Eurogamer.net Chris Tapsell Feed

Ghost of Yōtei review

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 13:16:09 +0000

I still can't figure out how to think about Ghost of Yōtei. And, honestly, its predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima, even four years on. I enjoy these games - I enjoy these kinds of games, even. I'm a sucker, if you'll forgive the pun, for the Sucker Punch style of open world. A kind of Diet Assassin's Creed: even lighter; even shallower; even simpler to grasp and follow around, sword in hand, air in head. Sometimes with video games and their often unfathomable complexity and depth, these games feel like just about all I can handle. Sometimes you just need Love Island, Emily in Paris, an infinite, blue-lit bedtime scroll. And sometimes you snap out of it.

Pokémon Legends Z-A is essentially an action game, but might not be a particularly great one

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 13:00:00 +0000

Revisiting Pokémon Legends: Arceus before this preview of its sort-of-sequel, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, I couldn't help but be struck by its almost singular eeriness. Legends: Arceus is deathly quiet, thanks in part to the total lack of voice acting - a long-running Pokémon quirk continued again here in Z-A, even in the lengthy cutscene we were shown at the start of the preview - but also, more intentionally and more interestingly, because of its environment. Legends: Arceus was set in the ghostly wilds of Hisui. A cold, unwelcoming, frequently haunted corner of Pokémon's take on the Japanese region. It made sense to dial into the sounds of swaying grass and gusting wind, the braying Ponyta, the heavy footsteps of human travellers in untamed lands. What an odd game, with such an odd vibe. I kind of loved it.

Football Manager player numbers are through the roof thanks to subscription platforms like Game Pass and Netflix - series boss Miles Jacobson explains how

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 09:00:00 +0000

"It was five, six years ago we celebrated two million players for the first time," Miles Jacobson tells me, during our lengthy interview with the studio head at Football Manager developer Sports Interactive's office earlier this summer. Checking that reference, it was indeed 2020 when the studio first announced that figure, with some pride. "And then we've really embraced the subscription platforms…"

The closest thing we'll ever get to the mysterious, long-forgotten Gorochu is coming to Pokémon Legends Z-A, but you'll need the paid DLC

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 16:20:12 +0000

Pokémon Legends Z-A is getting a DLC expansion post launch, dubbed Mega Dimension - and it features not one but two Mega Raichu evolutions.

Where's our Borderlands 4 review?

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Hello! We're back already - it's another one of those blogs telling you where our review is, but let's be honest you can probably guess by now. Here goes: you might've spotted some Borderlands 4 reviews going live around about now, but unfortunately we won't have a review for you here on the site today - or indeed on the game's full launch when it comes out tomorrow.

At last, our first look at Football Manager 26's flashy new match engine is here, and it's a bit like classic FIFA

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 16:49:58 +0000

Two years on from FM25's initial announce, we finally have our first proper look at actual gameplay from Football Manager 26, the game that supplanted it after FM25's troubled and ultimately cancelled development.

The big Football Manager interview: series boss Miles Jacobson on what went wrong with FM25, and what to expect from FM26

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 05:30:00 +0000

It's been a rough year for Football Manager. This time last summer, the ambitious FM25 was still a certainty, but while the development team at Sports Interactive remained optimistic - albeit to different degrees - soon came the first of two delays. FM25 would arrive two or three weeks later than its usual early November slot, the studio announced, with perhaps one of the first clues things weren't going entirely smoothly.

Dawn of War 4 devs on taking over from Relic, the health of real-time strategy, and reviving a legend of the genre

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 10:29:41 +0000

Dawn of War 4 is back, and I'm feeling pretty good about it. You can read my full thoughts on actually playing it - or really, playing the one available skirmish about six times over and over - in our big Dawn of War 4 preview, but alongside that hands-on time we also had a virtual sit-down with DoW 4's brand new development team.

I've played Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 4, and it feels like the sequel to the original that RTS fans always wanted

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 06:30:00 +0000

The last time I wrote a full review of a Dawn of War game I started throwing around terms like "a prima facie truth". Admittedly I was trying to be ironic - it was about how fun it is to smash big mechs into each other! - but also admittedly, there is something about this series that just makes me get a bit over-excited. The original Dawn of War, which took your little villagers in from the cold and turned resource generation into a game of take-and-hold, is a legendary part of the grand RTS tapestry - and it's also a personal, formative game of mine.

Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 4 announced, and it's coming from a surprise new developer next year

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 18:32:20 +0000

Eight years after the release of the audacious, but ill-fated Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 3, we finally have a sequel. Dawn of War 4 is coming, with a slated release of some time in 2026. Only it's not coming from the original developer Relic; instead German studio KING Art Games is at the helm.

Sword of the Sea review

Chris Tapsell — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 15:00:00 +0000

What do we actually mean, when we call a game rewarding? I reckon typically it's one of two things. First you have games that reward you for playing them well: rewards are given in return for achievement or superlative skill – a new outfit, a Legendary Cuirass, a skill point or two. Then you have the ones where you're awarded simply for playing the game at all, that kind of external stimulus for engagement. The Skinner box method, basically, where you get daily bonuses for everything from simply logging in to maxing out your battle pass. What Sword of the Sea reminded me, as I lanced my way through desert dunes, 720'd my way across cliff edges, nosedived off a mountain face, or just awkwardly bunny hopped my way along a ledge I wasn't sure I was actually meant to climb, is that there's a third way. A game that rewards you neither for just playing nor for playing well, but for playing it right.

Oh Dawn of War, how I've missed you

Chris Tapsell — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Hurtle back through space and time with me, will you, to my living room sofa in 2005. Hunched over, Ork-like and sallow, I used to balance my laptop on one of those nesting coffee tables that was a tiny bit too small, a squeaky little bluetooth travel mouse on the even smaller one beside it. It got so uncomfortable at one point I had to give up on the luxury of my squishy wrist-pad mouse mat, and just wedge a whole cushion under my arm instead. All that for another few minutes running my army around the corners of the map, looking for the final building to demolish, any straggling xenos I'd yet to expunge.

Sword of the Sea is an expression of the joy of movement in video games - PS Plus subscribers are in for an absolute treat

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 08:31:38 +0000

"First of all, it's just super fun in a video game to move," Matt Nava tells me, with the certainty of someone stating the absolute obvious. And he's dead right.

Where's our Mafia: The Old Country review?

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Hello! And here we are again - I promise, as always, to keep it brief. You might've spotted some Mafia: The Old Country reviews going live around about now, but unfortunately we won't have a review for you here on the site today - or indeed on the game's full launch when it comes out later this afternoon.

What we've been playing - the game of kings and a football rescue act

Chris Tapsell — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 08:40:39 +0000

Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing. This week's a quiet one, with a few staff out on their summer holidays. Chris manages his little football men, and our SEO maestro Will spirals into an all-timer.

Ghost of Yōtei's lo-fi beats mode sums up the very best and very worst of this very weird series

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 12:36:51 +0000

Well, that was a bit of a gear shift wasn't it? After about fifteen minutes of standard new-weapons-and-mechanics chatter in Ghost of Yōtei's big gameplay deep dive reveal video last night, we moved on to that section I think we probably all saw coming. The one where Sucker Punch starts talking about Japanese film directors and the mud from 13 Assassins and how it's licensed wind from Akira Kurosawa's estate. But then– clunk, screeeeeeech: can I interest you in some lo-fi chillhop beats to study/decapitate to?

Xbox's absent landlord execs are only part of a much bigger problem

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 11:20:53 +0000

In an all-timer of a candid photo, team green's big leadership triumvirate sit, after a tour of the Play Days show floor, huddled together on camping chairs. Toy fishing rods aloft, their focus set intently on a tiny blue paddling pool of plastic fish, the setup here is a Fallout 76 fishing expansion booth-slash-photo-op at the behind-closed doors part of Summer Game Fest last month.

Pokémon Go Type chart and weaknesses

Chris Tapsell — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 08:54:54 +0000

Pokémon type charts have long been a way for players to figure out the game’s overly complicated Rock Paper Scissors system of determining who is weak to what. That’s because Type effectiveness have part of the main series since the very beginning - with recent releases like Scarlet and Violet even having an in-game math lesson to teach you what happens if you hit a Grass-type with a Fire-type move.

Where's our MindsEye review?

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 19:09:55 +0000

It's that time again! You might have noticed that MindsEye, the new game from former Rockstar North studio head and GTA producer Lezlie Benzies and his studio Build a Rocket Boy, is out in the world and available to buy, while we don't yet have a review.

Obsidian's The Outer Worlds 2 looks to fix the problems it always knew the original had

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 15:00:00 +0000

Brandon Adler, The Outer Worlds 2's director, tells me the team at Obsidian knew exactly what would and wouldn't go down well with the original. "Before the first game even shipped, I did a full breakdown of: here's what I think people are going to like and dislike about the game," he says. "And here's what I think the press is going to like and dislike. And I think we should address these things in the next one."

Xbox finally cracks the Summer Game Fest special - the cost is them owning everything

Chris Tapsell — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 09:16:48 +0000

It feels quite apt that Xbox has really started to nail this summer showcase business these past few years. Those few years being right when the summer showcase as a concept is starting to look just a little out of date. Back in the heady E3 days, team green used to pack out their LA Live Microsoft theatre, just along from the main show floor, and then frequently go on to, most of the time, sort of biff it. In the post E3 years that moved to the slightly smaller-still-swanky Grammy Museum, as Xbox stubbornly refused to give up an inch of ground in a fight that had, actually, really ended quite a long time ago. Sony and Nintendo had long since moved to doing everything via some version of pre-recorded direct. And now this year, when it feels like it's finally cracked the summer game showcase formula for good, finally listened and learned and done all of that good stuff, it also clocked on that it might be time to follow its peers in sagely ducking out of the in-person wrestlefest at last.

Welcome Tour is the Switch 2's welcome surprise, and might even be worth your 8 quid

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0000

I normally hate talking about video games in terms of how much money they're worth, but with Welcome Tour - and against the backdrop of video games' wider squeeze on its audience - that discussion feels unavoidable. To get it out of the way: Welcome Tour feels like a pack-in game, and after the news broke that it would, instead, cost you actual money to play this seemingly staid, interactive console manual - one that seemed pretty similar to the free, pack-in Astro's Playroom on PS5 - there was a very understandable reaction. That being: this game is probably not going to do very well.

After a couple of hours, Mario Kart World's open world left me slightly underwhelmed - but is there more to it?

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 14:00:00 +0000

I feel like I'm about to say something unforgivable. I played a couple of hours of Mario Kart World recently, including a good amount of time with its new features like Knockout Tour and the open world, and came away having only had, well, quite a nice time. There were moments of hilarity - mostly involving gurning at my peers with the Switch 2's new camera while mercilessly blue-shelling them - and moments of typical kart-racer tension. But also, a little surprisingly, moments when I felt I'd maybe rather be playing something else (the strangely alluring Welcome Tour perhaps being one option).

Video games' soaring prices have a cost beyond your wallet - the concept of ownership itself

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 22 May 2025 11:36:46 +0000

Earlier this month, Microsoft bumped up the prices of its entire range of Xbox consoles, first-party video games, and most (or in the US, all) of its accessories. It comes a few weeks after Nintendo revealed a £396 Switch 2, with £75 copies of its own first-party fare in Mario Kart World, and a few months after Sony launched the exorbitant £700 PS5 Pro (stand and disc drive not included), a £40 price rise for its all-digital console in the UK, the second of this generation, and news that it's considering even more price rises in the months to come.

Remedy's Control spin-off FBC: Firebreak has only come together at the last minute - and somehow feels better for it

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 14 May 2025 13:00:00 +0000

Anssi Hyytiäinen, Remedy's lead designer on FBC: Firebreak, and studio veteran of more than 25 years, is "one of those really dangerous designers". This is how his colleague, the game's director Mike Kayatta, puts it to me in a conversation at Remedy's predictably stylish HQ in Espoo, on the quiet, grey outskirts of Finland's capital Helsinki. Kayatta means it as a compliment, although with maybe just a tinge of truth to it as well. He's dangerous because, as Kayatta puts it, he's one of the rare few designers who can "make his ideas manifest faster than he can tell you what it is."

Remedy hopes FBC: Firebreak can defeat the "predatory" live-service trap - with help from small budgets, Game Pass, and PS Plus

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 14 May 2025 13:00:00 +0000

I am quietly optimistic about FBC: Firebreak, Remedy's upcoming co-op, PvE Control spin-off. Having played a couple of hours of it, particularly towards the end of my time, as the systemic complexity began to compound, its coming together at the last minute almost feels like a strength, as I wrote in our big FBC: Firebreak preview. But naturally at a time when live-service, multiplayer-only games - particularly ones from studios known for the purely single-player output - are hardly the most popular pitches in the world, there is plenty of scepticism out there.

GTA 6's delay doesn't mean the games industry's in trouble - it's already dead

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 06 May 2025 12:00:00 +0000

I saw someone, somewhere, saying something like this recently: it's always easier to play the role of doomsayer than the optimist, because far fewer people seem to care if you're wrong when you're predicting something will fail.

Despelote review

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 01 May 2025 13:00:00 +0000

For such an ostensibly small game, there's such bigness to Despelote. On the surface this is a game about football, its humble joys and seemingly unstoppable knack for rendering whole nations enraptured. Beneath that surface however is something more inward facing, a reflective game about its creators, and the act of creating - about the act of remembering, too, this game being one about their own, half-imagined memories. The result is special, something personal and universal all at once.

Inside Muse, Microsoft's gen-AI game tool everyone hates - what's really going on and why is it being marketed at Xbox fans?

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:00:00 +0000

Earlier this month, Microsoft set loose upon the world a new, publicly-available demo of its video game-focused generative AI model, Muse. As far as demos go, it was a significant one: a playable, browser-based "AI rendition" of legendary first-person shooter Quake 2.

South of Midnight review

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 16:01:02 +0000

Few still-perfectly-decent games have felt as desperate a disappointment as this one. South of Midnight is gloriously pretty, a game of sumptuous environmental detail and rich attention. It's one of the best sounding games I've played in an age, with a highly unique, artfully implemented original score woven into its sound design. And it's also extremely well acted, a cut above the vast majority of video games in emotional authenticity and heft. But goodness me can it get tiresome to play.

EA Sports says Switch 2 versions of FC and Madden NFL to have feature parity with consoles "as much as the hardware allows"

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 16:35:44 +0000

EA Sports has offered some scant clarification as to whether or not its EA Sports FC and Madden NFL games, announced today as coming to the Nintendo Switch 2, will be fully-fledged annual entries such as FC 26, or more limited 'Legacy'-style versions. The Switch 2 versions, EA says, will aim for parity "as much as the hardware allows."

MindsEye, from former Rockstar developers, wants to revive the tight, linear, cinematic blockbuster game

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 17:06:22 +0000

There's a moment in the latest MindsEye trailer, released today alongside the news of its midsummer release date, that feels distinctly familiar. As some wonderfully billowy explosions roar, muscle cars tear through traffic and machine guns thunder on, a helicopter drops low over the action, sun setting melodramatically in the background. And the reflection of a city, searingly sharp above more racing cars and scorched tarmac, shines off the side of its ultra-polished fuselage. This is the future of video games, that reflection almost seems to declare. Only, it's the future as imagined by 2013, where the height of the craft remains a sense of bombast, polish, and ultra-fidelity - and crucially, a question of how accurately it can recreate another craft, in cinema. In other words: a world where the future looked like Grand Theft Auto.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A has a battle royale mode that finally explains what its name means

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 15:51:24 +0000

Ever wondered why Pokémon Legends: Z-A is called that? There are a few notable coincidences already - Zygarde is likely to be the key mascot of this entry, with the previous game's being Arceus; and the mysterious character AZ, pronounced as "A, Z" returns here in a seemingly promintent role also - but now we have another explanation, via a new, seemingly quite important feature announced today, as part of the game's surprise appearance in the Nintendo Direct.

With Assassin's Creed: Shadows, Ubisoft remains the undisputed king of snackable open worlds

Chris Tapsell — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

It feels like open world games have been having a bit of an extended, existential crisis these past few years. Like there's a sense that something within the classic formula of big maps, question marks and to-be-coloured-in icons that's served us so well, back through The Witcher 3 and Skyrim to at least The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, isn't quite working. That a change or evolution - if not outright ripping-up revolution - of some kind is necessary for the genre to thrive. But also, a bit of a problem: that the games wrestling with these bold new frontiers of mapmaking don't really know what that new, evolved form ought to be.

Fragpunk could be brilliant, if it wasn't so obsessed with being a hyper-rewarding slot machine

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 11:00:00 +0000

In a lot of ways, Fragpunk is much better than I expected it to be. One round the other day began with a wave of frantic team chat screams - standard, for a competitive shooter in the CS:GO mould - only this time the usual storm of verbal friendly fire came with a twist: "BIG HEAD MODE! BIG HEAD MODE! GIVE THEM BIG HEADS!!!!"

Wanderstop review

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 11:18:51 +0000

If you weren't already worried about game developers - and, heck, you really should be by now - the growing emergence of games explicitly about burnout is certainly a good reason to start. Wanderstop, in a similar vein to last summer's Dungeons of Hinterberg, is exactly that, only this time instead of opting for a breezy vacation to get away from it all, your location is a little more confined. Imagine Alice in Wonderland except, instead of a whole forest to act as her psychological gauntlet, Alice is trapped in a single clearing that's been turned into a kind of max-security plant-based rehab facility.

A new card just made Pokémon TCG Pocket's strongest type even stronger

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 12:15:52 +0000

I should start this by saying I think Pokémon TCG Pocket is, even now, pretty brilliantly balanced. Across various new releases of what is now hundreds upon hundreds of cards it's been rare, I've found, that a particular card, type, or deck has become so excessively dominant as to spoil the fun.

Pokémon games have become consistently ugly, and it's alright to wish they weren't

Chris Tapsell — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 13:33:14 +0000

It's been a while since I looked at a main series Pokémon game and thought, "That looks nice." This includes last week's full reveal of Pokémon Legends Z-A, which going from the first bit of footage seems to feature a lot of hazy-edged grey rooftops, futurist UI, and eerily smooth NPCs, and not a lot of consistent, nice-to-look-at art direction to tie it together. This is also a shame. First, because - and I don't think it's too controversial to say this - it's good, generally speaking, when things look nice. Glad we've got that established.

Warner Bros. Games' hellish decade offers a valuable lesson to gaming's power brokers: sometimes, you've nobody to blame but yourselves

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 10:31:11 +0000

Well, here we are again. A beloved studio closed. A mobile offshoot chucked on the fire. A scattered, opportunistic attempt at brand synergy binned off after one attempt. Hundreds of talented people - with their families and their mortgages and their institutional knowledge that can, in worker hours, be measured in centuries - all discarded as a result. And one, lone executive departs after a "remarkable chapter", presumably with a big fat golden handshake for his trouble.

X-COM's original creator keen on a return to the series, if Firaxis was ever to ask him

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:15:20 +0000

Julian Gollop, creator of the original X-COM game - known as UFO: Enemy Unknown here in the UK, and followed up by Firaxis' XCOM: Enemy Unknown later on - has told Eurogamer that he would be quite happy to return to the series in some form. Also, that he's fine with still being known as just "the X-COM guy" - despite the few decades' worth of subsequent games he's made since.

X-COM's creator believes the strategy genre's in dire need of innovation, and his new game is his attempt

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:15:07 +0000

"We still haven't quite managed to form a bridgehead yet," says Jullian Gollop, creator of the original X-COM (before Firaxis went and remade it as XCOM (no hyphen) in 2012). He and I are beating back waves of brain-in-a-jar aliens in co-op in his new game, Chip 'n Clawz vs. The Brainioids, and this is the second time he's mentioned the bridgehead, causing me to detect just the tiniest bit of tension in his voice.

Obsidian's modest ambition with Avowed is just what Game Pass, Xbox, and the wider industry needs - but will Microsoft let them stick to it?

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 12:19:21 +0000

I'm having a lovely time in Avowed, a game about bonking little lizard men on the head, skipping through classic, florid fantasy countryside, and walking up to NPCs to receive vast dumps of expository dialogue. It's a game that's less interested in doing something radical with the structure - this is a pretty straight-ahead, sword-n-spells, skill-and-dialogue-tree action adventure - than it is the sheer vividity of its delivery.

Is Sony beginning to coast? With PS5 sales up and first-party releases down, gaming's eerie new normal takes shape

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 10:46:32 +0000

After last night's State of Play, you'd be forgiven for thinking we're coming to the end of the PlayStation 5 generation. The big guns of Sony Santa Monica and Guerilla are silent, the teased-out reveals of Insomniac's Wolverine, Bungie's Marathon, or Kojima Productions' Death Stranding 2: On the Beach remain exactly that, still merely teased. Naughty Dog's next thing is lurking, off in the distance, gathering whatever secret power that studio ritually summons every near-decade to squeeze impossible reserves of lifeblood from end-of-generation hardware. And here comes a spate of middling remasters and kind-of-neat-looking third-party games to tide us over!

Pokémon TCG Pocket's Cyrus card is driving me up the wall, which is exactly why it's such a genius bit of design

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Cyrus, a new Trainer card introduced in the latest expansion to Pokémon TCG Pocket, is doing my nut in. He's doing my nut in because he is, frankly, just very, very good. Too good, in fact. The Cyrus card is, by most competitive game developers' definitions, overpowered. It's ubiquitous, used in decks with little to no real synergy. It's having an outsized impact on the meta, elevating entirely new, dominating decks from obscurity. And most importantly: it's forced me to rework my prized Charizard and Moltres EX deck, which is personally very annoying. I won every PvP challenge the game has had with variations of that deck, and suddenly it's struggling. If this were League of Legends, where you get the ability to ban one character from the opposing team's options, I would be banning Cyrus every time.

The moments set to shape video games in 2025

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 11:17:41 +0000

If there's one thing video games love, it's a marketing beat. Some major publishers and platform holders have settled into quite regular rhythms, spacing announcements out across the year in quarterly chunks. Some have a specific day they use every year without fail.

2025 will be a make-or-break year for triple-A video games as we know them

Chris Tapsell — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 16:38:20 +0000

Cast your eyes across the 2025 video game release schedule and you might notice a bit of a trend. There are triple-A games here. In fact, there are a lot of triple-A video games here. After a desperately barren year for them in 2024 - plenty of good games and surprisingly successful games; very few big, expensive ventures you'd hang your hat on - in 2025, the triple-A blockbuster is well and truly back.

The 50 best games of 2024, ranked

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 10:00:00 +0000

What a year, huh? 2024 has been brutal for video games, a medium which has taken a bludgeoning from seemingly all angles. It's been one of the quietest years for triple-A games in recent memory and the toughest for studios of just about all sizes too.

Marvel Rivals review - snackable team brawler lacks attention to the little details

Chris Tapsell — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:25:27 +0000

Sometimes, you don't quite know what makes something work until you experience another version of it that doesn't. This is, unfortunately, my experience of Marvel Rivals, a team battler that is eminently playable and moreish, but also never quite properly good.

The Witcher 4 dev CD Projekt Red talks Ciri fan reaction, playable Geralt coyness, and if the game will honour your previous choices

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 13:37:55 +0000

The Witcher 4 is real, and it's actually called The Witcher 4. It'll star Ciri as the main protagonist, be another third-person action-RPG just like The Witcher 3, and Doug Cockle returns to voice Geralt of Rivia, who will indeed be present in the game in some form.

CD Projekt Red stays coy on whether The Witcher 4 can run on current-gen consoles, including Xbox Series S

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 13:37:53 +0000

Since The Witcher 4's impressive, ultra-high-fidelity debut trailer at The Game Awards last week, there's been a fair bit of consternation from fans as to whether it'll actually be playable on current-gen hardware. That's something only compounded by the mention, in the trailer's small print and a brief official blog, that the trailer was pre-rendered on a mysterious, "unannounced Nvidia GeForce RTX" graphics card, "using assets and models from the game itself" - suggesting at least some minor level of similarity to what the game will look like on arrival.

Crash Bandicoot's true legacy? All the average games we love

Chris Tapsell — Sun, 08 Dec 2024 10:00:00 +0000

By now, the history of Crash Bandicoot - and the bejorted platformer's fabled importance to the PlayStation - has been pretty well documented. With Sony's PlayStation facing off against the Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64, there in the era of Mario and Sonic the debut console-makers felt they badly needed a mascot. And here came Crash, from a small, upstart, still technically independent studio of just a handful of people, and just at the right moment. Shortly before the E3 show of May 1995, Sony was so impressed with Naughty Dog's demo it bumped Twisted Metal off its main stand and replaced that game, which it had only just signed, with Crash Bandicoot – pitching up directly across from Nintendo's booth, where Sony's rival had come with a new 3D platformer of its own, in Super Mario 64. Shigeru Miyamoto was seen happily giving Crash a whirl at the show, the game sold like gangbusters, and the PS1 lived happily ever after.

Technical ambition, optimism, and timeframes: what we learned about The Witcher 4 from speaking to CD Projekt Red

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 13:09:29 +0000

Earlier this week, CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski announced the next game in The Witcher franchise - otherwise known as Project Polaris and unofficially referred to by most as just The Witcher 4 - has finally entered what he described as "full-scale production - the most intensive phase of development".

Pokémon TCG Pocket review - uh oh, it's really good

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 12:09:46 +0000

The last thing I needed was for Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket to be good. But here we are! It's a cracker, and annoyingly, worryingly, compulsively so. Over the past week or two since The Pokémon Company unleashed this fearsome dopamine machine onto the world, I've been hard pressed to put it down, filling erstwhile empty moments during tooth brushing, kettle boiling and, erm, definitely not working with just one more quick game.

I tried Ruben Amorim's tactics with Manchester United in Football Manager, and the results were all over the place

Chris Tapsell — Sun, 10 Nov 2024 10:00:00 +0000

I unironically think I'm pretty good at Football Manager. By this point, I really better be – I've been playing this game for anywhere between 200 and 400 hours a year, every year, since I caught the bug sometime around 2008. But then in each of those years I do always play as Manchester United, the team I support, and unlike the United of the real world, it's easy enough to see things regularly going well with a bit of clever spending and tactical nous - in my last save, I just won the quadruple with United, alongside a full "invincibles" season in the Premier League.

Arcane Season 2 review - luxurious animation returns with lavish angst and melodrama

Chris Tapsell — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 08:01:00 +0000

It's no great surprise that an animation costing a whopping $250m for two short seasons is ending before it gets to a third, but that doesn't make it any less of a shame. Arcane is a wonderful series, obviously beautiful but also deeply earnest. This show is unafraid to feel things, and feel them hard.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 review - wobbling franchise retreats to safe ground

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 10:20:25 +0000

Playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's multiplayer this week I felt something I hadn't felt when dashing about in Call of Duty for a little while: just ever so slightly bored.

Call of Duty Black Ops 6 campaign review - nonsensical, but surprisingly intimate psyop thriller is a blast

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 16:26:44 +0000

If you want to sum up Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's campaign in a single moment - and really all of Call of Duty in a way; this is quintessential CoD - then look no further than Ground Control, a mission roughly three-quarters of the way through the story.

EA Sports FC 25 review - football's fitting forever-drama continues once more

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 14:01:52 +0000

One thing I've always admired about football journalists is their ability to keep finding something new to say about what is, ultimately, the exact same game. In one sense that's just the nature of football, a sport which seems to defy all logic in its ability to create sparkling new drama from the same, enormously well-documented scenarios. But in this case I'm really talking quite specifically about a single club, in Manchester United. A club of which - sorry - I am a lifelong fan.

Neva review - artful puzzle-platforming action with the fullest of hearts

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 11:08:40 +0000

Forgive me reader, but I'm going to reference a tweet. The other day I saw someone I don't know talking about films, and it said: "There is a loss in going from Cronenberg, who is obsessively steeped in Heidegger, McLuhan & Freud, to his legions of imitators, who are obsessively steeped in Cronenberg, giallo & The Shining." They may or may not have been right (reading between the lines, they were probably talking about The Substance, which is a film I haven't seen yet - and hear is very good! - but which is kind of beside the point anyway).

Where's our Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred review?

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 16:53:14 +0000

Hello! It's that time again. You might've seen a few reviews going live right about now for the Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred expansion, but unfortunately not one from us (or from our friends at VG247 and Rock Paper Shotgun).

Saving Cyberpunk 2077: How CD Projekt Red recovered from one of video games' most disastrous launches

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 10:27:03 +0000

"Beep."

"FM25 is not a continuation of FM24" - the big Football Manager interview

Chris Tapsell — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

"Things- things are good," Miles Jacobson tells me, before a pause. "We've taken on a lot, with FM25."

A £700 PS5 Pro is an argument against "Pro" consoles altogether

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 10:34:03 +0000

There's bad timing, and there's your former company president going on a podcast and telling game developers – caught up in the worst period of mass layoffs in the history of video games – to go "drive an Uber or whatever," the very same day you announce a £700 console in the middle of a cost of living crisis.

We're launching The Eurogamer 100 today - here's what it's all about

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 11:29:34 +0000

Hello! You might have spotted Eurogamer is 25 this week, and so alongside the first appearance of a few permanent micro-wrinkles and a sharp decline in people asking us for ID, we're marking the occasion with something special.

Star Wars Outlaws review - stripped-back Ubisoft formula is admirable yet doomed

Chris Tapsell — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 12:01:10 +0000

If nothing else, I've had a wonderful time playing Sabacc. The new variant, Kessel Sabacc, invented for Star Wars Outlaws is infinitely moreish, a simple card game that takes elements of Blackjack and Poker and a few others, and blends them into an eminently snackable bit of video game gambling. In the simplest terms, four players are each dealt a hand of two cards and take turns, through three rounds, to attempt to make a pair of the two lowest numbers possible. Drawing a new card costs a token, as does coming anywhere but first at the end of each set of rounds. When you're out of tokens you're out of the game; last player standing wins. I could play it all day.

Spare a thought for poor Concord, a kind and earnest shooter sent out to die

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 09:11:10 +0000

Has there been a more competitive time to release a video game? Possibly. Without resorting to blunt totting-ups of metascores and sales figures and some kind of dividing-by-gap-between-release-dates, it's not really something you can measure. One particularly rectangular section of my brain was tempted, mind, in the same kind of doomed endeavour as Civilization 7 designer Ed Beach trying to mathematically quantify whether his team was sticking to Sid Meier's rule of thirds. After a physicist who helped launch the Hubble telescope told me he couldn't make that work, I thought better of it.

Civilization 7 pairs seismic changes with a lovably familiar formula

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 21:00:00 +0000

The opening to Firaxis' big Civilization 7 presentation is wonderfully on-brand: a quickfire history lesson from Ed Beach, lead designer, on the many historical layers of the City of London. Beach is one of the rare cases of a lead designer on Civilization staying in charge across multiple entries, having overseen Civ 6 before Civ 7, and who's worked on the series since long before that. A physicist turned game designer – Beach also worked on the launch of the Hubble telescope, a key part of the Civ 6 scientific victory – he's also a self-confessed history nerd. As quickly evidenced.

Where's our Black Myth: Wukong review?

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Editor's note: Our full Black Myth: Wukong review is now live!

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 delivers maximum Warhammer to glorious effect

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Often, the first question for any Warhammer 40K game is simply, "Is it Warhammer 40K enough?" This is one of those franchises where the brand itself becomes the thing some fans want to play: it must be grim, it must be dark, it must have sufficient gore, and must have both recognisable nods and oblique references that adhere strictly to our "Core Brand Values". Also, I suppose, there should be a video game in there somewhere.

EA FC 25's new Rush format is better than Volta - but where's FIFA Street when you need it?

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 10:23:13 +0000

Alongside the many changes coming to FC 25, a big new addition is Rush, a format - EA Sports was keen to specify this is not technically a mode - playable across every actual mode within the game.

The big EA Sports FC 25 preview: a proper career mode update, a Football Manager-style tactics system, FUT tweaks, and more

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 16:00:34 +0000

FIF- sorry, EA Sports FC 25 has been officially unveiled, with England wonderkid Jude Bellingham this year's cover star. As usual, developer EA Sports has also outlined plans for a couple of big headline changes for the year - as well as a bucketload of little tweaks to go alongside them - but there are a couple of surprises. For one, FC 25 is going all tactical, with a new system with its customary proper noun, FC IQ, being introduced behind the scenes. And maybe even more surprising: there's an actual, proper update for career mode.

Football Manager 25 to remove Inbox, ability to hammer "Demand More" whenever you're losing

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 11:31:28 +0000

Some big changes are coming to FM25. Last year, in an exclusive interview with Eurogamer on the future of Football Manager, Sports Interactive gaffer Miles Jacobson described those big changes, particularly those coming to the game's UI, as "the most dangerou changes you can make - because people who have muscle memory of knowing exactly where to go won't have that anymore"

Concord feels like a load of brilliant games combined - but is that enough?

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 09:00:24 +0000

Everything else aside, Concord definitely throws up an interesting question. Does doing every distinct, individual part of a game as well as it can be done lead to a good game in itself? We're a step away from "what makes a good game?" here, a mountain-sized can of worms. A worm volcano. Not going near that one - but Concord does make me wonder.

League of Legends is getting a Vampire Survivors-style PvE mode, Swarm - and it's a zen kind of carnage

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Somehow, a combination of League of Legends and Vampire Survivors has produced something strangely relaxing. The infamously intense MOBA is getting a new mode this summer - just temporarily, at least for now - called Swarm, taking characters from League and design elements of the recently formed "bullet heaven" wave survival genre. But the big twist is that for all the on-screen carnage - and there is a lot of on-screen carnage - the result is something strangely chilled out.

My first hands on with The Plucky Squire was one of the most joyful experiences in ages

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 13:13:37 +0000

Joy is a bit underrated, I reckon, but at Summer Game Fest this year it felt like the closest thing to a running theme. Astro Bot and Lego Horizon Adventures were both a breeze, playful, ebullient family games that put all their focus on simply being a good time. The Plucky Squire, an action game with a domestic dimension hopping twist, however, probably just pipped them to the position of first, in the race to be the most joyful experience I had all week.

Astro Bot channels the pure game design of Nintendo, as PlayStation turns towards families

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 13:59:49 +0000

Few games generated as much joy in the room of their Summer Game Fest demos as Astro Bot, the latest from Astro's Playroom and Astro Bot: Rescue Mission developer Team Asobi. During my three quarters of an hour or so with Astro Bot I just about cleared all of its demo. I say "just about" because, while the main missions accessed from its galaxy-style menu were a family-friendly breeze, a couple of other hidden, bonus missions were far from it, offering a challenge to rival some PlayStation platformers of old (looking at you, Crash Bandicoot).

Lego Horizon Adventures is a perfect match - a breezy, light-hearted approach the series has perhaps always needed

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 16:00:00 +0000

While chatting with Guerilla's narrative director James Windeler shortly after my time with Lego Horizon Adventures, I was reminded that Horizon Zero Dawn's signature robo-dino creatures have already had ties to Lego for some time. "The story goes that we prototyped the first machines in Horizon Zero Dawn from Duplo," he said, "so it's always been a part of the studio."

Whisper it, but Dragon Age: The Veilguard has me thinking the unthinkable: it looks like BioWare is back

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Right, let's get all the negative stuff out the way first. One: I'm not sure about the new name. Dragon Age: Dreadwolf was much cooler than Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

After a worryingly dated hands-on with Star Wars Outlaws, Ubisoft's galactic open world feels less exciting than expected

Chris Tapsell — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 20:00:00 +0000

Last year, Ubisoft's unveiling of Star Wars Outlaws was one of my highlights of the not-E3 period. In a lengthy hands-off demo, we saw protagonist Kay Vess and her little helper Nix sneak through an enemy base, blast her way out into the open world, rip across it on a speeder and scrape her way through conversations with a crime lord.

"I dont believe in living in fear" - Obsidian talks Avowed release date prospects and Xbox studio closures

Chris Tapsell — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 08:27:48 +0000

When Avowed was first unveiled back at the Xbox summer showcase of 2021, a dark and moody CGI trailer of burning arrows and fantasy spell-and-sword dual wielding - all from the studio behind the likes of Pillars of Eternity and Fallout: New Vegas - positioned it as something of a first-party Skyrim for Xbox.

Forget Levolution and Drivatars, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 now has 'omnimovement'

Chris Tapsell — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 18:20:00 +0000

The 90s may be back, as Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's roster of provocative political characters makes clear, but at Treyarch it might be a bit closer to 2013. Just as Battlefield 4 had Levolution and Forza had its Drivatars, Black Ops 6 is reviving the once-popular trend of making up silly words for neat, new, though not exactly groundbreaking ideas.

Sorry, you can't play as Margaret Thatcher in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

Chris Tapsell — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 18:20:00 +0000

I am very sorry to report that, no, you cannot play as former UK Prime Minister, Conservative party leader and unanimously beloved human being Margaret Thatcher in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

What is the point of Xbox?

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 09 May 2024 10:41:30 +0000

The 360 years feel like a lifetime ago. This week, Xbox stunned the industry by announcing it had closed three studios, and repurposed a fourth into another service game support team. This follows the 1900 people laid off across Xbox at the start of this year, and those Xbox employees quietly caught up in the 10,000 layoffs Microsoft made the year before. It has been a disastrous piece of PR self-sabotage, particularly with the reputations of these studios in mind.

What to Play This May 2024

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 01 May 2024 12:00:05 +0000

Hello and welcome back to What To Play! We've returned from a little hiatus, which you definitely noticed and have been very sad about, of course. It's finally edging towards spring here in the UK, but don't let that tempt you into going outside, there's video games to be a-playin'!

Flintlock's breezy visual panache suggests another fine addition to the burgeoning "souls-lite" genre

Chris Tapsell — Wed, 01 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

A short way into an extended hands-off presentation of Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, and my main thought was: this feels a lot like a mix between God of War and Souls games, at which point creative director Simon Dasan described it as… more or less exactly that. "A massive thing for us was to try and take that real Soulslike field of action, and then make it more accessible, kind of bring it all together to the masses," he explained, to the sound of main character Nor slashing theatrically through an enemy grunt.

Harold Halibut review - sub-aquatic sci-fi adventure is a little too prog-rock

Chris Tapsell — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 15:22:56 +0000

What if a game was intentionally quite boring? This feels like the premise with Harold Halibut, and at first it's kind of brilliant. You take on the role of the eponymous janitor here, a kind of lab-assistant-slash-gofer and general multipurpose dogsbody aboard the Fedora. A crashed colony spaceship that set off from Earth some time in the late 70s or early 80s, the Fedora has now been stuck, for about 60 years, deep beneath the ocean on a predominantly liquid planet, becoming a kind of self-contained commune that only partially longs for home.

Epic Games: mobile "gatekeeping" is "at the heart of why the industry is in a rut"

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 11:28:13 +0000

Back in September of 2023, the European Union officially designated Apple a "gatekeeper" under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), stipulating that it must open its App Store on iOS in a number of ways, including adding the ability to "side-load" apps from the web rather than the store, to have other storefronts available, and more.

Fortnite exec on kids making games: Island Creator Program is 18+ because "this is professional labour"

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 11:28:08 +0000

User-generated content, or UGC, has been a continued source of discussion recently, particularly when it involves minors doing the creating and, in some cases, earning off the back of it.

The Crush House is a "thirst-person shooter" that holds a mirror to reality TV production

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 09:39:14 +0000

Last night on Married At First Sight Australia, Eden revealed she'd be hiding a terrible secret. Another bride - who I won't reveal because SPOILERS, obviously - had texted her asking if she could borrow a top, so she could wear it to… see her ex-boyfriend.

Roblox Studio boss: children making money on the platform isn't exploitation, it's a gift

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 13:54:07 +0000

UPDATE 5/4/24: Roblox has provided Eurogamer a lengthy statement setting forth its views on the platform, its monetisation, and the ages of those who receive revenue through it.

Roblox's new AI creator tools conjure all the wonder and scepticism of a magic show

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 13:54:06 +0000

If you've been to a magic show, or even just walked past one of those blokes who spray paint themselves gold and 'levitate' by Covent Garden, you'll know the feeling. First it's something between a full-blown "Woah!" and an appreciative "Neat," then the inner child dies again and it's back to boring old rationalisation. The deck was probably loaded, the audience member was probably a plant, and that levitating guy is concealing the mother of all wedgies from his hidden harness.

The big Larian interview: Swen Vincke on industry woes, optimism, and life after Baldur's Gate 3

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 17:19:00 +0000

"Greed has been fucking this whole thing up for so long, since I started," said Swen Vincke, founder and head of Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian, while collecting Game Developers' Choice award for Best Narrative last week. "I've been fighting publishers my entire life and I keep on seeing the same, same, same mistakes over, and over and over."

How Super Mario Bros. Wonder's devs narrowed down 2000 ideas for its effects

Chris Tapsell — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It's not often we get to hear a senior developer of a Super Mario Bros. game philosophise about game design. At gamescom last year, Takashi Tezuka, executive officer at Nintendo and producer on Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and Shiro Mouri, the game's director, gave us a glimpse, as they spoke with Eurogamer about their intentions for Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom devs explain why it was a much bigger overhaul than you'd think

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 14:37:05 +0000

For many, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is still seen as a kind of Breath of the Wild 1.5 - a half-sequel that builds on 2017's revolutionary hit but, in using the same Hyrule as its overworld, doesn't fully transform it into something new.

Larian's next game will have different "tone, style, way of doing it" to Baldur's Gate 3, but won't "dwarf" it

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 21:57:33 +0000

You might have heard: while Larian isn't done with updating Baldur's Gate 3, the studio's next game won't be Baldur's Gate 4 or anything to do with D&D.

Larian's next game won't be Baldur's Gate 4, DLC, or anything with Dungeons & Dragons

Chris Tapsell — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:02:43 +0000

Surprising the audience at his GDC talk today, Larian's founder and CEO Swen Vincke announced the Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin developer won't be making any DLC or expansions for the game, and in fact will be leaving the Dungeons & Dragons world behind entirely.

Ubisoft unveils generative AI "NEO NPCs", and the spirit of Peter Molyneux's Milo lives on

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Much the same as last year, AI remains the talk of the town at GDC 2024. Roblox Studio has announced a new generative AI-based character creator. Graphics card manufacturer Nvidia unveiled a new AI-powered chip, sending its stock price skyrocketing. And behind closed doors, Ubisoft demonstrated something of its own to a small collection of the press: a partnership with Inworld AI to create a prototype for "Newly Evolving NPCs", or NEO NPCs as Ubisoft calls them.

Dune: Awakening won't feature sandworm-riding at launch - and no penis-sliders either

Chris Tapsell — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 18:14:14 +0000

Sandworms play a major part in Dune: Awakening, the big survival MMO coming some time soon from Funcom, the developers behind Conan: Exiles - but the game won't feature the novel's famous sandworm-riding come launch. And, presumably much more importantly for Conan fans, there'll be no penis sliders either.

Dune: Awakening devs explain "alt history" approach to Conan: Exiles' vast, intricate follow-up

Chris Tapsell — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 17:30:30 +0000

It's hard to think of a science fiction universe as inseparable from its canon as Dune. And yet at the same time, it's a universe where so much can vary from one interpretation to the next (as you'll be swiftly reminded any time you catch a stray set photo of a greased-up Sting.)

Pacific Drive review - an exhausting, oddly lovable nightmare

Chris Tapsell — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 15:02:50 +0000

The other day I read an old interview with Hidetaka Miyazaki, the FromSoftware director behind Dark Souls and Elden Ring, and it seems particularly relevant here. "I'm a huge masochist, so when I make games like these… this is how I want to be treated," he said. "'I want to be killed this way!' That's how I make it! It's just that sometimes other people don't understand it; it's for my pleasure." His interviewer interjects: "Really? You want to be killed deep in the forest, getting punched by a huge mushroom?"