Video Games

Overwatch wins Game of the Year at DICE Awards

Blizzard’s all-conquering team-based shooter Overwatch has taken home the Game of the Year gong during the DICE Awards 2017. The shooter tied with Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, winning a total of four awards over the course of the night. HIt the jump to check out the full list of award recipients.

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Video Games Review: Nioh carves out its own identity with interesting mechanics (PlayStation 4, 2017)

It’s almost impossible for Nioh to dodge comparisons to the Dark Souls franchise. From Software’s monstrously brutal action RPGs have become touchstones for hardcore gaming in the 21st century but, as Team Ninja prove with their latest title, there’s more than enough room for improvement. Instead of coming across as a desperate imitation, Nioh draws it’s strength…

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Village Roadshow to begin targeting individual Australian pirates

During their b-annual investor call yesterday, Australian film distributor Village Roadshow unveiled a new five-point plan for taking on Australian film piracy, including the pursuit of legal action against individual offenders — something they’ve been threatening for years but never actually followed through on.

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Video Games Review: Halo Wars 2 (Xbox One, 2017)

Real-time strategy has all but disappeared from the gaming lexicon in the last twenty years. From its heyday in the 1990’s with Command & Conquer, StarCraft and Total Annihilation, the genre seemingly peaked with Blizzard’s Warcraft 3 in 2002. From there, it entered an evolutionary phase, emerging in the early 2010’s as the all-powerful genre known as the MOBA. Halo Wars…

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EB Expo 2017 heads home to the Gold Coast

After beginning life on the Gold Coast in Queensland’s Great South East, the EB Expo gaming convention has made its home in Sydney for the last few years. It was an important growth period for the con, and with its draw now larger than ever, one of Australia’s two largest consumer show-and-tells is heading home.

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PAX Aus 2017 returns to Melbourne October 27-29

The PAX Australia gaming convention will return to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre in 2017 running over the weekend of October 27-29. 

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Video Games Review: Sniper Elite 4 is meatier and more intense than ever before

Sure, punching Nazis may be fun, but have you have ever eviscerated one with a single bullet, flung from the dangerous end of a powerful sniper rifle by a shot taken from almost 300m away? How about shooting one in the skull with a bullet that travels so fast that it rips past a young…

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South Park: The Fractured But Whole suffers another delay

Forthcoming Ubisoft RPG South Park: The Fractured But Whole has suffered a second release delay. Ubisoft have announced overnight that the game, based on the long-running Comedy Central animated series, will now launch during the company’s upcoming financial year.

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What’s it like to attend RTX Sydney if you don’t really know that much about Rooster Teeth?

Geek and gaming conventions are pretty magical places. RTX doesn’t have same energy as that of a PAX. It’s a different vibe, cruder, in line with the kind of scatological humour Rooster Teeth excels at. These attendees are rowdier, less patient and a great deal snarkier than your average PAX-goer. This is not to suggest…

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Overwatch‘s server browser is imminent, but may not work the way you expect

Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan has released a new Developer Update video this morning, introducing a feature the game’s PC fanbase has been howling for since launch — a server browser. The thing is, it may not work in quite the way fans were expecting.

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About time: Next PS4 update will finally allow external hard drive support

It turns out, if you harp on a company long enough, they will eventually bow to your demands. Sony have revealed a raft of changes and additions bound for the PlayStation 4 in the new v4.50 system software update, chief among them the long-awaited ability to plug in a USB hard drive and have it work.

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We spent some time with the For Honor closed beta last weekend, and here’s how it went

For Honor is a title we’ve been keeping in the back of our minds for a little while now. Having appeared and two consecutive E3’s, and always introduced the most passionate team at Ubisoft’s already exuberant press events, For Honor looked like the sort of game that could take the devil-may-care smack-em-up multiplayer shenanigans of games like Chivalry and War…

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Here are your free PlayStation Plus games for February 2017

Sony have announced the next wave of titles that will be made free for subscribers to its PlayStation Plus and the pickin’s are actually pretty good this month.

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The ABC have cancelled Good Game

Australia’s longest-running and most-watched television program about video games has been cancelled. The news comes as the show was gearing up for a new season this year on the ABC, and was announced via the show’s social media accounts this morning.

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The Elder Scrolls Online is heading to Morrowind

Erstwhile adventurers in Bethesda’s massively multiplayer online role playing game The Elder Scrolls Online will soon find themselves headed to the island of Vvardenfell, north of one of the series’ most iconic locales, Morrowind.

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Video Games Review: Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (Xbox One, 2017) takes the series back to basics and in an entirely new direction

I don’t do well in carnival haunted houses. If you want to test my loyalty and devotion as a friend or loved one, do not accompany me into a house of horrors. You could be the most important person in the world to me and I will throw you under the spooky-ass bus if it…

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‘Father of Pac-Man‘ and Namco founder Masaya Nakamura dies at 91

Masaya Nakamura, the man who founded video game publisher Namco and was in charge of the company during the video game boom of the 1980’s, has died at 91.

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Film Review: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (USA, 2017) brings the tale of the world’s unluckiest woman to a close

If there’s one thing you can rely on in a Resident Evil movie, it certainly isn’t subtlety.  Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is what it says on the tin — the last film in Paul W. S. Anderson‘s increasingly bonkers series of action horror films adapted from the video game franchise of the same name. For fans keen…

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Prey gets new trailer, worldwide release date

Bethesda and Arkane Studios’ upcoming reboot of supernatural shooter Prey has just dropped a brand new gameplay trailer, and unveiled its worldwide release date. Mid year is starting to look very, very interesting.

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Tekken 7 finally arrives on consoles in June

Tekken 7 will finally make the jump from arcades to home consoles this June after a 15 month wait, promising to bring the story of Kazuya and Heihachi’s long-running familial war to an end.

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Video Games Review: Yakuza 0 (PS4, 2017) is an engrossing, flawed, clever and defiantly Japanese experience

Yakuza 0 is the latest addition to SEGA’s long-running series of adventure games set in the Japanese criminal underworld. A prequel to the 2005 original, Yakuza 0 is all about how series mainstay Kazuma Kiryu began his bloody career in the mob.

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Next Overwatch event will celebrate Chinese New Year

Overwatch will see its next major event kick off in just a few days time, with the central theme being a celebration of the Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year.

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Ubisoft acquires Guitar Hero Live developer FreeStyle Games

Ubisoft have acquired FreeStyle Games, the developer behind Activision music titles DJ Hero and 2015’s Guitar Hero Live. Ubi announced the acquisition overnight in a post on their official blog, along with the developer’s new name, Ubisoft Leamington.

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We just spent three hours with the Nintendo Switch. Here’s how it went.

Shortly before Christmas, we at The Iris offices received a very exciting email. Nintendo Australia was inviting us (among a slew of other local games media) to Melbourne to spend some hands-on time with their newest console, the Nintendo Switch. 24 hours after Nintendo gave the world a substantial look at what the new machine…

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Nintendo Switch: Here are all the available tech specs for Nintendo’s newest console

Technical specs for any games console are always one of the first things hardcore players look to when thinking about whether or not to throw down that all-important pre-order. No-one really knew what to expect from the Nintendo Switch in terms of power or useability. The good news is that Nintendo have finally released the…

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Nintendo Switch: What’s it like to use the Joy-Con?

We spoke a little in our hands-on event wrap-up piece about how it felt to actually wield the Joy-Con controllers in their many different configurations, but in this piece we intend to go more in-depth. What works, what doesn’t and where we think there’s room for even more exciting ways to use the Joy-Con.

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Nintendo Switch: What we’ve actually played so far

During yesterday’s Nintendo Switch hands-on event in Melbourne, we got a chance to spend time with a whole host of different games for the upcoming system. We know you’re curious about how the new system works so let’s break down what we played and how they felt.

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Nintendo Switch: How much is Nintendo’s newest console actually going to cost you?

Nintendo have finally announced Australian pricing on their upcoming Switch console, and we’ve got the full list to help you adjust your gaming budget for March 3.

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Nintendo Switch Broadcast: Nintendo sets Switch pricing and launch date

Nintendo have finally announced pricing and a launch date for their upcoming Switch console during this afternoon’s live broadcast.

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