that another update might be on the way. “Not sure if they decided to scrap the FSR3 update or not but I feel like there will be one (small) final patch, considering the internal QA branch was updated six hours ago for the first time since the last update released,” wrote Apoqsi on X/Twitter.

This certainly seems to be the case, even if the update only arrives for the PC version of Cyberpunk 2077. FSR3 was similarly added to the likes of Immortals of Aveum and Starfield, letting PC players get the most of their high-end rigs.

CD Projekt Red wound down the development of Cyberpunk 2077 after the release of its first and only expansion, Phantom Liberty, in September 2023. It came after the game-changing Update 2.0, which completely revamped Cyberpunk 2077 with features such as a new perk system and improved AI, and was followed by another big update in 2.1 but only minor changes afterwards.

Patch 2.11 addressed myriad bugs and balance issues in the open-world role-playing game, while 2.12 applied what was thought to be a final layer of polish. CD Projekt Red is now looking firmly forward towards Cyberpunk 2077’s sequel, codenamed Orion, and its myriad incoming Witcher games, though not without releasing this FSR 3 update eventually.

In our 9/10 review, IGN said: “Cyberpunk 2077 throws you into a beautiful, dense cityscape and offers a staggering amount of flexibility in how you choose to take it from there.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Final Fantasy Tactics-like Trash Of The Titans dares you to be the garbage guzzling disaster mammal you always knew you were

Many moons ago, premiere wordsman Nate Crowley reviewed shark ‘em up Maneater, decrying its incurious perpetuation of anti-shark propaganda, and calling it “an ecstatically violent simulation of being a fool’s idea of a shark.” My own frothing penchant for the plan-schemes of Warhammer’s Skaven ratboys has been documented in these pages to the point of rabidity, but I do feel broadly similarly about media that sullies rats – clean, smart and good folk that they are. Lively tactics Trash Of The Titans does not aim to emancipate its villainous vermin. But, like Warhammer, it gets a pass for its evident affection towards its antagonistic dumpster diving scuttlers. Also, it’s just plain fun.

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Sony Pulls Controversial Interview With Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann After Finding ‘Several Significant Errors and Inaccuracies’

Sony has deleted a controversial interview with Naughty Dog chief Neil Druckmann after The Last of Us director called it out in a social media post.

The interview included quotes attributed to Druckmann that discussed views on everything from AI to Naughty Dog’s next game, which was said could “redefine mainstream perceptions of gaming”.

Druckmann then tweeted to say some of what made it into his interview with Sony was “not quite” what he said. “In editing my rambling answers in my recent interview with Sony, some of my words, context, and intent were unfortunately lost,” Druckmann added, before posting the “full long rambling answer for the final question about our future game”.

While Druckmann said this new project is “maybe the most excited” he’s been for one yet and “something really fresh for us”, he didn’t quite say, “it could redefine mainstream perceptions of gaming.” What he did additionally say was that he is “very excited to see what the reaction for this thing will be, and i’ve already said too much about it.”

Druckmann’s tweet surprised many given Sony owns Naughty Dog, and we don’t often see developers call out their own corporate overlords. But given just how misrepresented Druckmann was in this case, it was perhaps an appropriate move. Now, following that exchange, Sony has issued a statement of its own, addressing the controversy while removing the original interview.

“We apologize to Neil for misrepresenting his words and for any negative impact this interview might have caused him and his team.

“In re-reviewing our recent interview with Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann, we have found several significant errors and inaccuracies that don’t represent his perspective and values (including topics such as animation, writing, technology, AI, and future projects),” Sony said.

“We apologize to Neil for misrepresenting his words and for any negative impact this interview might have caused him and his team. In coordination with Naughty Dog and SIE, we have removed the interview.”

Naughty Dog confirmed it was working on a new project in March 2023, and this will be the first new game from the studio since 2020’s The Last of Us: Part 2. Naughty Dog also confirmed in 2023 that it had cancelled its The Last of Us multiplayer game and would focus on single-player games going forward.

Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images.

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.

No Man’s Sky’s ‘Adrift’ Update Lets You Explore An Abandoned Universe

No other lifeforms, no trading, no help.

Hello Games is preparing to launch the third large No Man’s Sky update of the year, ‘Adrift’. While previous patches have all been about adding more, this one strips things back.

In ‘Adrift,’ the universe has been abandoned. There are no other lifeforms — say goodbye to shopping, trading and shortcuts — and only echoes of a long-gone civilisation remain. Oh, and we should also mention that Sandworm numbers have increased, so be careful when taking a stroll across desert planets.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

An Abandoned Galaxy Awaits in Adrift, The Latest No Man’s Sky Expedition

Summary

  • No Man’s Sky Adrift expedition available to download this week, free to existing players.
  • Travellers will have to adapt their survival strategies in this abandoned galaxy bereft of the usual support systems like space stations, trading posts and alien traders.
  • The unique Iron Vulture starship headlines a vast array of unique and exclusive rewards for those who successfully navigate this, No Man’s Sky’s 13th expedition.

Xbox and Game Pass Travellers in No Man’s Sky have already feasted well in 2024 with the release of the Orbital update, which invited all Xbox players to try the game for free, and Omega, which introduced the ability to customize starships and overhauled space stations for the first time since launch. As we close in on our 8th anniversary in the summer, we are pleased to launch our 13th community expedition, Adrift. It’ll be available for Xbox players to jump in later this week.

No Man’s Sky’s expeditions are a chance for the entire community to come together in a specific place in the universe, which is consequently always alive with Travellers completing the expedition’s unique set of limited-time challenges. 

But uniquely, in the Adrift expedition, the galaxy has been abandoned. There is no life to be seen anywhere – no aliens, no space stations, none of the usual network of shops and buildings.

Although everyone awakes on the same planet (the desolate, worm-infested Lapezuk), you will not be together in the usual sense. Communication is consumed by static and the boundaries between each of your individual realities have thickened. 

Even the usually-bustling Space Anomaly is eerily silent and devoid of the usual support from merchants and traders. In this forsaken universe you will have to use all your wits and adapt your approach simply to survive. Self-reliance is more critical than ever. 

The Adrift expedition is a whole new way to experience No Man’s Sky and a chance to meditate on the darkness of deep space. When the world around us is a constant stream of noise and hubbub, it offers up a silent haven. Will you find it a soothing respite, or an eerie and disturbing void?

No matter how you choose to embrace the Adrift expedition personally, there are, as ever, exclusive and collectable rewards for the willing adventurers including the gnawing scuttler companion, a supply of starship stealth paint, a ghostly frigate, and the unique Iron Vulture starship.

Adrift begins later this week, and will run for approximately seven weeks. We have lots more planned throughout the summer so Xbox players should keep their eyes peeled for further updates.

The post An Abandoned Galaxy Awaits in Adrift, The Latest No Man’s Sky Expedition appeared first on Xbox Wire.