Xbox Series X

Forza Horizon 5, the Xbox Series X|S’s graphical showpiece, has arrived. This fifth instalment in the popular open-world racing title takes Horizon Festival to Mexico. This will be the first time the Horizon series has returned to the Americas since the original game. According to developer Playground Games, “(f)un, freedom, and beauty” are the watchwords…

The next game from Arkane Studios is Redfall. It’s a 4-player co-operative multiplayer game in the vein of Left 4 Dead, except instead of zombies you’ll be battling vampires. Because this is an Arkane game, it’s fair to assume that level construction and player agency will be core facets of Redfall‘s design. Arkane is known…

Eidos Montreal is making a single-player action game around Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. The game puts players in control of Peter Quill, Star Lord, as he and the still newly-formed Guardians eke out a living in some of the galaxy’s sketchiest locales. The Guardians roster consists of the same line up from James Gunn’s…

Sea of Theives adding Jack Sparrow might be the one of the most desired, but unexpected, moves Rare’s pirate game has ever made. Developer Rare has partnered with Disney to create a crossover event fans have hoped for since launch. Season 3 will introduce A Pirate’s Life. a series of five story-driven Tall Tales that…

STALKER 2 is a game fans have spent decades waiting for. At times, the wait for gameplay footage has felt much longer. No more. The gameplay trailer debuted during the Xbox Bethesda E3 showcase early this morning. There’s a lot to break down here, from radioactive biomes to the little fiefdoms carved out among the…

After years in development, Bethesda has finally given the first glimpse at Starfield. Bethesda’s first new RPG IP since Fallout 3, Starfield is a science fiction RPG and will be the first to use Bethesda’s updated Creation Engine 2. The crux of the trailer, which does not show gameplay, is that you are an interstellar explorer….

Ubisoft has dropped yet another trailer for Far Cry 6 during its E3 2021 presentation. The most memorable part of any Far Cry game is obviously the villain. When you have an actor as talented as Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad, The Mandalorian) in your cast, you let them chew the scenery. That’s exactly what this case…

Riders Republic, Ubisoft’s frenetic take on open-world competition games like Forza Horizon, is coming this September. A brand new trailer, giving the most detailed look at the game to date, dropped during this morning’s Ubisoft Forward E3 stream. The game revolves around extreme sports. Just a few featured in the trailer — snowboarding, hang gliding…

Two Point Campus, the sequel to 2018’s Two Point Hospital, will arrive in 2022. The game was announced this morning during the Summer Game Fest kickoff live stream. A management sim about building and running a thriving university empire, the game continues in the same vein as TPH and the game that inspired it, Bullfrog’s…

Frontier Developments has announced Jurassic World Evolution 2, a sequel to its 2018 park management hit. The game will launch as a tie-in to Jurassic World Dominion. The trailer depicts two new biomes that will hopefully come to the finished game. The first, and briefest glimpse, is of a windswept desert landscape. The second, much clearer…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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….

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…

On Friday, the Xbox YouTube channel released a special treat for all fans with the official Scarlet Nexus Demo Trailer. If you are not familiar with Scarlet Nexus, it’s a single-player action RPG releasing on June 25th 2021 on PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox One and Series X/S. The game is developed by Bandai Namco Entertainment and…

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:…

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….

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…

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…

From the moment we played the Outriders demo, our impression was of a functional and addictive looter shooter. Strong shooting and interesting powers overshadowed the demo’s repetitive mission structures and unrewarding grind. These are, of course, issues that affect the best in the genre. And, as a complete package, Outriders does indeed reflect the best…

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…

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…

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,…

On the surface, Outriders may seem like your average looter shooter. In many ways, it is. Outriders feels like an iteration of recent looter shooter RPG titles like Destiny 2 or The Division. It’s filled with mechanics and systems we’ve seen many times before. In saying that, there is still plenty to love about Outriders’…

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…

Fortnite adds cool new skins every other day, but the Lazarbeam skin is especially cool. The newest in the Icon Series line features Australian YouTuber Lannan “Lazarbeam” Eacott in quintessential tradie garb. When real-world Fortnite players like fellow Aussies Loserfruit and Lachlan have their likenesses recreated in-game, they opt for a fashionable look. Cool clothes,…

Epic Games has formally acquired Tonic Games Group, the company behind Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. News of the acquisition came via Epic’s official blog, with a promise to players that “your gameplay isn’t changing and Epic will continue to invest in making the game a great experience for players across platforms.” To wit, the current…

Modelled on its popular line of Surface Headphones, Microsoft has unveiled the Xbox Wireless Headset. Given that Microsoft wants to compete with PlayStation’s own branded cans, it’s no surprise that these cans sit in the mid-Premium tier. Indeed, at $149.95 AUD, they may be a bit cheaper than their sleek design might have indicated. Let’s…