David Smith is the former games and technology editor at The AU Review. He has previously written for PC World Australia. You can find him on Twitter at @RhunWords.
Looking for where you can find every E3 2021 livestream in Australian times? Look no further, friend. Below, we’ve laid out all the biggest livestreams in one handy list, with individual Aus timezones and links so you can find them on the night. So, when does E3 start exactly? Great question. Hard to answer….
Read More
The Battlefield 2042 reveal is here at last. The game becomes the latest instalment in the long-running series of military shooters by Swedish developer DICE. The game, set in the near future, depicts a new cold war between the US and Russia. From details made available prior to the Battlefield 2042 reveal, the game boasts…
Read More
Xbox and Bethesda have partnered with Aussie controller kit bashers We Are Robots on a demonic new Xbox Series X|S controller to celebrate The Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood. The entire Xbox controller resembles Mehrunes Dagon. In the Elder Scrolls lore, Dagon is the Daedric prince of destruction. Oblivion’s own CEO of being a naughty boy,…
Read More
Do you like Elder Scrolls Online, Oblivion, hot sauce and healthy competition? Do ever wish that your three extremely disparate niche interests would overlap? Good news: they have, and you can check out the full story right here. Thanks to Bethesda ANZ, The Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood and Melbourne Hot Sauce, we’ve got five bottles…
Read More
To promote the launch of The Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood, Bethesda ANZ has partnered with Melbourne Hot Sauce to create an ultra-spicy hot sauce. The sauce, called the “Hot Sauce of Oblivion,” weighs in at around 600,000 scovilles, the unit used to measure the heat contained in spicy food. As off-the-shelf hot sauces go, that’s pretty…
Read More
F1 2021 is the first game in the long-running Formula 1 racing series following EA’s acquisition of developer Codemasters. While the vast majority of the game retains the same look and feel of F1 games past, F1 2021 makes a few important strides toward accessibility that are in line with the modern EA Sports ethos….
Read More
The latest PlayStation State of Play broadcast was an extended Horizon Forbidden West gameplay trailer. And what a trailer it was. Sony has a long history of dropping spectacular gameplay trailers at E3 time and this was no exception. The new Horizon Forbidden West trailer sees series heroine Aloy battling back a mysterious rebel army. She…
Read More
Star Wars Squadrons, Virtua Fighter 5 and Operation: Tango are your free PlayStation Plus titles for June 2021. There are a few particulars involved here so let’s walk you through them. Operation: Tango Operation: Tango is a co-op, online spy game where two players work together to complete dangerous missions in a high-tech world. The…
Read More
A new PlayStation State of Play broadcast focused on Horizon Forbidden West will air this week, and we know when you can see it in Australia. Horizon Forbidden West is one of the most hotly anticipated next-gen exclusives in Sony’s considerable roster. We know that the game will launch on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4, but…
Read More
Like the bipedal marsupials that are its heart-and-soul, Biomutant is a strange evolutionary confection. It’s a game that borrows liberally from the action RPG genre, and wears its inspirations as a badge of honour. The ambition of the thing is striking, but it ultimately gets away from the 20 person team at first-time Swedish developer…
Read More
With the just-released Returnal proving popular among players and critics, Arkane Studios is preparing Deathloop, a timeloop shooter of its own. The era of the AAA rougelike, it seems, is upon us. Groundhog day Deathloop is a first-person immersive-sim shooter heavily inspired by the blaxploitation cinema of the 1970’s. In the game, hero Cole Vahn…
Read More
When most Resident Evil fans think of the series and a village setting, they likely think of the great Resident Evil 4. This comparison is something Resident Evil Village, the eighth mainline entry in the venerable survival horror series, freely trades upon. The old ways Set several years after the events of Resident Evil VII:…
Read More
PlayStation has announced a sneaker collaboration with Nike and NBA superstar Paul George. The fruit of this blessed union, the PG-5 PlayStation 5 colorway, is coming to retailers on May 14. The kicks, which were announced via a post on the PlayStation Blog, embrace not only PG’s signature style but the look of the PlayStation…
Read More
Xbox has announced the list of games coming to Xbox Game Pass in May. From popular picks like FIFA 21, Twitch favourites like Outlast 2, and cult classics like Psychonauts, there’s a little something for everyone. We’ve noted, where appropriate, which games are for Xbox Series X|S only, PC only, or coming to both platforms….
Read More
New Pokemon Snap is the 22-year sequel to a cult-favourite Nintendo 64 game. The original, released in 1999, was an inventive, if ultimately shallow, brand exercise. Players hopped into an on-rails rover and took photos of Pokemon in the wild. You had no control over the rover itself, it would wind through each level at…
Read More
Xbox has announced the addition of 70 new games to the growing Xbox Series X|S FPS Boost backwards compatibility roster. FPS Boost is a function of the Xbox Series X|S hardware that can double frame rates on many older games, The program partners with the original developers on each title to ensure stability and a…
Read More
PlayStation has made a minority investment into Discord. It becomes the first of the Big Three console makers to begin a relationship with the popular online comms app. PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan announced the partnership overnight with a short post on the official SIE blog. Beyond the disclosure that PlayStation had acquired a minority stake…
Read More
The latest PlayStation State of Play broadcast spotlit Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, the PS5’s first truly huge exclusive. The 16-minute gameplay trailer gives a clear idea of what Insomniac’s vision for the game is, who Rivet the mysterious female Lombax is, and how the game uses the PS5’s hardware to best effect. Spectacle seems…
Read More
It Takes Two is a charming, cooperative adventure game by Hazelight Studios. The game centers on Cody and Mae, an estranged couple beaten down by the complexities of their unfulfilling lives. Their dreams, individually and together, are unrealised. The passion of their early relationship is long extinguished. The slim thread that has kept their relationship…
Read More
The first thing you notice about the0 Diablo 2 Resurrected technical alpha is the way it looks just the way you remember it. The (by today’s standards) low-res models and environments have given way to a crisp, clean visual overhaul. It’s exactly the kind of remaster a community like the one that clings to Diablo…
Read More
The Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood is trying to solve to an impossible problem the game has grappled with for most of its life. Unable to fully emulate the trappings of its beloved parent series, and willing to fully embrace being its own thing, TESO has instead tried to do both. For the longest time, it has…
Read More
If you’re looking for all the games coming to Xbox Game Pass in April, you’ve come to the right place. Xbox’s on-demand gaming service goes from strength to strength, with several notable additions. This month includes the arrival of Rockstar’s legendary GTA 5 (console only) and the addition of NHL 21 to the EA Play…
Read More
Tickets to PAX Aus 2021 are back on sale. The first round of badges, on sale only a few weeks ago, created a great deal of drama as demand surged, servers failed, and excited punters missed out. Today, the second round of tickets is live. Ticket quantities remain limited, and demand will be high. You…
Read More
The Diablo 2 Resurrected technical alpha kicks off this weekend and everyone wants codes. We, however, might be able to help you out. Stay a while and listen. We have five Battle.net codes for the Diablo 2 Resurrected technical alpha up for grabs. All you have to do is fill out the form below and…
Read More
Keep an eye on your Battle.net account: the first Diablo 2 Resurrected technical alpha begins this weekend. It will be the first opportunity for fans to go hands-on with one of the most hotly anticipated remasters in video game history. The technical alpha will be single-player only, and will be exclusive to PC. It kicks…
Read More
Disco Elysium: The Final Cut has been refused classification by the Australian Classification Board. The ban comes a little over a week ahead of the game’s March 30th release date. Refusal to give the game a classification — a rating from G to R18+ — effectively bans the game from sale here. The ruling was handed…
Read More
The first-ever Square Enix Presents broadcast arrived early this morning, showing off a raft of new games from one of the world’s most beloved third-party publishers. Before you get too excited: there were no Final Fantasy announcements to be found. Indeed, the show ran surprisingly low on the JRPG’s that are Square’s bread and butter. However,…
Read More
Sony announced this morning that it has acquired the Evolution Championship Series, the biggest fighting game tournament in the world. Fans and contestants simply call it EVO. Sony Interactive Entertainment and RTS, an esports startup under Endeavour, have acquired the “assets and properties” of the EVO tournament. From today, all future EVO events become PlayStation…
Read More
After several days of social media teases, PAX Aus confirmed yesterday that it will return to Melbourne as a live, in-person event. The convention will return to its long-time home at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre and will run from October 8-10. As of this writing, tickets are limited. This is due to the…
Read More
Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of Zenimax Media, the parent company of Bethesda and its attendant studios, has formally concluded. As of today, Bethesda, and every studio under its umbrella, is officially a first-party developer at Xbox. Xbox says it will drop further Bethesda games onto Xbox Game Pass this week to celebrate the acquisition. In…
Read More