I don’t remember much about my grandfathers anymore, only that they were once there and they loved me, and now they are gone. So if I were a small child with quarreling parents and I stumbled across a hidden abandoned lab housing a horrifying shapeshifting psychic lifeform, perhaps I would also try to want this maybe-a-demon to be my grandpa. That’s the premise of Growing My Grandpa!, a delightful little indie horror game about feeding, teaching, and caring for “a grandpa-like entity”. It came out in 2022 and I kept forgetting to post about it, but it’s still great so I’m telling you now, okay.
Nintendo’s marketing campaign for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is well underway at this point (as you would hope, given its 23rd May release date) and that means we are getting to see a lot about what the remaster has in store.
A new short trailer shared on Twitter today contains some fresh footage of the game, giving us our first look at select locations, map reveal animations and, perhaps most importantly, the cloudy chapter boss Smorg — who’s looking just as intimidating as we would have hoped.
Welcome to Next Week on Xbox! This weekly feature highlights all the games arriving soon on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Windows, and Game Pass. Discover more about these forthcoming titles below and explore their profiles for additional information (note that release dates are subject to change). Let’s dive in!
Available on day one with Game Pass! Gather your allies for Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, the grand JRPG adventure. Assemble your 6-party team from a cast of over a hundred heroes and shape your destiny in this lush, hand-crafted 2.5D world brimming with war, intrigue, and magic. Manage your town of vibrant characters, play delightful mini-games, and prepare for an unforgettable narrative of boundless charm.
Gather your heroes and journey beyond the dungeons of Castle Hammerwatch to explore a pixelated world like never before. Adventure alone or gather your party to aid King Roland’s resistance, all while helping villagers along the way. Battle beasts, finish off hordes of the undead, and face the forces of evil in this epic ode to classic ARPGs.
As a newly appointed captain of the Pegasus corporation, you must guide a roster of colorful pilots, eclectic advisors, and state-of-the-art landers through a taxing series of missions. Deliver cargo, retrieve resources, and rescue stranded pilots as you navigate a mysterious universe of moons and planets.
Adventure into the beautiful and treacherous lands of Kenzera as Zau, a young shaman who bargains with the God of death to bring his Baba back from darkness. With your cosmic powers and untried courage, advance into unknown mythological lands in this metroidvania title. Will you embrace the dance of the shaman?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants
Re-experience the 2017 arcade classic with three additional stages and six additional boss battles! Take control of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, or Raphael in this classic beat ‘em up inspired by the cult favorite Turtles in Time. Play with your friends through local co-op and dominate the Foot Clan to foil the Shredder’s maniacal plan.
Play a little bird on its journey to find a home after losing its dear friend. You will discover unknown, giant, and beautiful environments and you will be able to enjoy the feeling of flying while exploring a whole world filled with beauty and little secrets.
Expand your farm business, produce cheap and sell your products at high prices. Control the land cultivation process, select the best employees, buy the most appropriate farm equipment, raise livestock, and process the harvested crops. Manage your own farm in the game Farm Tycoon!
Come and visit the famous Big Apple for a brand new cat-spotting adventure! Relax and look around the city, and with enough patience, find over 700 feline friends! The city only gets more vibrant the more cats you find!
An adventure roguelike with permadeath where you must overcome huge mountains. Thanks to the procedurally created environment, no two climbs are the same. Keep your climber alive by always making sure that your vital values don’t get into the critical range. This is made more difficult by a dynamic weather system, day/night changes, and a multitude of randomly generated events.
A distinctive game that recreates Moscow Metro and authentic train controls. 24 stations, various tunnels, and items within them. The game uses modern technologies to show the full experience of Russian capital’s subway — stations on this line will reflect the changes of their era.
Take the role of a nimble rodent separated from his family and lost in a frightening forest filled with fearsome foes! Ratyrinth is a side-scrolling precision platformer with brainteasing level design and retro presentation. Run, jump, cling to walls, swim and climb through mazelike stages presented in minimalistic 2-tone style with fluid pixel art animation.
Available on day one with Game Pass! A soulslike adventure set in a crumbling underwater world. As Kril the hermit crab, you’ll need to wear the trash around you as shells to withstand attacks from enemies many times your size. Embark on an epic treasure hunt to buy back your repossessed shell and discover the dark secrets behind the polluted ocean.
Developed by Masaya in 1997, this robot action game gained popularity at the time thanks to its customizable features, incredible robots, engaging storyline, and its position as the next installment in the Leynos series. The Saturn Tribute version includes new features like Rewind, Quick Save & Load, and Tips functions for smoother gameplay. You can also get power-ups with your Assault Suit.
Available on day one with Game Pass! Manor Lords is a medieval strategy game featuring in-depth city building, large-scale tactical battles and complex economic and social simulations. Rule your lands as a medieval lord — the seasons pass, the weather changes and cities rise and fall.
In this action RPG, players will find a nostalgic and heartwarming world created by Akira Toriyama where you’ll meet the Fiend Prince Beelzebub, his chaperone Thief, and the fearless Sheriff Rao, and follow the team on an extraordinary adventure in search of the Legendary Spring hidden in the desert. The end is only the beginning, as beyond this arid ground lies a new realm to explore.
Travel the world as an up-and-coming pro, go toe-to-toe with the biggest names in tennis, and take Centre Court at Wimbledon, Roland-Garros, the US Open, and the Australian Open as you strive to become a Grand Slam Champion in the MyCareer mode. Or choose from over 24 playable pros and unleash their explosive power and clever finesse against other players locally or online.
Aliens have attacked the planet, and they’re turning innocent people into mindless zombies. It won’t be long before the invaders have destroyed the planet unless somebody with guns stands in their way. That’s where you come in! Lead a cadre of soldiers who are ready to take down every last enemy in their path.
Now that’s what I call a big hunt! It took Helldivers 2 players less than 24 hours to complete its latest Major Order: to kill two billion Terminids.
On April 18, developer Arrowhead triggered the next step in Helldivers 2’s ongoing Galactic War after the PC and PlayStation 5 co-op shooter’s community successfully completed a Major Order to slow a significant Automaton invasion. Game Master Joel turned players’ attention to the Terminid front with the biggest kill order since the game’s explosive launch in February.
But today, April 19, the Major Order is complete and medals have been dished out to players as a reward. Cementing the achievement is an in-universe message from the official Helldivers 2 Twitter account:
2 billion bugs dead in less than a day.
Helldivers, Terminid planets run red with liberty thanks to this inspiring display of pre-emptive self-defence.
Your designated [loved one/relative/pet/neighbour] on Super Earth has been informed of your bravery.https://t.co/Lu4m5wHFZo
In the game itself, messages celebrating Super Earth’s victory make clear this bug clearout came as something of a surprise.
”In further proof of their elite training and irreplaceable value, the Helldivers reached the target set for Terminid biomass production far faster than anticipated,” the message reads. “While additional destruction of Liberty’s enemies is always beneficial, E-710 refinement pipelines are full at the present time. However, there will be ample opportunities for additional biomass production in the future.
“Super Earth High Command commends the Helldivers for their boundless enthusiasm to destroy the enemies of Freedom.”
The upshot of this is Helldivers 2 players head into the weekend without a Major Order to work towards, which means it’s weapons free time for the community. That’s no bad thing, really. Kill Automatons or Terminids or whatever you fancy!
As Arrowhead maintains the Galactic War and adds new content to the game, it’s also battling bugs of a different kind. This push and pull was a topic discussed by CEO Johan Pilestedt recently as part of a fascinating insight into Arrowhead’s live service philosophy. If you’re looking for more on Helldivers 2, check out IGN’s feature on the Let Me Solo Her of Helldivers 2, a player who has answered over 100 SOS Beacons as part of a mission to help others.
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’s starting to feel like ConcernedApe (aka Eric Barone) may in fact be a modern day Sisiphus, destined to work on Stardew Valley forever. Following on from the mega update of 1.6 a month ago, and 1.6.3 soon after that, the hardy perennial farming game has a new 1.6.4 mini update. The key addition this time is more new layouts that will appear after you reach the bottom of the mines, and more layouts for the volcano mines too. If you’ve not played Stardew Valley you might wonder why there are deep mines and volcanos, and to you I say “Pah! You should play Stardew Valley.”
1.6.4 also has a lot of bug fixes (including fixing disappearing pets, new pets being a key feature of 1.6) and some balance changes, as well as a host of fixes for modders and modded players. ConcernedApe said early on that 1.6 would be an update for modders, so it’s nice to see that being supported. You can read the full patch notes here.
We’ve suffered some body blows recently, but perhaps none will ever be as winding as the news I now deliver to you: Alice0 is leaving RPS. She recently celebrated 10 years here, so that should tell you something about how much of an influence she’s had over the tone of the site over it’s lifespan. Truly, the site won’t be the same without her – so let’s take the opportunity to celebrate here work here.
Capcom has detailed an upcoming patch for Dragon’s Dogmas 2 that makes a number of changes and fixes, but there’s no mention of the performance mode so many players are waiting for.
Elsewhere, there are adjustments to pawns’ behavior and dialogue, including a tweak to make it less likely for pawns to fall of cliffs. There’s also a note about reducing the frequency of some pawn dialogue, which should make them a little less annoying to be around.
To all Dragon’s Dogma 2 players
We have an update planned this month with the following adjustments and fixes. We will release them on each platform as soon as they are ready.
In our 8/10 review, IGN said: “More of a redo than a sequel, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a strange and wonderful action-RPG that bolsters the original’s strengths without addressing its weaknesses.”
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.
Timed perfectly off the back of the Fallout TV show’s success, Fallout 76 players can start testing out Skyline Valley, a new woodland area in the game’s upcoming major update. There’s a new public event to try, as well as combat readjustments that’ll be drip fed over the course of the test period. Anyone who owns the game on Steam can give these things a go, which is a bonus, too. I think I own it? I genuinely can’t remember. Anyway, yes, maybe I’ll hop in and see how things have changed since, errr, launch.
It was right at the end of 2023 that Universal Studios announced the opening date for its Donkey Kong Country park at Super Nintendo World Japan. It was supposed to be this Spring (any day now, we would assume), but instead, the studio has announced that the opening has been pushed back to “late 2024”.
The delay was announced by Universal Studios Japan on Twitter, with the notice giving no indication of why the opening had been delayed, but confirming that more details would be coming in the future when they are ready.
Valve has updated its near 17-year-old competitive first-person shooter Team Fortress 2 to finally add 64-bit support.
The update, which some fans are calling the most significant from Valve itself in years, should result in a performance improvement for most users. Reports indicate Team Fortress 2’s frames-per-second count is increased by around 20%, resulting in a much smoother experience.
While this Team Fortress 2 update is certainly welcome, it has done little to calm the constant stream of requests from the player base for Valve to tackle the game’s most troublesome issue: bots. Team Fortress 2 has had a bot problem for years, and despite a community-wide drive to raise awareness for the issue, there is little sign of improvement.
Team Fortress 2 April 18 update patch notes in full:
The major changes include:
Added 64-bit support for Windows/Linux client and server
Should include performance improvements for most users
Bugs can be reported here: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games/issues
Fixed an exploit related to uploading invalid custom decals that would crash other clients
Team Fortress 2 launched in 2007 on PC and console, and it has endured as one of Steam’s most popular games ever since. At the time of this article’s publication, Team Fortress 2 was the 16th most-played game on Valve’s platform, with 50,092 concurrent players. That’s more than the likes of Monster Hunter: World, Call of Duty, and Football Manager.
Despite Team Fortress 2’s ongoing popularity, players have often accused Valve of neglecting the game in favor of other projects, such as Dota 2. In January, Team Fortress: Source 2 and Portal 64 fan projects were shut down by Valve takedowns. In development since at least 2021, Team Fortress: Source 2 was envisioned as a new version of the classic game on Garry’s Mod spiritual successor s&box. With Team Fortress 2 now 17 years old and largely overrun by bots, Team Fortress: Source 2 was intended to inject fresh life into Valve’s beloved shooter. The team at one point had more than 20 volunteers helping to port assets from the base game and rebuild Team Fortress 2 mechanics.
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.
: ZAU Standard Edition
