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“Yeah, well, I think it’s fair to say for sure,” says Back 4 Blood’s creative director and Turtle Rock co-founder Phil Robb. “I mean, anyone who is a fan of the Left 4 Dead series will feel comfortable playing this game - but we’ve got a lot more stuff we’ve packed into it as well. There are similarities, but it’s its own thing.” That’s the thing that’s most striking about Back 4 Blood - at first, at least, before you begin to grasp some of its own quirks and twists....

With its servers deactivated, Battleborn is now no longer playable in any form - even single-player. It had already been removed from digital storefronts. Battleborn was reasonably well-received when it launched for PC and consoles in 2016, with many praising its ambitious, inventive blend of first-person shooting and MOBA-style action, even if the combination didn’t always land in practice. Unfortunately for Battleborn, it was quickly overshadowed by Blizzard’s Overwatch, whose success was as immediate and sustained as Battleborn’s failure....

Their petition to the US National Labor Relations Board has now been accepted, setting the stage for a vote by employees to formalise the process. Ballots will be sent out as soon as next week, Kotaku reported, with a result due on 18th November. Activision Blizzard had previously argued against this process going ahead, and claimed it should be a decision made by a larger group of employees at the Albany studio rather than its testing team....

Arclight Rumble is being pitched as a combination of strategy game and tower defense, that sees players choosing from one of several leaders across five factions - Alliance, Horde, Beast, Blackrock, and Undead - each with their own abilities and specialisations. Objectives vary depending on the chosen map (of which Blizzard is promising 70+ at launch), and these can range from skirmishes to boss battles. Players will need to deploy their units from their available “minis” - 60 collectible minis are being touted for release - and more powerful units can be deployed by gathering gold as a match plays out....

That’s according to Blizzard itself, which issued the warning to streamers over the weekend, just hours after the game was re-released as part of its new Arcade Collection. This new edition of Rock N Roll Racing features the original chiptune versions of artists such as Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, as well as the option to switch these for the actual licensed tracks. You can see how the licensed music might cause issues on Twitch, which has become increasingly paranoid over potential DMCA takedowns of its hosted videos....

It could be described as something of an off-cut, as Bowser’s Fury is built from repurposed assets from Super Mario 3D World - the eight way movement has been opened out a bit here but it’s still paired with a sprint button and the same lack of triple jump, as well as the same suite of excellent power-ups including the Cat Suit which once again takes top-billing - but Mario’s often been not so much about the building blocks but what Nintendo’s designers do with them, and that’s certainly the case here....

Prologue started life at Krafton’s Amsterdam-based PUBG Special Projects, and will continue to be developed at Greene’s new studio PlayerUnknown Productions, with Krafton investing in the new company with a minority stake. Setting the scene for Prologue in a new video shared on Twitter, Greene explained, “I’ve held this deep fascination with sandbox-style open-world games and the freedom they give their players but I always just wished they were a bit bigger, so that’s our mission as a studio - we want to create realistic sandbox worlds on a scale that’s seldom attempted....

A court has dimissed much of Bungie’s legal action against cheat site AimJunkies, in which it had alleged copyright and trademark infringement, as well as breach of contract, “tortious interference” and “unjust enrichment” (thanks, TorrentFreak). AimJunkies had argued back and said its cheating software was its own work, not a copy of Bungie’s code. The Destiny developer’s other claims, it continued, should also be kept out of court per clauses in Bungie’s own user license agreement....

Butterfly Soup 2 is due to launch on 29th October, and will follow the four main characters a few months after the original story. We’ve previously featured Butterfly Soup in a piece by Natalie Flores on the humanisation of queer women through humour in games, and Butterfly Soup has this in spades. Lei calls Butterfly Soup “a visual novel about gay asian girls playing baseball and falling in love” on its Itch....

As detailed on Twitter, the publisher will be broadcasting its latest Resident Evil showcase via Twitch this Thursday, with proceedings set to get underway at 11pm UK time - which, if you’re watching from the US, equates to 3pm PDT and 6pm EDT. Capcom hasn’t shared much in the way of specifics, only saying it’ll be detailing the Resident Evil Village Gold Edition - which arrives on 28th October, bundling together the base game and upcoming Winters Expansion DLC - as well as its Resident Evil 4 remake, and “more”....

BMW Group has partnered with AirConsole to offer casual gaming in its vehicles in 2023. The games are run directly on the vehicle entertainment system on its curved display and are controlled using smartphones connected by scanning a QR code. Watch on YouTube Eurogamer Newscast: Are CD Projekt’s Cyberpunk and Witcher plans too ambitious? Presumably games won’t be playable while vehicles are in motion. “With AirConsole we will leverage innovative technologies combined with a broad variety of fun and multiplayer games....

Originally released on the Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2003, XIII is a quality (and sometimes frustratingly difficult) espionage game that’s loosely based on the Belgian graphic novels of the same name. It brings the visuals of the graphic novels to life, filling the screen with comic-book-style panels when you whizz a throwing knife into someone’s face and phonetic visuals for sound effects, whether that’s the TAT-TAT-TAT of chugging through machine gun clips or the approaching taps of enemy footsteps....

First debuted at the Anime Expo 2022 in Los Angeles, these opening credits are accompanied by Franz Ferdinand’s ‘This Fffire’ from 2004. (A small spot of trivia for your next pub quiz, this is not the only piece of game-inspired media to feature this song. The earlier released and self-produced ‘This Fire’ can also be found on the soundtrack from Burnout 3: Takedown.) Anyway, I digress. Back to Edgerunners, and its new credit sequence which you can check out for yourself below....

Here, we’ll be talking you through the fundamentals of military playthroughs in Civ 6, including an explanation of the all new war conditions like Casus Belli, and likewise adding our own advice for the most efficient annihilation of your foe as possible. A quick note: we’ve refreshed out Civ 6 guides for the game’s launch on Nintendo Switch, but just be aware that they contain information regarding the Rise and Fall DLC as well as the base game, which means some things only apply if you have that DLC!...

Tonight’s teaser was debuted at The Game Awards and gave away very little about the game. Back in 2019, Funcom signed a deal to make new games set in Frank Herbert’s Dune universe with Legendary Entertainment, who also owns the movie rights. Hey, maybe Timothée Chalamet will also pop up? “I think I speak for every single person at Shiro Games, when I say that we are all massive fans of Dune - both of the original novel and the new and spectacular Denis Villeneuve film....

But then, Alien Isolation wasn’t exactly a natural follow-up to Total War, and speaking to Eurogamer at Gamescom, product director Alex Hunnisett explained that, actually, these games are rarely interlinked - despite some staff from within the studio moving across to work on it. “Really, when we were looking at Hyenas, it was a case of going, well, what are folks enjoying playing at the moment, for starters, and the great thing about working in a studio is often you’re enjoying doing something, you’ve got enough capable people around you just go, ’let’s just do that then....

While we already knew the show was making its triumphant return on E4 in the UK, a new press release explains that the programme will be back later this year with a “social-first partnership” with Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2. Though the show is described as spanning social, digital and linear broadcast, all episodes will initially premiere on E4’s YouTube channel and will be followed by a linear play on E4....

Of course, version 1.10 has since been updated with patch 1.11, which essentially delivers a hotfix update to correct a couple of bugs, but the main optimisation and stability push introduced memory management improvements, and addressed a large array of bugs. What’s curious are the platform-specific optimisations: there’s talk of crowd optimisation for PS4 Pro and PlayStation 5, but surely the base PS4 should improve too? And why wouldn’t these optimisations also improve the situation for Xbox One users....

Loads to talk about then during this week’s Eurogamer next-gen news cast! As usual, I’m joined by news editor Tom Phillips and reporter Emma Kent to discuss the week’s news - and there’s a lot to get through. It’s a packed show! First, a note: this week we discuss CD Projekt boss Adam Kiciński’s controversial investor call, in which he described Cyberpunk 2077’s crunch as “not that bad”. After we recorded the show, Kiciński apologised for his comment....

In a tweet, Ross wrote: “I’m excited to announce I now work at the amazing Crystal Dynamics as Design Director. “That’s all I can say other than I’m thrilled with the project, and especially the team of really wonderful people. I will become a Seattleite this summer.” The new design director then went on the share a list of vacancies within the studio, encouraging others to “come work with [him]”....