Is nine graphics options overkill for a console game? It’s a fair question. Last week, Santa Monica Studio published an infographic detailing the nine possible graphics modes for the much-anticipated God of War: Ragnarök. This seemed excessive to some people, especially as (so the argument goes) this is a console game, so surely all this visual optimisation stuff should be left up to the developers. Shouldn’t it be, ultimately, up to them to decide how best to run their game on standardised hardware?...

According to the studio, there will be over 60 options available to players starting with a redesigned UI which will allow for more flexibility and readability.. The studio also rebuilt controller remapping from the ground up and added more customization to the combat and interaction systems. All accessibility features from 2018’s God of War have been retained and expanded upon so that you can adjust the gameplay to best suit your style and needs....

All this comes via an official post on the PlayStation Blog from president of Polyphony Digital Kazunori Yamauchi, in which he thanks the community for supporting the game and apologises for the recent server outages that locked players out of the game as well as not communicating to the players before readjusting the reward system into its current unpopular state. The patch in question was an attempt to fix “inconsistent rewards payouts within a part of the World Circuit Events” according to this blog post....

The exec’s reasoning is that people buy games like Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 for $60, but then they can enjoy their online modes entirely free of charge. “We deliver the highest quality experiences in the business and we charge much less for them than we believe they’re worth to consumers,” Zelnick said. “And then we deliver typically an ongoing component that is free. And that’s already a great deal of value at any monetisation, of course, it’s totally optional....

Once you’re done with The Fleeca Job, you’re ready to move onto your first proper heist. You won’t be able to launch it until you get a call from Lester telling you it’s available. The Prison Break is a four-man heist, so you’ll need two more people if you’ve just come from The Fleeca Job. Set-up cost is $40,000. You have to rescue Maxim Rashkovsky, an “exceedingly vain” man who’s paying to have himself busted out of jail....

Me and my crew are driving around Los Santos for a big shot celebrity who’s been dicking us around. Go here. No, go there. Now over here. We’ve been everywhere, and now he wants us to murder some paparazzi. We do it with a smile, since we want to get into the Diamond Casino and Resort disguised as a member of the musician’s entourage. Most of the targets are dealt with quickly, using our CEO’s chopper to drop each member of our four-person heist team directly onto our targets....

Calling it an event at this stage might be a bit of a stretch, but the UFO will only be in GTA Online for a limited time. The first part of the event lasted from October 15 until October 21st, with a 2nd set of locations running through this weekend. It’s worth a quick jaunt to visit, and is pretty similar to the UFO encounter in Red Dead Redemption 2....

As well as new achievements and artwork, uncovered ahead of the actual reveal of the Remastered Trilogy, the folks over at GTA Forums have dug up more information about the incoming compilation of games. Specifcally, forum member and now-prolific dataminer alloc8or has uncovered a bonus bit of text that’s not been sent out in official Rockstar correspondence, noting that the Trilogy will take on GTA 5’s controls and see improved, updated textures and graphics....

Now that most of the work on the PC version of Halo: Reach is over, developer 343 Industries is shifting its focus to Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, the next game to make the jump to PC. In a forum post, the developer announced that testing will begin later this month with external partners, before it expands to more players early in February. 343 will only deploying the build to Halo Insiders, of course....

343 announced this week those part of the Insider program will be able to test content for Halo 2, Halo 2 Anniversary, and Halo: Reach’s Forge and Theater for The Master Chief Collection PC at the end of March. The test could also include some Halo: Reach audio fixes, but as the fixes are in progress, they may or may not come in time for the next flight. 343 notes that since it’s an ongoing process, the timing could change, but if things continue to go well, Insiders will start testing this month (thanks, Neowin)....

Back when Heartstone launched in 2014, Blizzard brought the collectible card game genre kicking and screaming into the mainstream with a 240-card set that proved anyone could enjoy the once-niche genre. Safe to say that the game has changed a lot since then, with myriad rotations and sets coming and going over the past six-plus years. If you’re eager to go back to the way things were in the beginning, you’ll be pleased to know Blizzard is introducing Classic Format: a mode that allows you to craft decks and play games using Hearthstone’s original card set....

The Resident Evil Village demo finally came to PC over the weekend. Available on Steam, the demo includes two sections, one set in the eponymous village, and another in the castle. Just like on other platforms, the Resident Evil Village demo can only be played for an hour in total. It’s always-online, too, so you can’t easily bypass this limitation - “easily” being the operative word here. That’s because, to no one’s surprise, someone figured out how to reset the timer....

A44 is back with Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, a major new project for the small team. Flintlock is everything Ashen was, and everything it wasn’t. It too is an action RPG, with demanding combat inspired by Souls games. Between missions, you’ll go back to a hub area that you’ll get to see grow and evolve over the course of the campaign, shaped by the people you come across in your travels and those you bring back....

These are the words of Brian English, who runs the ever popular YouTube channel originally known as PS4Trophies. Nowadays, it’s known as PS5Trophies, signaling the excitement that lies on the horizon for the new iteration of Sony’s flagship console. For many, trophies are a simple reward for the accomplishments gained across their gaming careers. Whether it’s peeping up a skirt in Lollipop Chainsaw or watching the loveable Trico shit everywhere in The Last Guardian, these are all done in the name of pursuing that sweet ‘ding’ as the trophy unlocks....

Stand up and face him head on and you’ll just get squished in one hit. To defeat Bassus, you’ll have to make smarter use of your environment and combat abilities to slip through his clutches and deal damage at a distance. Unlike in the previous melee fight with Chak’lok, you can just rely on your Threat Detector and run laps around a single pillar. At the beginning, Bassus’ boss arena is simply too small of a space to kite him effectively, but if you’re having trouble turning tail and running away there are a few things you can do....

Wurmple isn’t the most exciting of Pokemon - it’s a lowly bug-type Pokemon added in the third generation, a little spiky grub that eventually enters a cocoon form and then becomes something else entirely. However, Wurmple is fairly unique in that you never quite know what you’re going to get when you evolve it - it can evolve down one of two unique and specific lines of evolutions. On this page, we explain Wurmple evolution, just to dispel any questions you might have about how the mechanic works....

It’s also tied with a difficult boss battle, but you can start the quest at any time – even if you’ve defeated Darriwil, the Evergaol boss that Blaidd mentions, before finding the wolf man in Mistwood. What is the howling in Mistwood Ruins in Elden Ring? Like most things in Elden Ring, starting Blaidd’s quest is a bit vague. You’ll need to travel to the Mistwood Ruins, northeast of Waypoint Ruins, and hear the howling....

For lots of people, their first exposure to Bandai Namco’s 3D fighter was in Tekken 2 – but thanks to Demo One discs and the proliferation of Platinum games on the original PlayStation, I’d wager more people eventually got their hands on (and spent more time with) Tekken 3. And rightly so; it was argueably better than Tekken 2 in every way – and there’s something about the style, the music, the story, and the whole aesthetic that just belongs so wholly in the 90s....

During Ubisoft Forward, the company showcased Immortals Fenyx Rising and confirmed some of what you can expect. In the game, you play as Fenyx, a new winged demigod on a quest to save the Greek gods and their home from a dark curse. You will fight mythological beasts, master the powers of the gods and defeat Typhon, the “deadliest Titan” in Greek mythology. The open-world action-adventure allows you to roam freely about the world and participate in trials, “heroic feats and the very underworld itself await your bravery....

A new update to Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War makes it easier to see what weapon attachments you have attached. Developer Treyarch announced the tweak as part of its patch yesterday (Thursday March 11), saying that the weapon icons displayed in the Create-a-Class menu will now feature the various peripherals you have added to your gun. Before, the preview icon only showed the default weapon model, no matter what attachments the player had equipped....