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'Tis the season for these sorts of things to start showing up, so it's timely enough that TheGameCollection has launched its Easter Sale today, shortly after Amazon's own easter sale has begun. Featuring a whole batch of discounts across all formats, the Easter Sale range is live now and finishes up on Thursday 5th April. Among the listings, some of the highlights include the brand new Final Fantasy 15 Royal Edition on both PS4 and Xbox for under £20, Destiny 2 for £12, Call of Duty WW2 for £29.95, Gran Turismo Sport for under £20, the limited edition Minecraft Creeper Xbox One controller for £40, Homefront: The Revolution for under £4, Injustice 2 on PS4 for only £15, Metal Gear Survive for £15 and much more. Read more…

Battletech launches on 24th April 2018, publisher Paradox has announced. The turn-based tactical mech combat PC game is developed by Harebrained Schemes, the studio behind the Shadowrun Returns series. Harebrained Schemes raised an impressive $2.8m on Kickstarter from just over 41,000 backers back in November 2015. Two-and-a-half years later, Battletech is nearly ready for launch. Here's the official blurb: Read more…

It's really been far too long since we last saw a neo-Mexican space punk racing game, hasn't it? I've certainly been waiting a fair while for one, which makes the arrival of Yucatan's demo earlier this month such a pleasant surprise; this ticks all the right boxes. The work of developer Joe Bain - with a little help from his friends - Yucatan plays like a tequilla-soaked Trackmania (and there's probably a fair dose of peyote included in that cocktail, too), a psychedelic racer that pits your gloriously proportioned ride against a series of impossibly cruel tracks. Dig down into the detail and there's a lot to like. The drifting feels fantastic, a dedicated button enabling long, lurid slides in which your softly sprung car looks like it's about to dance out of control, but which in the hand feels brilliantly pliable. The tracks, from what's in the demo, have some real teeth, featuring deathly obstacles and layouts that ask for a little reserve with th...

Today, Bungie pushes out a big new update for Destiny 2 designed to make the game feel a lot faster to play. Patch 1.1.4., dubbed the "Go Fast" update, has been long-awaited by Destiny 2 players, many of whom have reckon the game, particularly in competitive multiplayer, has felt too slow and lacked excitement. In the video below, sandbox design lead Josh Hamrick said Bungie looked at everything from the way player characters move to the way supers come back, as well as a balance pass on weapons. Instead of nerfing "hot" guns, Bungie decided to bring everything else up to those "hot" guns, which should make for plenty of high damage carnage. Read more…

Using offensive language on Xbox Live - as if! - Skype or even in shared Word documents may get you into trouble with Microsoft's newly updated Code of Conduct. And if you get into trouble you could face suspensions or bans, have Xbox Live Gold membership time revoked or even lose money associated with the account. If Microsoft investigates you it reserves the right to "review Your Content in order to resolve the issue", too - which sounds a lot like 'dig through your personal data' to me. The Microsoft Service Agreement changes come into effect 1st May 2018, so you'd better get those swear words out of the way now, you silly old s**tbags. Read more…

Rare has ditched plans to implement a penalty upon dying in Sea of Thieves. Last week Rare mentioned the idea in a blog post filled with upcoming features headed to the game - but it drew questions and ire from fans. Rare later said the feature would not penalise players killed by other players - before now saying it had dropped the idea completely. Read more…

For a very limited time (just over a day and a half at the time of writing), PC owners are able to snag a free copy of what I, personally, would deem one of the most overlooked games of the last few years - The Darkness 2 . Head over to Humble today and you can claim a free copy of the 2012 paranormal mafia shooter for absolutely nothing. Your game will be delivered as a Steam key and is compatible with PC or Mac. For those unlucky enough to have not played The Darkness 2 when it launched, the game tells the story of Jackie Estacado, head of a brutal New York crime syndicate who also happens to be host to a ruthless demonic force known only as The Darkness. This means that in addition to battling rival mob bosses and his own personal struggles, he also has to quite literally battle for control of his own body. Read more…

Put down the controller and close your eyes: there is no better game on earth to listen to. What do I hear? The creak of timbers, the flap of a sail, the thud and shudder and boom of the ocean. So many of my very favourite things in Sea of Thieves are sounds. There's the wonderful snug internal clonk of the ship's wheel settling back into its full-ahead position (so subtle you have to really listen for it; at times I think I am imagining the whole thing). There's the strained, buckling groan of your hull reacting to a dropped anchor when it still has sails filled with wind. Best of all there's the neat, arresting, confirmative thwack of a shovel digging into sand and hitting - something! Something good! A treasure chest! Clonk, groan, thwack. This is a game you play with your ears as much as your eyes, and while your eyes get the glorious rolling, thrashing drama of the waters to look at, your ears get so much else besides. Your ears get the detailing that really...

Developer SeithCG has released a massive new update for its delightful mouse-based RPG Ghost of a Tale, aimed at quashing the "vast majority" of its remaining technical issues. Eurogamer liked Ghost of a Tale enough to give it the Recommended stamp of approval when it released earlier this month on PC; however, reviewer Edwin Evans-Thirlwell noted that it was "absolutely riddled with bugs". SeithCG has been more than open in acknowledging the game's launch problems, and has already released a number of updates to address them. The developer says its latest patch, known as 6.5, "takes care of the vast majority of the remaining bugs", admitting that "it's been a very intense period, with a lot of work and very little sleep." Read more…

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has received its latest test server update, introducing new weapon skins and accompanying loot crates, as well as bringing the news that developer Bluehole is "considering" region-locked servers. Region-locked servers are a long-requested feature, with proponents frequently citing anti-cheat company BattleEye's claims that "the vast majority" of PUBG cheaters are from China. According to Bluehole, however, it's decision to investigate region-locking isn't related to cheating; rather, it hopes that that the move will "provide a better gameplay experience as it will improve network issues and help with linguistic barriers." Read more…

Deadly Premonition director Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro and Panzer Dragoon's Yukio Futatsugi have launched their second attempt at securing backer funding for The Good Life, an intriguing open-world murder mystery game set in an idyllic English village. The original pitch failed to secure funding , but the team hopes its new campaign, which includes a more detailed design proposal, a new art style and a smaller funding goal, will capture the imagination of Kickstarter backers this time around. The amount of money required to fund the campaign - which is now live - drops from $1.5 million to $650,000. It's also shifted from the investment-oriented service Fig to Kickstarter as its crowdfunding platform of choice. Read more…

Update, 26/3/18: Rare has announced that its Sea of Thieves-inspired hunt for four golden bananas is now officially over, with the winning crew named as 'Herr Crew' from France. More than 10,000 players apparently signed up to take part, vying for the 18-carat, £80,000 prize. Once the deadline to solve the 15 competition questions passed, five teams were invited to attempt an “ultimate test” - SwashBuckleys from Australia, Die Germans from Germany, The boys from Canada, and Fun Brigade from the USA. The teams that failed to secure the four golden bananas will each receive engraved golden “doubloons”, valued at £300. Original story, 11/3/18: Rare is ushering in Sea of Thieves' launch on March 20th with a "digital treasure hunt" to win a bunch of golden bananas valued at £80,000. Read more…

Xbox Game Pass will add Cities: Skylines to its line-up next month. The sandbox city sim is set to become part of the Xbox Games Pass catalogue on 11th April, alongside seven other games - all of which are indies. It's good timing for Cities: Skylines, which recently added mods to its Xbox One edition designed by community members. Read more…

As we slip ever closer to Easter sales that might actually coincide with Easter itself, Amazon's latest offering is a big batch of discounts on 4K TVs - as well as the non-4K kind. The aptly titled Easter TV Deals range is live now and features up to 35 per cent off a bunch of sets of varying sizes and brands, including some of those fancy and extra pricey OLED sets. In addition to the range itself, there will be a selected few TVs seeing big discounts each day as 'TV deals of the day' while the offer is live. To highlight a few, you'll be able to find a 43-inch LG HDR-enabled LED TV for £419, down from its original £641, a 49-inch Toshiba 4K set for £349, a 43-inch Sony Bravia 4K TV with an Amazon Echo Dot thrown in for £538, and a whole lot more. Read more…

Pokémon Go will introduce Mew, its first Mythical Pokémon, via an all-new quests system. Daily quests will see you collecting Field Research by undertaking regular activities within the game - catching Pokémon, winning gym battles and defeating raid bosses. Seven days' worth of daily quests will then unlock a Research Breakthrough, which offers in-game rewards. These in-game rewards include items (Rare Candy, TMs and the like) as well as the chance to catch Pokémon - including Legendary Pokémon. Read more…

Update: Stock of the games seem to be going in and out, which can make it harder to claim this deal with everything in the basket. As an alternative, you can add an Xbox One X to your basket along with The Evil Within 2, Wolfenstein 2 and an extra controller and your total will come out to £436 . Original story: Fancy picking up a big, shiny 4K box with which to play all those 4K video games you've heard so much about? You can get yourself a bit of a steal of a bundle right now by heading to Tesco Direct today. There, you'll find the Xbox One X priced up at its regular £449, albeit with free click and collect if you fancy it. Look closer, however, and you'll see that you can add six games and an extra controller to your basket and the whole lot will be added for free on top of the price of the console. Read more…

Two weeks ago, Fornite earned Twitch its biggest ever audience - 635,000 people - when Canadian rapper Drake played alongside streamer Ninja. Last night, Fortnite attracted nearly double that number watching live on YouTube as 100 top streamers battled it out. It was billed as a Spanish-language stream extravaganza, filled with popular YouTubers who then broadcast it via their own channels. Read more…

You can kick off a spectacular set piece pretty much anywhere in Far Cry 5. All you need do is stand in the road. Give it 60 seconds, and - yes, there it is, a van full of hostages, cruising around unescorted, the lowest of low-hanging fruit. You pour hot lead into the windshield until the driver flops out of his seat like a spent shell casing, then follow the vehicle off-road and help its dazed occupants to safety. One grateful civilian waves you over, a side quest icon materialising over his head. "Wh-" he says, and is promptly swept off his feet by a speeding pick-up truck. The truck screeches to a halt and a huge, tattooed lady with a light machinegun climbs out, only to be set upon by the cougar you didn't notice lurking near the treeline. Your AI companion blasts the cougar with incendiary buckshot, setting it on fire; the cougar charges into your AI companion, setting him on fire; everybody runs in circles, yelling at each other, until a plane soars over a hills...

A new Avoid as Teammate option is coming to Overwatch "as soon as possible", finally giving us some immediate power to prevent other people ruining our fun. Maybe you're grouped with a tyrant, maybe you're grouped with someone deliberately working against the team and throwing the match, or maybe you're simply partnered with a pratt. Previously all you could do was report them, if you felt it was a reportable offence, and hope the game didn't group you with them again. But soon you will be able to directly affect the matchmaking process. To begin with, you will be able to set up to two players as 'Avoid as Teammate'. You'll be able to select this by clicking on their name in chat or finding them in social menus on console. When you've avoided them, they'll be avoided for seven days. After that period you can re-avoid them if you wish. Read more…

Rare's done it - Sea of Thieves has topped the UK games chart in a busy week for new releases. Impressively, the PC and Xbox One pirate simulator hit number one just on Xbox One boxed copies alone. (UK numbers company Chart-Track does not count digital sales on PC or Xbox.) And, of course, those sales do not count anyone playing the game using the cheapest option - via Microsoft's £7.99 per month Xbox Games Pass subscription, which Sea of Thieves is part of. Read more…

Late Fiorentina captain and Italian international Davide Astori will remain in FIFA 18, EA has confirmed. A message displayed to players upon logging into the game reveals EA took the decision at the request of the club. However, EA has pulled Astori FIFA Ultimate Team items from packs. Read more…

It is a question that has echoed down the ages ever since Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo strapped on metal jump-boots for Super Mario Bros in May 1993: will there ever be a good video game movie? The short but dispiriting history of gaming IP being repurposed for the big screen is like a high-score table filled entirely with clunkers, from the cheeseball flexing of Van Damme in Street Fighter to the constipated gothic grimace of Marky Mark's Max Payne. To make things worse, the whole sub-genre will forever be dragged down by slapdash cash-in king Uwe Boll and his unforgivably amateurish efforts at adapting games like Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne and Far Cry. (Not even the mighty Jason Statham as a hardnut ploughman could salvage Boll's aggressively banal medieval epic In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale.) Some of these early disasters could be written off as the growing pains of working out how best to combine the strengths of two similar but divergent art forms. B...

Ninja Theory's critically acclaimed action game and study of psychosis, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, is heading to Xbox. It had only previously been available on PC and PS4. And there isn't long to wait: Hellblade will be released on Xbox 11th April. Hellblade will also be enhanced for Xbox One X, and offer three performance modes. Enhanced Visuals will add unspecified extra effects and visual quality; High Framerate will run the game at 60 frames per second; and High Resolution will aim for 4K resolution with dynamic scaling. HDR is supported as standard on both Xbox One and X, apparently. Read more…

Editor's note: Once a month we're graced with the brilliant presence of Gareth Damian Martin, author of the zine Heterotopias , creator of upcoming game In Other Waters and, most recently, author of The Continuous City, a book of analogue photography of video games, which is now available for pre-order. Over the past few months leading up to the games release, there's been a strange sense that Far Cry 5's choice of a US setting means that the now venerable series is 'coming home'. It's something I've seen echoed in the coverage of the game, which is especially strange considering that the series was created in Germany, and originally set in Micronesia, and now sits in the hands of Ubisoft Montreal - the Canadian arm of a French company. How is it that a series defined by a surprisingly diverse set of landscapes, inspired by everything from the South pacific to Nepal could be 'coming home' to the wide-spaces and small-towns of Montana? Perhaps...